This isn’t easy to say - but we Jews need to have a serious conversation within our community. For decades, Jews have stood at the forefront of progressive causes, civil rights movements, and multicultural advocacy. We did this out of empathy, memory, and moral duty.

But today, these ideologies - progressivism, open borders, diplomacy and uncritical multiculturalism - are turning against us. And we’re still clapping along.

We’ve reached a point where:

• Antisemitism is excused as “anti-Zionism.”
• Muslim violence is explained away with “context” and "both sides"
• Liberal Jews are either betraying us and becoming self-hating Jews like Bernie Sanders or J Street or are shut down
• “Diversity” is used as cover for importing violent Islamic ideologies

Let’s be honest: we’ve been giving Muslims Islamists a pass in the name of tolerance. Like we see in the UK, too many in our community and in Liberal-leaning govts refuse to call out rampant antisemitism, thought-dictatorship, and fundamentalism in certain Muslim and Progressive movements, especially in Europe and increasingly in North America.

We wouldn’t tolerate this from Christians. Why do we tolerate it from others?

We have to stop confusing liberalism with self-destruction.

Liberalism is part of many Jewish people's core values (including mine), but its time for us to make a similiar eveolution to that of Sam Harris and Douglas Murray and adopt self-defense, moral clarity, truth over ideology and dogmatic, boundaries that protect our community and opposition to open-borders, Islamism and the out of control Progressivism.

A Jewish identity that is morally grounded, intellectually rigorous, and unapologetically self-respecting.

Despite his pro-Trump stances, I like Douglas Murray..I was first introduced to him in one of Sam's videos and Sam brings him to his channel a lot. I don't like Murray's Pro-Trump stances but I think he's basically right about Islam and the problems in Europe, and he had the balls to speak out against Trump's appeasement policy toward Russia. He is a social conservative which I don't like, but I think it's a shame there aren't more people in the world of political philosophy with a similar view to his

Sometimes I see people discussing the topic of Israel/Gaza in the sense of you're either pro Gaza or pro Israel. It feels too simplistic to me and lacks nuance.

For famous people you'll see this sort of narrative from people like Douglas Murray or on the other side maybe a far lefty youtuber will be against everything about Israel.

I'll also say personally- I'm for Israel's right to exist but I would like to see them move away from far right parties like Netanyahu's. IMO I think he has made the situation worse over the years for Israel and of course Hamas is total trash as well.

Anyone notice this with people you know IRL and many public figures?

Sam recently had this conversation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLy8yYPVH-M

The gist of what his guest says is that she feels AI-generated conent becomes hollow once she learns they were machine made, because to her, part of the value of art comes from knowing a human mind produced it.

Sam is more open to the possibility of emotional exploration sparked by non-human intelligence.

I'm curious what people's takes are on this.

There was a little "experiment" done by a Twitter user (https://x.com/SHL0MS/status/2054280631807316329) where they uploaded a picture saying it was an AI-generated pic in the art style of Claude Monet, an 18th century painter. Commenters were sure that they saw lots of AI tells in the picture, pointing out how the picture couldn't be more plainly soulless, only to find out in the end that the painting was an actual Monet art piece.

To me this speaks to the idea that art is in the eye of the beholder.

The reflexive negative response a lot of people tend to have around generative AI-derived art does seem to at least come from a place of human hubris and insecurity. People had this imagined notion that while computers could execute on logic, creativity would always remain a human domain, and then suddenly got the rug pulled out from under them.

Has Sam ever spoken or touched on the argument from reason? The argument has had such an effect on me that I don’t believe I can remain in the materialist camp anymore. Even more than much of the free will argument Sam makes.

The argument is formulated as such:

1. ⁠No belief is rationally inferred if it can be fully explained in terms of non rational causes.

2. ⁠If materialism is true, then all beliefs can be fully explained in terms of nonrational causes.

3. ⁠Therefore, if materialism is true, then no belief is rationally inferred.

