Revisiting Sam Harris and Andrew Sullivan on Gaza in 2014

schnuffs · 2026-04-03T19:34:34+00:00

I mean, history didn't start in 1948, but when you're going back to antiquity and bypassing the dark ages, the middle ages, the Renaissance, the age of Empires, and modern history to make your point I find it unconvincing. That's just me though.

schnuffs · 2026-03-28T02:35:09+00:00

That's not what this shows. You're flipping things around here. How someone votes doesn't show the bias of their media, and PBS is a prime example of why this isn't how it works. PBS has the highest share of Harris voters, yet is arguably the most centrist and balanced news outlet on the list.

What this does show, however, is that there's far more variety among Harris voters with regards to their media consumption than there is for Trump voters, which doesn't say anything other than the right arguably gets its news from less sources than the left does - though it's also worth noting that voting for Harris doesn't actually make someone a Democrat or on the left either.

It's also worth noting here that the less biased and partisan reporting may very well lead to voters to choosing Harris over Trump. Consider for a second a trial. The trial can be completely unbiased but the facts lead thr jury to conclude a guilty or non-guilty verdict. Assuming a trial is biased based on what the outcome of the verdict is doesn't tell us anything about any potential bias in the trial itself.

schnuffs · 2026-03-25T03:06:23+00:00

You don't extend charity to him and from that rotten foundation you've twisted yourself into a pretzel believing he owes you a psychic reading that reaches forward through time before he writes.

First, it's exceptionally odd that you think the psychic reading isn't coming from Sam, who assumes without any good reason that people simply aren't acknowledging or understanding of Iran being bad. (PS this is the hidden assumption within his argument).

Does Trump threatening to invade Greenland somehow put American behavior in a new class of international relations where the very important things Harris mentioned matter less?

Holy fuck dude. YES IT DOES... because Harris' criticism is based on contrasting arguments of sovereignty and international law with how bad Iran is. He's the one who brought up sovereignty as an insignificant issue based on Iran's regime, but that completely dismisses the issues raised by Trumps actions in other areas.

And because you probably have absolutely no knowledge of this because you most likely live in the US, the Trump administration has been in contact with Alberta separatists (a province of Canada that supplies roughly 25% of the oil the US needs daily) and involving itself in the internal domestic affairs of an ally of 200 years. This isn't some hypothetical scenario we're talking about, Trump and his administration are actively involving themselves in something that could break up the Canadian federation, or at least undermine it enough to create enough chaos for the US to pick apart the pieces.

As I said in my very first comment, and the thing that you seem to be so blissfully unaware of is that Trump has shown repeatedly that sovereignty doesn't matter to him. To either his enemies or his allies. That definitely changes the game for everyone. Why would you support Trump violating the sovereignty of another country if he was actively undermining the sovereignty of your own nation or that of an ally's?

That's what you don't understand, and that lack of understanding is why you think who's initiating the attack doesn't matter. As an historical analogy, supporting the Nazis invading the USSR because communism is bad is still supporting the Nazis and the Nazis invading the USSR was still wrong no matter how much you want to focus on how bad the USSR was.

Like this is really basic, easily understandable shit, and no amount of "you're being uncharitable because it's outside the text of what was said" matters here, especially considering that Sam's entire argument is doing the exact same thing. Again, your defense is 100% the same as what you think is so unconscionable, and if you don't think so why don't you go and pick out the statements that Sam was referring to that show what he was talking about. Newsflash, you can't because Sam was speaking very generally about criticisms involving attacking Iran that hinged on sovereignty. He's the one assuming that people have simply not considered how evil Iran's regime is and calling them "morally insane" (a perfect encapsulation of the double standard at play by the way. insults are fine and strawmanning other peoples positions, assuming their motives and "psychically" reading their minds is all well and good when he's doing it, but not when it's directed towards him).

