(Part 4) Top products from r/samharris

Ben Thompson explored Facebook's effect on elections two years ago:

> This [engaging content rising to the top] is a big problem for the parties as described in The Party Decides. Remember, in Noel and company’s description party actors care more about their policy preferences than they do voter preferences, but in an aggregated world it is voters aka users who decide which issues get traction and which don’t. And, by extension, the most successful politicians in an aggregated world are not those who serve the party but rather those who tell voters what they most want to hear.

As South China Morning Post points out, if your candidate selection process is hijacked, you only get the illusion of control.

Look at the recent Italian election. The recently formed Five Star Movement gained 31% of the votes earlier this month.

From Bloomberg:

> The five stars in its name represent the five issues it cares most about: public water, sustainable transport, sustainable development, the right to internet access and environmentalism.

Meanwhile, Americans traffic the conventional wisdom that a vote for the environmentalist or libertarian fringe candidate will have an adverse affect on that voter's preferences. Every American, like me, who was offered Bush vs Kerry AND Clinton vs Trump in their voting lifetime has an obligation to evangelize something like the alternatives offered in /r/endFPTP.

> What does "relentlessly pro-immigration" mean?

Call everyone who's for immigration restriction a racist? Basically if you think Trump "disqualifies" himself by suggesting that illegal immigrants be deported you're prob. a progressive extremest.

> Who, specifically, is giddy about "replacing" the population of the USA?

Progressives who want a one party state, based off demographic changes? Kind of people who write these articles?

> No. We don't have the evidence to justify this conclusion.

I'm sorry you don't think we 'have evidence' to say that " those who don't see PC as a problem are the group most likely to also be in favor of it?" Wouldn't this just be common sense?

Do you think people who do see PC as a problem are likely to be in favor of it???

> I'm having trouble following your argument. Are you saying that Democratic Party candidates are to the left of the party's voting base?

I don't know how I can state this more clearly than I did:

If these is no gap in attitudes beliefs between progressives and their voting base why results of the answers to a simply question about political correctness differ so largely between 'ultra-progressives' and the majority of Democratic voters?

This question shouldn't be a difficult one to comprehend.

> Who are these "extreme progressives" you keep referring to? It seems like you're using it as a stand-in for more well-to-do progressives.

I'm not, I'm talking about specifically the group outlined in the Atlantic article.

> Why might well-to-do progressives see PC as less of a problem? I can think of a few explanations that have nothing to do with "extremism."
>
>Perhaps well-to-do progressives are more likely to be educated on the subject of systemic oppression.
>
>Perhaps well-to-do progressives are more likely to be neoliberals who care more about social/identity issues than economic/structural issues.
>
>Perhaps well-to-do progressives, more likely to have been exposed to different types of people and a greater variety of perspectives in a higher education setting, are more likely to be sympathetic to "political correctness" insofar as it means trying to be considerate of what offends other people who aren't like them.

A) More likely to buy into the theory of 'systematic oppression' that downplays the importance of cultural or genetic differences between populations for a conspiracy about white power structures.

B) This one is likely true, but doesn't really counteract my point. One can still be 'extreme' and 'outside the mainstream' while not being a socialist/far-left on economic issues.

C) Most of the evidence suggests the opposite, that they are more likely to be ensconced in an echo chamber, largely out of touch with the lives of less privileged Americans due to their effective isolation ("Coming apart" being perhaps the best documentation of this).

I feel like I am repeating myself at this point but even if your particular, biased take is true, it doesn't really counteract my central point - there is every reason to believe that progressive policy makers are out of step with the majority of Americans on many, many issues.

> The fact is, we don't know. So my conclusions are just as valid, and probably a great deal more so, than yours.

Your conclusion that "We can't say that those people who are least likely to say PC is not a problem, are also the group that we can logically assume is most likely to be in favor of it" is a conclusion we cannot make assumptions about?

