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US Politics Mega-thread - Page 3683

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Read the rules in the OP before posting, please.

In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up!

NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious.
Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action.
Deleted User 3420
Profile Blog Joined May 2003
24492 Posts
Last Edited: 2016-04-26 20:39:07
April 26 2016 20:37 GMT
#73641
On April 27 2016 05:16 Naracs_Duc wrote:
Show nested quote +
On April 27 2016 05:13 zlefin wrote:
Driverless cars will find insurance fine; there is risk with a new technology, and that will involve a risk premium. But if they're sufficiently safer than normal cars, such that the payouts are much lower than for driven cars, then there'd be profit in offering insurance for them, so someone will offer it.
The considerable risk premium (which will also have to cover reinsurance for the insurer) will slow things down, but it will happen well enough.


There is only one reason something is automated: because people don't like doing it.



What? There's other reasons some things are automated

1.) It's unsafe to do manually
2.) It can be done quicker automatically than manually.
3.) To save money because you don't have to pay a person

I am sure I could come up with others\


For the case of automated cars, I think that the reasons why we would have those would be

1.) safety
2.) convenience

rather than
1.) convenience
2.) no other reasons
{CC}StealthBlue
Profile Blog Joined January 2003
United States41117 Posts
April 26 2016 20:39 GMT
#73642
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy on Tuesday said money to combat Zika should not be delivered through an emergency supplemental spending bill, even as Democrats continued to demand swift action to combat the virus.

“I do believe the best place to deal with this is in the appropriation process,” the California Republican told reporters at a pen-and-pad, referring to the annual process of passing 12 spending bills. “That’s where we will.”

Congressional Democratic leadership, including Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), have blasted Republicans for failing to pass supplement emergency funding to combat the spreading virus. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Monday , for example, warned of the increasing threat to the American public should Congress fail to provide funding, pointing to 500 confirmed cases of Zika discovered just south of Florida, in Puerto Rico.

“Experts tell us it won't be long before mosquitoes carrying Zika are infecting people here in the continental United States,” he said on the Senate floor. “We can't wait for that to happen before we act. This is an emergency situation.”

The Senate, he added, shouldn’t leave for the early May recess until it has acted: “We can't go on break without taking care of this emergency.”

A bipartisan group of Senators has been working on a deal to address the virus, though Appropriations Chairman Thad Chochran (R-Miss.) told POLITICO last week that such a measure would likely be attached to appropriations.


Source
"Smokey, this is not 'Nam, this is bowling. There are rules."
Naracs_Duc
Profile Joined August 2015
746 Posts
April 26 2016 20:41 GMT
#73643
On April 27 2016 05:36 Plansix wrote:
Show nested quote +
On April 27 2016 05:30 GreenHorizons wrote:
On April 27 2016 05:24 Plansix wrote:
On April 27 2016 05:20 GreenHorizons wrote:
On April 27 2016 05:16 Naracs_Duc wrote:
On April 27 2016 05:13 zlefin wrote:
Driverless cars will find insurance fine; there is risk with a new technology, and that will involve a risk premium. But if they're sufficiently safer than normal cars, such that the payouts are much lower than for driven cars, then there'd be profit in offering insurance for them, so someone will offer it.
The considerable risk premium (which will also have to cover reinsurance for the insurer) will slow things down, but it will happen well enough.


There is only one reason something is automated: because people don't like doing it.

As an example: Public Transit allows people to get to places without need of driving themselves. And yet there is no mass attempt to nationalize and make public transportation a common good. Why? Because at the end of the day people want to drive, they want autonomy, they want control. Automated cars won't go much further that the automated trains we have now. Niche uses with conductors and engineers keeping an eye on them as consumers continue to burn gas to drive around on their own free will.



I feel like there's a precedent/established mechanism for the government to encourage people to stop doing irrational things, or at least pay for their consequences?

Its not really that hard. People dislike traffic, but like driving cars. So driverless cars can work for commuting, but people could own(and likely will own) personal vehicles for traveling long distances. Driverless cars don’t solve all the problems personal vehicles do.


If driving is a privilege/luxury, surely driving long distances is too. Automated driving will be less expensive for insurers, so in time, it would become prohibitively expensive to drive yourself for most people.


As someone who grew up in a town of 900 people with no gas station or post office, I find this view adorable. It took half an hour to buy milk or food. One way. We all knew how to drive in a snow storm because it was unsafe not to.

Basically, check your public infrastructure privilege.


"Public Infrastructure Privilege" is now one of my new favorite phrases
Gorsameth
Profile Joined April 2010
Netherlands21587 Posts
April 26 2016 20:42 GMT
#73644
On April 27 2016 05:16 Naracs_Duc wrote:
Show nested quote +
On April 27 2016 05:13 zlefin wrote:
Driverless cars will find insurance fine; there is risk with a new technology, and that will involve a risk premium. But if they're sufficiently safer than normal cars, such that the payouts are much lower than for driven cars, then there'd be profit in offering insurance for them, so someone will offer it.
The considerable risk premium (which will also have to cover reinsurance for the insurer) will slow things down, but it will happen well enough.


There is only one reason something is automated: because people don't like doing it.

We don't automate factory lines because their boring, some smuck will always do the job because people need money.

We automate it because in the long run the machine is cheaper and produces less errors.
"People dont like doing it" doesn't factor into the equation.
It ignores such insignificant forces as time, entropy, and death
Naracs_Duc
Profile Joined August 2015
746 Posts
April 26 2016 20:46 GMT
#73645
On April 27 2016 05:37 travis wrote:
Show nested quote +
On April 27 2016 05:16 Naracs_Duc wrote:
On April 27 2016 05:13 zlefin wrote:
Driverless cars will find insurance fine; there is risk with a new technology, and that will involve a risk premium. But if they're sufficiently safer than normal cars, such that the payouts are much lower than for driven cars, then there'd be profit in offering insurance for them, so someone will offer it.
The considerable risk premium (which will also have to cover reinsurance for the insurer) will slow things down, but it will happen well enough.


There is only one reason something is automated: because people don't like doing it.



What? There's other reasons some things are automated

1.) It's unsafe to do manually
2.) It can be done quicker automatically than manually.
3.) To save money because you don't have to pay a person

I am sure I could come up with others\


For the case of automated cars, I think that the reasons why we would have those would be

1.) safety
2.) convenience

rather than
1.) convenience
2.) no other reasons


None of those are true.

As an example: There's a reason factories are going to 3rd world countries to mass produce goods. Its not because of safety, and its not because of speed.

Automation is a luxury that is only given to people high enough in society to have that luxury be a topic of discussion/interest. If they can simply tell someone to work harder for cheaper--companies will do that.

Relevant Example: UBER would like driverless cars--because right now they only get 25% of the profit per car and the drivers are now starting to file lawsuits and unionize. As such, getting rid of drivers will make them more money and cost them less. And this is only the case because their customers are not in third world countries, but in big cities where they can't just underpay their contractors and not be called out on it.
Silvanel
Profile Blog Joined March 2003
Poland4720 Posts
April 26 2016 20:54 GMT
#73646
Regarding automated driving:
1)Cars with such features are already here and noone have problems with insuring them: see new mercedes E class comercial for example
2)No they are no driverless and they are able to drive themselves only in certain conditions (highways etc.) but still its pretty amazing
3)If i had to guess thats the future of automation in driving (assistance to driver not replacing the driver tottaly)
Pathetic Greta hater.
Deleted User 3420
Profile Blog Joined May 2003
24492 Posts
April 26 2016 20:54 GMT
#73647
What do you mean none of those are true? Yes they are obviously true, why would you even try to argue that.

1.) why do they send robots to investigate highly radioactive places instead of people? or to defuse a bomb? Don't consider those automation? Here's an article of "three was industrial automation makes mining safer". http://www.torcrobotics.com/about-torc/blog/entry/three-ways-industrial-automation-makes-mining-safer

another example would be the thing we are talking about... I would buy an automated car for safety.


