Comments by "Tony Wilson" (@tonywilson4713) on "Sam Harris" channel.

  1. I will grant Sam any day of the week that MOST of his argument is valid, but the small part where he is TOTALLY 100% WRONG needs saying. Claiming cultural superiority is the most dangerous of all human traits because at its most basic it decides the fate of people by their birth. Its the very basis for for so many of histories ugliest moments. Every cultural and tribal and nation group has its fanatics and every so often that group takes control. That usually happens when a society is under stress. We are seeing that in America right now, where there is staggering economic stress over a massive section of the population. Its what's allowed Trump to grasp the power base that he has. The stress that Israel has applied to the Palestinian people for such a long time now has lead many young Palestinians right into the arms of Hamas. Just like the stress on many young Germans in the 1930s lead them into the arms of the Nazis. The other thing is that such fanatics will mistreat their own people with MORE violence and cruelty than they treat others. In Germany people who they felt were unworthy of being shot were guillotined like Sophie Scholl whose crime was distributing anti-Nazi Pamphlets at the University of Munich. A few weeks back Vice News did a story titled "Israel’s Far Right Government is a Gift to Settlers" in that story a young settler who has been REMOVED from land he has claimed on multiple occasions by ISRAELI authorities. They have told him repeatedly that this patch of land is NOT HIS to take. In the interview in one breath he's claiming that he's peaceful and he says "I'm a Jew talking to a non-Jew peacefully" In the next breath he basically says that anyone who doesn't agree with what he wants should have their heads cut off. Whenever you ignore the fanatics among any group they will fester and wait for an opportunity to grasp power. Right now Sam should have a look over his shoulder at the Libertarians in America. They've been waiting decades to grasp power and Trump opened the door for them BECAUSE the lazy establishments of both the DNC and RNC left a massive slab of the American population vulnerable to a morally bankrupt person like Trump. The lesson is: NEVER ignore the fanatic in your own culture or one day they will rip your people apart when you least expect it.
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  2. That's PART of why I gave up watching him. The other part was his hypocrisy over Netanyahu's prosecution of Gaza. Sam came out and made this very sound point that there was "no moral ambiguity" that Hamas were simply criminals who dealt in terror AND I AGREED WITH THAT. But he's NEVER put Netanyahu or the State of Israel to the same scrutiny. You can't claim a high moral position and then subscribe to the mass murder of children and there are now over 16,000 dead children in Gaza and 1,000s more who have lost arms, legs and been maimed for life. Here he is asking is History repeating itself. Well look at Gaza. How many times does the world have to watch the wholesale slaughter of children and then 10 years later some of the survivors turn up wearing Hamas headbands and doing horrible things? Its has not been widely discussed but support for Hamas was collapsing PRIOR to the October 7th attacks. Most of the Gaza population saw Hamas as nothing but a gang of criminals. Since the onslaught by the IDF support for Hamas has grown. Just like it did after the last Intifada and the Intifada before that and the Intifada before that. Sam as usual mentions anti-Semitism. The problem is ANYTHING ANYONE says against the State of Israel is labelled an anti-Semite. I am all for the State of Israel existing and being allowed to live in peace with its neighbors, but they have to accept that the Palestinians ALSO EXIST and have the same basic rights. The Palestinians also have to accept the reality that groups like Hamas have no place in their future.
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  3.  @alive-q3j  That's the part that upset me too and I'm a white Anglo-Saxon Australian. We've seen enough of that here in our society to keep hammering away like this. Does Islam have a problem at the moment? Absolutely, but that problem is not a lot different to European history that Sam points out but then magically suggests it all behind us AND ITS JUST NOT. Every society has people in it who are a problem and if your society becomes stressed over an extended time period it allows those people an opportunity to take over. That's how Trump go into power. And the worst aspect of this is once enough people have dived into that space its very hard to pull them out because mob psychology takes over. So it can become very hard to deal with which is why America has the mess it has.
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  4. That is incredibly sarcastic and cynical and also 100% correct.