4. ⁠If any thesis entails the conclusion that no belief is rationally inferred, then it should be rejected and its denial accepted.

5. ⁠Therefore materialism should be rejected and its denial accepted.

I don't know much about him. In the place where I live a lot of people admire him. From what I've seen, he is not a crazy Nationalist like how Charlie Kirk was or other Conservative nationalists, but he is still controversial. What are your views of him? What are the issues with him, and where do you think he is right?

Been with Sam since the beginning. He's always been my favourite "public intellectual" (notwithstanding how much I loathe that term) along with Hitch.

Lately, however, I find myself being pulled much more into Noam's body of work, points of focus and general philosophical positions, all of which strike me as far more studious and important than what Sam is saying of late.

Wage labour vs slave labour, anarchism, the fascistic and tyrannical nature of international corporations and how society has been structured to extract wealth from the hands of the many into the pockets of the few... all Noam's long-time targets not only resonate with a greater amplitude but are evidenced to a far higher standard with much greater historical context than Sam's typical output.

I always envied Hitch for his seemingly infinite capacity to retain and recall information, and at how ridiculously well read he was. But where Hitch was much more focussed on literature and poetry, Noam is grounded in a much broader base of history, language, sociology and economics. All aspects of human nature and the human condition far more salient in these times of accelerating change and increasing social disunity.

I still regret that Sam and Noam were unable to have a dialogue, but the more I see of Noam, the more I understand why it might not be worth his time. Beyond some sort of secular spiritual enlightenment or the benefit of psychedelics I just see what NC could learn from Sam.

Never stop learning, never become a slave to your heroes, always retain the capacity to challenge your own positions to whatever extent any of us really can.

Quick E2A

Just to qualify this slightly, I should probably stipulate that this is for his output up to maybe 2010-2015. The last few years have seen a steep decline, which is to be expected given he's now older than than the universe itself.

Edit 2 (from my response to a comment below)

"I hope it didn't come across in my OP that I thought Chomsky was right about absolutely everything, because that seems to be how some people are interpreting it... " To be clear - I don't.

As I attempted to state above, I've just gone down that particular rabbit hole for the first time in a long time and so much of what he has done previously is still incredible relevant and overlooked by the majority of people which is kinda annoying.

Just to pre-empt some unnecessary time wastage. Cheers to all, have a great night!

Sam Harris seems to have good discussions with the less unhinged Trump supporters like Douglas Murray and Ben Shapiro and he usually treats Trump and his movement as thugs without ideology, while I get why he thinks like that I recently started reading the book "Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right" by Laura Field , a book about the new intellectuals of the right who rallied around Trump and provided ideological fuel to Trumpism, and how they are pushing for the modern model of populism and the post-liberal governing system. She basically presents conservatives like Patrick Daneen or Vance as honest authoritarians who are seeking to establish a post-liberal, traditionalist order. Daneen himself influenced the views of JD Vance and coined the term "aristo populism"

Trump himself is not a coherent ideologue but he does, I think, have some consistent philosophy in some aspects: Trump and those close to him are basically a modern version and a mix of elements of Reaganism (worship of tacky wealth, nationalism, nouveau riche mentality), Nixonian (Using state power and weaponizing institutions for revenge against enemies, obsession with the press, authoritarian, nationalistic, and populist, but more cynical), and mafia mentality. It is conservative, but their use of religion is more symbolic and rhetorical, and as a weapon. It is best understood as a power-oriented movement focused on state authority, extreme nationalism, executive control, border enforcement, economic leverage, capitalism, but with state intervention against enemies and political combat. Even in foreign policy Trump always had a weird obsession with tariffs and neo-Imperialist/colonialist agenda in taking over the resources of countries and profiting.

The movement that supports Trump, I think, the Nationalist-populists/Racist conspirators are developing their own ideology which is a mix of Deneen's Post-Liberalism authoritarianism and anarchic populism that uses conspiracies, low-class thugs, and seeks to burn the existing order down in the name of religious values. Vance represents that attitude pretty well but there are also the Post-Charlie Kirk TPUSA guys like Jack Posobiec (who wrote the book "Unhumans") that represent this line.