I think we may have reached the limits of the usefulness of this discussion.

Sarcasm and scientific articles are a terrible mix. It supercharges whatever biases the author already has, while making them take more hard-line stances on claims than they often should.

I get that this article is really entertainment, but if anyone wants a fair criticism (that is still effective at shutting down some of Peterson's arguments) take a look at Sense & Nonsense by Laland & Brown.

<300 page book that is pretty accessible and summarizes the current state of knowledge on what parts of human behaviour are evolved vs dependent on environment.

TBH I wish everyone who wants to discuss this topic would read it, as some science is bunk, but some is definitely not. And the topic is very controversial, so there are TONs of hit/smear pieces out there on both sides.

Here's a worthwhile section to excerpt, in anticipation of those who may feel inclined to write off the writer as some right-wing conservative:

>Let me conclude by returning to the theme I led with: in this highly-polarized political moment, it is generally assumed that if someone is pushing back against a popular left-leaning narrative, or espousing an inconvenient view for the left, then they are de facto aligned with the right, intentionally or not. Beauchamp’s rebuttal attempt provides a great example of this fundamentalist thinking: highlighting systemic political bias or threats to free speech on campus will help the right – regardless of one’s intentions –and so, apparently, we should not talk about these issues (except, perhaps, to deny they are a big deal).
>
>I am deeply familiar with this “logic”: as a Muslim scholar who, until recently, worked exclusively on national security and foreign policy issues, it was regularly *suggested* to me that criticism of the “War on Terror” – especially by “people like me” — provided cover or ammunition for al-Qaeda, ISIS and their sympathizers. In the view of these critics (mostly on the right), I was aiding and abetting “the enemy,” intentionally or not.
>
>There was even an article published in the National Security Law Journal which argued that I, and academics like me (by which the author seemed to mean: Muslim, left-leaning, and politically “radical”) should be viewed as enemies of the state — and could legitimately be targeted by national security and law enforcement agencies. This article was eventually retracted, and its author forced to resign from his position at West Point (as described in the Washington Post here). But suffice it to say, I *get* the kind of narrative Beauchamp is trying to spin here, and I reject it whole-cloth.
>
>I challenge U.S. national security and foreign policy precisely to render it more effective, efficient and beneficent – because I actually have “skin in the game” with regards to how the military is deployed. I relentlessly criticize bad research on Trump and his supporters because it is important for the opposition to be clear-eyed and level-headed about why he won – to help ensure it does not happen again. A similar type of motivation undergirds my critique of Beauchamp and Yglesias:
>
>It does not help the left or academics to respond to distortions and exaggerations on the right by denying that there is any significant problem. It is especially damaging for “wonks” or academics to dress up these kinds of political narratives (essentially, propaganda) as social research – even more so if this “research” suffers from glaring errors or shortcomings like the essays criticized here.
>
>Such a strategy is self-defeating because it is the left, those in humanities and social sciences, those from historically marginalized and disenfranchised groups, and those who seek to give voice to these perspectives or to help these populations, who stand to lose the most if the credibility of social research is further eroded due to perceived partisanship.
>
>....
>
>I get why many on the left, especially at elite universities and media outlets, would rather just say “nothing to see here,” than to confront these realities. But it will not do, for all of us to simply close ranks and insist “there is no problem, we will make no changes.” Because there is a problem — and change is coming to institutions of higher learning, one way or another.

> You answered my question with three spokes comprising a wheel that is one
> non-answer, because you could not provide any material outside of reddit the
> philosophy community, that details Harris' faults as a philosopher. This is
> obviously of monumental significance.

It's not obviously significant, and on the contrary I've given an argument
supporting its insignificance, whereas the only thing supporting its
significance is your say-so.

