/lit/ - Literature

I haven't been following it at all. Can sameone give me a stupidly simplified greentext version?

>>6535174
>there's a chomsky debacle
>sam harris' rep gets destroyed
>/lit/ shitposts about it

>>6535174
>Hello Dr Chomsky :^)
>I think we should have a public debate on morality :D
>Here's an excerpt of my book in which i criticised your views on morality
>Chomsky: you've misrepresented me, this is pointless and therefore a debate would be pointless, here are some questions about your assumptions and why you are misguided and you're a twat.
>Harris: You probably shouldn't call me a twat and I am answering your questions even though I'm not
repeat x10 exchanges
>Harris 'not gonna be baited' by your last response but can i publish this
>Chomsky: Ok but it seems strange to do so


>Harris on twitter: Nobody won :D

>>6535174
>be le cocky science man
>think I'm smarter than everyone
>if Chomsky's so smart, why doesn't he do science, like me?
>must be because Chomsky is dumb
>thisisinfalliabelogic.jpeg
>better talk shit about Chomsky on twitter like a 16 year old girl

Then he got his shit slapped and tried to say that Chomsky, the most emotionless man to exist, the fucking block of wood, was using an emotionally backed argument rather than his pure, wholesome logic.

pretty much everyone with a scientific and philosophical mind has been saying since the start that harris has nothing to say.

the entirety of new atheism is such fodder for idiots to eat up to make them feel superior

modern atheism and its adopting of vienna school principles is a fucking joke

>>6535222
AHAHAHAHAH I haven't read this, but fucking Chomsky is nearly a sperg in his absolute lack of emotion.

Damn Ben Stiller, you should keep it on your level.

>>6535168
no; the people stupid enough that they liked him before that e mail exchange, are stupid enough to think he "won" the debate. though it does serve as quality ammo for further shitposting about how bloody useless he is.

>>6535237
nah, Chomsky's emotional as fuck, he's just convinced that being pragmatic and rational is the most effective way of getting things done.

Read When Chomsky Wept to get an idea of him personally

>>6535174

>Harris been saying on twitter he wanted to publicly debate Chomsky
>messages Chomsky under a very unconvincing pretense that it is private correspondence
>chomsky says harris misrepresented his work
>harris quotes passage in which he wrote chomsky has never addressed the issue of "intentions" in geopolitics
>chomsky points out that he has done this extensively for several decades
>harris then admits he's only read one book of chomsky's which was actually just a collection of interviews
>harris starts talking about al-shifa bombing, poses ridiculous exaggerated thought experiment that has no relation to the bombing whatsoever
>chomsky proceeds to lay into harris
>harris keeps saying "muh intentions"
>chomsky again continues the drubbing down
>harris complains about tone despite having misrepresented his work and being the one soliciting a discussion
>harris then "decides" the exchange should be published, despite that being his obvious intention all along
>the end

http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-limits-of-discourse

>>6535261
good summary.
I'd add
>the end
>keep on reposting the link on twitter
>always use a different passive/aggressive sentence
>>Please, people -- neither Chomsky nor I "won" that debate. The horror was that it couldn't even begin.
>have your "new atheist" cronies praise you
>retweet the dumbest crap
>>https://twitter.com/SamHarrisOrg/status/594362088530673664
>>Harris is a philosopher and Chomsky is a journalist
>Harris adds a waffling postscript that only adds to the impression that he didn't understand anything

>>6535283

TIL that posing stupid hypothetical scenarios, misreading scholars and complaining about tone is "philosophy"

Sam Harris can't get into perspectivism and modernism.

>>6535168
>is it safe to say that this guy's reputation is completely destroyed?
Nothing's changed, really. Everyone who read the exchange already had a preformed opinion of Harris that the debate only reenforced.

>>6535324

it looks to me like even die-hard sam harris fans are having a hard time defending his performance in that email exchange.

>>6535324
I feel like that exchange was another nail in the coffin of the "new atheist" movement, as evidenced in for example this blog post https://scientiasalon.wordpress.com/2015/05/11/reflections-on-the-skeptic-and-atheist-movements/

>>6535283
>that tweet
REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
[X]Triggered
[ ] Not Triggered

>>6535329
not really, got to /r/samharris for some keks

>>6535308
maybe to 21st century fedora tippers

>>6535346
it's true in a narrow sense tbf

i'm a moral and ethics philosopher, we have to kill evil at sight

t. sam harris

Sam Harris is a perfect example of why being a logical scientist doesn't magically imbue you with the power to wade in political or philosophical matters.

That acne scarred jewish astrophysicist is another good example.

What should I read from chomsky to start?

>>6535364

not really. you'd have to bastardise the definitions of philosophy and journalism to say that what harris was doing was the former and what chomsky was doing was purely the latter.

>>6535386

responsibility of intellectuals essay, manufacturing consent.

>>6535386
I have Understanding Power: The Indispensible Chomsky, which is a nice relatively large collection of interviews, dialogues and essays, a good overview of his thought, from there you can easily branch out into what field interest you.

People also usually recommend Manufacturing Consent (which he co-wrote with Herman), an older book on media propaganda - a lot of it has become mainstream by now, you may be bored, who knows

I like how now Chomsky has shown his internet arguing chops people are less ashamed of liking him here

>>6535417
yea wtf i remember a couple of weeks ago everyone here hated him. I'm personally still under the impression that he's a cunt and not worth reading.

>>6535405

it's important to note that some of chomsky's writings outside of linguistics are controversial to say the least. the propaganda model is heavily disputed in communication studies literature, for instance. that said, the guy is orders of magnitude more serious than a dilettante like Harris, who as far as i can see is not taken seriously by anyone in the academic literature on topics he claims to have enough expertise to write whole books on.

does anyone know what his actual contributions to the neuroscience literature are? from what i can see he's collaborated on a couple of studies and...that's it? why does he call himself a neuroscientist if he's not actively working in that field?

>>6535417

>/lit/ is one person

>>6535385
What science has he done or what is his scientific background? Doesn't he have a BA in philosophy from Stanford?

>>6535432
i didn't imply that you dingus

>>6535427
>being a new-wave-/lit/-chomsky contrarian

>>6535435

Google it faggot

>>6535435

PhD in neuroscience but his contributions to the field are fairly meagre. before publishing the end of faith he didn't have anything besides the BA, yeah.

>>6535261

So sad Chomsky would have his time wasted by this individual.

>>6535460

I have a BA, why can't I get my baseless shit published?

>>6535464

harris lacks self-awareness. he got absolutely mauled (though not this bad) in his exchange with bruce schneier, but came out of it thinking he'd done well. he genuinely can't see when he's lost an argument.

>>6535477


he has rich parents who probably know someone that helped it get published.