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  5.  @jaarneal  He is claiming another culture is inferior AT THE CULTURAL LEVEL and its NOT the first time. AND he is doing that for 2 Billion People across a staggering number of countries. I AGREE 100% that Hamas have done an insanely terrible and stupid and inexcusable thing, but to hold them 100% accountable for the shitfest of Gaza is equally stupid. If Sam was making this ANOTHER example of a religion in trouble with a section of its people out of control then I'm 100% on his side but he doesn't do that. He's painted this as Islam is 100% wrong to its core and that condemns 2 Billion people most of who have not a damn thing to do with this mess. Maybe he can explain why his peaceful Buddhist Regime in Burma can justify their treatment of the Rohingya people, because Sam has a history with Buddhists, go check his Wikipedia. Its his complete dismissal of accountability of the Israeli government that I take offense at. Sorry but that is simply BULLSHlT and he should know better. For example on his claim of holding people accountable. How about the MURDER last year of Journalist Shireen Abu Akleh who was covering the IDF incursion into the Jenin refugee camp on 11 May 2022. She was clearly identified as PRESS by the Blue Body Vest with PRESS written on it and was shot in the head. Are you seriously going to tell people that a trained military sniper couldn't see who she was in his scope? How about the spotter? You do know snipers act in a team with one of them as the spotter who has a wider field of view and does the range finding and wind. The spotter job is to decide what targets are and aren't valid. Sniper shots are NOT accidentally taken. They are planned and taken quite deliberately. So for the IDF to claim there was no fault in that is complete BULLSHlT. There have been so many case over the years where Israeli soldiers DELIBERATELY targeted Palestinian children. At one point in the Intifada there'd been about 30 children shot dead by the IDF and the IDF were claiming again and again that they were not targeting children. Then one day a journalist asked if they weren't targeting children then how come (I think it was) 26 out of 27 deaths were by single shots to the head. It was between 25 and 30 and only 1 wasn't a head shot. It was by trained military personnel and they claimed there was no targeting. And finally if you really want to discuss who are and who aren't fanatics in the Palestinian-Israel shit show then explain who shot Yitzhak Rabin? By the way did you know Sam's mother is Jewish although the claim is she's non-religious???
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  6.  @gammagongetya8967  They said Trump preached faith. Nobody said he practiced it.
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  7. There's another part of this discussion that needs discussing and that's the degrading of institutions BY EXPERTS. At the start Sam said Bret went to the University of Chicago or as I like to call it the Grand Temple of Narcissistic Arrogance. That place was in part founded by John D. Rockefeller himself the man who made his entire career about how useless government was and that the general population needed a strong hand like his to guide it. Out of UC came McKinsey the worlds largest and most influential consultancy and Chicago School economics which has done nothing for 90% of the developed world and been fantastic for the type of narcissist that Rockefeller was the model for. I'm Australian and right now we are trying to find out how to deal with the utter SHlTFUCKERY of the consulting industry. The big 4 as they are referred to here (EY, KPMG, Deloitte and PwC) have all been involved in a series of scandals that have undermined our nation. We haven't yet got to discussing McKinsey and Boston Group. That major problem we now have is EXACTLY what British-Italian economist Mariana Mazucatto has been saying. She's quoted a British MP who decried the fact that the British government had become infantilized by the consulting industry. This is a backlash America needs to be ready to face. All these consultancies that are screwing up Western governments (McKinsey, Boston Group, EY, KPMG, Deloitte and PwC) they are all AMERICAN.
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  8.  @neirinski  SIMPLY based on your last very snide remark F⋃CK OFF. Go back and read what I ACTUALLY SAID. The problem is NOT Sam's arguments of what IS and IS NOT morally ambiguous or morally absolute. The problem is Sam applying to one side AND NOT THE OTHER. You cannot honestly say that killing 1,200 people is morally reprehensible in absolute terms and then dismiss killing over 16,000 children and maiming 1000s more as morally ambiguous. That is not only a hypocritical position that is MORALLY DISGUSTING it is the same sort of argument the Nazis used and other psychotic leaderships that went on rampages have used.
