Comments by "Kristopher Driver" (@paxdriver) on "Sam Harris"
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Lol "covid was unknowable in Dec 2019 and Russia invading Ukraine was unknowable 60 days prior".
Horse shit. Russia was stacking troops at the border and l'au Ching shell companies to hide money 3-6 months before invading and December 2019 covid had already crossed borders which by definition is a pandemic, its just that nobody took those things seriously.
My podcast I predicted this year's market crash in a 2hr episode where I described inflation and I don't have a economics degree, I just followed markets since I was a teenager and also got caught in 2007 only months after throwing my life's savings into my investment portfolio chasing millions.
It's about attention to detail and creativity, we're not victims of our pasts we're victims of our egos. Very, very different.
Also, 1950's salaries were single earners supporting entire households, and with fresh memories of trench warfare and Nazi holocaust. They had clean air and access to over the counter heroin, coke and booze. They had houses on minimum wage they owned outright in 5 years, and family life was achievable. It's not just nostalgia, wholesome people would prefer all that. Superficiality has always and will always exist. But at least now women can vote and get professional jobs. Very few people need a jet to feel successful, only in that tiny bubble of us in finance does that even sound normal. Nowhere else is there an insurance salesmen bummed out for not flying to Tahiti every weekend. Most people would still be happy with a bungalow and a bonfire.
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21:12 Sam, you haven't looked very hard. All of these listed arguments are verifiably false. 1) occupying nations are subject to a different standard than resistence of occupations. 2) the definite of apartheid does apply to walls, freedom of movement, economic blockades, checkpoints, voting rights, and judicial processes based solely on birthright. 3) Israel is a colony, they and the West who illegally assigned them the land of others admit it. 4) the brutality of Oct 7 pales in comparison to the generations of assaults against gazand prior, like operation cast lead, and the statistics prove it looking at death tolls for decades one compared to the other. 5) the values of the West you love so much have done nothing to put Trump or Republicans in jail, or banks or any other white collar criminals, but black men fill prisons which are for-profit institutions. 6) Iran was democratic, go look up any source to find out why Iran is the way it is today. It was American exploitation, spoiler alert. Look up banana Republic, or cía sponsored coups, or recently the Dobbs decision with the context of the hearings from Trump appointed justices.
Violation of law, rights, human dignity, sovereignty, and corruption are western values. You can't sincerely promulgate your higher ground dismissing the vile atrocities and the root causes of the world's refusal to accept any of the arguments you make here. You're a smart guy, just speak with someone educated who disagrees with you, just like you had to do when you were denying covid.
The older you get the more you seem intent on spreading disinformation rather than learning.
32:32 capitalism is just as much a religion of exploitation and conquest as your claims of Islam, if not more. It's not all capitalists, certainly not my capitalism, but my Buddhism lends to a more rounded view of reality and humslity of my understanding than yours does, it would seem. My Buddhism asks me to listen to others, which I implore you to attempt. Just stop and learn before you keep speaking and preaching your beliefs like they're facts, or you'll only become the thing you hate the most - a religious zealot of another variety. 😊
This is not religious, it is apartheid by definition, it is genocide, the world agrees as per UN resolutions every year. The racist quoted of Israel's cabinet for eg.
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I can support what you're trying to do, Sam, but your failure to appreciate how facts are produced and generated is starkly contrasting your opening messages for years about employing critical thinking. You take data and skew just the right x axis and all the relativity potentially changes. When we redefine "violent crime" and the numbers drop, your choice of a 25 year time frame is arbitrary. If you're truly interested in facts you'd pull the 1/3/5/10/15/25-year charts, then take those results and also examine them because changing start-end dates on the same sized window changes the nunbers. Although I realize this leads down an endless pattern of self refinement, it would serve well to rule out the possibility your choice of timeline or definitions of terms aren't skewing data. Maybe LA shootings are down because people were afraid for the last few years years their children would be ripped from them by ICE? Maybe it's because black people have organized and educated their communities by local leaders you've never heard of. Maybe the black community churches have stepped up since the Catholic priest scandals. Maybe affirmative action works on a delay like almost every social science model does when evaluating effects of broad policy changes. Maybe the boomers retiring has something to do with your data and facts on a 25 year time scale.