>>6535460

Douglas, P. K., Harris, S., Yuille, A., & Cohen, M. S. (2011, May 15) Performance comparison of machine learning algorithms and number of independent components used in fMRI decoding of belief vs. disbelief. Neuroimage. Volume 56, Issue 2, Pages 544-553.

Douglas PK, SB Harris, & MS Cohen (2009). Naïve Bayes Classification of Belief verses Disbelief using Event Related Neuroimaging Data. Abstract presented at the 15th Annual Meeting of the Organization for Human Brain Mapping. San Francisco (June 19).

Harris, S., Kaplan, J.T., Curiel, A., Bookheimer, S.Y., Iacoboni, M., Cohen, M.S. (2009, October 1) The Neural Correlates of Religious and Nonreligious Belief. PLoS ONE 4(10): e7272.

These are the scientific papers I could find where he was in the list of authors

Harris was on rogan a few weeks back and was up to his usual tricks.

>>6535168
OK so I am not a Harris fanboy. I respect the work of Chomsky. My impression from the dialogue was that Chomsky was arrogant and dismissive. He didn't even understand that what Harris was proposing were thought experiments, which he misread as if Harris was making direct statements. Quite brutal. I was quite disappointed! Harris was more than willing to change his views. In the same string of Emails, Chomsky misrepresents Hegel (clearly he doesn't understand Hegel yet he paraphrases him as if Hegel was saying black people lives have no value). Also, let's not forget how often was Chomsky wrong and biased. He supported Pol Pot and he denied the genocide Pol Pot caused saying it was "American propaganda". Before reading the exchange I had equal opinion of Harris and Chomsky. After it, I prefer Harris to Chomsky.

>>6535501
was it before this thing?

>>6535513
April 25 or something.

All they talked about was mma, artificial intelligence, Iraq war body count, Stephen pinkner and WWI.

>>6535525
Harris is one of those annoying guys who pretends he has an opinion on everything, but really only has a few well worn bug bears that he always directs the conversation back to.

>>6535512

i don't think it was unfair of chomsky to adopt that tone. harris had published criticisms of his views in a very popular best seller which were misreadings from someone who had only read one of his books. what duty is there for chomsky to be civil to such a person? i wouldn't bother feigning politeness if someone like that emailed me trying to solicit a discussion.

chomsky understood very well what those thought experiments were - absurd obfuscations that didn't address the issue at hand, which was the al-shifa bombing.

the issue on chomsky and the khmer rouge is a bit more complicated - coming within the context of the cold war, one could have plausibly believed that the reports coming out about the scale of the atrocities were exaggerated propaganda. i know it's not exactly chomsky's finest hour, but chomsky did not and does not "deny" the genocide.

>>6535168
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian_genocide_denial#Chomsky_and_Herman

Chomsky genocide denier...

Isn't he supposedly the great master of uncovering muh facts and telling propaganda from truth?

Instead, he attacked a serious journalist calling him "third rate propaganda" and defending a maniacal tyrant...

>>6535512

Yes, you are a Harris fanboy. Your disingenuousness is so obvious that you should have put :^) at the end of the paragraph.

>>6535539

Old news, and you've already been refuted here, >>6535538, Harrisfriend.

Sam Harris has no reputation with me, other than as the guy who makes Penn Jillette look smart.

I want the Harrisfags to go back to r/samharris and not come back.

>>6535512
now this is very good bait

>>6535417
>>6535427
I've posted this before and nobody believed me but a year or two ago this board loved Chomsky

>>6535656
i was here a year or two ago and i remember him not being loved

>>6535512
>clearly he doesn't understand Hegel yet he paraphrases him as if Hegel was saying black people lives have no value

kekked hard

>>6535261

What pretense are you talking about? This is literally in his second email to Chomsky:

>Before engaging on this topic, I’d like to encourage you to approach this exchange as though we were planning to publish it. As edifying as it might be to have you correct my misreading of you in private—it would be far better if you did this publicly.

And he talks about how he would like to do this in public in the very first email.

>>6535780

saying "as if we were planning to publish it" is not the same as asking permission to publish it or asking for a public debate. he very clearly wanted to publish it all along, though, I don't dispute that.

>>6535283

>>Harris adds a waffling postscript that only adds to the impression that he didn't understand anything

You mean the postscript where he admits he initially misunderstood what Chomsky meant when discussing intentions and that was largely the cause of their disagreement?

Why you do resort to lying?

>>6535799

oh god there's nothing worse than harris fanboys. he said that he initially misrepresented chomsky, but only in a narrow sense that didn't actually have any significance for the conversation (protip: yes it did), so yeah it was just a self-serving acknowledgment that he'd misrepresented chomsky.

in my opinion, he had a negative reputation. this just makes things worse. he's an ideologue, not a thinker

>>6535789

He made it clear he wanted to publish it from the start and then he explicitly asked for a permission to publish it.

Nothing is amiss here.

>>6535828

>"Speak like as if you were a retard"
>"uhnghhunug"
>"haha, you are a retard for real then"

>>6535819

>but only in a narrow sense that didn't actually have any significance for the conversation

But he does admit it has significance:

>I now see that to the extent that he does weigh intentions, he may do so differently than I would (for instance, he says that Clinton’s bombing al-Shifa without thinking about the consequences is “arguably even worse than murder, which at least recognizes that the victim is human”). This would have been interesting terrain to explore.

He recognizes it changes the direction of the discussion

Bro-tier argument, whining about tone, unable to comprehend what is being said, concocting elaborately ridiculous what-if scenario to justify Americas bombing

>>6535856

If that was an attempt at an analogy it was pitiful.

>>6535860
>elaborate what its

Harris always does this. I'm not sure what the objective is other than to redirect the debate.

>>6535261
>>harris quotes passage in which he wrote chomsky has never addressed the issue of "intentions" in geopolitics
Muh intentions
Its okay to kill innocent people and wreck infrastructure and ruin a country if your INTENTIONS were good!

>>6535337
This new atheism seems to just be an excuse to say we can do whatever we want because Islam lol

>>6535386
The political economy of human rights, especially if you want to know what he actually said about pol pot not what everyone claims while curiously never ever providing quotes or citations

>>6535879
Worse then this, when I saw he started the "debate" that way it was obvious the whole thing was going to be damage control. They should have debated something interesting, like, "is america a force for good" or "will secular states be replaced by thoecracies". Instead we get some passage from some book Harris wrote years ago where he is monologiuing about shit no one cares about, and then wants to email Chomsky about it ten years later? Who cares?

>>6535428
What's to dispute? The core of the propaganda model is that media is a business that needs to make a profit

>>6535860
>>6535874

How is the concept of a thought experiment, especially in a discussion about ethics, supposedly so alien to you?

