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Recoding Sam Harris with Eiynah (Part 2) (Patreon)

Published:
2022-03-22 07:15:55
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

Content

Here is the second part of the conversation with Eiynah on her podcast 'Polite Conversations'. As Eiynah describes:

"This episode covers the second part of our chat. Here, we get into the nitty gritty of our differences. I think it's important because to casual listeners all IDW criticism may appear to be similar but actually there are some pretty fundamental differences even within the critical space."

I agree with her and I think we still probably do disagree on the best approach and how to best categorise Sam & similar thinkers but I do think she makes good arguments for her side. Interested in what others think.

But again a warning... this is a very inside baseball discussion and I'm not sure how I (or Eiynah) classify people on our political spectrums really matters in the grand scheme. Some interesting points made nonetheless and I enjoyed the chat so maybe you will too.

Files

Ep 67: Chris Kavanagh (pt 2)- Differences & Similarities by Polite Conversations

This episode covers the second part of our chat. Here, we get into the nitty gritty of our differences. I think its important because, to casual listeners all IDW criticism may appear to be similar, but actually there are some pretty fundamental differences even within the critical space.

Comments

Daniel Reed Miller

I really enjoyed both parts! I’ve been a fan of both your approaches so i was stoked when i saw her tweet about these episodes. Perhaps sometime you can have her on DTG too, to pick up on topics you never got to, though with hopefully not too much relitigation of points of difference 😄.

Tasty3141

Very good second part. She is as deeply embedded into guru minutiate as Chris so can go toe to toe with him all night. She did well pushing on on Sam Harris. It's a shame Chris is rarely able to articulate what he disagrees with about the more leftist positions. There is a lot of talk of 'we may disagree' but I'd like to hear some push back. It's almost like it's not possible to argue with a leftist without risking being tagged as right wing or something?

Shannon

I feel like I still don't understand Chris's argument for Sam Harris not being right wing. Beyond some pragmatic point that we shouldn't call him right wing because that might make people decide they are right wing too. That seems like Chris is conceding the point but just disagrees as a strategy? This is not a critique, I like that Chris is not trying to "win" and concedes where he actually agrees or feels unsure or feels some force in the argument. It seems like he might be changing his mind on it? Not sure. Edit: If you think Sam Harris is left, Destiny is definitely left. Being left doesn't make him less of an performative edgy boy. He throws out the spicy tweets to generate the content.

Jeremy Stewart

I really enjoyed this. Your podcast has made me really reconsider the level of credence I give the likes of Sam Harris and I'm sure there are many more like me. I've heard plenty of criticism of him before yours but the reason yours stuck is that you were willing to give him credit where it was due. I wonder how many people have ended up being pushed in the opposite direction by your podcast as Eiynah suggested. I have to say that her characterisation of effictive altruism as creepy was a little bit too much for me. It's stuff like that that would probably make it difficult for me to listen to her regularly.

Tasty3141

Oh and just another aside. Regarding you potentially 'laundering' bad people by giving them an inch of air time and how that might move people towards the right rather than away... DEFINITELY NOT. I've heard all the podcast that are on the left or anti IDW types and although I have enjoyed them at times (especially when they're going after people I had already decided I didn't like) they were rarely able to move me away from people I had soft spot for because I always had this feeling they were not critiziing them fairly but rather coming at it from an ideological angle. But DTG is good natured and doesn't seem to have a chip on its shoulder and just invites us to take a second look at what they are actually *saying* and because of that it MASSIVELY and QUICKLY moved me more towards the center from the right. If that's what Eiynah wants from people she should know that it's almost certainly the case that DTG does more good in that regard than something like I don't Speak German and that's because the latter show and others like it end up preaching to the converted. Also people come to DTG I'm sure mostly because they are either A) Already on left and want to watch the gurus dunked on. In which case they are hardly going to go "oooh they said Gad Saad makes wholesome tweets I think I'm antiwoke now" or B) fans of the people being dunked on and if they are fans DTG is way more likely to move them than a podcast that is likely to end up calling them a fascist in the first 5 minutes and put the listener on the defensive... "I just like Jordan Peterson saying people are like Lobsters and now I'm being told I'm Hitler. Fuck this podcast."