2.) when im low on time I type my math problems into wolfram alpha and get an answer much faster.

3.) does it cost more over a 5 year period to set up a machine that sells sodas and then have someone reload it once a month, or to pay a guy to stand there selling sodas all day and night for 5 years? why am I having to even argue that this is true.



so in tell me what way those aren't true again please, because I just gave you examples of how they are true.
DeepElemBlues
Profile Blog Joined January 2011
United States5079 Posts
April 26 2016 21:05 GMT
#73648
naracs I think you are underestimating labor costs when employing human beings and overestimating acquisition/operation/maintenance costs with automation.

Human labor costs tend to rise over time no matter where you put your factory, automation costs follow the trend of technology costs in general, they decrease over time as the robots or whatever the automation is become cheaper to make and maintain and more efficient in their operations.
no place i'd rather be than the satellite of love
oBlade
Profile Blog Joined December 2008
United States5488 Posts
April 26 2016 21:07 GMT
#73649
I think Kasich colluding with Cruz ruins his "I'm the only adult" shtick.
"I read it. You know how to read, you ignorant fuck?" - Andy Dufresne
GreenHorizons
Profile Blog Joined April 2011
United States23079 Posts
April 26 2016 21:10 GMT
#73650
On April 27 2016 05:35 travis wrote:
Show nested quote +
On April 27 2016 05:10 GreenHorizons wrote:
Hillary supporters keeping it classy...


when you frame things this way it reminds me of when certain people in this thread take some event and then say "sanders supporters at it again" or "sandernistas are *this way*" etc

it's annoying and it's a generalization that is probably not really accurate at all

and it helps to divide people

just FYI


I was hoping they would notice that as well. It was a crappy thing to do, but afaik people came out and said it shouldn't be happening. Think we can all stand to remember this a bit more often.

Meanwhile in PA...

"People like to look at history and think 'If that was me back then, I would have...' We're living through history, and the truth is, whatever you are doing now is probably what you would have done then" "Scratch a Liberal..."
Simberto
Profile Blog Joined July 2010
Germany11451 Posts
April 26 2016 21:14 GMT
#73651
I am not convinced that a large percentage of the population actually likes driving that much. Most people drive when they need to go to a place. Only a very small percentage of road traffic is people driving around randomly just for the fun of it.

Some people might enjoy driving more than riding a bike or taking the bus.

A lot of people like the convenience of having a car that takes them where they want to go at the time they want to go there, warm, dry, and with a lot of room to transport stuff without a lot of effort of necessary.

But imagine instead of driving the car, you could just sit there and watch a movie/eat breakfast/read a book/check facebook/get some work done while the car drives itself. Do you really think that a majority of the population would choose driving themselves? (If they think it at least as safe)
Acrofales
Profile Joined August 2010
Spain17955 Posts
April 26 2016 21:34 GMT
#73652
On April 27 2016 04:02 IgnE wrote:
you people are out of your minds if you think its cheaper to insure human drivers than computer ones. you are also out of your minds if you think an industry as huge as trucking and new companies as aggressive as uber will be prevented from realizing the enormous gains they stand to reap by insurance companies and hypothetical liabilities. computer drivers are orders of magnitude safer than human drivers in 2016, and thats a fact.

source needed, plansix, on your assertion that insurance companies are "very uncomfortable with it"

Case in point: here in Brazil (not sure on elsewhere) Uber already runs their own insurance. Uber drivers pay (I think) R$ 50 per year to insure their customers. There is nothing stopping them from reserving X amount of money for paying medical costs and legal fees in the case of an accident if the believe that will be cheaper than using human drivers. Insurance companies do not have a monopoly on insuring (or putting money aside for the case of eventualities)
Mohdoo
Profile Joined August 2007
United States15513 Posts
April 26 2016 21:43 GMT
#73653
On April 27 2016 06:10 GreenHorizons wrote:
Show nested quote +
On April 27 2016 05:35 travis wrote:
On April 27 2016 05:10 GreenHorizons wrote:
Hillary supporters keeping it classy...


when you frame things this way it reminds me of when certain people in this thread take some event and then say "sanders supporters at it again" or "sandernistas are *this way*" etc

it's annoying and it's a generalization that is probably not really accurate at all

and it helps to divide people

just FYI


I was hoping they would notice that as well. It was a crappy thing to do, but afaik people came out and said it shouldn't be happening. Think we can all stand to remember this a bit more often.

Meanwhile in PA...

https://twitter.com/ShaunKing/status/725039600629092353


Is this some sort of touch screen device? It looks like some dude pushing his finger into a piece of paper.
Acrofales
Profile Joined August 2010
Spain17955 Posts
April 26 2016 21:43 GMT
#73654
On April 27 2016 05:16 Naracs_Duc wrote:
Show nested quote +
On April 27 2016 05:13 zlefin wrote:
Driverless cars will find insurance fine; there is risk with a new technology, and that will involve a risk premium. But if they're sufficiently safer than normal cars, such that the payouts are much lower than for driven cars, then there'd be profit in offering insurance for them, so someone will offer it.
The considerable risk premium (which will also have to cover reinsurance for the insurer) will slow things down, but it will happen well enough.


There is only one reason something is automated: because people don't like doing it.

As an example: Public Transit allows people to get to places without need of driving themselves. And yet there is no mass attempt to nationalize and make public transportation a common good. Why? Because at the end of the day people want to drive, they want autonomy, they want control. Automated cars won't go much further that the automated trains we have now. Niche uses with conductors and engineers keeping an eye on them as consumers continue to burn gas to drive around on their own free will.


Maybe in the US, but in Europe there are various initiatives for mass attempt to nationalize and make public transportation a common good. Moreover, the lack of public transit puts a significant stress on the US infrastructure, and its sustainability is questionable. Also, Uber/taxi drivers and truckers are the first to be automated. The rest will follow when it costs less, and government finds that it causes less accidents and allows a more optimal use of infrastructure.
GreenHorizons
Profile Blog Joined April 2011
United States23079 Posts
Last Edited: 2016-04-26 21:51:05
April 26 2016 21:48 GMT
#73655
On April 27 2016 06:43 Mohdoo wrote:
Show nested quote +
On April 27 2016 06:10 GreenHorizons wrote:
On April 27 2016 05:35 travis wrote:
On April 27 2016 05:10 GreenHorizons wrote:
Hillary supporters keeping it classy...


when you frame things this way it reminds me of when certain people in this thread take some event and then say "sanders supporters at it again" or "sandernistas are *this way*" etc

it's annoying and it's a generalization that is probably not really accurate at all

and it helps to divide people

just FYI


I was hoping they would notice that as well. It was a crappy thing to do, but afaik people came out and said it shouldn't be happening. Think we can all stand to remember this a bit more often.

Meanwhile in PA...

https://twitter.com/ShaunKing/status/725039600629092353


Is this some sort of touch screen device? It looks like some dude pushing his finger into a piece of paper.


Yes, that's what "voter machines" look like in Philly


"People like to look at history and think 'If that was me back then, I would have...' We're living through history, and the truth is, whatever you are doing now is probably what you would have done then" "Scratch a Liberal..."
Naracs_Duc
Profile Joined August 2015
746 Posts
April 26 2016 21:58 GMT
#73656
On April 27 2016 06:14 Simberto wrote:
I am not convinced that a large percentage of the population actually likes driving that much. Most people drive when they need to go to a place. Only a very small percentage of road traffic is people driving around randomly just for the fun of it.

Some people might enjoy driving more than riding a bike or taking the bus.

A lot of people like the convenience of having a car that takes them where they want to go at the time they want to go there, warm, dry, and with a lot of room to transport stuff without a lot of effort of necessary.

