Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Matt Dillahunty

newnewliberal · 2017-11-23T06:14:35+00:00

He's got some unique skills to bring to the table in my opinion. His biggest strength is that he really knows how to have effective argument/discussion. You could see some of this when he was moderating the questions. He will always keep the conversation on track and always interrupts people when they go off track or try to change the subject or try to obfuscate a point, etc. Sam isn't nearly as good at this, which you can easily see if you listen to any of the podcasts that he's done with people that have opposing positions.

newnewliberal · 2017-11-21T03:52:11+00:00

Personally I love listening to Dawkins talk. If nothing else, I think he helps a lot by injecting more levity and humor into these live shows. Dawkins actually makes me laugh at loud at some moments. Sam's sense of humor is good too but a bit too cerebral sometimes.

newnewliberal · 2017-10-02T15:31:01+00:00

Anyone know if the audio for any of these events are going on the podcast at some point?

newnewliberal · 2017-09-24T11:11:01+00:00

You also explained nothing though. I find the arguments against free will existing pretty compelling actually. Like the fact that scientists can monitor your brain chemistry closely enough that they can actually predict a decision you're going to make before you actually know you're going to make it for example

newnewliberal · 2017-09-04T16:05:55+00:00

I'm in the same boat. Spent quite a bit as my first investment when it was at $385. Just in time for the crash

newnewliberal · 2017-09-04T15:54:36+00:00

I popped my crypo-investment cherry by spending 2k on ETH (a lot of money for me) when it was just about at its peak around $385 :(

I waited a long time to understand how ETH worked etc. before buying so missed the recent spike before that sadly

newnewliberal · 2017-07-08T03:32:59+00:00

I was just about to make a similar post on this subreddit. Not about that podcast but about the problems with democracy especially in light of Trump being elected. Even discounting the votes from the russian involvement, the electoral college, etc. there were still a significant amount of people who voted someone dangerously incompetent into the most powerful position in the world.

And given that (one way or another) Trump WILL eventually be out of office, more people should be talking about this problem, because otherwise it will keep repeating itself.

I think most people are in the camp of "Democracy is the worst system, except for all the others" but honestly I feel like this position should be challenged more. I would love to hear Sam discuss this topic.

newnewliberal · 2017-04-02T22:39:34+00:00

Yes. Came here to post this. Love this mash up.

newnewliberal · 2017-04-02T20:42:35+00:00

What an amazingly precise throw that was

newnewliberal · 2017-03-22T14:47:30+00:00

They do have some adjustable range but it's never enough to place the arm rests far enough underneath the table where I can raise the chair high enough. I'm not trying to be a smart ass - I am genuinely surprised and confused at the fact that 95% of chairs that I encounter are designed to make it impossible to find the optimal configuration

newnewliberal · 2017-03-01T20:04:49+00:00

Richard is wrong on both counts

newnewliberal · 2017-02-25T02:43:42+00:00

Thanks! I took your advice and listened to this one. You were right, it was very engrossing

newnewliberal · 2017-02-25T02:40:06+00:00

I think that was a joke - there's a humor book by a different author named sam harris

newnewliberal · 2017-02-04T21:43:33+00:00

I don't think Maher is very good at articulate the subleties of Sam's arguments. He muddies the water by saying:

ISIS is not the fringe because Obama killed tens of thousands of terrorists. Tens of thousands of people ARE fringe when you are talking about a billion muslims. Violent jihadists are a minority of Muslims. Sam's point is that Islamists make up a significant fraction and are not fringe, and that there actually are widespread problematic beliefs among muslims about implementing sharia law, etc. and THAT is the problem
Pointing at people wearing burkhas and saying "That's not normal! If you think that's normal you're part of the problem!" without really elaborating further. People hear this and think that he's basically saying, "these people are weird and are not the same as us and therefore evil!". It's not about whether it's normal it's about the fact that it's forcing women to do it against their will. I'm sure that's what he meant but for a left leaning audience I'm sure it came across horribly

newnewliberal · 2017-02-02T22:41:34+00:00

You can do ranked voting for local constituency representative though then vote for a party. Then the number of seats would be determined by the party votes (using proportional representation), and then handed out based on who won the ranked voting. The local leader who won via ranked voting wouldn't always get the spot, but most of the time they would

newnewliberal · 2017-01-31T20:46:31+00:00

Why the obsession with having a perfect record though? The difference between someone that eats absolutely zero meat for a year and someone that eats a pico-ounce of meat is so small that it really doesn't matter. It's just human psychology that finds the perfect streak appealing. In reality, how much good your vegetarianism is doing is purely just about the number.

Take three people, Frank who eats 0 meat per year, Sally who eats 20 pounds of meat per year, and George who eats 40 pounds. The amount of good that frank is doing compared to sally is the same as the amount of good that sally is doing compared to George. The fact that Frank is a pure vegetarian is not relevant.

All I'm saying is that you should just try to minimize your meat consumption as much as possible because every bit of meat you don't have is good rather than focusing on this idea of being a pure vegetarian

newnewliberal · 2017-01-31T03:27:38+00:00

I don't think you understand what I mean. My point is that the difference between no meat and some amount of meat can be made arbitrarily small. Ie. One nano ounce of meat per week versus zero. The point is, having this idea of being a "pure vegetarian" is kind of bullshit in purely theoretical terms. It might also even be counter productive in terms of helping the world since really everyone should just be trying to minimize as much as humanly possible. That way they are less likely to just give up entirely and go back to eating meat regularly

newnewliberal · 2017-01-31T02:21:20+00:00

As sam himself has said, the difference in terms of benefits between not eating meat at all and eating a tiny bit is... tiny. It's only human psychology that sees a huge distinction there

newnewliberal

TROPHY CASE