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Sam Harris Questions (Patreon)

Published:
2024-01-27 06:00:23
Imported:
2026-06
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We will have a second episode with Sam soon. He probably will have some objections to things we said on our decoding episode and we have various points we want to raise with him (Chris a lot more than Matt).

We really can’t promise anything, as it’s likely we won’t get through our own questions but just wondering if any of you have any burning questions you would *like* us to ask.

Again, given how it went last time ***it’s very unlikely we are going to get to listeners’ questions*** but nonetheless interested in any suggestions.

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Comments

Emma

What tribe does Sam belong to?

Alex A

Please do not say the word “tribal” even one time! :)

Oblio

Please ask him: given his recent episode with Jonathan Rauch talking about the constitution of knowledge, what are the elements of HIS epistemic process? How does he ensure he doesn't fall into the "i think it's true because i think it" trap or the "my friends and family keep me grounded" trap? Why does he feel confident ignoring topic experts in some domains but not others - he will properly invite epidemiologists or medical experts to insert sanity into the discourse against IDW contrarians, but he will not invite experts on terrorism to talk about the complex political and biographical factors motivating political violence and suicide terrorism. For the former, he will defer. For the latter, he will insist, dismissing criticisms without even detailing let alone addressing them.

Adrian Li

Sam really needs to listen to your response to his interview with the Lab Leak Theory duo. I was initially quite convinced by his interview, but after listening to the DtG response, I flipped completely. It was just a much more nuanced and deeper conversation.

Maarten Wesselius

I would like it if you focus on the issue of him opining on topics without doing the proper basic research and, relatedly, on the lab leak hypothesis and how to form an opinion on that based on what the (actual) experts say. And I think you were planning to do this already anyway, but: please avoid the topics of tribalism and his tendency to extend more charity to anti-woke / right wing types than to left wing types. Not because it's not interesting or important, but because nothing will come out of it and it's been tried before.

Eric Stern

Just ask him this: Sam, would you please let me finish my sentences before speaking?

2LegHumanist

I'd love to see him questioned about his views of AI. Most AI researchers are comfortable with the idea of AGI or even superintelligence emerging in some far flung future. But there is a crackpot contingent who believe it's only a few years away. It's never been quite clear which camp he is in. He does seem to think resources should be mobilised today to mitigate the risk of AI killing us all. This is not to be confused with genuine immediate concerns of generative AI infringing copyright or facilitating scammers and fake news propagandists etc.

Empty_Cognizance

Could you guys post a list of your questions, by any chance? Just curious what slant they're going to take

Ymirsdreams

I have a genuine one (which is a bit confrontational) and a supplement: 1: Harris has advocated for a very particular style of meditation, 'western mindfulness' as a means to acquire the correct 'dispassionate' mindset to address moral problems from a 'scientific' / 'utilitarian' stance. This appears to be a purely subjective 'benefit' of mindfulness meditation. Most practitioners cite increased frustration, boredom, even experiencing painful memories from meditation as being normal experiences during mindfulness. The religious tradition surrounding these experiences relies on the metaphysics of Buddhism. ('oh, that's the ego attempting to tempt you away from nivana', etc) In order for Sam's belief that mindfulness mediation will facilitate objectivity and disinterested application of moral judgment doesn't this entail an adoption of the Buddhist metaphysics? 2: Sam advocates for the benefits of a particular style of mindfulness practise. i) why this style? ii) are there modes of mediation he would consider harmful (eg: loving-kindness or 'metta' seems completely counter the idea that meditation helps one become more objective: many meditation practises have nothing to do with 'calmness' or 'objectivity') iii) how far would he go supporting the claims made and benefits attributed to these? (eg: enlightment, etc?) Finally, on a scale of Visigoth to Navajo...