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  9. Sorry, but I am an engineer. How TF does a penthouse weigh 400lbs? That's bits of this I can easily say are flawed but if you are going to be critical get you stuff right.
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  10. There's actually a "List of nuclear close calls" and despite what happened in 1973 being way too close there's a couple of others that got closer. There's also one close call that's NOT on that list and that's the one where a software engineer loaded up a simulation into the BACK-UP system (I think on Friday) and didn't tell people that it was ready to go. While that software engineer wasn't present the main system faulted and the back-up system kicked in and started running the simulation AND NOBODY KNEW it was a simulation. They apparently got within seconds of pushing the button when someone realised that it was running the simulation that they were planning to run in future.
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  11. ​ @shawnlund  Your RIGHT, Sam has NOT defended the atrocities aimed at Palestinians. He's simply remained silent on it and THAT'S the point. Sam Harris came out and slammed Islam (as in 1.3 Billion people) as subhuman animals because they DID NOT condemn Hamas and that there was nothing "morally ambiguous" about that. Its his words on his channel. I absolutely agree 100% with Sam's position on Hamas and that his condemnation of them has no morally ambiguity about it. What they did Oct 6th and have been doing for years is disgusting. BUT - You can't claim there's no moral ambiguity on condemning the slaughter of 1,200 and then REMAIN SILENT on slaughtering over 16,000 children. And if you can't see the hypocrisy in that then you need your moral compass checked because its broken.
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  12.  @gammagongetya8967  And again as has been said many many times - preaching isn't the same as practicing.
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  13. FANTASTIC AND I AGREE 100% WITH YOU Now please kindly go and tell Sam Harris to GO F⋃CK HIMSELF ON HIS IDENTITY POLITICS Because Sam has played the identity politics again and again and again with respect to the Palestinians. Sam Harris can make what ever claim he wants about Hamas Jihadists and I WILL AGREE WITH HIM. But when he makes claims about "Moral Ambiguity" as in there is no moral ambiguity regarding how evil Hamas is for what they do and then he does NOT apply the same scrutiny to Benjamin Netanyahu and the radical Zionists who have (among other things) slaughtered over 16,000 children who had NOTHING to do with the October 7th Attacks then he is the person who is playing identify politics and doing it at a level that is disgusting. SO YES I WILL APPLAUD the end of Identity Politics, but it has to be all of the identity politics not just the parts we dislike.
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  14. Up to point. He is 100% RIGHT about the Jihadists - NOBODY can live with them and its about time the Muslim world dealt with this problem instead of funding it. He is 100% WRONG that ALL the people protesting Israel at the moment are suffering moral ambiguity. Some no doubt are, but most recognise that the belligerent bombing campaign that has included 4,000 children being killed IS WRONG. If Sam thinks protesting the slaughter of 4,000 children is wrong then the person suffering moral ambiguity is Sam Harris. On the Hamas tunnel system. That's not an original idea either. Its the same strategy the Vietnamese Communists used against America in the Vietnam War. They could not control the sky overhead so they went underground and attacked by stealth. Even that wasn't here idea. Its been practised for centuries to hide soldiers in covered pits. Sam is also (and I think deliberately) leaving out certain facts. 1) Suicide bombing IS NOT a purely Jihadist tactic. It was notably used by the Japanese in World War 2, but also by the Chinese against the Japanese in World War 2. Its been used by others with no links to Islam. Go look up "Suicide Attack" on Wikipedia and look at the Pre-1980 history. 2) Hamas was foundered and funded by Bibi Netanyahu so that Yasar Arafat's Fatah would have an opposition and it would keep the Palestinians divided.
