I think Sam did a very poor job in that episode -- he was preaching exclusively to the choir. He spends the start of the podcast explaining the important distinction between justified and unjustified police involved killings. This is a very important distinction, and I would love to see data about the racial breakdown of unjustified killings, relative to a racial breakdown of police interactions.
But, Sam then completely abandons this distinction. He discusses "An Empirical Analysis of Racial Differences in Police Use of Force", Roland G. Fryer, Jr. July 2007, a NYC-only study that does not measure unjustified killings.
Then, as usual, he spends an awful lot of time spouting his usual rhetoric of truth, epistemology, science, data, facts, and knowledge. This is merely rhetoric because his reference to that study is clearly meant to be evidence that we have the truth -- that police brutality is the issue, and unjustified killings do not disproportionately affect black Americans. He even discusses the Fryer study and moments later is confidently stating "race isn't the relevant variable". This is a grand claim that can't possibly be justified based on the Fryer study.
All interspersed with more rhetoric such as:
- "expiation of sins" for you Botox as if you're "woke as AOC"
- "ecstasy of ideological conformity"
- "woke analysis" is where "democratic politics goes to die" (probably means Democratic Party politics)
- "social activists playing chicken with the forces of chaos"
- "form of political pornography"
- "unable to speak or even think about facts"
Sam's usual parade of platitudes about epistemology are best understood by another quotation from this episode: "the difference between the branding of a movement and its actual aims, that's why propaganda works".
> Slate Star Codex says they were expecting a relatively nice article, not a hit piece.
Yeah, I wasn't referencing the article specifically, but the general state. What Sam Harris said at the beginning of that episode (I was talking about the one you linked, but I only read the transcript, I don't have the attention span for podcasts) rang true for me: opening your mouth is risky for normal people, but it's extra risky if you're a publicist/commentator/celebrity and that has an extreme chilling effect.
I don't want to debate his opinions, I don't regularly listen to Harris, but the fact that he felt it's necessary to add so much "please don't take this out of context" left me impressed, and I haven't marked Harris down as somebody who'd do that for effect, to claim victimhood etc. I also don't believe that he does so for his usual audience, because they most likely know his general positions, know that he's not alt-right or a white supremacist and that he may say something that doesn't intuitively sound "okay" but usually has at least some reason for it. On the contrary, I think he does it purely for the Twitter mob who is sure to look for material in whatever he says. And that's really just a sad state of affairs, when any public utterance is basically "my lawyer has advised me not to answer that question" because whatever you say can and will be used against you in the court of public opinion, will be taken out of context and will be enhanced with rumors and lies.
That's not specific to Sam Harris, of course, and the tactic isn't specific to whatever you want to label the people who hate him. It's pretty universal in both the targets and those that target them.
Are you referring to Episode 207? https://overcast.fm/+KhqFMR3J4
I think Sam did a very poor job in that episode -- he was preaching exclusively to the choir. He spends the start of the podcast explaining the important distinction between justified and unjustified police involved killings. This is a very important distinction, and I would love to see data about the racial breakdown of unjustified killings, relative to a racial breakdown of police interactions.
But, Sam then completely abandons this distinction. He discusses "An Empirical Analysis of Racial Differences in Police Use of Force", Roland G. Fryer, Jr. July 2007, a NYC-only study that does not measure unjustified killings.
Then, as usual, he spends an awful lot of time spouting his usual rhetoric of truth, epistemology, science, data, facts, and knowledge. This is merely rhetoric because his reference to that study is clearly meant to be evidence that we have the truth -- that police brutality is the issue, and unjustified killings do not disproportionately affect black Americans. He even discusses the Fryer study and moments later is confidently stating "race isn't the relevant variable". This is a grand claim that can't possibly be justified based on the Fryer study.
All interspersed with more rhetoric such as:
- "expiation of sins" for you Botox as if you're "woke as AOC"
- "ecstasy of ideological conformity"
- "woke analysis" is where "democratic politics goes to die" (probably means Democratic Party politics)
- "social activists playing chicken with the forces of chaos"
- "form of political pornography"
- "unable to speak or even think about facts"
Sam's usual parade of platitudes about epistemology are best understood by another quotation from this episode: "the difference between the branding of a movement and its actual aims, that's why propaganda works".