You seem to be honestly trying to figure things out and I commend you for that but the fact that you're not outraged over the federal reserve's actions this year speaks volumes. You shake your head at and wag your finger at petty theft and looting by a tiny fraction of all protesters, while your treasury is robbed by rich white guys shows even your priorities are still screwy, with all due respect.
You chastise people whose lives have been ruined for making a world that wants them dead a little darker while you watch the federal treasury robbed during that same 25 year time frame leading us into a new age of leveraged finance as implements of slavery, so we riot the present state of legalized oppression because for 25 years people like you keep saying "relax".
We know a lot about human needs but casually forget that any 1 need is a need on its own. You can't satisfy hunger with extra shelter. Every need is crucial, and black people's needs are to this day being shat on by people who have so much excess they refuse to give up while dying en mass by overeating yet still managing to waste food.
We're printing money so people can pay rents so that shareholders whose companies charge rents can collect their dues, complete with tax deductions on all sides for unproductive work; meanwhile black girl goes to work her 3 jobs, living with more crime and abuse than we can imagine. How is a lifetime of duress and undue hardship to satisfy greed with the only discriminating factor being something as visible as skin color. Imagine not getting loans, not having your votes counted, being afraid to report crimes for your own safety, being over worked underpaid, over charged rent, and then hear educated rich white guys on podcasts criticize them for overreacting by looting.
We already looted the Treasury and the environment and politics, and justice system, and schools, we've made health prohibitively expensive then blamed them for not lifting themselves up or dealing with it better. You can't even give up the internet or a smartphone to peddle meditation services.
I get that you're trying to empathize, but you're absolutely not doing that. I respect you a lot for speaking your mind, that takes courage most white people don't have these days. If we could speak more openly like this it wouldn't be so shameful or taboo to have opinions we later correct. I don't say regret because regret implies knowing better ahead of time, you're certainly not one lacking thoughtfulness. It's nobody's fault for not appreciating gravity without having lived to experience weight vs weightlessness. I wish we could all discuss our views with as much sincerity, regardless of our disagreements.
For the record, what I'm speaking of is the quality that Jordan Peterson tried to convey to you during your public talks. It's the shroud of impairment that a consistent experience will engrave into the psyche, and those experiences aggregate and feedback positively when systemic racism affects every level of our social system; from wages to school meals to love prospects to being abused by licensed authorities in all branches of public service to varying degrees.
You don't appreciate the ubiquity of prejudice, nor the heartbreak of a wasted life over nothing. And not just your life, your cousins, neighbours, friends, role models, everyone you know reinforces the destructive feelings you have which come as naturally as breathing. Just like people with depression or mental illnesses can't just "get over it", it's deep. It's real deep. For you it's an issue you watch on TV, these people have heard it at church, holiday dinners from childhood, visiting prisons, or the state of the schools.
You can't just look at numbers without also scrutinizing the definitions, methodological approaches, constraints to the examinations, or the qualitative effects of pervasive injustices over a lifetime. You can't assume black crime is reported accurately if you can't rely on the cops all over the country standing watch as racism persists.
Poor people kill poor people, minorities are 7+ times poorer. If a black man wants to get away with murder, killing another black man would be the smarter choice if a premeditated murder was in the cards. If not premeditated, then black on black crime is a symptom of segregation and systematic abuses like crowding hungry animals into cages like Michael Vick.
How many times was Jeffrey Epstein caught as a pedophile? Did he get the George Floyd treatment or did the FBI, state prosecution, journalists and wall street keep giving him a by? Would you believe a statistic that says pedophiles assaults are down in the Catholic church, so all those victims should be well adjusted now like it never happened? It takes generations to heal even after it stops, and racist policing isn't something black people will just get over over night because you read a statistic in Los Angeles that by the police tally they're doing a good job this year?