But imagine instead of driving the car, you could just sit there and watch a movie/eat breakfast/read a book/check facebook/get some work done while the car drives itself. Do you really think that a majority of the population would choose driving themselves? (If they think it at least as safe)


That's called public transit.

In the US, the reason for cars is for a sense of control. A sense that "since I am a better driver/navigator/etc.. I can find the faster/fastest/least obstructed route to _____. Its part of the bootstraps capitalist personality of being the top dog. Having a Siri drive you from place to place will result in people wanting to turn it off and take over the wheel themselves.
GreenHorizons
Profile Blog Joined April 2011
United States23079 Posts
Last Edited: 2016-04-26 22:08:01
April 26 2016 22:02 GMT
#73657
On April 27 2016 06:58 Naracs_Duc wrote:
Show nested quote +
On April 27 2016 06:14 Simberto wrote:
I am not convinced that a large percentage of the population actually likes driving that much. Most people drive when they need to go to a place. Only a very small percentage of road traffic is people driving around randomly just for the fun of it.

Some people might enjoy driving more than riding a bike or taking the bus.

A lot of people like the convenience of having a car that takes them where they want to go at the time they want to go there, warm, dry, and with a lot of room to transport stuff without a lot of effort of necessary.

But imagine instead of driving the car, you could just sit there and watch a movie/eat breakfast/read a book/check facebook/get some work done while the car drives itself. Do you really think that a majority of the population would choose driving themselves? (If they think it at least as safe)


That's called public transit.

In the US, the reason for cars is for a sense of control. A sense that "since I am a better driver/navigator/etc.. I can find the faster/fastest/least obstructed route to _____. Its part of the bootstraps capitalist personality of being the top dog. Having a Siri drive you from place to place will result in people wanting to turn it off and take over the wheel themselves.


Cars do have passenger seats (designed for adults), seems like we wouldn't have so many of those if it was all about the sense of control. I think the actual control over your destination/company is the major reason people opt for individual transportation.

EDIT: Give 100 people a free 24hr driver for a month and see how many of them want to give them back.
"People like to look at history and think 'If that was me back then, I would have...' We're living through history, and the truth is, whatever you are doing now is probably what you would have done then" "Scratch a Liberal..."
Nebuchad
Profile Blog Joined December 2012
Switzerland12083 Posts
Last Edited: 2016-04-26 22:12:18
April 26 2016 22:05 GMT
#73658
On April 27 2016 04:12 Kickstart wrote:
Show nested quote +
On April 27 2016 03:25 Nebuchad wrote:
+ Show Spoiler +
On April 26 2016 02:26 Kickstart wrote:
Show nested quote +
On April 26 2016 00:01 Nebuchad wrote:
+ Show Spoiler +
On April 25 2016 04:31 Kickstart wrote:
Show nested quote +
On April 25 2016 04:07 Nebuchad wrote:
On April 25 2016 03:51 Kickstart wrote:
On April 25 2016 02:36 Nebuchad wrote:
On April 25 2016 00:09 Kickstart wrote:
On April 24 2016 12:03 Nebuchad wrote:
On April 24 2016 05:10 Kickstart wrote:
On April 24 2016 04:53 JW_DTLA wrote:
Very few people actually defend "political correctness". The term is usually a straw man for conservatives who want to apply group prejudice without feeling bad. So when I hear it, I try to think of which definition of political correctness the conservative is attacking. I can think of three functional definitions of PC:

1) Don't use racial epithets - White people often complain they can't use the N-word.
2) Don't apply actions of some in a group to others based on group membership - White people like tarnishing blacks/Muslims with actions of some in those groups.
3) General resentment of liberal arguments against conservative positions - this is the original definition of politically correct from the 70s, where liberals would argue down conservative positions.

Definition number (2) is by the most important and most discussed. Lots of people want to use group attributes to tarnish individuals. This is a natural human instinct from back in the cave man days. Being politically correct involves resisting this temptation.

People like Sam Harris, who have made valid criticisms of Islam as an ideology, the 'regressives' have went all out completely misrepresenting his views and what he has said.


Sam Harris has claimed to be misrepresented at least three times more often than he has been... He's a professional troll, the fact that his first book got a following is a disgrace given what it contains, and his fanboys are the closest thing to a cult I've seen in the atheist community. I'm perfectly comfortable with my PC position of strongly disliking him.

On the general topic of political correctness, I think the attack is misplaced. I don't think political correctness is a problem, I think being wrong while trying to be politically correct is. On a recent example, I don't think the problem with criticizing Halloween costumes because they're offensive is that we're trying to be nice, I think it's that we're wrong. Halloween costumes are not offensive. And I think using examples where people have been wrong while trying to be politically correct to criticize political correctness as a notion in its entirety is a politically motivated move.


Well we can disagree about Sam Harris. I wouldn't consider myself a fanboy of his. I don't really read his books or follow him on any sort of media, but I watch some interviews he does and so on. That said I know what his views are on most things because I have listened to him express them, and the misrepresentation of his views by the far left are fairly blatant. My main point is that he has relevant criticisms of Islam that get drowned out by the far left misrepresenting what he says and then attacking his character based on that. That is the thing I was initially talking about is that the discourse in general (from left/right/everyone) has degraded so much, that everyone seems more content to engage in frivolity than have serious discussion about important issues.

I agree with you about the costume thing, and the people in this thread who go on and on about how costumes can be offensive annoy me to no end. My point isn't that speech , costumes, or anything else can't be offensive, it is that offensive things are to be allowed (not banned on college campuses and what have you) and (in most cases) shouldn't lead to the kind of overreaction that they have recently. Some of the costumes they were bitching about were quite ridiculous, especially given that there could be actually offensive costumes like a nazi officer or klan uniform. I agree that there are consequences to wearing certain things or saying certain things, but the 'pc culture' and 'regressive left' that everyone keeps talking about just take it to the level of absurdity.


If you want to present specific elements about Harris I can debunk them. If you don't, then I'll come with mine, and that will be a very long post.

And you manifestantly don't agree with me about the costume thing cause you use terms like "PC culture" and "regressive left" that are at the exact opposite of what I'm saying.


I use the terms because people know what I mean when I say them, notice how I put them in quotation marks. They describe the type of people whom I have a problem with, or attempt to anyways. A few pages back I went into specifics about it, but it truly is much easier to sum it all up in a phrase, however inadequate or disliked the phrase might be.

What aspect of Sam Harris' ideas are you speaking about, because he does talk about a range of topics. I'll assume you mean his thoughts on Islam as that is what he is probably most known for and gotten the most flak over. He has said a lot, and it would be better to listen to his talks and read his stuff than it would be for me to summarize. But some of the general points he makes that I agree with that we can start with are:
(1) All religions have issues, but in today's world we find our selves in a time where Islam is causing us the most problems. (Islamic fundamentalists, terrorism, ISIS, and so on).
(2) While the large majority of muslims don't engage in violence, majorities of them , when polled, are consistently for things like stoning adulterers, removing the hands of thieves, death to apostates, and so on (implementation of sharia law). Likewise in countries with large muslim populations, large portions of the muslim population say they would like for sharia law to be implemented.
(3) There is a direct line between things that the faith teaches and words in the Koran and Hadiths and in the Islamic tradition, that all explain the types of fundamentalist behaviors and problems we are facing today. Harris often describes it as a mother-load of bad ideas.

Those are me rewording what I think of as his main points whenever he discusses Islam. We can start there I guess, unless you were thinking of other things entirely. I don't see how the charge of him being an islamophobe or a racist or all these other things are at all based in reality, or are representative of the things he says on the topic.