That being said, there are plenty of criticisms of Harris's work that have been
published outside of Reddit. For example:

• https://www.samharris.org/blog/item/reflections-on-free-will
  
  
• http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/blackburn-ethics-without-god-secularism-religion-sam-harris
  
  
• http://www.barnesandnoble.com/review/the-moral-landscape
  
  
• https://www.edge.org/discourse/bb.html#atran2 (This is a continuation of
  criticism that Atran levied in his
  book,
  Talking to the Enemy,
  but that isn't freely available online.)
  
  >I'm not attacking anyone.
  
  Anyone who reads this thread can see the fact of the matter.
  
  > I'm telling you it's true, because I've seen it first hand, many times.
  
  The claim in contention is that /r/askphilosophy bans discussion of Sam Harris.
  But here are some examples of cases where /r/askphilosophy has permitted
  discussion of Sam Harris:
  
  
• https://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/6h17jp/do_you_think_sam_harris_is_doing_a_good/djpfcvs/
  
  
• https://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/52xxag/what_do_you_all_think_of_sam_harris/d7sxemp/?context=3
  
  
• https://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/4vjv12/is_sam_harris_a_respectable_philosopher/
  
  
• https://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/4bxw83/why_is_badphilosophy_and_other_subs_in_reddit_so/d1eh3t0/?context=2
  

Read "The Case for God", by Karen Armstrong. She talks about this sort of thing from quite a different point of view. I think the book forms a good foundation that might help you see things from Peterson's point of view. Interestingly enough, she also has quite a lot to say about Newton and Darwin and how they relate to religion.

https://www.amazon.com/Case-God-Karen-Armstrong/dp/0307389804

I should warn you, it's densely packed and will require your full attention throughout.

I think the onus is not on me - but on the person preaching the "Green Deal" to the rest of the nation. If you are going to preach - it is up to you to do everything in your power to be as pure as you possibly can be.

So I am ready to scrutinize the preacher and to nail him and her on any possible point of hypocrisy.

And yes it matters to me - because I believe that progressives are generally phonies who value virtue signalling and group solidarity above anything else.

If the word went out that global cooling was the real enemy - progressives would do a 180 turn and start preaching about that.

Wait a minute - that's actually what in fact DID happen. Global cooling was the disaster du jour in the 1970s through maybe the mid-80s.

And yes - I do consider myself a strong environmentalist.
And finally, you need to tell your fellow progressives that their support of illegal immigration is severely impacting all environmental issues in the USA, including greenhouse gases.

The details are laid out in the book "How Many Is Too Many?: The Progressive Argument for Reducing Immigration"
https://www.amazon.com/How-Many-Too-Progressive-Immigration/dp/022619065X

If there's no ultimate meaning there's no ultimate truth, in which case it's erroneous to say anything as a truth claim, such as there being no ultimate meaning, or the falsity of Christianity. I'd recommend the existentialist theologian, Paul Tillich's book "The Courage to Be".

I'll send you a copy of you're interested?

Charles Murray @charlesmurray
Robert Plomin, one of the biggest names in behavioral genetics, has just published a book on recent developments in genetics and heritability. It's called Blueprint and is written for a general audience. Here are two early reviews:
https://twitter.com/charlesmurray/status/1044672142502170624

@QuilletteM published this one, by Greg Cochran, polymath and a curmudgeon's curmudgeon (I speak as an authority):
…. Hard to believe the two reviews are discussing the same book. Read Blueprint and decide for yourself.

Forget Nature Versus Nurture. Nature Has Won
written by Gregory Cochran
https://quillette.com/2018/09/25/forget-nature-versus-nurture-nature-has-won/

Blueprint: How DNA Makes Us Who We Are Hardcover – Nov 13 2018
by Robert Plomin (Author)
https://www.amazon.com/Blueprint-How-DNA-Makes-Who/dp/0262039168/

There should not be any pejorative association with the term "social justice." One of my earliest exposures to the term was in college long ago, reading "Social Justice in the Liberal State."

