Comments by "PM" (@pm71241) on "Sam Harris" channel.

Bret Stephens is being VERY revisionist when he describes his role wrt. Climate Science. Let's not forgot that Bret has an important stake in all this. He has been at the forefront of pouring gasoline on the fire against expertise. He has been a part of teaching people that any experts can be rejected if what they are saying don't comply with your ideology. He's absolutely not innocent in the current fact-free state of the GOP of the US political climate. Here's a 2011 Bret Stephens quote: “Consider the case of global warming, another system of doomsaying prophecy and faith in things unseen. As with religion, it is presided over by a caste of spectacularly unattractive people pretending to an obscure form of knowledge that promises to make the seas retreat and the winds abate. As with religion, it comes with an elaborate list of virtues, vices and indulgences. As with religion, its claims are often non-falsifiable, hence the convenience of the term “climate change” when thermometers don’t oblige the expected trend lines. As with religion, it is harsh toward skeptics, heretics and other “deniers.” And as with religion, it is susceptible to the earthly temptations of money, power, politics, arrogance and deceit.” No. He did not only point out that economics is a factor in how we respond!
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@jhonklan3794 🙄
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@MakerInMotion That's just ignorance speaking. You look out the window in your back yard and see it's cold - then conclude that the "thermometers don't oblige". There's not room in this comment section to explain the science to you, but I can assure you that the temperature record is very clear. I has never been warmer than now while humans have been around.
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On one hand I like the idea of meritocracy voting ... but I'm not convinced it would work in practice. Someone has to decide which merits are relevant to vote on something. - and that will fail often. Take an example: Denmark had a popular vote whether or not to join a new EU patent-court-of-law. This is an absurd matter to put to a public vote. Almost no one knows anything about the subject. However... if ballots were only handed out to people "knowledgeable" about the subject, we know from experience (the softwarepatent-debacle) that this will most likely be people working in the patent-establishment and the people really affected by it (as the software developers) will not be asked, because the civil servants deciding who are the experts are heavily leaned towards lawyers. And in the software patent situation there was a clear interest for these patent-professionals to extend their own area of work by expanding the patentable area. In fact... I predict that such voting based on merits will have a natural tendency to soak even more of society in economists and lawyers so no one in the end will be able to do anything productive without their first employee being a lawyer.
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@steverogers2755 He has not changed. If you think that, you didn't understand where his arguments against religion came from. I've been listening to him for 20 years and I have yet to be surprised by a reasoning he has made.
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@Andre_Louis_Moreau Well ... that's embarrassing for you then...
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@joshboston2323 well... As one agreeing with him in about 98% of what he argues, I of course think that's how any reasoned mund should work (I might be biased)... But it came as absolutely no surprise to me that Sam categorically rejected Trump... And wokeism. Both are fundamentally in conflict with the rational science based modernisme both he, Dawkins and Hitchen advocated
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Sam... Don't start with a straw man. Europe doesn't have the equivalent of confiscating all firearms. That's not what Europeans recommend. And you don't need to abolish the 2nd amendment. You just need to roll back the silly interpretation started by Scalia. It's clearly meant for States to arm a well regulated militia - not as a personal right to wield assault rifles bought over the counter. You're better than that. No strawmen, please.
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As someone living in a place where this is not an issue ... I think you fail to ask yourself,... why
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@Illlium Exactly ... I've personally had conversations with very high level patent-lawyers who insisted that software-patents was Gods gift to humanity, while clearly showing that they have absolutely no clue about how software or the Internet works. One individual suggested that the way into the market of email-program producers wouldn't be hampered by patented protocols, since anyone could of course just invent their own email protocol. Sure...
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Wrt the doomsday clock ... it's also including other factors now, isn't it? Climate change, pandemics, ... etc..
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The US debate on this issue is SICK. The premise that it's a question of finding a specific point in time where we go from non-person to person is fundamentally flawed. This is a gradual process and there is no such point in time. ... and any solution needs to acknowledge this. As long a the premise is that there's a point in time, this will forever be a political fight between the 2 extremes. Mind you... there are actually countries which have abortion laws acknowledging this where this is simply not a political issue - it just works. Denmark would be such an example.