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Hamas is not Palestine. Half of Gaza (1.1mln) are under 19 yrs old, of the remainder half are elderly or mothers (550mln people). That leaves ~300,000 Hamas supporters, including supporters who don't support violence.
Your "moral equivalance" resolves that the region is morally bankrupt EXCEPT for Israel, when they will indiscriminately murder 1.65mln women, elderly, and children to target less than 300,000 people of a different political view due to a minority of those 300k being driven to extremism due to their family members being killed by Israelis while unarmed. Clearly marked ambulances being targeted by Israel, reporters, disinformation about Palestinians being able to just leave the area or warned before a building is felled.
What exactly is your "equivalance" position based on, Sam? Who has had medical support during covid and whose clinics were bombed? Who has education to elect and act more wisely? How has Jared not affected tensions by the imprisoned? Which of those 1.1 million children elected Hamas before they were born in 2006?
Then there's bibi netanyahu: castrating the supreme court to evade criminal charges of fraud. Vetos by US to help him evade war tribunal and resolutions against his illegal occupation. You support Ukraine for fighting back against Russia but Palestinians should be more patient and trust the murderous, corrupt, thieving, lying, and extortionist regime that oppresses them because Israel has earned the trust of Palestinians who have had nothing to do with any of this conflict?
That's really, really dumb imho.
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That call transcription sounds more like a kid trying to impress his parents, and parents who feel ashamed of the decisions they made raising their child, than a religion of murder or a culture of massacre supporters... People are people, you can't sincerely believe 52:00 sounds like a logical, sound, educated mind from an untraumatized upbringing conflicted by a lifetime of propaganda ignored by the world as they watch white countries receive weapons to defend themselves from occupations.
Context IS important, it is patently false to believe decades of child murders by isarealis didn't translate to the Hamas attacks. Gruesome murder is gruesome murder, even if it's in smaller bits over longer time frames.
Mass shooters in the US are more random than Hamas attacks. In the US people have a chance with libraries and freedom of movement to pursue prosperity. They are far more radical imho than Hamas. That doesn't justify or apologize for terror at all, it's to point out that distressed people - faith or not - do this. Desperate people commit atrocities. The solution is alleviating desperation, not murdering children as collateral damage and refusing humanitarian aid. You need to keep your ideas in context, as you rightly promote is sound and wise practise.
You can't compare oppressed people not retaliating. USA retslliates too, like Iraq; are they Hamas too because other nations wouldn't have done that? No, that's absurd right? Think more deeply please.
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I think the fallacy your theories fall prey to most often are not logical fallacies until viewed from a higher vantage point. The diversity of thought itself sharpens the minds of others who rightly agree hut under false pretenses. The adage of the person believing something that is true when they have evidence it is true but still wind up being incapable of knowing they were right (the person on horseback behind the wall, assuming there's a horse you can't see. There is a horse, but the person bobbing up and down which led you to believe they're on horseback was just tall and limping and the horse was hidden behind then, being too small of a horse to be ridden)
Without the debate and diversity of belief in truth, not just wanton but fervent true belief, we would lose the chance and the unlikely only path to utopia being engineered out of possibility if it just so happened one of those irrational routes wound up being the only route to utopia.
You don't need a lot of outspoken dissenters in a society to have that diversity, but the hubris of relying on our believed approach of abject logic exclusively presupposes we already have a proof to lead to that perfect end state while simultaneously admitting with that same rationale that perfection of all humans at one time is immeasurably impossible. Our own train of thought requires that we push our rational mode of thought for the betterment of mankind, but it also requires that until such time we have a perfect proof against spiritual or theistic pursuits over the long run of evolutionary time scales, not just our lifetimes, until then we have to cultivate and entertain dissent - within reason. It must be the case that if we admit uncertainty of the path to perfection which all ratiinalists must, we in turn must also ensure we don't snuff out the unlikely but possible exclusive paths to eudaimonia in the process of intellectual / metaphysical self adulation.