EDIT: I honestly think it would be easier for you to briefly describe why you don't like him or what he has said that you take issue with. Because asking me to both state and defend all of his positions on any given topic seems a lot more effort than you stating what you take issue with ;]


You're right, it'll be easier if I describe my problems with Harris, but I don't think I can be brief about that. I'm at my parents' right now so I don't have all of my sources with me, I'll get on it when I come back (tomorrow night CET)


Sounds good. I usually follow this thread even though I don't post too much~


I thought I had internet links saved in my .doc, turns out I didn't. That is kind of dumb on my part. Most of the content I'm talking about is referenced using article names, which means you can google the name and find the article it's coming from. If there's some source material that you can't find and wish to, please signal it to me and I'll do my best to find it again.

My two main attacks on Sam Harris are based, one on the content of some of his arguments, and the second on the way he argues and defends himself. I think his general tactic is to combine very obvious statements about reality and very provocative statements, and when he’s attacked for the provocative ones, to roll back to the obvious ones and pretend this is what he’s being attacked on. What you have said illustrates kind of well what I’m talking about. You’ve mentioned what he thinks of islam, and you’ve mentioned that it’s causing the most terrorism today (an obvious statement) and that there are concerning polls about islam and what some muslims think (another obvious statement). What he’s doing is hijacking the conversation and having us believe that if you don’t agree with him about islam, well it must be that you disagree with those obvious statements. You must not think that it’s a problem that this amount of muslims believe apostasy deserves death. A lot of his arguments function in this fashion.
On top of that, he's been relentlessly attacking the character of people who disagree with him and have argued against him. These people are not simply wrong, they're also evil; they're dishonest, they're misrepresenting him with an evil intent, and sometimes they're also assholes if they're really lucky. This manichaean view is useful especially because it's so manichaean: it allows you to dismiss factual claims that are made against you, because the people making them aren't honest actors and don't deserve an answer. My favorite example of that is the Mondoweiss article by Theodore Sayeed called Sam Harris, uncovered: http://mondoweiss.net/2012/06/sam-harris-uncovered. Whether you agree with the article or not, you will notice that it's a fully sourced piece, which references Sam Harris' writing on a consistent basis, and that its criticism of Harris is always based on reasons that are explained.
Here's the one and only time, as far as I know, that Harris has adressed this article in any way: "I receive a stream of emails demanding to know why I continue to ignore Theodore Sayeed’s demolition of me on the website Mondoweiss. The answer: I’ve never heard of Theodore Sayeed or Mondoweiss. A subsequent glance at his article reveals misrepresentations of my views and tendentious maneuvers that seem to have been made in very bad faith. Engaging with this sort of thing only gives it greater currency—or so I like to believe, given that I have no time to engage with it."
If you're familiar with Harris, you're familiar with how much he's claimed to be misrepresented. He has put a lot of time into making sure people know that he's misrepresented a lot by everyone. I guess he didn't have any time left to explain how that was the case.

Here are some points in no particular order, focused mainly on content and dishonesty in Harris‘ speech:
1. Harris will tell you that he doesn't criticize all muslims, he criticizes islam. His concern is with the doctrine being wrong and dangerous (the mother lode of bad ideas, a thoroughgoing cult of death), not with the people who call themselves muslims. Basically, his depiction looks like this: there are fundamentalists and extremists, and there are the people who truly follow islam. Those are the people we don't like. Then there are other people, nominal muslims, many of whom "don't take their faith seriously". Those are the people who are fine. Which is why not all muslims are criticized.
It’s a logical conclusion: if you criticize an ideology, but not all the people following it, then obviously the people you don’t criticize are the people who don’t really follow the ideology to its end.
Many problems with that: first, there are people who are muslims, take their faith seriously, and don't believe that their faith commends them to do anything as terrible as the fundamentalists believe. According to the portrayal here, those people aren't muslims, they just think they are. That doesn’t portray the muslim world well at all. A more accurate representation should be: here are fundamentalists and extremists, here are radicals. Those are the people we don’t like. Then there are other people, moderate muslims, and then non-practising muslims and nominal muslims.
The reason why my depiction is more accurate is because the claim Harris makes about fundamentalism being directly tied to islam is inaccurate. Not because it’s wrong: it isn’t wrong, there is a clear connection between the texts of islam and the beliefs of the fundamentalists. What Harris ignores is that there is also a clear connection between the texts of islam and the beliefs of the moderate. A moderate will cherrypick the quran and ignore what he doesn’t like, but a fundamentalist will do the exact same thing. As such, an honest observer can’t declare that one group is „true islam“ while the other isn’t (in the same way that an honest observer cannot say that the fundamentalists aren’t muslims). Harris speaks of some of the contradictions regarding the link between the quran and fundamentalism in the End of Faith, but he says they are „loopholes“ that are „easily dismissable“. Oh, okay? Why does that line work for fundamentalists, but not for moderates? He, of course, doesn’t explain that.
At 8:30 in the Affleck interview, Harris says „there are hundreds of millions of muslims who are nominal muslims, who don’t take the faith seriously, who don’t want to kill apostates, who are horrified by ISIS, and we need to defend these people […]“ A description that coincides with what I‘ve described, in which he says the moderates of islam are people who don’t take their faith seriously, which coincides with everything he’s ever said about the doctrine of islam. Commenting about this specific interview, he said on his blog: „Unfortunately, I misspoke slightly at this point, saying that hundreds of millions of Muslims don’t take their “faith” seriously.“
Interesting mistake to make. Especially interesting considering that a month before that, he had this to write on this very same blog (or miswrite, I guess?):
„In drawing a connection between the doctrine of Islam and jihadist violence, I am talking about ideas and their consequences, not about 1.5 billion nominal Muslims, many of whom do not take their religion very seriously.“
Now this isn’t the first time I’ve copypasted this point, and it’s been objected to me that in his more recent book with Majid Nawaz, Harris is presented with a similar vision by Nawaz and seems to agree with it (or me). Well, I have not read this specific book. It’s possible that Harris has become more sensible about this topic, and I certainly would commend him for that. The thing is, I have not seen this recent enlightenment come with an acknowledgement that what he used to think on the topic was bullshit, and so I can’t factually say that he’s departed from those ideas.
I think it’s especially telling that Harris is adressing this specific message to liberals, as opposed to muslims. When he talks about islam, he doesn’t want to influence the muslim world, he doesn’t want to influence islam. He wants to influence the left-wing of our own countries. It is my belief that this point is especially important because we’re talking about islam, precisely because the polls show that the amount of radicals in islam is so important. I think if you portray islam to its face in the way Harris has portrayed it, you’re helping the cause of extremism. You’re lending credit to the notion that we have a culture war on our hands, and you’re telling all of the people who feel muslim but don’t associate with radicalism that they aren’t really muslim unless they do, that they belong to an enemy culture. I don’t want moderate religious people to have to choose to either deny their own culture or be an extremist. I want them on my side against extremism. This is the message I want out there.

2. Harris develops a concept in the End of Faith: there is a link between belief and behavior. When someone believes in something, it influences how likely he is to act in some ways. We will ignore, for the purpose of this criticism, that this is one of the top 5 Captain Obvious comments of all time. We will instead focus on how he uses this link to demonstrate that his criticism of the texts of islam is necessary. He will say, this thing is written in the quran, therefore, based on the link between belief and behavior, it’s logical that fundamentalists behave this way today.
That’s not really how beliefs function. Beliefs are dangerous insofar as they are held, not insofar as they are written. The best example of this I could come up with is a reverse example. The quran says, and reinforces several times, that there should be no compulsion in religion. As a muslim, you are only the messenger, nothing else is demanded from you. You should let he who believes it, believe, and he who rejects it, reject. According to the logic of Harris, there can’t be a problem with killing apostates in islam, because the quran speaks very clearly against that, and there is a link between belief and behavior... Yeah well. Beliefs are beliefs. Texts are texts.
You may think I’m being too simplistic in how I describe the thought process of Harris. I am not: he is. In his interview with Cenk, he compared secularism in christian countries and secularism in muslim countries. This is how he illustrated the difference: in the Bible, there is the line „Render to Cesar the things that are Cesar’s“, and there is no equivalent to that in the quran.
Consider this: the reason why we have secular democracies today is because we had a line in the Bible that allowed us to, while muslims did not… Where in this train of thought is the Holy Roman Empire, or the concept of Christendom? No clue. Where are the thinkers of the Enlightenment that actually did lead us to secularism? Did they do so because they wanted to follow the Bible? Can’t say, can’t tell.