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I remember the story ... but not following it closely. I just watched the documentary ... Makes me really mad. That prosecutor and his fantasies ... and the damage he has done. He should be the one locked up for 26 years.
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@christheghostwriter Sure boycotts have always existed and are totally fair. And sure a lot of those complaining about cancel-culture confuses the problem with boycotts. But that doesn't mean that cancel culture isn't a thing (and toxic). Boycotting someone you don't agree with is totally fair... but going after people for something they said, contacting their employer and trying to get them fired, by stirring up an (often strawman based) shit-storm is not.
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@christheghostwriter That wasn't what I said. I was referring to the way people go after others - and the subjects they chose to do that on. - which are now often not based the in actual point they made, but instead some fabricated picture. Maybe you have to be non-American to really notice it, but a lot of the shit people are outraged about on social media today is so uniquely taken out of American culture and politics that it's absurd when viewed from, say, a European perspective.
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Sorry Sam ... I usually agree with you, but this time you're simply being naive. Sure, when you are in the situation, you need good guys with guns. But when we're talking about preventing situations like this, the "good guy" talking-point is just a Red Herring. Places exist in the world where this is SIMPLY NOT A PROBLEM!! ... And NOT because there are good guys with guns around.
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Interesting that she says economist don't know how to solve inequality because (paraphrasing) they've tried everything and nothing worked. Well ... Henry George pointed out the fundamental problem 150 years ago and very few places have his argument been tried in practice. ... but the few places it has been tried in small scale is certainly hasn't failed.
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Sam's question at 1:04:00 is a bit naive. I mean...the inertia in this is on timescales much much larger than politics. Sure... when Mar-a-lago is below 3 feet of water maybe some Republicans might realize they were wrong... but it will take millennia to get the ice back on the polar ice caps.
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Ben Shapiro is an idiot. Claiming that fair elections hasn't been undermined for years is just nonsense. Just take a thing like Gerrymandering. That doesn't mean, however, that Kamala won't concede. And for f... sake ... it can't be double standards to say what is an obvious recognized fact compared to actual lying.
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@sciencecompliance235 You might have missed my point. The religious right is trying to define the debate as when a "soul" is created (to put it simply). Of course they then define that as at the moment of fertilization. ... and it seems to me that many of the pro-choice side accepts the premise that we have to define a point in time where we talk about a "person" ... and my point is that that leads nowhere. In other words, my point is that it's a long gradual process from gamete to human. One long grey zone and we can't point to any magical point in time where nature says a person appears. Of course I agree with your statement that it's then a matter of deciding when we care for law to be involved at all - and after that, make a gradual process requiring increasingly weighty reasons to do an abortion. That's how the law is in Denmark. The law is not involved before 12th week. Before that it's entirely up to the woman. From 12th to 22nd week it requires a permission be a panel of medical and social experts. After 22nd week it basically requires that the fetus is not viable. This just works. It's not a political debate. Danish public discourse waste no time arguing about this, but can deal with actual important things.
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@wasdwasdedsf Sorry... but that's just pure idiocy. You don't know me. You don't know shit about my opinions, aside from that I on the science side of the climate change issue - not the science denier side. And yet, you jump into putting in in a box of "you people" and assume the rest of my opinions.
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@MakerInMotion There's no cherry-picking here. You just don't know anything about how the Jetstream works and how it reacts to rising temperatures in the arctic. The jetstream will slow and it will wiggle more and it will get stuck in curvy patterns which can produce both polar vortex cold spells and heatwaves and drought - depending on which side of the jetstream you end up on. You just don't know what the science actually says.
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@MakerInMotion You might know what cherry picking is... but you are clueless about what the science you criticize actually says.
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I wonder if one can really regard the Crimean Tartars as "native". Back in the 1200, they were the invaders. Not that that makes the Russian case any better. Before the Tartars there were Goths and Greeks and Scytians.
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It's kinda weird to hear a climate science denier claim he's the least partisan person.
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... sigh
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