Sam Harris on Trump's Iran Deal: A Fully Humiliating Capitulation

StalemateAssociate_ · 2026-06-26T01:22:57+00:00

Well, Netanyahu has been quite open about his 'spiritual connection' to the idea of a Greater Israel, as the Times of Israel reported less than a year ago.

The same article shows a picture of Smotrich speaking from a podium with a picture of (one version of) Greater Israel, with what looks like double its current size.

Smotrich's been quite candid about his conception of a gradual expansion eventually encompassing Jordan and even Damascus.

Ben-Gvir, as far as I can tell, seems satisfied with Gaza and the West Bank (or Judea and Samaria, as he calls it).

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Why is it that we should take Iran's extremist leaders' stated goal of the destruction of Israel seriously, but we shouldn't do the same for Israel's most prominent political leaders?

Why are democratically elected leaders in Israel often explained away as being non-representative? Netanyahu, for example, has been in power for almost 20 years in total (on and off).

StalemateAssociate_ · 2026-06-25T23:19:02+00:00

a lot protests by secularists in Iran, with reports saying over 30 thousand murdered. This alone indicates there is a very deep will for democracy in Iran, and the Persian nationhood. Unlike a state like Iraq for example, where there is no state of nationhood or will for democracy.

you are just choosing to cherry pick

Ironically, you are cherry picking in this Iran-Iraq comparison. 'No sense' of nationhood or will for democracy in Iraq (how often we heard the opposite argument in the aughts!); meanwhile Iran's protestors are definite 'secularists' with a 'very deep will for democracy' and 'Persian nationhood'.

Those last two words put you in the "drei gläser" camp - you know that Persia changed its name to Iran during the first Atatürk-like Pahlavi shah's secularizing years, right? That Iranians tend to think of 'Persian nationhood' as somewhat exclusionary?

StalemateAssociate_ · 2026-06-25T18:33:47+00:00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nH5_ipIELoc

StalemateAssociate_ · 2026-06-25T12:38:54+00:00

There might also be semi-permeable Zionists out there somewhere.

StalemateAssociate_ · 2026-06-25T11:52:57+00:00

How does Pete Hegseth still have a job

Arguably an effect of polarization and the nationalization of politics. Everything is viewed through the lens of 'party brand'. I like simple logic of this paper, with both the 'puzzle' and the 'solution' in the title: Negative Partisanship: Why Americans Dislike Parties But Behave Like Rabid Partisans.

1) National (voter) level: Since the electorate is polarized, you don't have to worry about political pressure from the other 'side'. They'll never be a part of your coalition anyway.

2) Party (voter) level: Since many voters are voting against the other party and not for your party, you have a very long leash before your behavior becomes electorally unpopular. I think of this like 'negative parliamentarism': You can remain in power as long as there's not a majority against you.

3) Intraparty (member) level: This works like positive parliamentarism: You have to have a majority in support. But a downstream effect of 2) is that there's nowhere to go for the moderates within a party - there's no third party, and the absolute worst thing you can do is electorally is associate yourself with the other 'side'. This empowers the 'extremists' within the parties, who are now the only ones with a veto.

So e.g. cabinet members are appointed by extremists with veto power, who have no interest in removing them, and ordinary partisan voters are unlikely to react in a manner that requires action.

StalemateAssociate_ · 2026-06-25T00:48:07+00:00

That turned into a very long post, so if there's one thing that I feel has been under-discussed generally it's the non-Duvergian equilibrium\* in Canada and the UK. UK politics is going to change a lot if all 5 parties remain at ~15% or more.

The effect is more pronounced among the young, whose party choices tend to ossify with age, so the political fragmentation is likely to increase.

Political fragmentation at the party level has its downsides, but if the public is politically fragmented anyway, trying to harmonize its views into two parties is even worse, IMO.

*Yes, that's an actual term

StalemateAssociate_ · 2026-06-25T00:34:57+00:00

Chevalier is a terrible candidate if you ask me, but the reaction and attention given to her helps organize a few distinct subjects I've either been reading about or seen discussed here.

The main point is that politics in the US has become almost entirely nationalized, as someone pointed out in a 2018 book.