Michael

A few years ago, Sam Harris had Bill Maher on and they were talking about movies and Sam speculated that movie audiences have gotten smarter because he found a lot of “classic” films to be boring and slow. He didn’t say it exactly like that, but that was the gist. Specifically - the movie he chose to illustrate his point about dull witted audiences of yesteryear was Hitchcock’s NORTH BY NORTHWEST, a movie I discovered when I was 9 years old, i’ve seen it a dozen times and it’s still thrilling, with a flawlessly engineered script. And while there’s no accounting for taste, it’s an acknowledged masterpiece by a director who has a legitimate claim to GOAT. Sam went to see it with his wife and they found it tedious. Specifically, he said the first kiss between Cary Grant & Eva Marie Saint looked fake and at that point they walked out. Before the crop duster sequence! Maybe if Sam had stuck around he may have understood why Hitchcock staged that scene that way. I don’t know what the question is, but I believe Sam carelessly and publicly slagged off one of the greatest films ever made, ensuring less people will see it, simply because he doesn’t know how to watch a movie. They simply do not make movies like this anymore - every single detail is thought over for months, every beat, every breath, every line, everything has been considered by the director. I like Sam a lot. I believe he is conscientious, thoughtful, sincere, and trustworthy. Even when I don’t agree with him. But this has been rattling around in my mind for years. He’s from a show business family. The kiss looked fake? Its a movie, its all fake. I feel I’ve taken up enough of your time. I just have a hard time understanding how Sam could have jumped to the conclusion that he was right - NxNW was obsolete entertainment tech - and film scholars who live and breathe this stuff, they’re all wrong.

OAR

Ask him if he's worried Jordan Peterson is going to lose his licence.

Aaron Holder

I would like to know why he casts government institutions and large media organisations as no longer trustworthy at all. He never qualifies his statements by restricting them to a specific geographical region or group of regions, and he never explains how some perceived problems can justify damning the lot. He’s engaging in rhetoric, not critique. And it feels like a North American either ignoring the rest of the world because it’s not America, or he’s assuming that everyone else does it like the US of A.

Klas Bergholtz

I would like to know why he is so shortsighted with regards to his analysis of the world. His view for example that Islam is uniqily expansionist just ignores all of history after the arab conquests. You could look at the crusades, colonialism, the Nazis for some exemplet of Christian expansionism. Likevise he whitewahses Budhisms history as a religion of peace which is far from the truth. Even a casual look at Indian, south East asian och Chinese history betrays the falisity of this

Dermot Power

Listening to Sam and his guests nodding along to his assertion that ‘having no free will makes retributive justice pointless because a person is no more responsible for their actions than a bear who tore your arm off and you wouldn’t want to get revenge on a bear ( or a tornado or whatever ) ‘ how come he doesn’t extend that charitable attitude to Nasim Taleb when he is (very enjoyably) skewering him- sure sounded retributive to me. - btw that Taleb take down was hilarious - so not suggesting he shouldn’t have done it.

Daniel

I'd like Sam to be asked how disregarding leading experts on COVID-19 origins is consistent with his stressing the importance of experts and institutions. Frankly, I think COVID origins is a topic he's been hypocritical on, and it's consequential because his one-sided promotion of the lab leak theory contributes to mistrust of health institutions. In any case, I respect Sam for coming back on, and I've appreciated his denunciations of Trump, vaccine conspiracists, Musk, etc. To me he's one of the good guys.

Níall

What's his favourite colour? That was a big deal up until I was 7 or so. It defined the people I met (children in my class).

Dr Badmouth

How come DTG is one of the few disagreeable conversations with people on the left he has?

Dr Badmouth

What was the last topic he did a deep dive on? I feel like SH hasn't been able to make any bold claims as he used to do with religion because he's not putting in the work

Michael

Sam has said that he believes racial profiling is a correct approach, during a conversation with comic Hannibal Buress. His reasoning was that if an outsize percentage of young black males were committing violent crimes, of course the police are going to single them out. I wonder if Sam has ever had the experience of being suspected at all times, wherever he went, getting pulled over for no reason, any number of degrading situations simply because of his appearance. If that were his lived experience, how would he engage with the world? If the authorities assume you are a criminal, isn’t it just the path of least resistance to become a criminal? Racial profiling is a complicated issue that we’re not gonna solve tonight, but the cold logic of his reasoning fails to account for the collateral damage from stigmatizing a population. This conversation happened years ago, maybe he’s changed his beliefs. He is conscientious, so it is baffling he could hold these beliefs. The sleep of reason breeds monsters, i’m told.

Jamison Shipley

Why do so many of the friends he has go off the deep end? Weinsteins, Maajid Nawaz, etc.

Linda Sears

Who was the father figure that guided him towards wisdom (since he and Chris Williamson appeared to think these are important to have)?