It's a perfectly suitable way to discuss and illustrate ethical ideas.

>>6535464
He spends up to 6 hours a day replying to emails

>>6535879

What are you saying? That Harris believes the al-shifa bombing was an "okay" thing to do? Or that intentions don't matter?

Both propositions are ridiculous.

>>6535903
it wasn't relevant, he was using it to compare to a real life situation as though they were comparable and is if it were a worthwhile argument in context.

>>6535903
Fuck off muh ethics. Why would you ask Noam Chomsky, critic of american foreign policy, some fucking ethical thought experiment?

>>6535902

that's not what the propaganda model states because that's just blatantly obvious. the propaganda model makes a bunch of predictions about media coverage reflecting the interests of the media's home state.

>>6535483
He says things that support established power and prevailing doctrine
The core conceit of him and other smuglords like Maher and Hitchens is western imperialism is a-okay

>>6535920
Sam Harris is the biggest whig apologist of all time.

>>6535512
>thought experiments
That made shit up and tried to justify the bombing
That's fucking retarded
Lets have a thought experiment that the world trade centres were secret nuclear weapons research facilities for IDF

>>6535914

>it wasn't relevant, he was using it to compare to a real life situation as though they were comparable and is if it were a worthwhile argument in context.

But it was very relevant for the purposes of illustrating why intentions matter, which it did. That's all it was supposed to do.

>>6535512
>Also, let's not forget how often was Chomsky wrong and biased. He supported Pol Pot and he denied the genocide Pol Pot caused saying it was "American propaganda".

Quote and cite

>>6535933
>implying Chomsky needed to be told this

>>6535915

Kek, by saying that Harris should stick to facts instead of philosophy you're just making the people who said "Harris is a philosopher, Chomsky is a journalist" sound like they're right in their assessment.

>>6535903

harris' criticism of chomsky is that chomsky doesn't ever consider intentions, which is false. the thought experiment harris provides is completely ludicrous and doesn't illustrate a point relevant to the discussion, because the discussion centred around issues of geopolitics and professed intentions. harris does this shit all the time - he makes completely ridiculous thought experiments and then applies those conclusions for real-world scenarios. it shows a deliberate unwillingness to engage the facts.

>>6535913

he never said it was an okay thing to do but he clearly doesn't give adequate consideration to the effects of the bombing. he just uses it as fodder for a juvenile thought experiment.

intentions aren't helpful frameworks for discussions about geopolitics and foreign policy or even government policy in general, because literally every single government makes the claim that their acts are carried out with good intentions. it's not that they're irrelevant, but that there's no way of knowing them so they can't in any sense be considered facts that would inform the debate.

>>6535933
how did it illustrate that intentions matter

>>6535929

Completely misrepresenting his point. The thought experiment was only there to illustrate how intentions matter.

>>6535940

He didn't, and in the postscript Harris admits this misunderstanding was the problem.

>>6535942
What are you smoking? Ethics does not equal philosophy. Chomsky is a linguist, bro, and Sam Harris is a public speaker. Anyway, the point remains that this "debate" was a nonstarter and they failed completely to talk about anything important

>>6535948

but the scenario bore no resemblance whatsoever to the al shifa bombings because the sort of information that his "humanitarian" AQ had was not the sort of information that the clinton administration could in any reasonable sense be said to have obtained. harris later backtracks and says that his only evidence for clinton's supposed benign intentions was because he couldn't think of any other reason, despite chomsky mentioning "retaliation" several times.

so harris says that intentions are important, and that he's able to know what the intentions of the clinton administration were just on gut instinct.

>being this retarded

>>6535538
>coming within the context of the cold war, one could have plausibly believed that the reports coming out about the scale of the atrocities were exaggerated propaganda

The only source people had of millions of butchery was a translation of a review of a French book
So chomsky and Herman did a crazy thing
They obtained a copy of the book and read it!
And found it had two different sets of casualties which had been conflated and neither were attributed to the Khmer
The first were those killed by the American bombing of Cambodia
>"everything that flies on everything that moves" - Kissinger
The second being deaths caused as a result of the breakdown of society caused by the bombing

Chomsky and Herman then went to that notorious hive of scum and villainy the US State Department for any information and they had figures in the tens of thousands

The whole point of their inquest was to compare the teeth nashing and hair pulling and hysteria over Cambodia which nothing could be done about to East Timor where at the very same time the US was aiding Indonesia invade and occupy and kill 1/3rd of the population by the time it was done - something that received zero attention and a lot could be done about

Any further critics from this point on MUST explain their concern for Cambodia and lack of concern for East Timor

>>6535944
And furthermore, implying uniformity in the intentions of a government is irrational.

Harris is a pleb

>>6535944
>because literally every single government makes the claim that their acts are carried out with good intentions.

Not all.

Chomsky doesn't just make comparisons between governments.

>>6535903
Instead of discussing what happened, he makes up something entirely different to justify it

Imagine someone on trial for bank robbery asking the judge "your honor, what if I didn't rob a bank? What if we consider for a moment that I was stopping a child molester from kidnapping someone"

>mfw Harris and Chomsky had a shitposting conversation through email

>>6535903
Because that's not what happened, your making shit up and then discussing your shit instead of what happened

>>6535913
He believes it was okay and that if murikas intentions are good then everything's okay

>>6535918
And those predictions rely on the business making money
It can't do that if it pisses off government sources, advertisers, shareholders, etc

>>6535944

>harris' criticism of chomsky is that chomsky doesn't ever consider intentions, which is false.

He admits this was a misreading

>he makes completely ridiculous thought experiments and then applies those conclusions for real-world scenarios. it shows a deliberate unwillingness to engage the facts.

A completely ridiculous thought experiment would be a thought experiment that could never happen, Harris uses thought experiments that are relevant to the discussion at hand at their core. In this case the point of the thought experiment just didn't matter because of Harris' misreading of Chomsky.

>it's not that they're irrelevant, but that there's no way of knowing them so they can't in any sense be considered facts that would inform the debate.

Could you not apply this same preposterous logic to any criminal trial involving deaths? "He did something that resulted in the deaths of two people. He claims it was an unforeseeable accident, but there's no way to know his real motives so let's judge him the same way we judge the guy who knowingly murdered his wife and child in their beds"

>>6535218

Stopping by to say that this was an excellent summary.

>>6535948
>Completely misrepresenting his point.
Its not, his thought experiment was what if it was a weapons lab and merikas intentions were good

>>6535933
>>6535948

harris does a similar thing with his first-year undergrad level arguments for torture. they go something like:

1. there is a conceivable time bomb scenario in which torture may be justifiable.
2. it is conceivable that this scenario could happen in the future.
3. therefore torturing KSM is morally necessary.

this is why using exagerrated thought experiments as a basis for discussions of foreign policy is the kind of thing a 15 year old would do - it's very easy to construct ludicrous scenarios. it's harder to actually address facts and acquire knowledge.