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  15. Up to point. He is 100% RIGHT about the Jihadists - NOBODY can live with them and its about time the Muslim world dealt with this problem instead of funding it. He is 100% WRONG that ALL the people protesting Israel at the moment are suffering moral ambiguity. Some no doubt are, but most recognise that the belligerent bombing campaign that has included 4,000 children being killed IS WRONG. If Sam thinks protesting the slaughter of 4,000 children is wrong then the person suffering moral ambiguity is Sam Harris. On the Hamas tunnel system. That's not an original idea either. Its the same strategy the Vietnamese Communists used against America in the Vietnam War. They could not control the sky overhead so they went underground and attacked by stealth. Even that wasn't here idea. Its been practised for centuries to hide soldiers in covered pits. Sam is also (and I think deliberately) leaving out certain facts. 1) Suicide bombing IS NOT a purely Jihadist tactic. It was notably used by the Japanese in World War 2, but also by the Chinese against the Japanese in World War 2. Its been used by others with no links to Islam. Go look up "Suicide Attack" on Wikipedia and look at the Pre-1980 history. 2) Hamas was foundered and funded by Bibi Netanyahu so that Yasar Arafat's Fatah would have an opposition and it would keep the Palestinians divided.
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  16. I'm an engineer whose been privately studying economics for a couple of years and COVID gave me a lot of time to watch a lot of economics lectures and talks. One such person is Mark Blyth (Brown U.) Listen to what he said in 2019 about Bitcoin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGuaoARJYU0&t=4673s It wasn't until another interview and he mentioned a Bank of England report (Q1 2014) that I worked out what Economists mean by "a unit of account." That report had 2 articles about how money is created in a modern economy. In a nutshell that term "unit of account" is how value is measured. To an economist value is like what temperature pressure, length, weight and time are to engineers. We know what those things are but we need ways to measure them reliably. Money is the way value is measured. Centimeters and Inches are to length what currencies are to value. And we also have conversions factors, like the 2.54 that converts inches to centimeters called exchange rates. The bit that's strange to an engineer is that our conversions are constant they do not change. Money is different because economies are dynamic and they change and the value of things going from one economy to the next also change. It works because there's a reasonable amount of stability in economies. In fact economic stability is a requirement to make this work. Once you understand that basic concept of what money is and why economies work because they are reasonably stable then you can understand why Bitcoin is not money and the Chinese call cryptos "Digital gambling assets."
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  17. I'm an engineer and when people started telling me about crypto I was an immediate sceptic. HTF do you write code and create a data block and say its the same as money. Sorry but to every engineer outside the IT industry it was BS from the start. And for the record real engineers don't consider 90% of IT people real engineers. The other 10% I have huge respect for because they do amazing stuff.
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  18. good point there's so much we don't know and the stuff we do know we are missing lots of details about.
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  19. That is a very good way to describe what he does. We do really live in a dark storm of BULLSHlT. Although I tend to think that some of them are just wrong like Rogan tends to be I don't think he acts out of malicious intent. He just doesn't realise that his audience will react or what it might cause. Weinstein is just a sad sorry soul who has lost his way and can't admit that he's made mistakes. Again I don't think he acts out of malice just that he can't admit the mistake. Then there are the people like Shapiro who KNOW EXACTLY what they are doing and DO ACT with malice. Shapiro graduated from Harvard Law. That requires a serious level of intelligence. So he knows what he is doing AND THAT'S MALICIOUS.
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  20.  @jaarneal  You are without doubt one of the most morally bankrupt C⋃NTS I have ever encountered period. You have along with Sam Harris condemned 2 Billion Human beings on the basis that 1 subgroup acts like animals to which I have AGREED. Your logic is so bent that it also calls for the extermination of 330 million Americans because if you want to talk about a culture that glorifies killing and torture then lets start with the nation that presents to the entire world through its TV, Media and Films how it glorifies violence, killing and torture OR like all your KIND have you not forgotten the Invasion of Iraq where the Vice President of the United Stated personally approved the wonderfully titled "enhanced interrogation techniques"
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  21.  @jaarneal  As for the deflection on the MURDER of Shireen Abu Akleh you are so morally bankrupt is barely conceivable that you know how to breath oxygen. Here you are saying Sam's right on the Moral equivalence and this cannot equate to that and what did you do????? She was outright MURDERED and you pull that whataboutism crap. I've met your kind before.