Allan Hutton

Yup, the last 30 mins had me squirming in sympathy for you lad. And poor old Matt getting thrown under the wholesome bus😂😂😂 DTG has actually given me insight into people I trusted and let me see the conspiratorial nature of them. Eiynah has her own agenda, fine, go to it. Trying to police other critics is a bit much for me

TheRick

I found this conversation very interesting. Though I know Decoding the Gurus is not primarily a political podcast, the gross categorization of political positions along the left-right axis continues to be a stumbling block and source of confusion in the characterization of the people you discuss, particularly in this conversation with Eiynah. I think most will agree that Democrats insist that government makes many positive contributions to our lives, while Republicans argue that it is a barrier to the prosperity created by free markets, but as usual, the devil is in the details. Confounding that simple dichotomy are issues like immigration, abortion, judicial philosophy, the unitary state vs federalism, gun rights, foreign policy (think about security-state neocons, e.g.) equality vs liberty (or communitarianism vs individualism), church/state issues, etc. etc For example, to say Glenn Greenwald or Matt Taibbi are of the “right” is unhelpful because it’s far too simplistic. (I don’t say this in defense of all their positions). Or to characterize Bernie Sanders is emblematic of the far left, when as you know Ireland, Australia, Japan and pretty much the rest of the industrialized world enjoys universal healthcare — Bernie’s signature policy position — makes me wonder what you mean when you call yourself a “moderate liberal.” (In most other contexts Bernie would simply be what Europe calls a Social Democrat.) I don’t want to go too much further down the political science rabbit hole here, and I know you don’t want to do that in your interviews or podcasts either. But if you are going to characterize peoples’ politics — and you probably need to sometimes, based upon what you do in your podcast — I would suggest you examine (offline) and treat these characterizations with the nuance it demands. It’s commonplace these days to say that this is a time of intense political and social polarization. And I think we can agree that many of the IDW types make their livings off of that. I think that if we want to get past some of the social and political gridlock we find ourselves enmeshed in, we are going to have to be much more nuanced in how we define people’s politics.

TheRick

I am not saying that the left/right framework is entirely irrelevant, but it is most useful as a starting point — as I think your disagreements with Eiynah over Sam's politics highlight (to the "right on race/immigration, and more "centrist left" on issues relating to a social safety net). Aside from Democrat/Republican, the left/right spectrum has stood in for progressive/reactionary, conservative/liberal, communist/fascist, socialist/capitalist. But taken alone it can be conceptually confused and historically contingent. (Conservatism for example, in its original sense, has no specific ideological content at all, since everything depends on what one is trying to conserve.) Any position anywhere along a simple left/right spectrum is filled with contradictions because there really are no coherent groups of either the left or the right. The “left” tends to stand for promoting equality over traditional hierarchies — a crude shorthand I know — and that takes in a lot. The so-called right can range from free-market libertarians to extreme nationalists, isolationists like Pat Buchanan or Tucker Carlson, war hawks, and advocates of authoritarianism, theocracy, or military dictatorship for example. Or these days, simply “anti-woke.” There’s no common vision. Still, I agree there’s some utility in the left/right designation. The case of Glenn Greenwald is particularly confounding — and disturbing. He’s been a pugnacious contrarian for a long time, going after the hypocrisy of Democratic Party, many in the “liberal media,” and a host of nefarious establishment policies and practices. In the past he’s done this in a manner not unlike other on the left , e.g. Chris Hedges, Noam Chomsky, Jeremy Scahill, Krystal Ball, Katrina vanden Heuvel, Aaron Mate, Amy Goodman, Nathan Robinson, Max Blumenthal, and Matt Taibbi (Matt is also “complicated”). They all also criticize the right, “corporate capitalism,” the military-industrial complex, and censorship. But Glenn now has tapped into the reactionary rage machine for what appears to be both psychological and (obviously) monetary reasons, which I’d say makes him an excellent subject for Decoding the Gurus — if you’re willing to confront the heat of his vindictiveness.

Sean Carmody

Just listened. Notwithstanding Matt not being as tough on Gad as Chris, I found Eiynah’s notion that DTG could push people into taking Gad or Williams seriously a stretch. I’d never heard of Gad before listening to the DTG episode (lucky me) and, while it may not have left me with the visceral disgust I felt towards Scott Adams after that episode, I certainly came away with the impression that he is a buffoon channeling some far right tropes. So I think your listeners are in safer hands than Eiynah fears