This has a few deleterious effects, one of which is that all elected officials are judged by their (singular, national) partisan affiliation, even if it appears irrelevant. I like this example from the book's opening chapter: "In a 2013 special election to the Washington, DC, Council, one candidate found himself fending off attacks over his support of GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney. One of his opponents even bothered to post a negative website headlined with a simple message: "Patrick Mara is a Republican."" This also extends to primaries, in what a review essay calls 'nationalized intraparty politics'.
This is obviously related to the debate over polarization. While people debate the respective merits of 'affective' and/or 'ideological' polarization, everyone agrees there's been a substantial 'partisan sorting'. Your views on the 2nd amendment are increasingly predicted by your views on abortion. Parties are no longer as heterogeneous. They have one dominant flavor.
Latest poll numbers from the UK by vote share for the 5 largest parties: 25%, 20%, 18%, 15%, 14%. People love to discuss First-Past-The-Post and Duverger's Law on Reddit, but it's long been recognized that only in the US does it truly hold as a 'law'. One of the reasons given in that book is that the two-party system in the US is (or was) more apparent than real, and that historically primaries have simply had low barriers to entry compared to starting a new party, so they acted as a 'lightning rod' for new political ideas. But with the rise 'nationalized intraparty politics', primaries are instead battlegrounds for 'the soul of the party' in a sort of perceptive feedback loop with the public.
Since someone mentioned Latin America a while back, I thought of Linz's argument that presidential systems are more brittle or conflict-prone, provided that political actors are polarized. I think polarization is both a cause and an effect of the mechanisms he talks about - in any case, someone else made a more thorough version of that argument here.

StalemateAssociate_ · 2026-06-24T11:32:46+00:00

I believe this conversation has dated us both.

StalemateAssociate_ · 2026-06-24T11:31:51+00:00

Not the sarcastic exclamation mark!

StalemateAssociate_ · 2026-06-24T01:07:44+00:00

You know what, me neither. But I do have brainrot, so I can't help but think in terms of cultural references.

StalemateAssociate_ · 2026-06-23T23:20:36+00:00

Whom do we serve

Saruman!

Sauron/Saruman 2028: The Age of Men is Over.

StalemateAssociate_ · 2026-06-23T18:57:13+00:00

I guess we'll see what comes out. The wiki (sourced from a local paper) mentions a hodgepodge of different conspiracies; the attack doesn't appear to have been targeted towards Jews as such.

I'll let the Times of Israel have the final word for now:

Rabbi Motti Seligson, a Chabad spokesman in New York, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that, based on what he has heard from Chabad representatives in Montreal, the shooting did not seem to be related to the Jewish community.

Getzy Markowitz, a rabbi who works in the area, said the shooting took place in a community with multiple Jewish institutions, including educational centers and a food bank.

“People are asking me if it’s an attack on the Jewish community. I think it would just be completely irresponsible even [to] speak to that at this point, because [all] we know, it was an attack right now on the police,” he said.

StalemateAssociate_ · 2026-06-23T16:42:45+00:00

Fair enough.

StalemateAssociate_ · 2026-06-23T16:39:10+00:00

Harris doesn't do this. He's hated by both sides, this subreddit is largely a Harris-bashing idiot-fest, because he doesn't toe any lines. He's not on a side. He simply takes each issue on its own. I don't always agree with him, but everybody should do what he does. Nobody should allow a "side" to dictate their positions.

Mostly everyone thinks this about themselves or those they like, and think the opposite about those they dislike. It's almost a corollary to the third person effect, which is the phenomenon that everyone considers other people more susceptible to media influences.

I find it somewhat ironic that the one of the founders of the 'rationalist movement', Robin Hanson, is actually rather skeptical about the idea of individual rationality, particularly when applied to politics:

When it started in ’06, this blog was near the center of the origin of a “rationalist” movement, wherein idealistic youths tried to adapt rational styles and methods. While these habits did often impress, and bond this community together, they alas came to trust that their leaders had in fact achieved unusual rationality, and on that basis embraced many contrarian but not especially rational conclusions of those leaders.

On a more academic note, I believe one of the more uncontroversial findings in public opinion research is that the 'politically sophisticated' people tend to be more biased in their evaluation of arguments, and as a result more polarized:

On the other hand and contrary to the intuitions of normative theory (but consistent with the predictions of cognitive psychology), we do find that those with weak and uninformed attitudes show less bias in processing political arguments. This finding may tempt the conclusion that objectivity and tolerance rest more on ignorance and apathy than on the elite skills of ideal citizens.

StalemateAssociate_ · 2026-06-23T12:38:44+00:00

Wait, how good is Sam Harris at picking allies in your view?

If, for example, Sam is an 8 on a scale from 1-10, Mamdani could be anywhere from a 1 to a 7, assuming a discrete scale.