Really it's only the addition of "warrior" here that matters.

https://www.amazon.com/Social-Justice-Liberal-State-Ackerman/dp/0300027575/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1485380198&sr=8-1&keywords=social+justice+and+the+liberal+state

Have you ever read Yuval Harari's book, Sapiens? This isn't really an answer to your question, but based on this post, I think you would like it.

also, wanted to add - a good precursor to that book is confession of a buddhist atheist.

and his third book in a similar fashion, after buddhism: rethinking the dharma for a secular age.

It is called split brain syndrome. Here's one book that talks about it.
https://www.amazon.com/Tales-Both-Sides-Brain-Neuroscience/dp/0062228854

> Citation fucking needed.

https://www.amazon.com/Human-Accomplishment-Pursuit-Excellence-Sciences/dp/0060929642

One Article

Another


She got Asylum in the Netherlands (1992)by falsely claiming that she was being forced into a marriage in Somalia. (Her family was middle class and lived in Kenya). She was able to get Asylum because she said she was fleeing directly from Somalia. She rode her story to Dutch Parliment in 2003. She was outed in 2006. She fled to the United States where she took up a post at the AEI (The American Enterprise Institue, YES THE SAME NEO CONSERVATIVE think tank that paid Murray to write the Bell Curve. I couldn’t make this shit up if I tried, and I have an active imagination.)

TIL thanks u/bloodsvscrips

This part has drama written all over it (lots of edits to the wikipedia page so fair warning it’s contentious). link

Wikipedia has this book listed as the source for the comments about her family life being amicable. It’s written by a Harvard professor.

She admitted to lieing about her name, date of birth, and the way in which she got to the neatherlands but denies other accusations. She resigned from Dutch Parliment shortly before it began proceedings to remove her.

Former Vice President AL Gore wrote a letter on her behalf when an honorary diploma from Brandeis University was rescinded for some of her previous speech. He defended her right to condemn Islam Wholesale.

My Hot take: Islam is shit... we all know that. There is a good chance that she lied to attain fame in the wake of 9/11.

Edit: The video shows her Muslim school and her brothers Christian school that they went to. That puts serious doubt on the family being radical. That appears to be a fact. Zembla the TV series looks legit.

> "Why arrest a murderer? It's a fools errand to expect to end murder."

That might be the weakest analogy i've ever encountered and I hope you'll admit it wasn't very thought out.

"Believe it or not, being in this country "illegally" is not a crime in and of itself"

It is a violation of federal immigration law to remain in the country without legal authorization, but this violation is punishable by civil penalties, not criminal. Chief among these civil penalties is deportation or removal, where an unlawful resident may be detained and removed from the country.


Nice misdirection.


I have put myself in their shoes and my views remain the same, I think it's you who are being limited in your thinking. Allow me to suggest what I think is a valuable book:

https://www.amazon.com/Against-Empathy-Case-Rational-Compassion/dp/0062339338

https://quillette.com/2019/07/03/how-antifas-apologists-fell-in-love-with-street-violence/

> Princeton University’s Omar Wasow studied protest movements in the 1960s and found that violent upheaval tended to make white voters more conservative, whereas nonviolent protests were associated with increased liberalism among white voters. “These patterns suggest violent protest activity is correlated with a taste for ‘social control’ among the predominantly white mass public,” wrote Wasow in his study.
>
> In contrast, “nonviolent movements succeed because they invite mass participation,” says Maria Stephan, a director at the United States Institute of Peace. Violent resistance, on the other hand, is incredibly divisive. Stephan and Erica Chenoweth produced a book, Why Civil Resistance Works, which found nonviolent resistance movements were twice as likely as violent movements to achieve their aims in the 20th and early 21stcenturies. “A campaign’s commitment to nonviolent methods enhances its domestic and international legitimacy and encourages more broad-based participation in the resistance, which translates into increased pressure being brought to bear on the target,” they wrote. According to Stephan and Chenoweth, governments have little trouble justifying brutal crackdowns on violent protesters, but nonviolent protesters engender greater sympathy from the public, reducing the likelihood of repression.