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  22. Sorry you are wrong and there's actually a huge mistake made by Paul Robichaud at 28 minutes. Before he died Daniel Ellsberg who was their during the Cuban Missile Crisis gave an interview to theAnalysisNews -which is available here on YT. The American's NEVER depth charged the Russians but were actually trying to SIGNAL the Russian submarines by throwing hand grenades into the water. That wasn't working because they'd blow up before they went deep enough. So they started wrapping the hand grenades in toilet paper. They'd throw the hand grenades into the water which would then sink before the toilet paper fell away. What the American's didn't know was that this freaked out the Russian because at depth the hand grenades had a concussive effect that made the Russians feel like they were being attacked. What saved the world was the oddity that Vasily Arkhipov was on the particular submarine that thought it was under attack. Normally it only takes 2 people (the commander & political officer) to use a nuclear weapon. The submarine Arkhipov was on (the B-59) was one of 4 Foxtrot submarines sent to Cuba by the Russians. He was NOT the commander of the B-59 he was the overall Commander of the flotilla of 4 Foxtrots. On the B-59 the actual commander Valentin Savitsky and his political officer DID PREPARE to launch their T-5 nuclear torpedo, BUT because Arkhipov was on that submarine it also required him to agree and he didn't. He worked out the Americans were only trying to signal them. THAT'S HOW CLOSE IT WAS. Had Arkhipov been on one of the other Foxtrot submarines then Savitsky would have launched the B-59s nuclear torpedo which the Americans didn't even know they had. The Americans didn't find out for many years just how close it came. As a side note of trivia the character played by Liam Nesson (Mikhail "Misha" Polenin, E) in the film K19: The Widomaker is based on Arkhipov.
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  23. Up to point. He is 100% RIGHT about the Jihadists - NOBODY can live with them and its about time the Muslim world dealt with this problem instead of funding it. He is 100% WRONG that ALL the people protesting Israel at the moment are suffering moral ambiguity. Some no doubt are, but most recognise that the belligerent bombing campaign that has included 4,000 children being killed IS WRONG. If Sam thinks protesting the slaughter of 4,000 children is wrong then the person suffering moral ambiguity is Sam Harris. On the Hamas tunnel system. That's not an original idea either. Its the same strategy the Vietnamese Communists used against America in the Vietnam War. They could not control the sky overhead so they went underground and attacked by stealth. Even that wasn't here idea. Its been practised for centuries to hide soldiers in covered pits. Sam is also (and I think deliberately) leaving out certain facts. 1) Suicide bombing IS NOT a purely Jihadist tactic. It was notably used by the Japanese in World War 2, but also by the Chinese against the Japanese in World War 2. Its been used by others with no links to Islam. Go look up "Suicide Attack" on Wikipedia and look at the Pre-1980 history. 2) Hamas was foundered and funded by Bibi Netanyahu so that Yasar Arafat's Fatah would have an opposition and it would keep the Palestinians divided.
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  24. That's a really good point. I'm an engineer and almost anything engineers produce can be used and misused. Cars are incredibly useful until some clown drives drunk and kills someone. Explosives are incredibly useful in industries like mining. But if someone packs a truck full of it, like timothy McVeigh did then its a nightmare.
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  25. Up to point. He is 100% RIGHT about the Jihadists - NOBODY can live with them and its about time the Muslim world dealt with this problem instead of funding it. He is 100% WRONG that ALL the people protesting Israel at the moment are suffering moral ambiguity. Some no doubt are, but most recognise that the belligerent bombing campaign that has included 4,000 children being killed IS WRONG. If Sam thinks protesting the slaughter of 4,000 children is wrong then the person suffering moral ambiguity is Sam Harris. On the Hamas tunnel system. That's not an original idea either. Its the same strategy the Vietnamese Communists used against America in the Vietnam War. They could not control the sky overhead so they went underground and attacked by stealth. Even that wasn't here idea. Its been practised for centuries to hide soldiers in covered pits. Sam is also (and I think deliberately) leaving out certain facts. 1) Suicide bombing IS NOT a purely Jihadist tactic. It was notably used by the Japanese in World War 2, but also by the Chinese against the Japanese in World War 2. Its been used by others with no links to Islam. Go look up "Suicide Attack" on Wikipedia and look at the Pre-1980 history. 2) Hamas was foundered and funded by Bibi Netanyahu so that Yasar Arafat's Fatah would have an opposition and it would keep the Palestinians divided.