>>6535962
>notorious hive of scum and villainy the US State Department

>>6535946

It illustrated that in the case where a group exposes a deadly vaccine and accidentally causes damage in the process would not be judged the same way a group intentionally killing the same amount would be because that wouldn't make any sense and that's not how our justice system works.

I just imagine some fedoralord smug bastard rubbing his greasy palms together between gorging himself on pockey over this "intentions matter" non debate. What the fuck? People actually think Harris was being clever? Perhaps *this* is why you're a virgin. Can you imagine someone talking to a women like this?

>>6535996

>tfw Harris tries to be like Socrates but fails

>>6535996
>muh 24 torture scenario
Which doesn't exist in the real world

>>6536001
>your honor I thought her intentions were to consent to sex...

It's funny because Chomsky addresses this things about intentions in the first fucking question of Understanding Power

>>6535920
>>6535879
You two seem to be losing your composure. Please consider leaving this discussion.

Harris advocates supporting admittedly brutal secularist dictators, which the US has bombed or invaded, if it denies religious fanatics access to government power. So the claim that he furthers US, western, or imperialist ambitions doesn't make sense and sounds like what the fevered imagination of some SJW journalist commenting would say.

This intentions shit is the worst apologetics for power
Everyone has good intentions in what they do even the worst monsters

Arguing that their intentions had to have been good so its alright is just fucking naieve or retarded

>>6535992

you're doing exactly what harris is doing, which is trying to use the framework of a criminal trial for a discussion about means of evaluating geopolitics. a criminal trial will go to lengths to ascertain the mens rea because it is generally assumed that a mental element is establishable. so actually - the killer's professed intentions are not as relevant as what can reasonably established as to his or her intentions at trial. in terms of geopolitics, it's impossible to know what the intentions are, because governments always say that what they're doing is morally right. therefore we look at what the relevant facts are, just like a criminal trial would. chomsky's point being that clinton's actions re al-shifa do not demonstrate a concern for human life - as evidenced by his unwillingness to investigate the crime and address the humanitarian catastrophe which he knew was ongoing.

also certain crimes are strict liability and don't require any mental element, so your argument doesn't even work on its own logic. kek.

>>6536017
>implying not a whig apologist

>>6536017
>if it denies religious fanatics access to government power
George Bush invaded Iraq because god told him
When trying to get Jaque Shiraq to commit troops he was ranting about Gog and Magog and the end times

>>6535959

>but the scenario bore no resemblance whatsoever to the al shifa bombings because the sort of information that his "humanitarian" AQ had was not the sort of information that the clinton administration could in any reasonable sense be said to have obtained

Good thing he obviously wasn't saying that the al-shifa bombings were morally equivalent to the actions of the humanitarian AQ

>and that he's able to know what the intentions of the clinton administration were just on gut instinct.

Misrepresentation again, he just finds far less likely that the clinton administration would intentionally kill thousands of civilians than that Al-Qaeda would, which is a reasonable stance.

>>6535973

Jesus christ, he was not drawing a moral equivalence between al-shifa and the imagined humanitarian in the thought experiment. He was showcasing that there's a continuum of intentions and that they matter.

>>6536017
>Harris advocates supporting admittedly brutal secularist dictators
>so the claim that he furthers US western imperialist ambitions doesn't make sense
Lolwut

>>6536017

lolwut. how does his support for secularist dictators imply that he doesn't support imperialist ambitions?

>mfw sam harris apologists literally use his support for dictators as defense

>>6536028
>He was showcasing that there's a continuum of intentions and that they matter.
No, he's making shit up and then using that made up shit instead of the facts to rationalise a justification

>>6536028
Still contending that governments express unilateral intentions.

How's that black box working out for you there?

>>6536036
Based Zizek.

>>6536018
It's so fascinating watching /lit/ take a stand against virtue ethics, a stand that was used to argue against other new atheists. It really is hilarious how easily /lit/ can be triggered into taking different stances.

>>6535979

If after this many posts about the subject if you still don't understand the point of the thought experiment you're a lost cause.

>>6535983

>There is no doubt that the United States has much to atone for, both domestically and abroad. In this respect, we can more or less swallow Chomsky’s thesis whole. To produce this horrible confection at home, start with our genocidal treatment of the Native Americans, add a couple hundred years of slavery, along with our denial of entry to Jewish refugees fleeing the death camps of the Third Reich, stir in our collusion with a long list of modern despots and our subsequent disregard for their appalling human rights records, add our bombing of Cambodia and the Pentagon Papers to taste, and then top with our recent refusals to sign the Kyoto protocol for greenhouse emissions, to support any ban on land mines, and to submit ourselves to the rulings of the International Criminal Court. The result should smell of death, hypocrisy, and fresh brimstone.

>We have surely done some terrible things in the past. Undoubtedly, we are poised to do terrible things in the future. Nothing I have written in this book should be construed as a denial of these facts, or as defense of state practices that are manifestly abhorrent. There may be much that Western powers, and the United States in particular, should pay reparations for. And our failure to acknowledge our misdeeds over the years has undermined our credibility in the international community.

Yeah, he clearly thinks the US can do no wrong

>>6535548
>old news

And yet he was still defending his white-washing of communist atrocities even in the late 80s when the facts had been firmly established.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idy8m5V8uLI

The fact is that Chomsky leapt to defend communist dictators on ideological anti-american grounds whereas if he had been unbiased then he would not have discredited himself so much.

>>6535998
and how is that equivalent to the real discussion they were having and if it is not, then why is it relevant

>>6536028
>Misrepresentation again, he just finds far less likely that the clinton administration would intentionally kill thousands of civilians
Thatsthejoke.jpg
The consequences of bombing a countries single pharmaceutical plant don't even warrant consideration

>>6536045

what exactly has sam harris done to challenge atrocities committed by the US, aside from those two paragraphs in his first book? as far as i can tell he does absolutely no work to actively challenge atrocities committed by the US, but writes a lot about their professed good intentions.

chomsky, on the other hand, works tirelessly to hold the US government to account for its atrocities. it's just obtuse to not recognise that sam harris does virtually no work that is critical of the US in any significant sense.

>>6536045
Oh I understand, the point is to change the subject to something Harris has made up and geared towards supporting his argument

>>6536045
Harris sits in his ivory tower and says, "bad". Clearly not a whig. Clearly not an apologist for whigish behavior.

>>6535995

It was an illustration of an abstract idea, not a claim that "this would be okay, therefore al-shifa was okay". If you can't understand that you're a dumbass.

>>6535996

>3. therefore torturing KSM is morally necessary.