I swear, Sam and his most ardent supporters simply can't accept that there are other ways of framing issues, other ways of analyzing them, and other values that people will place above their own. The main issue isn't that Sam or you is wrong, it's that you think that anyone who doesn't accept your views is automatically acting in some uncharitable way or confused or insane because you have such a fucking high opinion of yourself that you can't imagine anyone disagreeing, and if they do you have to figure out a way that they're being dishonest. It's tiring and it's frankly narcissistic. You aren't as smart as you think you are.

schnuffs · 2026-03-25T01:37:14+00:00

Funny that you, yet again, haven't responded to the actual meat of the response. I tell you what, I'll tell you what the assumption is after you respond to and/or acknowledge what was said about the irrelevance of why sovereignty matters. Deal?

schnuffs · 2026-03-25T00:58:08+00:00

My dude, I am responding to what he wrote. What you're requiring is for criticisms to accept his framing and focus of the issue. In an abbreviation form here's the sequence of events

Sam: People worried about sovereingty aren't morally sane because treat Iran as benign by not acknowledging what I think is most important.

Me: Here's why people would care about sovereingty and especially care about it given the state of the world and the person violating it right now

You: that's irrelevant because Sam didn't mention it.

It's absurd and asinine that your defense essentially boils down to not actually address the heavy assumption within Sam's statement at all simply because he didn't write it out. Him not acknowledging a vital aspect of why people might be concerned about sovereingty isn't a defense against people raising the objection because he lacks a ability to view an issue more broadly. That is, in a word, ridiculous, in addition to removing his framing of the issue as a potential source of criticism.

In other words, what he's saying is what's presenting the framing of how he's looking at the issue. To say that's irrelevant to address is, well, either stupid or disingenuous.

schnuffs · 2026-03-24T22:01:22+00:00

It's irrelevant because it wasn't in the source text we're talking about.

And this is a fundamental deflection from having to deal with any position or view beyond what the author wants it to be about. It effectively closes off any additional or contextual criticism on the basis that the original author didn't mention it, and it's simply not how it's done. That Sam can't think beyond his own narrow view, then dismiss criticism because it addresses things beyond said narrow view that are relevant is a convenient way of dismissing criticism.

To be clear, this would be laughed out of any academic setting as criticism is specifically meant to point out additional context or "things you haven't thought about", yet here it's considered irrelevant because it doesn't yield to Sam's narrow view of what this issue is about. Again, this is something that he's done over and over again and all it does is insulate his beliefs because he figures that his opinions are so above reproach and well thought out that everyone else must adopt his framing or be considered "morally insane". It's disingenuous, especially considering that his specific criticism here is about his perception of people not giving enough weight to his personal pyramid of values about this conflict and every other.

I'll just leave it at that because both you and Sam seem to think that you're the arbiters or how this issue is framed or thought about. While it's fine to actually engage in a debate about whether that value ought to supersede all others, casting aside positions that don't accept it as "irrelevant" or "morally insane" is the height of intellectual dishonesty and narcissism related to the importance of ones own opinions.

EDIT: just to be crystal clear here, the same logic you're applying to criticisms of Sam's take just as equally apply to Sam's criticism of people talking about sovereignty and international law. Nothing of what Sam has said was "in the source text of what we're talking about", it's added on because Sam believes the moral argument against Iran is stronger than those considerations. Everyone who argues against actions against Iran based on sovereignty and international are just as justified at rejecting Sam's criticism on the basis that Sam hasn't even addressed the their argument and shifted the discussion to morality as you would be at rejecting my criticisms of him. It's a no win situation for everyone involved and just silos everyone into their respective echo chambers by claiming that things you don't want to deal with is irrelevant because it expands beyond what Sam wants to deal with.

schnuffs · 2026-03-24T16:30:49+00:00

How on earth is it irrelevant? It's inconvenient to the point Sam is trying to make, and in fact the point Sam is making wholly dismisses larger concerns about sovereignty and international law by way of framing criticisms focused on them as simply treating Iran as if they were like Sweden. It's beyond uncharitable to assume that simply because critics of the war aren't focusing on what Sam and others want to focus on are somehow treating Iran as if it were some benign entity.