3. The introduction to The End of Faith, the first writing that you’re introduced to if you read Sam Harris’ books, is intensely misleading for several reasons. It depicts a suicide bombing. Somebody detonated a bomb in a bus and killed plenty of people. You don’t know anything else. The book then asks you: „Why is it so easy, then, so trivially easy—you-could-almost-bet-your-life-on-it easy—to guess the young man’s religion?“
Simply said, that isn’t a criticism of islam. The response to the question isn’t: because the doctrine of islam is so terrible that it leads to terrorism. The response to the question is: because in today’s context, there are more islamic terrorist acts than any other. When someone tells you: „Everytime I read the paper and see gang violence, it’s a Black or Hispanic kid who did it“, you don’t think he has a good point about black culture. And yet somehow saying the same thing about islam isn’t shocking.

4. There is a footnote to the introduction to the End of Faith (about the suicide bomber who you can trivially guess is a muslim):
„Some readers may object that the bomber in question is most likely to be a member of the Liberations Tigers of Tamil Eelam—the Sri Lankan separatist organization that has perpetuated more acts of suicidal terrororism than any other group. Indeed, the “Tamil Tigers” are often offered as a counter¬example to any claim that suicidal terrorism is a product of religion. But to describe the Tamil Tigers as “secular”—as R. A. Pape, “The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism,” American Political Science Review 97, no. 3 (2003): 20-32, and others have – is misleading. While the motivations of the Tigers are not explicitly religious, they are Hindus who undoubtedly believe many improbably things about the nature of life and death.“
Same claim in the article Bombing our illusions:
„Several readers followed Pape’s and put forward the Tamil Tigers as a rebuttal to my claim that suicidal terrorism is a product of religion. But it is misleading to describe the Tamil Tigers as “secular,” as Pape often does. While the motivations of the Tigers are not explicitly religious, they are Hindus who undoubtedly believe many improbable things about the nature of life and death.“
It won’t surprise you that I have a few things to say here:
. Oh, okay, when you wrote this, you knew that the group that had done the more „terrororism“ was the Tamil Tigers, a secular organization? Then maybe you shouldn’t have encouraged people to bet their lives on the fact that the bomber is muslim?
. When you discussed Cenk, you told him that when a muslim commits an act of terror and says it’s for Allah, we should take him at his word. Here, someone commits an act of terror and says it’s for secular and nationalist reasons. Now you’re looking for other reasons. Interesting double standard. No true secular would ever do that, am I right?
. Maybe notice the casual racism there? Sure, you claim that you’re secular, but well, you’re Hindu, so you culturally have crazy beliefs, we should take your claim that you’re secular with a grain of salt. It’s as if our good old Sam has suddenly forgotten the kind of crazy beliefs that we culturally have in Europe… Or perhaps we should take any European’s claim of secularism with a grain of salt too, but weirdly enough, this topic hasn’t come up.

5. In 2006, Israel caught criticism for carpet bombing Gaza and Lebanon. This is how Harris responded to the criticism (in an article called The End of Liberalism?): „In their analyses of U.S. and Israeli foreign policy, liberals can be relied on to overlook the most basic moral distinctions. [Muslims are worse than Israelis (note: the shift from religious appartenance to national appartenance is from the original)] Given these distinctions, there is no question that the Israelis now hold the moral high ground in their conflict with Hamas and Hezbollah. And yet liberals in the United States and Europe often speak as though the truth were otherwise.“
Actually, the fact that Israel has the moral high ground is EXACTLY why we were able to criticize it. When a terrorist causes a suicide bombing, nobody thinks: „Damn, those terrorists, another suicide attack, I didn’t think they could stoop this low.“ They are terrorist groups, it’s what they do, it’s what’s expected of them. Israel, as a democracy, has ascribed values to itself because of being a democracy. When it doesn’t follow these values, it acts in a less moral way than we expected it to act. Which is why we criticize it. Your defense of Israel relies on the very notion that justifies the attacks it got.

6. Harris proposes a thought experiment about justifying nuclear first strikes if an extremist muslim country were to come in possession of nukes. Yeah, I know, it’s not a justification (except it is, unless you think „ensuring our survival“ isn’t something we should aspire to), yeah, I know, it’s self-defense (then why isn’t it self-defense for the islamists to first strike us, when they know that we would first strike them in self-defense?). The argument that he developed on the subject of nuclear first strike is very reminiscent of what was said by many about Khruschchev before he came into power: he was very dangerous, there was a good chance that he would use nukes, we should nuke him first. I think we’re glad today that we didn’t listen to those voices.
The biggest reason why his thought experiment is not thought provoking at all is that we already have an extremist muslim country who has access to nukes. It’s called Pakistan…

7. Since we were just talking about self-defense, here’s why you can’t attack Harris for saying „Some beliefs are so dangerous that it may be ethical to kill people for believing them“: because there is context to the sentence. In this context, it is made explicit that Harris doesn’t want to kill harmless people for thought crimes. (blog post: on the mechanism of defamation)
Yeah, Sam, except the quote that we criticized contains the term „dangerous“. As such, we clearly don’t think that you’re targeting harmless people. Your claim of misrepresentation misrepresents our claim.
There are two levels for this claim: either you’re describing self-defense, in which case you’re describing something obvious that is already accepted by everyone, so why would you need softeners like „it may be ethical“ as opposed to „it is ethical“, or you’re describing something more than self-defense, in which case it’s not a misrepresentation to say that you are. There is no middle ground there. The blog post „on the mechanism of defamation“ is one of the clearest examples of the dishonesty of Harris which I’ve mentioned in my introduction. It’s a blog post in which he’s complaining about being misrepresented, and then in the sole example he gives, he proceeds not to show how he’s misrepresented, but how he’s right to believe what he believes. This is called backing your argument, not displaying a misrepresentation. But his line of defense hasn’t been „I need to back my arguments“, it has been „my opponents are dishonest assholes“. And so this is what we get.

8. Here’s how Harris defended the notion that we should profile muslims, or anyone that could conceivably be a muslim: it’s not racial profiling, it’s anti-profiling, we should profile people who can conceivably be a threat, not 5-year-old girls and 90-year-old japanese women. Unfortunately for him we haven’t forgotten that 5-year-old girls and 90-year-old japanese women can be muslim, that it’s conceivable. Unfortunately for him we haven’t forgotten that 90-year-old muslim women don’t represent a threat superior to 25-year-old japanese men. Unfortunately for him, saying „muslim“ is not the same thing as saying „a threat“, those are two different ideas, so pretending that you meant the latter when you wrote the former is misusing the english language. To claim misrepresentation when you used words of different meaning just so you could elicit a controversy is transparent and laughable. This might be the only case in which the defense of what Harris says paints a picture as despicable as what he said in the first place.

9. Islamophobia: the Maher interview with Affleck: „I’m not denying that some people are bigoted against muslims as people“. An e-mail to Greenwald: „There is no such thing as “Islamophobia.” This is a term of propaganda designed to protect Islam from the forces of secularism by conflating all criticism of it with racism and xenophobia.“

10. During the interview with Cenk, there is a 15+ minutes segment in which Cenk tells Harris that islam is one factor amonst others in terrorist acts, not the only factor and not the predominant factor. For 15 minutes, Harris develops his criticism of islam. Cenk, several times, reiterates that he acknowledges it is a factor, and offers that it isn’t the only one. Each time, Harris continues with his criticism of islam. At the end of the segment, Cenk says it once again, and Harris counters: „I agree with that.“
Oh, you agree? Maybe you should have said so the first time then. This is a common mechanism for Harris. You answer questions in ways that elicit certain reactions, but you don’t fully confirm the basis for the reaction. You say Cruz is reasonable for wanting only christian refugees, but you don’t say you want it yourself. That way, if you’re attacked, you can whine that you’re misrepresented. Here, if you’re criticized for blaming only islam for the terrorism, you can say: but look, at the end, I said I agree that there are other factors…
This also enhances confusion. Now plenty of people don’t know where others stand. People say that Cenk is a muslim apologist, because they are under the impression that he thinks islam has no blame at all. We are called regressive because we don’t want to blame islam for anything. But we do want to. We want to blame islam accurately. Then why are we disagreeing with Harris? That’s what he said to Cenk the apologist… And round it goes.