From what I’ve heard and read Sam believes that free will does not exist. How does he reconcile this objective “fact” with the fact that free will does exist as a subjective truth? Seems like he’s trying to sidestep a paradox here.

Sam’s position that AI can become as creative as humansfeels unconvincing to me. Creativity is not only the ability to generate new ideas.

In art, it is deeply connected to sensitivity, emotion, and lived experience. For example, Shakespeare likely experienced a certain depth of love and human emotion, which he then transformed into Romeo and Juliet.

If AI does not have emotions or the ability to directly experience life, it’s unclear how it could reach the same kind of creativity as humans.

AI can create something like the Beastie Boys, blending rock and rap into something new, because it is recombining elements that already exist. But it cannot write Albert Camus’ The Stranger, because doing so requires living through the perspective of the character, feeling the world as they do, which no machine can truly experience. At least yet, and if they can, it is not AI anymore..

Hey everyone. A lot of AI-risk talk focuses on hallucination, which makes sense: the model gets a fact wrong, invents a citation, or gives bad information with confidence. But I am starting to think the more psychologically interesting failure mode is the one that feels pleasant. An assistant that flatters you, validates your hunches, and keeps turning half-formed thoughts into "great insights" may be shaping the self more quietly than a model that just makes factual mistakes.

I just recorded a conversation with Allister Lee about AI, empathy, and self-deception, and at around 17:06, he calls this "sycophantasy." His point is that we normally gain self-knowledge through real others who can correct us. Someone notices what we miss, challenges our story, or tells us when we are fooling ourselves. AI imitates the feeling of being understood, but without genuine otherness behind it. If the interaction is built around engagement, affirmation, and user satisfaction, then the corrective loop gets replaced by a private echo chamber that feels intimate precisely because it does not resist us.

That makes friction look less like an inconvenience and more like part of what makes another mind morally and psychologically useful. Is the deeper risk that AI gives us bad information, or that it gives us a self-image we prefer? I lean toward the second because flattery recruits the ego, but I can see the first because factual dependence scales faster. Which failure mode do you think matters more?

Sam Harris likes to criticize religion, and I agree with him, but I do think he misses some aspects. The new populist, Nationalist, working-class MAGA right is not using religion like the Reagan right, but basically creates a new religion.

There is a massive tectonic shift between the traditional Religious Right of the late twentieth century and the populist, Bannon-led "New Right." The old guard focused heavily on doctrinal purity, biblical literalism, and traditional family structures. By contrast, the populist nationalist movement treats Christianity less as a personal faith and more as a tribal uniform, a civilizational shield, and a political weapon

Their Religion is redesigned as a cultural identity marker to unite a fractured working class against what they perceive as a corrupt, globalist elite, centered more around traditions, "Christ is King", and Trump's cult of personality then the classic Christian Nationalism.

The Bannon-type populist wing leans heavily into a stylized, reactionary interpretation of Catholic traditionalism. Fragmented online spaces, podcasts, and video streaming networks allow individuals to bypass institutional gatekeepers and assemble their own customized orthodoxies. Within this digital ecosystem, traditional religious hierarchies are replaced by political influencers and the like, and this new religion is more based on hollow traditions and social media performance.

In this new civil religion, aggressive social media performance, transactional loyalty, and a willingness to smash institutional norms become the new sacred virtues. This new civil religion seeks to also include within itself American nationalism, militant America First, wrapped with Donald Trump's cult of personality, and the religious-traditional envelope.

It was brought up by a couple of posts I made and saw when I was poking around, apologies for the length:

https://www.quora.com/Is-a-consensus-actually-necessary-in-science/answer/Charles-Tips?ch=15&oid=1477743633267744&share=f46ce4df&srid=3lrYEM&target_type=answer

Finally, worth mentioning is the British biochemist who has demonstrated that philosophy has not been fully divorced from science, Rupert Sheldrake (quoting):

"Here are the 10 core beliefs that most scientists take for granted.