Can you find a quote on that regarding KSM? Because that sounds like a complete misrepresentation, although a crafty one because you use the same words as he does.

He contends that he can conceive of a situation where torture could be ethically justified. Which is completely different from what you just said.

>>6536045
>muh intentions wer gud

>>6536065
>i went through my whole career without ever mentionin...

>>6536057
You clearly didn't exist during the 'god told me to end the tyranny in Iraq' Bush administration.

Fuck off underage.

>>6536064
>It was an illustration of an abstract idea
Which he trots out to discuss instead of the facts, arguing "but, what if..."
The intention is clear

>>6536073
How can you tell this?

>>6536073
And Harris did what about that?

lit, take a moment. look at that jpg. linger on it. the confident blank stare. the taut symmetry, the jaw, etc.

what must it feel like? maybe some other person on this board can imagine the total, blithe confidence. to receive immediate respect for your academic background. to spackle twitter with your jizzum drops and receive 40 000 eager responses. to receive acclaim for your publications, or enough sales to compensate for disagreeable critics.

sam harris would have been surprised if he hadn't beaten God. it would have been the first failure of his entire career. I want you to think long and hard about that man's penis, lit. linger on it.

>>6536064

if you look at his article on his blog in which he writes in depth on his views on torture he says it - or it's in the huffington post piece he did called in defense of torture - can't remember which. he also says that he considers it acceptable that innocent people who just happen to "look like" osama bin laden would be tortured as a consequence of his views. the guy is morally abhorrent. that last bit is definitely on his elaboration on his views on torture on his website.

>>6536084
What Chomsky 'I'm a scholar, I don't get involved in the world' ever done?

Double standard much?

>>6536073

yes i did - criticising the religious rhetoric of the bush administration is not the same as critiquing the haditha massacre. sam harris spent way more time writing material in support of a "war on islam" than he did working against us atrocities.

>>6536019

>a criminal trial will go to lengths to ascertain the mens rea because it is generally assumed that a mental element is establishable.

They might be easier to establish in a criminal trial than in geopolitics but that's not a reason to remove the variable from geopolitics. In both cases it's a game of chance, you can be X% sure they did it for reason Y but it also might have been reason Z.

>in terms of geopolitics, it's impossible to know what the intentions are,

It's harder, not impossible. Or if you think it's impossible because we can't look inside the minds of the politicians then it's also impossible in a murder trial.

>because governments always say that what they're doing is morally right.

Murderers often claim they did nothing wrong or that it was an accident.

>chomsky's point being that clinton's actions re al-shifa do not demonstrate a concern for human life - as evidenced by his unwillingness to investigate the crime and address the humanitarian catastrophe which he knew was ongoing.

Perhaps it was fear of political suicide that made him not address that and that would be abhorrent behavior, but Harris' point is that would still not be as morally reprehensible as the act of intentionally killing thousands of civilians, especially if clinton was not aware of the casualties beforehand.

>>6536088
Sam Harris: superstar

>>6536098

>believing this about chomsky

>radioactive lizard Jew intellectually gets his ass handed to him by Ben stiller lookalike

>>6536103
>that's not a reason to remove the variable from geopolitics. In both cases it's a game of chance, you can be X% sure they did it for reason Y but it also might have been reason Z.
Okay there little Timmy. Sure thing.

>>6536103

so none of what you said is actually disputed by chomsky. the point chomsky made was actually a THOUGHT EXPERIMENT (since you're fond of those) asking US citizens to put themselves in the position of having a major pharmaceutical factory in their country being bombed. his point, therefore, was that we should hold our own governments to the standard as if its atrocities were committed against us.

sam harris' point, meanwhile, is the exact opposite - he's saying that the atrocities committed by the US should be judged less harshly than atrocities committed against it, because the US has good intentions, whereas its enemies do not.

>>6536088
I know what it's like to impress a retard with my meager vocabulary and paltry academic accomplishments.. But to impress thousands of retards?

Harris really is a giant among the pygmies.

I don't think so. Harris hardly came across as a moron. Chomsky did 'win' the debate but it was mostly just him schooling Harris on his misreadings of chomsky... he didn't really do any damage to the core of Harris' arguments about false moral equivalence. I also don't know what I think about Chomsky's point that 'disregarding' peoples' lives is worse than intentionally murdering them... His rationale that murder involves acknowledging the other as human strikes me as weak shit and could actually support the opposite claim:.

>>6536119
Everyone claims to have good intentions so that is irrelevent

>>6536038

Never contended that. Do you understand what "likely" means?

>>6536091

Here's the part you speak of:

>If you think it is ever justifiable to drop bombs in an attempt to kill a man like Osama bin Laden (and thereby risk killing and maiming innocent men, women, and children), you should think it may sometimes be justifiable to water-board a man like Osama bin Laden (and risk abusing someone who just happens to look like him). It seems to me that however one compares the practices of water-boarding high-level terrorists and dropping bombs, dropping bombs always comes out looking worse in ethical terms. And yet, most people tacitly accept the practice of modern warfare while considering it taboo to even speak about the possibility of practicing torture.

He doesn't explicitly say he supports the act but he makes the case that if you consider collateral damage morally justifiable in some cases there would be some cases in which torturing someone could be morally justifiable. Notice that he does not specify what "sometimes" refers to and the rest of what he says on the page would point towards unlikely scenarios which is why he thinks torture should be illegal. I find nothing morally reprehensible in this argument but do point it out if you do.

Chomsky should have sent the trolley problem back to Harris to keep his autistic mind occupied

>muh intentions
Weasel words: the ideology

>>6536106
Believe?

He's said it himself.

>>6536150
>implying that its "likely" the Clinton admin didn't mean to kill thousands of civilians when it dropped bombs on Libya, Iraq, Serbia, Somalia, etc

When does it become no longer acceptable to hide behind the vague notion of "intentions" when the outcomes are undeniable?

Oops, I didn't realize firing tomahawk missiles at another country might cause civilian deaths. It certainly seems unlikely, that I, bill Clinton, intended to do that... Even though I've done it to other countries dozens of times.

>>6536119

>his point, therefore, was that we should hold our own governments to the standard as if its atrocities were committed against us.

Ok, let's take this thought experiment and imagine the US government out of the blue dropped a bomb on a purely civilian target containing 3000+ people and stated their reasons as "These people are our enemies and our religion allows for this act of revenge". Would the reaction really be that different from people's reaction to 9/11?

>he's saying that the atrocities committed by the US should be judged less harshly than atrocities committed against it, because the US has good intentions, whereas its enemies do not.

I don't see how that's the "exact opposite", your summary of Chomsky's point didn't even include discussion of intentions.

>>6536175
Fuck off muh intentions

Intentions actually don't matter in realpolitik, dipshit.