11. There is perhaps no better example of a dishonest Harris than the discussion on religions not being equally wrong. He said to Cenk that it was a mathematically true fact, that you’d have to be a moron to think otherwise (this argument is often used by followers of Harris to discredit Cenk). There is a discussion on Youtube called Four Horsemen, in which Harris discusses other new atheists. At the very end of this discussion, Sam brings up the notion that all religions aren’t equally wrong. Hitchens and Dawkins both disagree with him, saying that they are. Hitchens even says they are latently equally dangerous. Sam Harris, at this point, doesn’t tell them they are mathematically ignorant and stupid. He’s like okay, let’s have a debate about that. And they proceed.
In this discussion with new atheists, Harris is interested in talking about whether religions are equally wrong. Which is why they do that. In the discussion with Cenk, Harris is interested in wanting other people to think of Cenk as a moron. Which is why he dismisses Cenk’s opinion as being ridiculous. Notice the epic, epic double standard.

12. The US has good intent. „Ethically speaking, intention is (nearly) the whole story. The difference between intending to harm someone and accidentally harming them is enormous—if for no other reason than that the presence of harmful intent tells us a lot about what a person or group is likely to do in the future.“
That’s from Chomsky vs Harris. There are two things I want to say about this.
First, here the opposition is between accidentally killing someone and willingly killing someone. It is fallacious to represent collateral damage as „accidental“ because your intent wasn’t to kill the people you ended up killing. We know how bombs work. We know that we kill people with them, it’s not an accident. Let me present you with a thought experiment: you have three people in front of you, one of them is a terrorist. You have no way to determine which one is. Because you want to prevent further acts of terror, you decide to kill all three of them to ensure the terrorist doesn’t escape. Your intent wasn’t to kill the other two, you had nothing against them. But their death can’t be described as accidental. You knew what you were doing. You are stating that killing the enemy is worth more than keeping these people alive. You are saying their lives don’t matter enough. And maybe you’re right, bear in mind: that’s another discussion. But either way it is very different from accidentally killing someone, and you’re smart enough to know it, so you can’t be arguing in good faith.
Second, we don’t know from this discussion what it is exactly about the US that causes it to have good intentions. Cause we know from reading the End of Faith that it’s not simply saying that it does:
„Are intentions really the bottom line? What are we to say, for instance, about those Christian missionaries in the New World who baptized Indian infants only to promptly kill them, thereby sending them to heaven? Their intentions were (apparently) good. Were their actions ethical? Yes, within the confines of a deplorably limited worldview. The medieval apothecary who gave his patients quicksilver really was trying to help. He was just mistaken about the role this element played in the human body. Intentions matter, but they are not all that matters.“
Those people are acting ethically within the confines of a deplorably limited worldview. The US, on the other end, are just acting ethically, period. We don’t really know why. Because Sam Harris says they are? Can’t we say that Harris has a deplorably limited worldview himself, in which islam is evil and it’s more important for a president of the US to be really against islam than to be a rational individual?
The mechanism, in a nutshell: good intent makes you a good person, unless I’ve decided that you have a limited world view, in which case good intent isn’t that important. In other words, we’re good because we’re good.

On April 25 2016 04:02 oBlade wrote:
actual content of Sam Harris because all you did was call him a professional troll and then say you had a miraculous way of debunking him that your post was too small to contain.


Challenge accepted.


+ Show Spoiler +
Well I'm rather annoyed, I was typing out a long response going back and forth and hit back and lost everything I had typed so far. Ill summarize what I had (was up to point 3) and continue on.

I prefaced by saying I can't speak for Harris nor do I want to, I can just give my take on the issues and what I have taken away from what Harris has said and how I interpret what he is saying.

(1) My main point was that you are just describing what has long been pointed out by critics, which is that religion is open to interpretation and thus you will find very devote and literalist followers and then the more a la carte followers. Sam Harris may have expressed this point poorly when saying that people don't take their faith seriously if they are moderate, but the point stands. The fundamentalists are the ones who live their entire daily lives by one book, the only book worth reading; while moderates tend to pick and choose as it suits them. This is what is generally meant when people make this type of criticism.

(2) This is just another point about interpretation. The main point here is that Christianity has gone through a reformation, and that Islam is in need of one. You say the point he makes is obvious but then you say you have a problem with it, I'm not sure I follow what exactly the problem with an obvious point is. Again, the problem is that if a book is divinely inspired, then the divine being who 'wrote' it should have had the foresight to know how it would be interpreted. For example, if the Bible and Koran explicitly said things like 'genocide, rape, slavery, and torture are never okay', and also didn't have any passages that could be interpreted to say something contradictory, then the world would be a much better place today.

(3) My main point here was that you seem to be complaining about how the world is. The fact of the matter is that Islamic extremism IS the primary motivation for suicide bombings in today's world. Now, it would be nice if it weren't so, and it is true that Islamic extremism isn't the ONLY cause of terrorist activity, but here he is just illustrating the reality of the world we live in.

I might now elaborate a bit more since this is where I got to before I lost everything I had typed out!!!

(4) Well this is a silly argument to me. It is like saying Hitler and Stalin and Pol pot were 'secular' or had 'secular values'. You believe that if you want, but it is rather far out to get from traditionally secular values to committing atrocities. The main point as I see it is that Islamic extremists are causing the most problems worldwide. Perhaps he picked a bad example, but his examples aren't as important as the underlying points, which seem to me to be valid.

(5) It seems you and he are making different points. The main reason he and those like him would defend Israel is from the charge that Israel is behaving just as badly as the extremists on the other side. For example, Israel is capable of wiping out everyone in Gaza if they saw fit to, but they don't. On the other hand, imagine if the extremists had a nuke, or the political,economic, or military power to do the same to the Israelis; they most certainly would have already done so. That is the main thing that he and others are fighting against ( the notion that Israels behavior is somehow equivalent to that from the other side, he has criticized Israel for many things, but to think of it as equally as bad as the terrorists organizations is silly.

(6) His point is valid. There ARE groups out there who, if they had nukes, would almost certainly use them. We can argue about which groups those are and that they aren't in power 'yet', but they do exist. The main point here is that a first strike would be warranted in certain cases. Again we must face the reality of the situation, which is that there are organizations whose charters say that one of their goals are to wipe Israel and the US off the face of the earth. We should take these things seriously, and them getting nukes would be quite serious.

(7) Don't have much to say about this point. I'll just say that he seems to have summed up a complex idea into a rather simple single sentence, and that could have brought about some confusion from his opponents. That is perhaps his fault, but reading more into something someone has said than what they actually stated or even meant, is fairly common, and I can see how it would have happened with the sentence "Some beliefs are so dangerous that it may be ethical to kill people for believing them“.

(8) Again you are arguing something different than what his point is. The general point is that there is a limited amount of resources to try and combat such things, and that it is a complete waste of those resources to be searching 5 year olds or 95 year old woman. Again, profiling might not be nice, and we can argue about that, but his point is still correct. There IS a certain profile that extremists have, it might not be politically correct to say, but it is the reality. http://p4.img.cctvpic.com/20110901/images/1314869577401_1314869577401_r.jpg
I see no 5 or 95 year old females in that picture.