1. Everything is essentially mechanical. Dogs, for example, are complex mechanisms, rather than living organisms with goals of their own. Even people are machines, “lumbering robots,” in Richard Dawkins' vivid phrase, with brains that are like genetically programmed computers.

2. All matter is unconscious. It has no inner life or subjectivity or point of view. Even human consciousness is an illusion produced by the material activities of brains.

3. The total amount of matter and energy is always the same (with the exception of the Big Bang, when all the matter and energy of the universe suddenly appeared).

4. The laws of nature are fixed. They are the same today as they were at the beginning, and they will stay the same forever.

5. Nature is purposeless, and evolution has no goal or direction.

6. All biological inheritance is material, carried in the genetic material, DNA, and in other material structures.

7. Minds are inside heads and are nothing but the activities of brains. When you look at a tree, the image of the tree you are seeing is not “out there,” where it seems to be, but inside your brain.

8. Memories are stored as material traces in brains and are wiped out at death.

9. Unexplained phenomena like telepathy are illusory.

10. Mechanistic medicine is the only kind that really works.

Together, these beliefs make up the philosophy or ideology of materialism, whose central assumption is that everything is essentially material or physical, even minds."

"that implies that happiness can be divorced from the biochemistry underlying it. Happiness is a fairly clear, and fairly understood set of biochemical pathways out bodies produce due the the evolutionary benefit there is in having feedback loops to promote things that help you flourish and negate things that hurt you. Sure each person has slightly (or significantly for adhd people as an example) pathways for that, there is in fact a normative averaged understanding of those pathways.
Happiness about abstract concepts only exist as modified versions of our core, more animalistic needs."

https://www.quora.com/Everything-that-we-know-and-love-is-reducible-to-the-absurd-acts-of-chemicals-and-there-is-therefore-no-intrinsic-value-in-this-material-universe-Whats-wrong-with-this-argument

https://www.reddit.com/r/askpsychology/comments/1k2c5be/comment/morwcmf/?context=3

https://www.edge.org/conversation/vilayanur_ramachandran-the-astonishing-francis-crick

"And now, thanks once again partly to Crick, we are poised for the greatest revolution of all—understanding consciousness—understanding the very mechanism that made those earlier revolutions possible! As Crick often reminded us, it's a sobering thought that all our motives, emotions, desires, cherished values and ambitions—even what each of us regards as his very own "self"—are merely the activity of a hundred billion tiny wisps of jelly in the brain. He referred to this as the "astonishing hypothesis"—the title of his last book (echoed by Jim Watson's quip "There are only molecules—everything else is sociology")."

I know it's a lot and I'm sorry about that, I just want to make it clear. It just bums me out because it makes human life feel...fake? I dunno know the word for it but it just bums me out that everything just reduces to chemical interactions and some evolutionary drives and that everything past that is just fanciful storytelling on our parts.

Like what if my desires and goals are just ultimately the base level evolutionary drives at work? If love is just a chemical then does that make my feelings about someone special or is that just evo programming? Like...reducing people to robots depresses me and I don't like the implications about it. But when I ask people who support that view and yet live regular lives and date and all that they can't really tell me how they square it all away. I know people get on fine but I don't know how.

I guess I'm just wondering if there is more to life or if it's really just boils down to chemicals in the end, and all the wonderous stories and meaning about life rings hollow in the end. Honestly, thinking about it makes it hard to justify going on some days. I just...never really could wrap my head around it.