Kathleen May

In his interview with Ezra Klein years ago, Ezra was trying to talk about Sam having unconscious bias (presumably in favor of other middle-aged white men who share his primary preoccupation of being afraid/outraged that someone somewhere might call them bigoted) and Sam was like, nope, I have examined my mind and I have no unconscious bias. I’ve always wanted someone to invite him to dwell on the absurdity of that.

Mohammed

What does he think are the most pressing issues the world is facing in 2024 and the near future?

jodcr

I’ve seen Harris have conversations with folks like Ben Shapiro wherein they discuss things they agree about and congratulate themselves for being civil while “thinking in public.” And yet, time again, when somebody disagrees with his ideas directly or criticizes his arguments, he insists that he’s being personally attacked. Why can’t he simply confront the arguments of people who disagree with him without presuming to know they are in bad faith and complaining that he is a victim? It makes the self-proclaimed mind guru look thin skinned incapable of separating his ego from his arguments.

YellowDreams

How has he changed in his approach toward who he does (and doesn’t) engage with after having many of his former close collaborators go completely off the rails? Can he address if he truly thinks he charitable to people with those who criticise him vs those who he finds are friendly to him

Patrick Dunlop

Chris, can I suggest you spend more time steel-manning Sam's argument and asking him to do the same to yours before getting into the parts where you disagree. It might prevent a repeat of the tribalism spiral where it seemed the problem was you were using the word "tribalism" very differently. Matt, maybe you could interject if it happens again (that last discussion with Sam needed a circuit breaker!)

Tom

(I used to know the specific details better than I do now):Can you ask about his thoughts on Charlottesville as it was happening? He's been a sympathizer of the "very fun people hoax". Which discounts the shock that people felt when on a Friday you had nazi's yelling jews will not replace us. For almost a full day he does not condem the march at all. Then when a women gets killed he starts blabbering about "very fine people on both sides" and clumsley confusing the friday protest with the saturday protest? Why should the president be given the benefit of the doubt when he's proven to be a racist countless times before? Why if Sam has "Personal" knowledge of Trump being a racist (which he won't reveal) is it ok for him to throw that accusation but not others? Why if what Trump said was fine was it probably the first time in his administration where you saw daylight between him and his senior appointees on a issue publicly? His chief of staff, commerce secretary and many others condemed Trumps response. Why can't Sam?

Maytree

Were the infamous Willie Horton Bush ads racists dog whistles -- as the became widely recognized to be -- or not? In other words, must we always interpret purposely amiguous statements that may well be designed to illicit support byappealing to race, gender, sexual orientiation, xenophobic biases, as merely limited to the literal words that that are used, which may be interpreted in as harmless? ("there are good people on both sides, Proud Boys stand back and stand by"). I think here about Sam's argument with some of his guests who he later described as more woke than he had realized before he invited them onto his show. I think Sam and Ezra may have had some discussions on these points.

john statham

I think his ability to dodge answers is much greater if you ask multiple part questions; basically because he is so verbose.

Artemis Green

At risk of asking the same thing twice (and noting that you can't guarantee anything, may struggle to get your own questions in etc), I would love to hear you challenge Sam on: 1. 'Macho' Islam vs 'Girly' Christianity - specifically by reference to Christian history re: imperalism and violence; and 2. Chris's point about the Westernised view of Buddhism one gets from English language books at your local book store vs the perspective one gets from say reading an abhidharma literature at random.

john statham

Did he say that Matt Ridley was his friend?

Erik Fast

I would like to know why Sam doesn’t invite a more ideolologically diverse set of people to have conversations on his podcast. I know he views many on the far left as beyond the pale, but there are moderate liberals who could give the argument from the other side on issues like racial justice, Israel-Palestine, etc. and have a good faith debate about it.