(9) Not much to say here. Only that people get called Islamophobes when they clearly aren't. I know people who are bigoted against Muslims, we have had some who were presidential candidates. But Sam Harris isn't one of those people. Without knowing the context of the message I can't say more. Maybe he did mean as it seems in general, but he could have just as easily meant 'there is no Islamophobia from me personally ot in the positions I hold".

(10) Again I don't feel strongly one way or another about this point. Terrorism is nuanced, but fundamentalist ideology is clearly the biggest factor, and it can just as easily be Islamic fundamentalism as some other form. Main thing I would say here is that the problem is fundamentalism, and that Islamic fundamentalism is one of its many forms, but it is the one that Harris has decided to talk about. Don't really see that much of an issue here.

(11) Perhaps a double standard. But I think the points being made are more nuanced. The main point as I see it is that all religions are equally untrue, and that dogmatic beliefs that aren't based on reason alone are potentially dangerous. That is true, but it is different than the point that, in today's world, fundamentalist Islam is the religions doctrine causing the most issues. Both things can be true at the same time.

(12) Eh, again don't see anything particularly wrong with his general point. Maybe he does apply double standards, but I can't really speak to that. I can say that intent is indeed important, and maybe even the most important thing when deciding how to respond to someone or some event. Everything that follows is secondary to the main point, which seems true enough.

Kept things a bit short but didn't want to be here all day and wanted to address everything!


1) Well I don't think your vision describes the muslim world accurately, as I've exposed in the last post. The two big problems are, you can be a devout muslim without being a radical or a terrorist, so it's not just a difference in level of commitment, and the fundamentalist aren't exactly following the book, even though they claim they are, because nobody can claim to exactly follow a contradictory book. But all of that was said in more details in the last post.

2) Well what is obvious is that there is a correlation between what a person believes and how they act. What is not obvious is the jump that is made afterwards in which written text becomes a belief. That's not how beliefs work. And no, this specific point has nothing to do with reformation, I'm not sure why you brought it up.

3) End of Faith is a book written to criticize faith in general, and a lot of it has to do with islam. It opens with an introduction that says nothing at all about islam, but is presented as if it does. This is disingenuous. It is even more disingenuous because there is a footnote that literally admits that the introduction is disingenuous. It is nothing more than a rhetorical trick.

4) That's not what the argument was at all... Come on. The thing is, we're presented with extremist muslims that say they blow themselves up for Allah. Experts then say that there are also geopolitical reasons for that, that context must also be taken into account. Harris answers that we should take them at their word. If they say it's for islam, then it must be for islam (he then backs up on that whole line and says that he agrees there are contextual and geopolitical reasons, as I've already mentioned, but hey, whatever). Now when it comes to people blowing themselves up and saying it's for nationalistic and secular reasons, Harris doesn't want to take them at their word. He wants us to go back in the background of their country and notice that they have some cultural religious beliefs that are crazy. Suddenly their word is not that important, because their word contradicts the claim that suicidal terrorism is primarily a religious move (even though he'll say later that he agrees it's due to a mix of factors).

You also dropped the two other glaring issues that were presented under that point.

5) It seems you want Harris to be arguing something different than what he was arguing. This article was specifically made in regards to Israel carpet bombing Lebanon in 2006 and the whole mess that this was. Harris argued that we should be on Israel's side when they do this because we shouldn't forget that Israel is better than its enemies on a moral scale. The thing is, Israel isn't better than its enemies by definition. It's better because its behavior is better. When it stops to be, then it meets criticism, and that criticism is justified because of the descent of this very scale. So his defense of Israel is misplaced, as it's based on exactly what warrants the criticism.

7-8-9) You've fallen for Harris' trap. As I've explained, Harris does this on a regular basis: he presents a very provocative idea, then he comes back with a very mundane idea and he pretends that he was attacked for the mundane one, not for the provocative one. In point 7, it presents like this: You can kill people for their beliefs if their beliefs are too dangerous, it's self-defense. That is an extreme statement. Attacks ensue, and suddenly he's talking about people who you know are about to commit terrible actions, which is much more benign, so much so that it already falls under self-defense. In point 8, we went from "We must profile muslims, or anyone who looks like they could conceivably be muslim, and we should be honest about it" to "we should profile people who look like they could represent a threat (as opposed to 5-year-old girls and 90-year-old Japanese women)". The content of these two ideas is very different. Looking muslim and looking threatening are not synonyms. But like the good soldier you are, you fall in line, and you assume that if we disagree with Harris on profiling, then we disagree on the very mundane line that 5-year-old girls deserve less scrutiny than 25-year-old men. No. That's not what we reacted to. Same thing in 9. The problem is not that we believe everyone who was ever called an islamophobe is one. The problem is the original statement, "Islamophobia doesn't exist", that has since been edulcorated into the more mundane statement.

11) Harris doesn't think religions are equally untrue.

12) I'm going to need you to be a little more precise. What can you possibly not have a problem with? Is it with the mischaracterizing of collateral damage as accidental, or is it with just stating a moral high ground based on nothing to justify a position where good intentions are everything (unless I disagree with your world view)?



+ Show Spoiler +
(1) I guess I don't understand what you are arguing. I took you to mean that you disagree with Harris belief that there are 'radicals, and they are the ones who take the faith seriously, and then there are the moderates who aren't serious about their faith', and that you had a problem with that characterization. I agree that it leaves out a lot of nuance, but again, the general idea as I see it is that the 'fundamentalists' adhere more strictly to the literal texts (hence why they have the name fundamentalists). This is what is meant when someone says the extremists take their faith more seriously. They mean that their beliefs are so extreme and so integral to everything about their lives, that they translate into action. Now sure, a moderate can be just as devout, but generally speaking their actions aren't going to be as extreme as the fundamentalist types. Perhaps 'they don't take their faith seriously' is a bad way to phrase it, but I think that is the main point.

(2) Again your original point was dealing with interpretation and how beliefs are formed. My point was that we see the wide array of interpretations because the text allows for this. Again, if a text truly was divinely inspired, surely the divine being would have had it written in such a way that things were very clear, and no errors in interpretation could be made. But alas all these things are man made. My point about reformation was that as time went on, Christianity became less and less extreme in its beliefs and practices because it was forced to, and in my mind Islam is at a similar stage. In order to denounce the extremism, there needs to be a large change.
Also the original example you gave about 'no compulsion in religion' is a poor example. It is rather early in the Koran and regardless the latter parts supersede the earlier parts (which is problematic cause the latter bits are the nasty ones, where Muhammad turns conquering warlord). The fact of the matter is that the vast majority of Islamic scholars and leaders believe that there should be punishment for apostasy. You could also look at every Muslim dominated society and see how the standards of livings there are and what sort of society it is, then come back and try to whitewash how terrible things are.

(3) Again, the story DOES illustrate something. It illustrates that (almost) everyone reading will associate that act with Islamic extremism. Seems like it did exactly what a rhetorical device should do, illustrate a point. You are right that it illustrates peoples perceptions more than it illustrates Islam, but that seems to have been the point anyways.

(4) Yes, things such as suicide bombers and extremists in general can be rather complex and nuanced issues. But the extreme ideology is a large factor. Now, extreme ideologies come in many forms, not all of them religious, but the fact is that there is more Islamic extremism in the world today than other types. The fact that the texts allow for an extreme and fundamentalist interpretation is indeed only one factor when accounting for why people commit certain actions, but it is a pretty big part.

(5) I don't see much of a disagreement here. You seem to be saying that Israel does bad things. No one disputes this. Harris seems to be saying that Israel isn't the moral equivalent of its enemies, which is true. I'd say behavior is a pretty important aspect, as I stated before, if Israel wanted to, they could just kill every Palestinian, they would be capable if that is what they wanted to do, but they don't. The same can not be said for many of its enemies, if they had the means today, by tonight Israel would be a wasteland.