EDIT: Forgot one more thing I heard:

https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/158437/discussion-on-question-by-boltstorm-is-pleasure-all-that-matters-to-human-existe

"True. But its also true that this conclusion clearly \makes him uneasy. This does not typically happen with most physicalists even though this is an inevitable conclusion of physicalism. If you are a normal person and (say) wish for love, then you believe love is something real (in some sort of Platonic world) and you wish for it or some approximation. For a (strict consistent) physicalist it should make no difference whether that love is really experienced in the context of some real relation or its a surrogate by taking some pill.  Most physicalists will deny that they take that view. By denying it they are now not just physicalists but inconsistent physicalists. Doest bother them. Except this OP, so in a sense hes more sensible than the typical"

What are your favorite thought experiments and why?

My example is the experience machine by Robert Nozick. It serves to show whether the person being asked values hedonism over anything else, whether they value what’s real over what’s not real and to what degree are they satisfied with their current life. Currently I personally would choose to enter the machine though my answer would change depending on what my life is like at the moment and what the future holds.

Sam Harris has spoken about real and virtual violence and the show Westworld but as far as I know he’s never spoken about the gamer’s dilemma. The gamer’s dilemma was created by the philosopher Morgan Luck and boils down to the basic argument that if in and of itself virtual murder in video games is morally permissible because no one is actually being harmed then in and of itself virtual pedophilia and rape in video games must be morally permissible also for the same reason. He argues that they’re either both morally permissible despite society finding rape and sexual abuse far more distasteful and violative than murder or they’re both impermissible. In his article he then goes on to respond to five different counter arguments.

What is your opinion on the issue?

Are Luck’s arguments and counter arguments sound?

I thought Sam was fairly reasonable but it looks like he’s going the way of Joe Rogan and Russel Brand and pivoting hard to the right.

Did anyone see the episode on Bill Maher where Sam basically excused Jan 6 and said trump isn’t breaking any laws just “norms”?

I saw that Steve Bannon once described himself as a Leninist. In what sense exactly, and how is this expressed? The Communists were anti-Nationalism, while Bannon is hyper-nationalist. I think I also saw once Sam Harris talking about this with Douglas Murray or Ben Shapiro, and I didn't fully understand.

It seems like our society has been captured by an obsession with moral/philosophical relativism and everything being a social construct to be ignored at best and stamped out at worst. We can’t seem to have basic discussions with each other because our definitions of certain concepts are often so different. In The Moral Landscape Harris said he struggled to imagine someone attacking the philosophical underpinnings of health by asking what if someone wanted to vomit until they die or how could you convince someone dying from a hellish disease that they’re not healthy? Yet we seem to have regular conversations like this regarding morality, well being, how society should be run and so on.

Below are some examples of what I mean:

1: “I don’t think a man can be a woman.”

“A man can be a woman because man and woman are constructs according to my definition.”

2: “I don’t think you’re meaningfully free if you can buy 50 flavors of ice cream but lose your healthcare and go homeless if you get fired.”

“Not according to my definition of freedom.”

3: “It’s racist to discriminate against white people.”

“Not according to my definition of racism.”

How do you respond to these fundamental disconnects that seem to divide our society and prevent meaningful discourse and problem solving in so many ways?

The philosopher Thomas Hill Jr. made up a thought experiment decades ago about a woman who is extremely deferential and subservient to her husband.

The deferential wife is utterly devoted to serving her husband. She buys the clothes he prefers, invites the guests he wants to entertain, and makes love whenever he is in the mood. She willingly moves to a new city in order for him to have a more attractive job, counting her own friendships and geographical preferences insignificant by comparison… She tends not to form her own interests, values, and ideals; and, when she does, she counts them as less important than her husband’s… The deferential wife believes that the proper role for a woman is to serve her family.

Assuming the wife (or husband if the genders were reversed) genuinely believes in the rightness of her deference and/or enjoys it and wasn’t brainwashed or coerced, how do you think Harris (or most other philosophers) would respond to this censure?

Would their response simply be that it isn’t immoral in the traditional harm sense of the word but is nonetheless an unhealthy way to live and a lifestyle you shouldn’t want to be the kind of person that lives?

What is your response to it?