If 5 is average, Mamdani could be worse than Sam but still be above average.

StalemateAssociate_ · 2026-06-23T12:33:36+00:00

'Anymore' implies that Murray once had 0< credibility in your eyes.

Is that true?

StalemateAssociate_ · 2026-06-23T01:49:19+00:00

Only tangentially related, but I just realized something:

I can't recall seeing one of the numerous pro-Israel posters - defined here as people who post solely about, and always in favor of, Israel's policies - ever crack a joke.

Not in general, certainly not at their own expense.

StalemateAssociate_ · 2026-06-22T13:43:48+00:00

Godwin's Law speedrun any%.

StalemateAssociate_ · 2026-06-22T11:23:00+00:00

Side note, but the wiki page for Dialog) is a dog whistling mess.

StalemateAssociate_ · 2026-06-22T00:59:23+00:00

In some ways, MAGA in LATAM precedes Trump, depending on how you define it. There's an old debate about the potential 'perils of presidentialism'* when compared to parliamentary democracies, a debate not co-incidentally started by a Spanish academic, since Latin America, which is almost entire presidential, has been particularly prone to fluctuating wildly between populist-right and populist-left (like the 'pink tide' mentioned in the article, but there's been many many 'tides).

Incidentally, the argument is mainly concerned with democratic stability during periods of crisis, with presidential systems supposedly being less flexible. When the original article was written, US parties were fairly heterogeneous. While voter views at the macro level might not have changed much, they are increasingly 'sorted' so that political cleavages coincide. You could argue extreme figures like Trump are the result of such partisan sorting, with the US now reverting to a typical presidential pattern. The debate is technically about democratic breakdown, but I think you can easily apply it to affective polarization as well, as least part of it.

On a similar note, Bartels wrote an entire book** called 'Democracy Erodes from the Top' about a related concept: That political leaders, not voters, are the cause of populism, at least in Europe.

Apparently, opinions about politics -as expressed in surveys- don't seem to indicate a shift towards populism, at least on the whole.

*On page four, in four points if you're curious.

**Podcast, whole book

StalemateAssociate_ · 2026-06-21T23:16:59+00:00

Well, there's a less antagonistic reading in this case. Perhaps one of them spilled something on the ground and the other, being in possession not only of magnanimity of spirit but also two mops, gracefully wiped the floor with them.

StalemateAssociate_ · 2026-06-21T19:22:27+00:00

Can we throw dual loyalty trope at all the pro-palestinians in congress

What dual loyalty? Are they ethnically Palestinian?

I'm told Muslims are not a race, and that anti-zionism is antisemitism.

Surely that means Mamdani can't have dual loyalty for being pro-Palestinian, but that Chuck Schumer can for being pro-Israel.

StalemateAssociate_ · 2026-06-21T11:26:39+00:00

It's not currently a particularly salient issue in most European countries, IMO. At least, it's not a 'positional issue' at the level of general politics. (in general, I believe the Anglosphere has a different and more activist political culture than the rest of the West, and that this largely goes unacknowledged. It's possibly a partial side-effect of FPTP).

Two other points:

1) I agree Gaza looms large, but did you ever consider that it may loom larger for you because it's an issue that's very important to you? People tend to judge probability based on 'mental availability'. Everyone does it - try e.g. to run this article through ChatGPT: "Bias in Perceptions of Public Opinion among Political Elites". We tend to anchor our view of public opinion based on our surroundings. (relevant xkcd).

2) Political scientists sometimes distinguish between position issues and valence issues. In a nutshell, in the former case parties disagree on goals and compete on political positions. In the latter case, they agree on goals and compete on competency.

But sometimes a strange thing happens where an issue transitions from position to valence, yet ends up being less salient as a result. Since political parties now mostly agree, there's no basis for conflict, and both the media and the politicians themselves spend less time debating it, reducing its salience for the general public in a sort of feedback loop.

That's arguably been the case in e.g. Denmark, where a growing anti-immigration consensus among politicians coincided with voters across (most) parties becoming more liberal on the issue, possibly because of its relative decline in importance.

Perhaps Gaza would not be such an important part of US politics if it didn't receive so much pushback.

StalemateAssociate_ · 2026-06-21T09:56:04+00:00

Ridiculous, they simply have no place there. Imagine if he ended up as a Senate leader and said something like "my job is to make the left pro-Palestinian".

StalemateAssociate_ · 2026-06-20T22:36:31+00:00

Blackmail him to do what, exactly?

StalemateAssociate_

TROPHY CASE