>>6536171

Even in the case of collateral damage, which is morally abhorrent, it's still not as morally abhorrent as intentionally targeting civilian targets.

>>6535994
Excellent emoticon usage at the end there

>>6536181
Who is "intentionally" responsible here? The drone pilot who does the intended targeting, or the political leader whose intention it is to authorize the drone strikes?

>>6536188

Interesting question. Not one I'm prepared to discuss.

>>6536195
The generals and politicians
They didn't put privates and corporals and sgts on trial at Nuremberg

>>6536195
>>6536188
..both

>>6536200
But it is also not acceptable for corporals to carry out unlawful orders.

>>6536150

please take your apology goggles off. harris has written an article called "in defense of torture" and says he supports its use in the war on terror. what he is addressing here is a logical consequence of the policy he supports - he is not a pacifist, he accepts that people will die in war. equally, he supports torture and accepts that innocent people will be tortured as a result of his policy.

>>6536206
Actually, legally, only few countries allow soldiers to refute orders if they have moral qualms. Germany is one of the few where it's legal, for obvious reasons

>>6536175

>harris apologists have to resort to non-existent scenarios and thought experiments because they are completely unable to address real-world scenarios and because harris doesn't know the first thing about geopolitics or history.

>>6536017
easy way to out yourself as a moron man nobody says sjw unironically now

>>6536175
>Ok, let's take this thought experiment and imagine the US government out of the blue dropped a bomb on a purely civilian target containing 3000+ people and stated their reasons as "These people are our enemies and our religion allows for this act of revenge". Would the reaction really be that different from people's reaction to 9/11?

please see my lai, haditha, abu ghraib. the idea that the US holds itself to the same sorts of standards it holds its enemies is laughable.

>>6536211

>he supports its use in the war on terror. what he is addressing here is a logical consequence of the policy he supports - he is not a pacifist, he accepts that people will die in war. equally, he supports torture and accepts that innocent people will be tortured as a result of his policy.

Nothing in this most recent text of his on torture suggests that he "supports" it on any general level:

http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/response-to-controversy#torture

Saying that he "supports torture" is like saying I "support murder" because I believe there are cases where it's ethically justified to commit it. If you can't take something he said and point out why it's wrong there's no point in continuing because this is going in a circle.

>>6536175
>Ok, let's take this thought experiment and imagine the US government out of the blue dropped a bomb on a purely civilian target containing 3000+ people and stated their reasons as "These people are our enemies and our religion allows for this act of revenge". Would the reaction really be that different from people's reaction to 9/11?

what about the kissinger-backed coup against the democratically elected govt. of allende? the "intentions" there were because the US govt thought the outcome of the election unacceptable. do you think if the US voted for a president some other country found unacceptable, that they would think it ok for that country to support a coup against the president because "muh intentions".

this is why your stupid sophistry thought experiment garbage is useless - it has no relation to the real-world.

>>6535168
>chomsky

I don't even know what has happened but fuck this guy.

Anti-jewish, Holocaust denier, Nazi sympathizer, Anti-western, pro-Russia, anti-NATO, etc.

Here's a thought experiment:
what if al-Qaeda bribed members of the military to stage a coup d'état on September 11 and killed the president and abolished the congress and senate and established a military dictatorship that disappeared tens of thousands of citizens and tortured hundreds of thousands more; instituted a series of economic reforms that sent the majority of the population into poverty; devastated the environment, saw unfiltered sewage being used to irrigate crops and as drinking water causing millions to become sick with cholera and dysentery; and began a worldwide assassination program of refugee critics
Imagine of al-Qaeda did that to America
It would be gorillian times worse than what actually happened, right?

Well we don't have to imagine.
Its what the USA did on September 11 1973 to Chile

>>6536255
Utilitarian scum confirmed

People surprised by this: zero

>>6536255

oh please - you're just reading him in such a way as to ignore the implications of what he's saying. he is in favour of using torture in the war on terror, and names individuals who he thinks should be subjected to torture. his justification for these real-world scenarios are fictitious hypotheticals which don't bear relation to the situation of the people he advocates torturing.

i can't be bothered to go into a long explanation of why torturing terrorists is wrong, but have a read of yuval ginbar's book "why not torture terrorists" as a nice primer. my issue in this discussion is the sanctimony with which harris presents his position despite it being poorly thought-out and based on absurd reasoning.

>>6536265
Why you mad bro

>>6536278
>Sam Harris supports torture in the bullshit "long war" that has no real goal.


Case closed

>>6536265
>anon

I don't know shit but fuck this guy

Virgin, NEET, repels women, passionate about chines cartoons, etc

>>6536278
Torture is wrong from a purely practical standpoint: the subject will tell you whatever you want to hear to make the pain stop you have no way of knowing its authenticity
And it appears the freaks in the us government don't care they just want to get their jollies hurting brown people

>>6536241

Of course the US government would try to minimize the damage from those to itself as much as possible, and that's certainly wrong. And Harris would absolutely agree that all those instances were morally reprehensible things. But he would also point out that the US government did not order those things with the kind of malevolent intentions Al-Qaeda has.

If the US government actually stated "Good work on killing those slanty-eyed bastards, God wanted those women and children dead" after the My Lai massacre instead of convicting the people responsible you'd have more of a point.

>>6536276
>instituted a series of economic reforms that sent the majority of the population into poverty
Capitalism is the best system though.

>>6536298
>the My Lai massacre instead of convicting the people responsible

Only one soldier was convicted to jail, and immediatelly pardoned by Nixon

>>6536298
>muh intentions
What if they just don't think about the consequences
Then that's worse
Its lik walking along a street and not noticing or caring about any bugs on the sidewalk you might step on
Its a bug
So what
You don't have time to stop or walk around it

>>6536298
>the kind of malevolent intentions Al-Qaeda has
Aren't Al-Qaeda's intentions to serve God? Wouldn't they cease their war if we reverted en masse to Islam?

>>6536288
>>6536278

It has a goal though, and it's a pretty obvious goal. Oil, guns, and cash forever. There's plenty of ideological bullshit to back the geopolitical maneuvering that's been going on for quite a while to destabilize the entire region and using Israel as the proxy in the region, since the countries around Israel that are the target of said ideological judgement hate Israel for historical reasons.

It all just feeds itself and 9/11 was the boiling point and the excuse to establish a PERMANENT military presence there, to support the Post-Cold-War weapons manufacturing industry.

The occupation isn't there for "no reason", it's there because it's immensely profitable and strategic for them to stay, you can defend it pretty well too. It's pretty much Capitalism all the way down.