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  26. Yes its a shame Sam never got to interview Daniel Ellsberg as there's a massive mistake in this interview. at 28 minutes The Americans DID NOT depth charged the Russian submarines during the Cuban Missile Crisis. In an interview with theAnalysisNews (which is available here on YT) Daniel Ellsberg who was actually there at the time related what happened. The American's were actually trying to SIGNAL the Russian submarines by throwing hand grenades into the water. That wasn't working because they'd blow up before they went deep enough. So they started wrapping the hand grenades in toilet paper. They'd throw the hand grenades into the water which would then sink before the toilet paper fell away. What the American's didn't know was that this freaked out the Russian because at depth the hand grenades had a concussive effect that made the Russians feel like they were being attacked. What saved the world was the oddity that Vasily Arkhipov was on the particular submarine that thought it was under attack. Normally it only takes 2 people (the commander & political officer) to use a nuclear weapon. The submarine Arkhipov was on (the B-59) was one of 4 Foxtrot submarines sent to Cuba by the Russians. He was NOT the commander of that submarine he was the Commander the flotilla of 4 Foxtrots. On the B-59 the actual commander Valentin Savitsky. Savitsky and his political officer DID PREPARE to launch their T-5 nuclear torpedo, BUT because Arkhipov was on that submarine it also required him to agree and he didn't. He worked out the Americans were only trying to signal them. THAT'S HOW CLOSE IT WAS. Had Arkhipov been on one of the other Foxtrot submarines then Savitsky would have launched the B-59s nuclear torpedo which the Americans didn't even know they had. The Americans didn't find out for many years just how close it came. As a side note of trivia the character played by Liam Nesson (Mikhail "Misha" Polenin, E) in the film K19: The Widomaker is based on Arkhipov.
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  27. ATTENTION ALL: There is a huge mistake at 28 minutes. The Americans DID NOT depth charged the Russian submarines during the Cuban Missile Crisis. In an interview with theAnalysisNews (which is available here on YT) Daniel Ellsberg who was actually there at the time related what happened. The American's were actually trying to SIGNAL the Russian submarines by throwing hand grenades into the water. That wasn't working because they'd blow up before they went deep enough. So they started wrapping the hand grenades in toilet paper. They'd throw the hand grenades into the water which would then sink before the toilet paper fell away. What the American's didn't know was that this freaked out the Russian because at depth the hand grenades had a concussive effect that made the Russians feel like they were being attacked. What saved the world was the oddity that Vasily Arkhipov was on the particular submarine that thought it was under attack. Normally it only takes 2 people (the commander & political officer) to use a nuclear weapon. The submarine Arkhipov was on (the B-59) was one of 4 Foxtrot submarines sent to Cuba by the Russians. He was NOT the commander of that submarine he was the Commander the flotilla of 4 Foxtrots. On the B-59 the actual commander Valentin Savitsky. Savitsky and his political officer DID PREPARE to launch their T-5 nuclear torpedo, BUT because Arkhipov was on that submarine it also required him to agree and he didn't. He worked out the Americans were only trying to signal them. THAT'S HOW CLOSE IT WAS. Had Arkhipov been on one of the other Foxtrot submarines then Savitsky would have launched the B-59s nuclear torpedo which the Americans didn't even know they had. The Americans didn't find out for many years just how close it came. As a side note of trivia the character played by Liam Nesson (Mikhail "Misha" Polenin, E) in the film K19: The Widomaker is based on Arkhipov.
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  28.  @govindagovindaji4662  REALLY look at what he wrote "400lbs" NOT "£400" And that's before we get into what sort of penthouse costs £400. £400k or £400,000 makes some sense but NOT 400lbs £400 would barely buy the front door in most parts of London where billionaires live. Try being less of a DlCKHEAD in future. Its not a crime to actually think.
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