It is imperative we tolerate diversity of cultures for this reason among many others, like subjective feelings of community and identity. We may well outgrow this in 10,000 years, but for the time being it is a beauty and wonder of human nature which our ultimate goal is to strive to preserve.
Put another way, if we discovered color vision was a maladaptation for civilized cultures like humanity today, even if we knew for sure we could quash all needless suffering and many illness onset by stress if only our colour vision didn't predispose our brains to violence and greed on aggregate over time, who would be willing to deprive themselves or their child of the beauty of colour? It might be rational, but we live once. If we were assured to reach utopic society in 10,000 years without removing colour vision, but 1,000 if we did engineer our biology for it, one could easily imagine violent eugenics movements, wars, despots eager to herald the dawn of a new age...
And then what if we discover a new particle turning that entire theory on its head 800 years after the colour vision purge? Oops? We've caused the loss of hope for that eventuality by rushing toward it in hubris, ignorant of our own flawed rationale.
Without the mathematical proof of religion being a guaranteed detriment we ought to debate it, surely, but never fall into the trap to presume we know better having had 100 years of quantum mechanics explaining electromagnetism that we know all there is to know about light and QFT.
To use rational in favour of your philosophy requires you to take on the burden of also subjecting your own philosophies to the added scrutiny of that open mindedness. If we think we know better it is incumbent upon us to challenge our much more thought out philosophies with even more rigor, because plucking the low hanging fruit of an ancient tradition might not necessarily even be in our rational best interests.
Fight oppression and suffering, absolutely, but calling for the abolition of divergent thinking had always led down the path of two steps backward before taking a step forward. That's what history has shown time and time again since slavery seemed natural and racism seemed obviously reasonable for centuries across cultures and spanning eons.
We're clever, but until we figure it out with irrefutable proof the best we can do is debate and persuade, not abolish. Abolition leads to conflict, persuasion leads to compromise, sharpened thought / language, and a richness of community which objectively and subjectively adds intrinsic value to quality of life to such an extent thousands sacrifice their lives for it annually for millennia. Logically it is preposterous to me to suppose that since I believe I'm right about my high minded intellectualism, so too do the faithful in their high-hearted spiritualism. If I can't prove them wrong I want them around to speak to because they make me better and add value to the world I live in too.
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Bayesian symbolic vector associations are not expériences. If à machine were to become conscious via machine learning it would not be able to experience the qualia of experience. I know this because biology is life stemming from life, it is emergent. Machines don't have the cellular memories of animals and plants which create opinions and bias that shape character with culture, hope and desires.
A bit has no culture, no kinship, no feeling of the data it processes just like a cleverly designed river that counts in binary is just water falling into jugs, not a conscious act of the waterfall to perform binary logic.
A matrix dot product system of weights is not feeling anything, it is electrons tumbling in order based on probabilistic circuits it resides in. It produces language because language is a tool we use to transmit and receive abstractions from/into our psyches. Mimicking a tool is not the same as mimicking the users of that tool. When a computer develops its own language on its own to achieve its own goals in its leisure time, maybe then you could make the case for conscious AI but signs of that would show long before the tipping point just like amino acids appear long before RNA and DNA.
Real synthetic life projects do exist but they are not computer systems, they are us mimicking the tools of biology - electrical signals and implants in regenerative organisms. You're worried about the wrong side of artificial intelligence when talking about machine learning. It's like claiming my saw is a real carpenter...
Logic gates are not life. Life takes quantum mechanics, chemistry, and time to develop its capacity for experience. Circuits are fixed straws not amorphous clouds. Brains and culture are clouds, mutations are imprecise; circuits are randomized by algorithms relative to their clock cycles which are also fixed and determinate.
The danger of ai is the users just like weapons or parliamentary power. It's the wielder and exclusion of access that creates risk. It's the guardrails and lack of regulation and transparency that's the risk, not a conscious silicone rebellion.
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