>>6536298
>citing my lai
>the good example
>not citing Project Phoenix
Pleb

>>6536298
From their perspective al-qaedas intentions are perfectly just and noble
From their perspective any collateral damage is unfortunate but they are fighting the great satan who in its wickedness surrounds itself with the innocent

>>6536302

>Capitalism is the best system though.

>>6536323
Which is why muh intentions is so fucking ham fistedly retarded
But point out this analogy and its suddenly moral relativism

>>6536318
Operation pheonix had the clearly good intentions of torturing chi commies.

>>6536258

>do you think if the US voted for a president some other country found unacceptable, that they would think it ok for that country to support a coup against the president because "muh intentions".

That's not at all what I think that's a pretty ridiculous statement to make. Of course staging a coup in another country to serve your own interests is horrible.

But were the American populace and the world in general aware that Allende was elected through the way of coup by the US government?

>>6536332
And we know they're commies because we chained up a village and held everyone at gunpoint and walked him around the village asking him to point out the commies
Then we killed everyone to be sure

>>6536298

there was a public outcry after the US govt tried to hold those responsible for the massacre to account, resulting in a pardon.

do you see what you're doing here? you're excusing a manifestly immoral act of murdering civilians in a war which, we now know (but which was not always said at the time) did not have noble intentions, and saying that it's somehow excusable because AQ's intentions are worse

>>6536340
Allende won a legit election

>>6536350
My lai was chicken feed compared to the whole war
Phoenix program carried out hundreds of such acts

>>6536340

Allende won an election you dipshit. The point was the intentions of those who supported the coup against him, not to shift it to the US population in general. It is to point out that whilst some in the US thought that the "intention" of stopping the spread of Marxism justified the coup, if the logic was applied to an election in the US, we can see that the issue of intentions doesn't do anything at all to help us understand the situation.

>>6536358

yeah well that just underscores my point that harris' point that the US is somehow a "well-intentioned giant" is just fucking stupid.

Sam Harris is a sock puppet for the establishment.

Oh look, its Sam Harris, the noble voice of reason. I was feeling white guilt about all those commies america tortured for no real reason beyond power, greed, and strategic influence. But Sam Harris will show that the west is still best!

Sam Harris: reddit, the man

>>6536340
Why is that question relevant?

Is Chomsky misquoted (relatively) as often as Murray Rothbard?

>>6536340

>proof that sam harris fans don't know anything about world history and would rather equivocate on "muh intentions" because it's easier than reading a book

>>6536278

>he is in favour of using torture in the war on terror

You don't know what situations he would find torture ethically justifiable so this is an intellectually dishonest way to represent him. If he thought torture should be legal and a tool to use in general practice then this would be fair to say.

>and names individuals who he thinks should be subjected to torture

The only name mentioned in relation to torture is in his argument is that if we find it ethically justified to drop bombs on a compound that has someone like Osama Bin Laden inside then we have no ethical justification for why we think it's wrong to torture someone like Osama Bin Laden (unless you somehow think murder of innocents is less worse morally than torturing a single individual). This is completely different from your assertion.

>>6536384
People don't even bother to quote chomsky
When someone says he supported pol pot they provide no quotes
When they say he is anti-American they provide no quotes

>>6536340
>But were the American populace and the world in general aware that Allende was elected through the way of coup by the US government?
Wut

>>6536390
Its like they've got something to hide

>>6536388
>You don't know what situations he would find torture ethically justifiable so this is an intellectually dishonest way to represent him. If he thought torture should be legal and a tool to use in general practice then this would be fair to say.

he says he supports its use against KSM, and says it's a moral necessity in the war on terror. TIL it's intellectually dishonest to read somebody correctly.

>The only name mentioned in relation to torture is in his argument is that if we find it ethically justified to drop bombs on a compound that has someone like Osama Bin Laden inside then we have no ethical justification for why we think it's wrong to torture someone like Osama Bin Laden (unless you somehow think murder of innocents is less worse morally than torturing a single individual). This is completely different from your assertion.

this is the stupidest fucking thing i've ever heard. it's literally the sort of thing a 13-year old would say. if you take harris at his reasoning then it's morally permissible to rape women in territory you captured, because it's not as bad as dropping a bomb on them.

>>6536388
>implying its morally permissible to assassinate someone

>>6536323

And a serial killer might be under the delusion that he is releasing his victims to heaven and is therefore doing a noble thing.

>>6536350

>you're excusing a manifestly immoral act of murdering civilians in a war

How am I excusing it just because I think it could be worse? How is saying "this act would be worse ethically if the US government had ordered this massacre for the purposes of killing nasty gooks and heathens" excusing the act?

If some guy hits his wife because he finds her getting double-teamed by two dudes and another guy hits his wife just because he likes it, I'm going to say the guy hitting her because he likes it is ethically worse. That doesn't mean I "excuse" the first guy or think he's not morally reprehensible also.

>>6536407

>he says he supports its use against KSM, and says it's a moral necessity in the war on terror. TIL it's intellectually dishonest to read somebody correctly.

Where are you getting this from? How about you read his latest stance on the issue instead of something from 10 years ago (I'm assuming you're remembering correctly and not just misremembering/making it up)

>if you take harris at his reasoning then it's morally permissible to rape women in territory you captured, because it's not as bad as dropping a bomb on them.

This is retarded. Collateral damage is accepted because it's seen as something that will (hopefully anyway) lead to more lives saved than lost. That's the whole point, the same logic can be applied to torture. Your analogy is woefully stupid, I'm still reeling from having read such drivel.

>>6536430
i'm getting it from here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sam-harris/in-defense-of-torture_b_8993.html

he wrote it 10 years ago but nothing he wrote on his blog repudiates it. try and take him at his word rather than put some kind of overly charitable interpretation just because he's your intellectual hero.

>This is retarded. Collateral damage is accepted because it's seen as something that will (hopefully anyway) lead to more lives saved than lost. That's the whole point, the same logic can be applied to torture. Your analogy is woefully stupid, I'm still reeling from having read such drivel.

knew you'd say this - you don't understand anything. rape is used as a tool to demoralise the enemy and stop them from fighting. it's used to humiliate the enemy and stop a battle by eroding the other side's morale and will to fight. it's to make them think they've already lost, to make them fearful. in a very real sense, therefore, you could say that it can serve the purpose of leading to more lives saved than lost.

>>6536451

>in a very real sense, therefore, you could say that it can serve the purpose of leading to more lives saved than lost

Actually the pain inflicted on the civilian populace is one of the main reasons these wars continue to go on as they dofrom their perspective (ignoring the financial interests of the West). Widespread rape would have the same effect as intentional killing of civilians would be, more hatred and a longer war, thus less lives saved.

Night at the Museum 3 has yet to come out, so we'll see what happens then.