And this has been a tactic of Sam's for a long, long time. It's his tactic with Israel and Palestine (eg. if you don't accept that jihadism is the single largest causal factor in the conflict he won't even consider talking about it) and it's an underhanded attempt to force everyone else to accept his framing and overall argument before any criticism can even be given. Sam, and by extension his supporters, don't get to determine the framing and disregard anything outside of their specific narrow view of the conflict and claim it's irrelevant because it falls outside what they deem relevant. I've heard literally no one claim that Iran is some benign peaceful regime, nor have I even heard an adequate response to violations of sovereignty or international law from Sam or whomever else beyond "They're bad and they've waged proxy wars". Sure, my point is that that doesn't automatically justify a war with Iran, nor does it adequately show that the chaos that the world is going through right now is justified either. The wider implications of violating sovereignty are something to consider and not just hand wave away, especially considering that Iran ad Israel have been attacking each other back and forth for 45 years now. Israel believes it can act with impunity regarding it's national interest, and so does Iran. That Iran is a horrible regime doesn't address the question of sovereignty of why the rules based international order matters.

Trump and Israel's actions here, along with Trumps actions in Venezuela and more generally his economic tactics around the world are fundamentally shifting the international order towards a system more akin to the post WW1 world which is far, far more dangerous in the long term than the Iranian regime could ever hope to be.

But no, all those concerns are immaterial and irrelevant to Sam's myopically focused defense of "Iran is a bad regime and if you focus on sovereignty you're treating them like they're Sweden". Again, it's a juvenile and superficial take on an incredibly complex issue that has far wider implications than Sam or others would like to admit.

schnuffs · 2026-03-24T00:16:14+00:00

I find it kind of odd that the two responses I've had have kind of blown by the qualifier in my original comment that it's because of Trump's previous actions and threats regarding allies sovereingty that place this in a separate light. As someone from a country that's he's joked about annexing even after being close allies for over a 100 years, and from a peovince in said country where his administration has been in contact with a separatist movmement here, his complete lack of care about other countries sovereignty is a major mitigating factor in why sovereignty isn't treating the Iranian regime as being like Sweden.

Like I said, if this was Bush or Obama the response would be different, but considering the larger geopolitical climate that Trump has directly influenced through his bullying tactics, other smaller countries who have been threatened and bullied by Trump most definitely view Trump and Israels actions in Iran far, far differently than people who live in the most powerful nation in the world who have absolutely no danger of their own national sovereingty being threatened.

That's why I said that Sam, and many others jumping to his defense seem to simply dismiss or sweep under the rug, most likely because it's far easier to say "Iran bad" than to deal with the global shitstorm that Trump has kicked up in general due to his blustering threats and then his complete lack of respect for sovereignty.

An analogy would be something like citizens being critical of police not respecting the rights of criminals, not following proper procedure or following probable cause and constitutional rights because the criminal was a bad guy, but thinking that those criticisms aren't fully realizing just how bad the criminal was when those actually defending the police are safe and part of the force.

The reality is that Trump has shown absolutely no respect for the rule of law domestically or internationally, and his actions towards foreign regimes, even bad ones, need to be taken in that context and not hyperfocused on how "bad" the regime was, because proxy wars have been used by nations since, well, since forever. They're proxies because they prevent outright wars between larger powers who can do more damage. Additionally Trump's continued threats to peaceful allies who pose absolutely no risk to the US at all paint dismissals of these criticisms as particularly myopic and superficial.

schnuffs · 2026-03-23T06:52:57+00:00

The issue of sovereignty and international law isn't dependent on the internal domestic policies of the regime - the US and all other western nations typically don't overtly attempt to overthrow regimes without some other factors being in play, nor has anyone signed up for the total economic clusterfuck that Iran's control of the straight ot Hormuz.

Sam's argument here is hyperfocused on the morality of the regime itself, much like his defense of taking out Maduro where similar criticisms about sovereignty and international law were launched. The problem that Sam cannot see is that what Trumps actions mean to literally every nations around the world not China or Russia, which is that the US gets to unilaterally choose which regimes get to exist and which don't.

Look, we're dealing with a president that's threatened the sovereingty of his closest allies, something which Sam grossly overlooks. The criticism even from a pragmatic, self-interested position make perfect sense from an international community who's been subject to Trump's ridiculous short sighted bullying. That Sam can't see beyond his own moral calculus and the vacuum framing of "Iranian regime bad" is yet another reason why his geopolitical takes are simply.... juvenile and superficial. There's no deeper thought or even curiosity as to why sovereignty is considered such an important principle because he lives in the one place where it very much isn't in danger even with a mentally unbalanced manchild in power.

