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Gurometer: Sam Harris (Patreon)

Published:
2023-12-27 03:23:06
Imported:
2026-06
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Sam was decoded but how does he rank on the Gurometer? Join us, clear your mind, and realise the answer was inside you all along.

Comments

n-gons burgess

For some gurus you restrict input to a single content source, but here you've casted a much wider net. I would expect that this selection bias inflates the score and makes guru-guru comparisons less meaningful. However, it also makes the decoding more entertaining...

Riku

Great couple of episodes - maybe a little boring at times because the points and criticism was quite straightforward and honest. I think Chris' part in the main ep about the lab leak was so excellently put. Plus, I like Matt's overall take of 'he's alright, but why talk about everything'. The whole wider phenomenon about Sam Harris is more interesting than the actual content, because of how polarising he seems to be (the subreddit is actually insane at the moment). If you don't find it useful, don't listen to it. I do have the one issue with the section on 'Buddhism', and it's the same issue I have with Evan Thompson's work. I don't doubt that Chris (and Evan) conceptually understand all the points that Sam (and thousands of others) make, but the insights on self and free will are so dependent on the experience and exploration of non-duality, that without mentioning that it misses the point being made to begin with. Overall, I think the waking up is genuinely a great resource in putting together lots of wisdom - but there is a reason I choose to pay for that app subscription and not to Making Sense. Although, I give money to DtG so that probably voids any opinion I have ^^

Anna T

Man I’m so happy you dudes finally tackled this.. not beast obvs but complex gentleman’s view. I do like Sam Harris in many ways, but like this finger pointing like “it was twitter’s fault” and all this crying from men (and I’m sure many women) with a sort of higher “score” on the narcissism spectrum always end up with those type of “explanations”. They never like, “fall” gracefully which I guess can make up for some of the mumbo jumbo

Leslie

I mostly agreed with your scoring here, but I would have given Sam more credit on galaxy-brainedness (I think that’s the one). While he does address a broad range of topics, he was very clear that he is not an expert on vaccines or covid. He interviewed a couple of people with more expertise on those topics and said he should not be the one to debate anyone (Bret) about vaccines.

Paul Bowman

The more I hear about SH's shtick, the more it seems like a simple case of a guy who has deluded himself that he has "transcended ideology" through the magic of his introspective meditative practices and this is why he is incapable of doubting the first opinion that comes into his head, even in the face of opposition from experts, or having any self-awareness when it comes to his own ideological blinkers. If anyone can be said to have internalised the "ideology of non-ideology" as a personal credo and transformed into a supposed liberatory praxis (at least at the epistemic level) its Sam the Man.

Paul Bowman

By coincidence, I listened to this back-to-back with Matthew's interview with Brad Onishi about "Secular person of faith" over on Conspirituality pod. While I think Onishi might be on a bit of a hiding to nothing trying to redefine "faith" in the way he wants to, I have sympathy for his meaning. i.e. that there is a dynamic of (some) people taking refuge from uncertainty and unpredictability in the dogmatic certainties of religion - and that this has parallels in the atheist secular world as well. And that the alternative position of accepting uncertainty, unknown unknowns and the undecidability of some really significant questions, yet still holding a basically pro-social position of cautious optimism for the meliorability of the human condition, requires something a bit like "faith". I feel SH and many of the IDW have fallen into secular (or with JBP, crypto-religious) searches for certainty through "mind-hacks" and various other supposed sense-making "one neat trick" maguffins

James Pulver

I have a couple questions from this decoding. First, I kind of want to see a guruomoter reading of a mainstream news opinion person on a set of mainstream content. Bill Mahr might have fit, but you did his stoned podcast, which I feel is not that mainstream the way I'm talking. Maybe John Oliver? Someone's opinion / reporting on a mainstream news show on a major cable or broadcast network. The reason I ask is I want to know if simply commenting on "everything" is "galaxy brained" or if there's a subtle difference. Or would every interview podcast be galaxy brained? This might also elucidate the difference between Chris and Matt's ratings scales more usefully. Second is more around the philosophy. I'd love some more explanation on why physicalists would reject determinism a la Sam? If you do buy into the determinism I then kind of wonder how you then define self. I think Chris was saying something like how I see it - there are different levels of thinking about it like we have biology -> chemistry -> physics. We don't usually talk about biology at the physics level because it hinders rather than helps. But we also realize that underlying biology is molecular processes. I had the feeling that Sam also thinks this way, that while he doesn't think there's a self in a deep philosophical way, we all, including Sam, experience a self in the colloquial way, and it's useful to understand we have to deal with that experience. He just thinks that a lot of things become way less salient if you follow him to the meditative no-self system. I don't go that far, I think it can be useful to deal with issues people have at the level they're having them, but you can sometimes "work-around" them if you can move to another layer (anti-depressants for example). Maybe for some the meditative practice can remove the need for therapy or whatever, but certainly it's not a law of the universe they way Sam seems to feel it is. If you don't buy into determinism, I'd love to see someone talk about what they do think is happening and clarify where Sam goes wrong there.