>>6536480
>Widespread rape would have the same effect as intentional killing of civilians would be, more hatred and a longer war, thus less lives saved.

as opposed to capturing and torturing people, which the other side is totally OK with?

>>6536486

Of course not. But 1) It's not inflicted on civilians (except on the rare occasion they have the wrong guy) 2) It's not inflicted on thousands of people and the populace probably doesn't even usually know about it

In any case in the model Harris seems to suggest it would be less prevalent than it has been so far and would probably be limited to a small amount of individuals.

I wish he'd flat out state the specific situations where he would find it ethically justifiable so I'd know whether I agree with him or not and it'd be easier to talk about it. For now I can't really tell.

>>6536508

>But 1) It's not inflicted on civilians (except on the rare occasion they have the wrong guy)

yes and i'm sure in those instances where innocent people are captured and tortured by US forces will go forgiven - the people will see the goodness of our intentions!

>2) It's not inflicted on thousands of people and the populace probably doesn't even usually know about it

are you joking? do you really think people in other countries make these sorts of calculations when their countrymen are kidnapped and tortured by US forces?

you're just dancing around the issue because you acknowledge that rape during wartime is abhorrent, but can't see that inflicting enormous amounts of suffering on a person who you have captured and detained, and who may not even be guilty, is also morally disgraceful.

>>6535283

>>6536531

>but can't see that inflicting enormous amounts of suffering on a person who you have captured and detained, and who may not even be guilty, is also morally disgraceful.

You're twisting words to make me (and Harris) look like monsters. What you're doing is akin to saying I can't see why murder is morally abhorrent because there are situations where I find it acceptable. Of course I can see torture is morally disgraceful, in general, just like murdering or violence in general is. I can also conceive of situations where it could be ethically justified to employ torture (serious chemical/nuclear weapon threat), or to murder someone (self-defense, defense of others).

I find it baffling that you seem to be willing to accept this logic in the case of murder but not torture.

>>6536570

because with collateral damage there is no choice. if it were a matter of policy whether or not to have civilian casualties, then i would be opposed to it. with torture there is a choice, so i am opposed to it.

>/lit/ is on the side of the irrelevant pseudointellectual instead of the neuroscientist who actually needs to use his brains for his work

Why am I not surprised? You philosophy fags are the worst.

>>6535168
SO MACHISTO
ODEIO FEMINAZES VOCES
FEMINAZE É PELUDA
VOCES NAO GOSTAM DE ME SERVI
VOCES NAO FAZEM SANDUICHE
ABORTERAS ASASINAS
MULHERES PORCAS
HOMENS SOFREM NADA ACONTECE ALISTAMENTO

>>6535283
>https://twitter.com/SamHarrisOrg/status/594362088530673664
>his 1970s denial of Cambodian holocaust
i'm tired of this meme

>>6536580

Ok, that seems reasonable.

I just read the whole thing.

Sam got absolutely #REKT

He must be squirming

so after the whole foucault debacle, is it safe to say that this guy's reputation is completely destroyed?

>>6536580
If they're so incompetent asto not to know what might happen if they blow the only pharmaceutical company in the company then they are guilty of negligence and incompetence
Or the possibilities are never even thought of
Which is far worse than deliberately doing it or being incompetent
You don't even consider what could happen, what are the outcomes, the consequences, you just do it and move on
Like walking down the street not bothering with any bugs in your way

>>6536570
The monstrosity of the smug liberal insistence that muh intentions makes criminal acts legitimate

>>6536809

is foucault the greatest gayboy in existene? why is he so fucking based?

LMAO just skipped through some of it

>Harris: "WHY ARE YOU SO MEAN TO ME!?"

seems to be the most recurrent theme

>>6536809
>so after the whole foucault debacle, is it safe to say that this guy's reputation is completely destroyed?

No.

>>6536827
it's the mirrorhead. his babybald noggin looks as if someone stretched flesh colored latex over the cool metal of some robot, leaving a twisting network of cables and fibers to breathe somewhere just beyond the naked outline of a human head.

>>6536842

shed a tear reading this. god bless.

Sam Harris is a bad scientist(read his PhD thesis), philosopher and a neo-con shill riding the New Atheist fad. Read his recommended reading list under History and Economics on his website. Kind of surprising list of books containing Neoconservative thought especially for a guy that claims to be a fair minded empiricist that bashes Islam and Christianity.

>>6537245
not really surprising, a large number of #1 NYT best-sellers and popular histories combined with some classics.

It did remind me of something relevant to this discussion, which I recall now from his Rogan interview, which was the issue about the "Perfect Weapon" -- another Harris hypothetical question, oh no! which raises the question of the morality of drone strikes and such since these are *not* perfect weapons and cause collateral damage. If, however, such a weapon DID exist (that never caused collateral damage and was always completely 100% accurate), would it be morally acceptable to use it?

pic related: it's what Sam Harris is reading RIGHT NOW

>>6536088
underrated post

>>6536183

fuckin douche

>>6535168
Idk what's going on but I like Harris but I can see how he probably leaves his area of expertise when he talks about foreign policy.

>>6537550
Exactly

>>6535525
Actually April 29

>>6535168
Is it safe to say your man-crush threads on him will soon stop?

*Crosses fingers*

Imagine that /lit/ is filled, not with Marx-intoxicated sociopaths intent upon creating a global Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, but genuine humanitarians. Based on their research, they believe that a deadly batch of autism has made it into the U.S. pharmaceutical supply. They have communicated their concerns to MOOT emeritus but were rebuffed. Acting rashly, with the intention of saving millions of shitposters, they unleash a computer virus, targeted to impede the release of this deadly autism. As it turns out, they are right about the vaccine but wrong about the consequences of their meddling—and they wind up destroying half the Chinese Cartoon girls in the U.S.

What would I say? I would say that this was a very unfortunate event—but these are people we want on our team. I would find the MOOT emeritus highly culpable for not having effectively communicated with them. These people are our friends, and we were all very unlucky.

>>6536024
Don't you think attributing the Iraq War to Bush's religiosity is reductionist though?

>>6537710
I have not been following this thread and have no idea what the fuck you are talking about but this post was funny and made me laugh god bless

>>6537245

>the clash of civilizations

jesus fucking christ. are the fountainhead and mein kampf on the list, too?

>>6536265
He's against zionists because he is sympathetic to Palestinians. He got rused by holocaust deniers into writing something about freedom of speech which was then sneakily used as an introduction to a book on holocaust denial. You can figure this out from watching ten minutes of stuff on youtube.

Please post evidence of him being anti-semitic or a nazi sympathizer. Post evidence of him supporting Russia, beyond him calmly pointing out that America got away with more shit back in the day. Post some evidence of him being anti-western and not just anti-America.

>>6539597
Not him, but probably. There is some possibility that he actually believed all of that though.