(7-8-9) I haven't read where these specific statements come from but I'll just take your word for it. I have however listened to Sam Harris enough to know what he believes in general. For example, saying he thinks there aren't people out there who hate Muslims just isn't true. Now he may have misspoke and given that impression, but it isn't what he believes nor what he expresses. The other points I already went over. Yes profiling is not nice, but again, we have limited resources when trying to combat these types of things, and there is very clearly more efficient ways than others to spend those resources. Profiling all middle aged middle eastern ages men may not be the most efficient way to stop terrorist activities from occurring, but it is more efficient than searching 5 and 90 year old girls would be.

(11) Semantics. Beliefs in the supernatural are all untrue. Trying to rate whether or not one thing is more false than another is rather silly.

(12) 'Intent' isn't based on nothing. Someone who accidentally causes a car accident and kills 3 people in the other vehicle, is not morally equivalent to someone who goes to a shopping mall with a gun and manages to kill 3 people. One is morally worse than the other, it is due to intent, which isn't 'based on nothing'.


1) I mean I can only repeat myself. It's a characterization in which fundamentalists are better muslims, more accurate muslims or better followers of the faith, than the moderates. Regardless of whether it's true or not (it isn't, as the qu'ran is a contradictory book and fundamentalists cherrypick things in it just as much as moderates do), it's not the vision you want out there, as it tells muslims that they must choose between fundamentalism and renouncing their culture. If it were true, then we'd have to go with the characterization, even though it sucks for the world in general. But it isn't, and so we should be really happy that we don't have to do it.

2) You're just jumping into different topics now. If you want to adress point 2 again, I'll be happy to come back to it, but none of the things you say now belong in this conversation.
About superseding, what you're describing is written in hadiths, which are less sacred than the quran, so either way you're ignoring a part of the text; whether it's the actual text or the part that says everything in the qu'ran is the word of God and is therefore true, that's up to you.

3) So if End of Faith was about perception and how it leads us to form inaccurate conclusions, then you would have a good point. However End of Faith is about getting us to share the conclusion that this perception leads to. As such, it is a trick.

4) I agree with you. Harris does too for the most part, when he isn't in provocative mode. That's not what he's saying there though, is it. He's saying that suicidal terrorism is linked to religion, and he's explaining away the nationalistic Tamil Tigers because even though they claim to be secular, well they're Hindus, and there are crazy beliefs in the culture of Hindus. Your explanation would be: "extreme ideologies come in many forms, not all of them religious, and the most extreme of them can resort to suicidal terrorism". That sounds a lot better to me, and to most people.

5) So why attack liberals when they criticize Israel for doing bad things? Surely, if you don't dispute it, then you should be agreeing with us, instead of telling us that the problem with liberals is that we don't have the moral clarity to see that Israel is better than its enemies even when it's not behaving as if it were?

7-8-9) Well I don't know what he believes. I'm not sure how you can listen to someone enough to know that he doesn't think islamophobia doesn't exist when he's written in an email that "There is no such thing as “Islamophobia.”" Like I said, there is a provocative Harris and then there is a mundane Harris that he falls back onto when he's attacked. #WhichHarris is the real one? I can't say. But I'm not sure why I should bother to search, when I can listen to less polemic and more coherent individuals instead. You're still missing the point on profiling. There are two different positions: "We should profile Muslims, or anyone who looks like he or she could conceivably be Muslim, and we should be honest about it.", the thing he said in his first article (https://www.samharris.org/blog/item/in-defense-of-profiling), and "We should profile people who represent a threat more than people who don't represent a threat, aka anti-profiling, which is what you're defending and what he's defended later, a very mundane position. Profiling muslims and profiling people who represent a threat are not synonymous or even similar positions. You've fallen for the trap of thinking that people who disagree with Harris disagree with spending less time on 5-year-old girls than 25-year-old men. That is not the case.

11) I agree with you. Harris doesn't.

12) You're conflating two discussions, which is probably my fault. There are two levels to the discussion on intent. One, it's intent vs non-intent, in which the counter is that collateral damage is not accidental. When you launch a bomb on a place where there are people, it's not an accident that you killed them just because you happened to target someone else. Two, it's good intent vs bad intent, in which the counter is that Harris has just decided that the US has good intent based on nothing. He's spoken about how some people who have the best intentions can't be described to be doing good, because they have a deplorably limited world view (for example a religious one). But that doesn't apply to the US here, because he's decided that it doesn't. When it comes to the US, all we can say is that they have good intentions, and that's nearly the whole story. Therefore, he's treating the good intentions of the US with a much higher regard than the good intentions of people he dislikes, which is very clearly biased.
"It is capitalism that is incentivizing me to lazily explain this to you while at work because I am not rewarded for generating additional value."
Acrofales
Profile Joined August 2010
Spain17955 Posts
April 26 2016 22:05 GMT
#73659
On April 27 2016 06:58 Naracs_Duc wrote:
Show nested quote +
On April 27 2016 06:14 Simberto wrote:
I am not convinced that a large percentage of the population actually likes driving that much. Most people drive when they need to go to a place. Only a very small percentage of road traffic is people driving around randomly just for the fun of it.

Some people might enjoy driving more than riding a bike or taking the bus.

A lot of people like the convenience of having a car that takes them where they want to go at the time they want to go there, warm, dry, and with a lot of room to transport stuff without a lot of effort of necessary.

But imagine instead of driving the car, you could just sit there and watch a movie/eat breakfast/read a book/check facebook/get some work done while the car drives itself. Do you really think that a majority of the population would choose driving themselves? (If they think it at least as safe)


That's called public transit.

In the US, the reason for cars is for a sense of control. A sense that "since I am a better driver/navigator/etc.. I can find the faster/fastest/least obstructed route to _____. Its part of the bootstraps capitalist personality of being the top dog. Having a Siri drive you from place to place will result in people wanting to turn it off and take over the wheel themselves.

I dunno. Even in Holland, a tiny country with a highly connected public transit system, people drive cars for convenience. Even if the bus stops at a 5 minute walk from your door, and has a quick route to your work, where you have another 5 minute walk, it puts you in a crowded environment with a risk you have to stand; it doesn't go on demand, but you have to wait on its timetable, and usually its seats aren't as comfy as car seats. You can take a taxi, but what exactly does it matter to the passenger whether the taxi driver is human or an AI, as long as the latter is at least as safe as the former. The only thing an AI driver would not do is the chit chat, but you can whatsapp/facebook/skype with someone instead.
OtherWorld
Profile Blog Joined October 2013
France17333 Posts
April 26 2016 22:08 GMT
#73660
On April 27 2016 06:58 Naracs_Duc wrote:
Show nested quote +
On April 27 2016 06:14 Simberto wrote:
I am not convinced that a large percentage of the population actually likes driving that much. Most people drive when they need to go to a place. Only a very small percentage of road traffic is people driving around randomly just for the fun of it.

Some people might enjoy driving more than riding a bike or taking the bus.

A lot of people like the convenience of having a car that takes them where they want to go at the time they want to go there, warm, dry, and with a lot of room to transport stuff without a lot of effort of necessary.

But imagine instead of driving the car, you could just sit there and watch a movie/eat breakfast/read a book/check facebook/get some work done while the car drives itself. Do you really think that a majority of the population would choose driving themselves? (If they think it at least as safe)


That's called public transit.

In the US, the reason for cars is for a sense of control. A sense that "since I am a better driver/navigator/etc.. I can find the faster/fastest/least obstructed route to _____. Its part of the bootstraps capitalist personality of being the top dog. Having a Siri drive you from place to place will result in people wanting to turn it off and take over the wheel themselves.

Sense of control? With automatic transmissions, endless roads in straight lines, and cars that are globally unable to turn with any agility and sportiveness? American sense of control then, control over something that's so easy to control that you'll never lose control.
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