> The 'Death' is clearly inflammatory but not meant to represent 'White replacement' or anything, just the gradual shift of European 'culture' in the face of immigration.

The title of Murray’s book is a reference to ‘The Strange Death of Liberal England’ by George Dangerfield. Plenty of other authors have referenced it in titles.

Dangerfield’s book is one of the most famous political books written in/ about the U.K. during twentieth century. The ‘death’ in Murray’s title, therefore, isn’t to be taken as literally and wouldn’t have been intended to inflame.

> First, why is the bar set at alignment with other leftists of the time?

In order to understand whether or not the Nazis were left-wing or right-wing it is important to consider their historical context. Otherwise we'd end up saying virtually every political party in the 1800s was right

>Almost no two leftist factions of the day got along leading to multiple violent changes in power.

That is true, but the disputes between the Nazis and leftists were completely different to the disputes amongst Communists. Communists and social democrats were not murdered for being insufficiently left-wing, they were murdered for being left-wing.

>any books on the subject that I can bring up will be inadvertently dismissed by you as right wing propaganda without any consideration for the actual content...A simple google search shows quite a few publications claiming Nazi politics to be leftists and some books rebutting those claims

A curiously relativistic point. I am not asking you to merely find a book that states the Nazis were left-wing. I'm sure you could find any dime store Ann Coulter or Rush Limbaugh who could claim that. I am asking that you find a respected historical source which argues that the Nazis were primarily a left-wing political movement.

You could argue that the Nazis started with left-wing elements, but by the time of the Night of the Long Knives it was very much Hitler's party, and Hitler was from the conservative right, and the Nazis positioned themselves deliberately in opposition to the left of the time.

>Personally, having grown up in Europe in the 60's and 70's, I learned history of Nazism from people who actually lived through it. And no, not just my family members, actual history teachers and university professors who were old enough to understand what was going on while it was going on.

I'm sorry but your position is not unique and is shared by anyone who was born in Europe in the past few decades and still has living grandparents or even an active social circle - myself included. Just saying "I know people" isn't an argument - you'll have to give sources, but you're refusing to do so because you think I'll dismiss them (it's true - I will, if they're a terrible source).

>Left politics were new then and different takes on the subject fought each other violently. Just look at what happened in Russia after 1917. Hitler was just another player in the same game.

This is ahistorical and colossally stupid. I don't know how many times it needs to be reiterated but the Nazis sending Communists and soc dems to the camps was not leftist infighting - they were sending people who they viewed as their chief political enemies to be murdered. The Bolsheviks fought Mensheviks fought Maoists fought Anarchists fought whatever because they each regarded each other as insufficiently socialist. The Nazis fought everyone else (including non-leftist liberals and social democrats) because they were insufficiently Nazis and there was no room for ideological maneuver within Hitler's party.

Since you aren't in the business of providing sources, can I recommend this book as a means of understanding Hitler's party and its motivations?

In that post /u/Bernardito recommends "War Without Fronts: The USA in Vietnam", who was described as:

> Rather than pointing the finger at the "grunts" fighting a dirty war on the ground, Greiner argues that the responsibility for these atrocities extends all the way up to the White House and the Pentagon. The escalation of violence on the ground can be attributed to several factors: a U.S. political leadership afraid for the United States to lose its credibility and unable, against better advice, to stop the war; a military that devised a strategy of attrition based on "body counts" as the only way to defeat an enemy skilled in unconventional warfare; officers who were badly trained, lacking in motivation and interested only in furthering their careers; soldiers who realized they were utterly disposable and sought to empower themselves through random killing. The result was the torture, rape, maiming, and murder of countless Vietnamese civilians.

... so saying that he's "whitewashing the US military" is a bit of a stretch. He's just saying that book isn't that great, and recommended a better one.