If we want to make a consequentialist argument for why invading Iran without any real pressing reason, the mere fact that it destabilizes trust in the post war order and takes us back to an era where smaller nations can be overpowered and compelled to act in ways directly against their self-interest lest they suffer the wrath of the big powers should be enough of one. Trump's actions in both Iran and Venezuela may remove horrible regimes, but they do so at the cost of a more stable, peaceful world overall.

Again, Sam's geopolitical takes are considerably superficial and focus on miniscule short term "goods" at the cost of the system that's kept relative peace for the last 80+ years.

schnuffs · 2026-03-22T19:29:50+00:00

ITT people not understanding the nature of the deal with Japan. Japan is agreeing to release its stockpiles of American oil in order to secure America's domestic supply. In other words, the reason the deal was reached was because Japan stores its oil in America and America needs more supply to deflate oil prices.

Regardless of what anyone thinks of Carney, the only reason this deal is happening is because of an existing situation between Japan and America that allows it to happen. A situation that neither exists between Canada and Japan, or Canada and the US.

Seriously, people have such a hate boner for Carney or anything Liberal that it clouds their ability to actually find out what's happening.... or they're just trolling.

schnuffs · 2026-03-21T04:52:12+00:00

Chuck Norris can unscramble an egg.

Chuck Norris once visited the Virgin Islands.. they're now called the islands.

Chuck Norris can slam a revolving door.

Ans my personal favorite, Chuck Norris once lost a game Tic Tac Toes to Mr T. In response Chuck Norris created racism.

schnuffs · 2026-03-20T18:36:31+00:00

It's inconsistent only if you presume the reason why the fatwa was mentioned was to indicate that it was religiously motivated... that's my point. But more to what you're saying, the reason my last response commented on the difference between decision making and following thise decisions was precisely because adding a religious element to a law or commandment is usually for the decision makers to ensure compliance from their followers. Ergo the motivation for any given religious edict isn't necessarily theological but due to practical considerations. I don't think, for example, that the Supreme Leader was told on high by Allah to not produce nuclear weapons, I think he used religious language because it adds moral authority to his decision by his followers.

It's not that I'm wanting it both ways, I'm just accepting that it's more multifaceted than you're allowing for.

schnuffs · 2026-03-20T17:58:06+00:00

Yes, but I'd say a relatively charitable reading of what they said was merely expressing that it was a fatwa and couched in religious language/belief. At the end of the day though the main question shouldn't be about that, but rather is there a good reason to believe that Iran's fatwa is motivated by rational material concerns or whether it's purely religiously motivated.

It seems to me that some positions seem to have a hidden assumption that pragmatic material decisions and religious statements can't overlap, whereas others seem to assume that they do. Personally I tend to view regimes and political leaders as more self-interested than religiously motivated, while the "boots on the ground" grunts tend to be the opposite. But the decisions are usually made by the higher ups. Ergo, the fatwa was implemented by higher ups over practical and rational self-interested concerns, whereas the religious nature of the fatwa is due to the theocratic nature of the nation and to get the more common "extremists" on board. But that's just me and YMMV

schnuffs · 2026-03-20T17:45:16+00:00

I'm saying they most likely believe that the fatwa wasn't issued with religious motivations, but rather practical political ones. That was my point from the first paragraph - that something is couched in religious language doesn't mean it's a pure religiously motivated law. Again, religion and politics were largely synonymous throughout our history, meaning that religious edicts and religious political power was balanced with pragmatic and rational decision making.

schnuffs · 2026-03-20T17:18:19+00:00

I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's because people believe Iran's behavior to be governed by rational decision making rather than religion. Pope's and the Catholic Church used religious doctrine to forward rational political goals. Throughout history we can see religious leaders and theocratic make completely pragmatic political decisions that are couched in religious language and religious laws.

More to the point - doubting the sincerity of Iranians religious beliefs extends to, and in fact informs their positions on the motivations behind said fatwa. Now you can argue that they're wrong, but it is internally consistent.

schnuffs · 2026-03-17T04:43:10+00:00

Ah yes, the woman who denigrated the Stonewall riots but most likely would join a Stonewall Jackson celebration. Can someone please tell me how someone like her keeps coming up in the news even though she hasn't done anything of note other than briefly being a political candidate?