Kyle Ferriter

1) I'd like to know if he attempted to interview experts on the opposite side of the argument as Alina Chan and Matt Ridley. Or if he just interviewed them, said it sounded legit, and left it there. A lot of people on the other side seem to be pretty open to appearing on good-faith platforms to discuss. 2) I think Sam catastrophizes about the fall of institutional credibility. I fundamentally don't think anything has worsened in terms of how well institutions in fields like medicine, economics, science apply the scientific method and strive to arrive at true conclusions. If anything they are doing better now than at any time in the past. I think people have a rosy view of history. The way politics intertwined with science were way way worse in the past. Reagan had a White House astrologer. And in terms of research, they remember Newton and Einstein and Feynman, but there were tons of contemporaries of those scientists publishing much worse stuff! Even Newton published some nonsense. And Einstein probably got some opinions wrong. This doesn't mean all of science has collapsed and was untrustworthy. It's always been a mix. It's about improving over time. What's different now is that lay people are on social media reading charlatans publishing bunk and catastrophizing to audiences of millions, making them think *right now* is uniquely bad. I guess my question is does Sam know anything about history? 3) Alex O'Connor recently interviewed Richard Dawkins (good interview btw), and asked him about Ayan Hirsi Ali's claim to have converted to Christianity, and what it actually means. And they continued onto other related topics like whether the meme of religion is beneficial (i.e. aids the flourishing of human individuals and/or civilizations). I thought it was a good discussion. Ayan clearly does not actually think the truth claims in the Bible are true. But she seems to sign onto the idea that it is generally good when other people follow the teachings of Christian churches, and her nominal conversion is just an attempt to further that. What is Sam's view of this kind of nominal religion, especially since he is friends with Ayan too. Does he think it might be better for people *generally* to be adherents to some kind of religion because it makes them follow rules and share structured experiences with other people, even if he (and probably most of his listeners) don't actually think any of the fact claims the religion makes (besides generic moral ideas like "it's good to be kind to your neighbor") are true? 4) You could spend 2 hours talking about bias and tribalism, but I would recommend against spending *too much* time on it, just in the interest of productive discussion.

Randy

Sam has pointed to national data re: police killings to claim there is no evidence of racism in police killings. An article in the Washington Post a couple of years ago showed the data is flawed and incomplete. Is he aware? Does that give him pause or cause him to reconsider? Here's the article: Killings by police are undercounted by more than half, new study says https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/10/01/police-killings-undercount-study/

Randy

Also, on a recent appearance with Piers Morgan, he (Sam) appears to invent the word "tragesty." This isn't a question. I just think it's a good word. (I'm not suggesting he did it on purpose)

Maytree

On Israel/Palestine, Sam seems fixated on the those who he says are explicitly and admittedly pro-Hamas, particularly in universities and other high-cultural institutions, evidenced by demonstrations at a few elite universities, and the answers given by university presidents before Congress. My question is, how much relevance does this have to the debate? Is it not likely that a large portion of people on the left actually do condemn what Hamas did on October 7, but also disagree with the policies of Israel vis-a-vis the Palistinians? Why doesn't he discuss what is wrong with that, to me, more thoughtful viewpoint, and why not take that on instead of what seems more like a straw man to easily knock down. Interestingly, his latest argument in the 5 myths podcast from yesterday seems more extreme and self assured than such a nuanced position. He says -- as he admits repeatedly that he knows that it "sounds like war propaganda," that the Gaza war is essentially a necessary evil, and large swaths of innocent civilians, including children, are unfortunately necessarily going to die in order to win the war, and that there's even likely to be war crimes committed, but all that is rationalized given the evil we (the West) is dealing with. . . . . Perhaps this discussion is not particularly relevant to the Guru issues, as it is all pretty political (though I don't think Sam would agree), but it does strike me that there is something lacking here in the analysis, as his position seems close to the more right wing views in the governing Israeli administration.

Randy

Has he read the Radley Balko article (on his Substack) which completely eviscerates Coleman Hughes and (by extension) Bari Weiss and her Free Press regarding Derek Chauvin and the murder of George Floyd? Did it make him rethink his opinion of any of them as thinkers, journalists, and good faith actors? Link: https://radleybalko.substack.com/p/the-retconning-of-george-floyd

Kat

Has he read South Africa's case for Israeli genocide against the Palestinian people at the ICJ, or listened to the proceedings, and what does he think of it

Maytree

In the latest Making Sense episode, Rory Stewart pushes back on Sam's views about Muslim religious extremism being the primary source of violence in the middle east. Sam engages on this, but not so forcefully as he usually does, and seems to concede to some meaningful extent Rory Stewart's viewpoint, which is more in line with those for whom Sam has previously chastised from what I can recall. Seems like Stewart has already done much of any work Matt and Chris might do with Sam on this point.