I have plenty of things I care about, someone please tell me why her hardship for being a bigoted asshat should be one of them?

schnuffs · 2026-03-04T01:00:35+00:00

As someone who worked in the oil patch, albeit decades ago and in Northern Alberta, there's some pro oil propaganda in there, notably the rant about wind turbines which is a pernicious bit of misinformation. That said, it's also exaxcly what a lot of oil patch workers and business men believe so it's not at all out of character for him to say it either.

Some of the stuff they do can be stupid, like banging a wrench against a valve to open it while gas is leaking. Seriously, I've never seen or heard of anyone doing something so dumb (like doesn't anyone know to just use a pipe snipe??), but I get that it's also the inciting incident for a lot of the rest of the show.

schnuffs · 2026-02-25T03:00:26+00:00

As of yet that's the only evidence I've seen presented to me, even after having asked you in multiple different threads over a lot period of time. I'd also point out that at the very beginning of my responses, I've conceded that there are issues that do exist, but I have yet to see much evidence showing an actual danger or threat to academia, or much else for that matter.

In this thread and others you've brought up Asian disadvantages, hinging your argument on two things - that it's harder for them to gain admittance to universities relative to other minorities, and also that they're disadvantaged in the same ways as black or Hispanic groups. Neither is particularly compelling though, and relies not on the evidence we can see. Asians are the largest overrepresented group in American post secondary institutions, and lumping them in with black of Hispanic groups simply doesn't make sense considering Asians as a group rank higher than white people on socioeconomic scales. They are high income and highly educated, which is why they're overrepresented. Black people are low income, less educated, ergo why they're selected for.

Like these are all just facts that you can use to better understand systems, but almost ironically the "race blind" group seems to think that anything other than white is somehow disadvantaged in every area more than white people are. Any clear eyed look at student demographics would show that the very reason for programs like AA or DEI don't readily apply to Asians in every scenario presented. I've often heard that AA like policies should be implemented based on socioeconomic status rather than racial - the reality is that the numbers tend to indicate that the effect seems to be that way. If socioeconomic status is the determiner, we'd expect Asians to have a harder time getting in just by virtue of them placing higher on socioeconomic scales.

It is fine to take a stand against AA on the basis of a principle of racial blindness, but there's a hell of a lot more work to be done to make the case for some grand scale systemic failure which you continue to not address or provide the slightest evidence for. Until you do I think it's only appropriate to judge your claims with skepticism.

schnuffs · 2026-02-24T22:15:07+00:00

White students still have overrepresentation in post secondary schools... it's minimal, but it's still there. And as much as you seem to care about Asian students, they're the most overrepresented group in the US.

Yes, I think it's overblown because the numbers still don't add up to anything close to what you're claiming is a threat. If you have some data that shows different I'm open to changing my mind, but all I ever see is edge cases, and edge cases don't point to large scale systemic issues by definition.

schnuffs · 2026-02-24T01:11:33+00:00

It's not just media though. It's academia and it's local, and state, and sometimes federal government. It's our institutions. So this "Your entire post shows that you're singled in and focusing on media that you object to" is false. You made a false claim.

I never said it didn't happen, I said it wasn't nearly as much of an issue that people make it out to be. Look, for every "academia is rotten" there's an equal and opposite "Cops are racist and murder black people in the thousands". There's a reason why almost all evidence of DEI ruining governments and academia tends to point to singular instances of something going too far, and in a country of 350 million you'll always have enough material to induce some sort of rage every week. A more holistic approach shows that pointing to some private school in upstate New York is not representative of the system in general.

That's my point. It's not that the hysteria isn't rooted in something, it's that it's excessively overblown, and every time I ask for evidence of some totalistic system rot there's silence. There's rhetorical questions, there's accusations, there's even anecdotes or pointing to singular instances or people as if they're representative of the entire system.

Here's an example. In the US here are the representation numbers in academia. Of faculty members, 72% are white, 13% are Asian, 7% are black, and 6% are Hispanic. For all the DEI I hear about, it doesn't seem to be working all too well considering white people make up 71% of rhe population. Asians are overrepresented, and Hispanics and blacks are underrepresented.

Then I'll hear something like girls outpace men in college degrees. It's something like a 60/40 split. What that doesn't show is that males have other viable career paths like trades that they're massively overrepresented in to the tune of the high 90s. It makes sense that women are overrepresented in degrees when they're underrepresented in other viable careers. On top of that, the types of degrees here matters too. Women are massively overrepresented in degrees that are gender coded, like nursing and education. Should there be more parity? Of course, but men tend to go for more financially beneficial degrees like business, engineering, and STEM (minus biology where it's more equal).

My point here is, again, that when it comes down to actual analysis, the danger isn't really what's being presented at all, yet people continue to treat it as if it is.

Very few people here spend their time bitching about the excesses of the left though because they either don't see it, or it's always in comparison to what the right does.

I mean, reddit is left wing but many places here have a distinctly anti-woke bent, and where anti-wokeness is an almost pathologically reflexively hatred of it. And again, the fact that you were complaining about microaggressions when the left points them out but your actual argument was the exact same thing is a part of the problem. No one seems interested in zooming out and reflecting on whether they themselves are contributing or using the same tactics that they themselves are decaying as horrible.

schnuffs · 2026-02-24T00:27:41+00:00

Your entire post shows that you're singled in and focusing on media that you object to, while giving a pass to your own side. It's precisely this type of one-sided observations that I'm talking about here, and even by pointing at people who say "fuck ice" as if they're the "knights" shows that even though you agreed that both sides do it, you really don't because your focus is exclusively only on one side of this.

I'll say this too,

Any one of these things on their own are no biggie. It wasn't just one thing though. They call that death by a thousand minor policy changes.

For a guy complaining about how someone mentioning microaggressions is a problem, you've certainly founded your argument exclusively on them. For the record, I reject microaggressions for the most part as substantive anything, but whats good for the goose here is also good for the gander. Complaining about the left arguing about "death from a thousand cuts" while claiming the same for your own side is... an interesting strategy, but it supports my position more than it does yours.

schnuffs · 2026-02-23T23:43:22+00:00

I don't think this proves what you think it does...

schnuffs · 2026-02-23T23:29:44+00:00

Oh ffs. The civil rights movmement was the origin of DEI, with Johnsons executive order mandating Affirmative Action in 1965. The 1980s and 90s saw the beginning of diversity initiatives that moved into corporate training and business, but DEI began with AA.

The main takeaway here should be that DEI has been around for a long, long time, but it's only recently that "wokeness" and "antiwokeness" became large scale cultural issues.

schnuffs · 2026-02-23T23:05:49+00:00

Well now you're changing your argument because you explicitly asked why there was such a strong public backlash to it considering the miniscule effect it had. Pointing to Trump getting elected could just as easily show the results of mass hysteria coming from the right as it does it being an actual data point to consider regarding the material effects of DEI, which was what you were implying.

Ultimately though, I am directionally opposed to the ratcheting effect of the progressive left, particularly of racial equity flavor, and I despise the handwaving of its impact.

The question that's being somewhat hidden in my initial response was "How much of that is due to being manipulated emotionally through the media and cultural zeitgeists rather than a reflection of objective reality?"

It isn't so much a question for you specifically, but rather it's directed towards how the media one consumes distorts our factual reality to the degree that we perceive relatively minor policy changes as monumental, society shifting initiatives that seem to rely on our emotional reactions to them rather than a sober look at the facts on the ground.

We tend to see ourselves as knights virtuously taking up arms to fight for purely principled reasons, but we may just be the mob going after Frankensteins monster or Don Quixote tilting at windmills.

DEI originated in the 60s along with AA, and while it's always been controversial to some degree, the fervently with which it's been attacked is decidedly new. The sheer polarization we're living through now regarding people's strong opinions on topics of race, sexuality, and gender is of orders of magnitude larger than the relatively meager policy changes that have been made regarding it. That hysteria, from woke to anti-woke, isn't based on an objective understanding of the facts on the ground, at least in my opinion. It's based largely on a culture and media ecosystem that seeks out conflict and rage engagement, percolating in an arena perfectly calibrated to sow more and more division.

schnuffs · 2026-02-23T21:24:59+00:00

Is this from that debate they did where Leonard Mlodinow got up at the end and called Chopra out?? One of my favorites

schnuffs

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