AES doing what Sam says he wouldn’t.

Sam Harris recently said in his podcast that El-Sayed is a «covert islamist» because his spidey senses told him so. He clearly doesn’t believe El-Sayed to be a good faith political actor. He also says we should believe jihadists when they say what they mean.

Why not believe El-Sayed when he says what he believes about the constitution?

As someone who knows nothing and is compassed by intuition, the phenomena that are talarico and el sayed give me pause and dare I say hope, especially given the their positions in the non-secular landscape. Am I alone in thinking that a honest, good faith 3 way conversation about everything wouldn’t be interesting? Apologies if this post is redundant.

So what now? Obama seems to be putting all the blame on Israel, which seems to be the world's norm. Palestine is apparently the innocent victim here.

What would Sam say? :)

Relevant IMO as Sam Harris has spoken repeatedly about UN bias and that the charge of genocide is unfounded. This debate lends heavily towards his assessment.

Debate here, transcript here

This debate took place a few days ago. It was between Chris Sidoti (member of the 3 person UN Commission that 'found' Israel committed genocide in Gaza) versus Brian Cox, international criminal law expert. Panelist and audience questions were included. Its brutal, Sidoti admits the commission didnt verify evidence, conveniently forgets things, etc.

Some highlights here, the IVF clinic exchange is bonkers:

Sidoti admits the commission didnt make its determination in a standard beyond a reasonable doubt (i.e. the ONLY reasonable inference for what we're seeing is clear unambiguous genocidal intent), but merely reasonable inference where there may be reasonable doubt. And this "inference" is made while simultaneously acknowledging Israel's intent was to eliminate Hamas

Sidoti: According to the International Court of Justice, to form a conclusion that the purpose is genocidal on the basis of inference requires that inference be the only reasonable inference available. That’s a really high test. It’s a test in fact that in my opinion is higher than the criminal standard of beyond reasonable doubt. You know you can say you can have four or five possible inferences that you can draw from circumstantial evidence and you can conclude I have no doubt that this is the inference that we must draw. But in the case of genocidal purpose, it has to be the only reasonable inference, not just the one that we have no reasonable doubt about. [...]

Sidoti: The fighting, the strategy can be undertaken in such a way in our view of the law that it can coexist with a goal of eliminating Hamas and there were a number of factors which we can go into later that induced us to come to that conclusion.

Audience member asks about the Guardian's reporting (cited in the UN report) that 83% of the dead were civilians, and what the steps commission took to verify that. The answer was nothing.

Audience Member: I’d just like to ask—your report says that [unclear] Israeli intelligence identified 8,900 dead or probably dead Hamas and PIJ militants out of roughly 53,000 fatalities. That means 83% were civilians. Did the commission independently establish that the remaining approximately 44,000 people were civilians?

Chris Sidoti: No we didn’t because we don’t have that information. Nor did we establish that the numbers that the IDF claimed were militants were accurate as well. So we literally do not know nor does anybody else know including the IDF how many militants were there. But the IDF is claiming that there were 17,000, 17% Sorry.

A panelist inquires about Israel purportedly destroying 5000 embryos at an IVF clinic, listed in the UN report as Israel "Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group".

As it turns out, the number wasnt 5000, the clinic wasnt necessarily destroyed by Israel, the UN ignored its own witness, the building was not marked as a fertility clinic (google it), and Sidoti fumbles and stumbles along!

Mark Holtz (panelist): We’ve already researched this. You claim that 5,000 embryos were wasted and births were prevented in Gaza. And it’s very sad, but your own expert told you that the director of the hospital had destroyed 2,000 embryos himself because they’d run out of nitrogen. So you’ve got running out of nitrogen. The place has been taken over by raging terrorists. We know that. Or Israel sent a tank to line up the one shot? This is the only reasonable explanation you found? So how did you confirm that the Israeli tank was responsible?

Chris Sidoti: Firstly, let me say I cannot give you a detailed response because I’ve not looked at this now for two years that one on the 5,000 or or whatever

Mark Holtz: You you’ve said Israel committed genocide. You should know your facts. [applause]

Chris Sidoti: I know my facts, Mark. But I don’t necessarily sit here without notice being able to go through the information on every single case. But I can tell you that it was a tank shell. Hamas doesn’t have tanks.

Mark Holtz: But they’ve got Kornet missiles. They’ve got RPGs. They have multiple.

Chris Sidoti: It was a tank shell. It was a tank shell.

Mark Holtz: Why are there no burn marks in the building? If it was an Israeli tank, and you’re battle damage assessment experts and I’ve asked a few people, you wouldn’t have the coffee cup still sitting on the table, the papers on the desk, and the glass window not broken in your own pictures. Because if it was an Israeli tank shell, there’d be shit everywhere.

Chris Sidoti: Okay. I don’t know about that. I mean, I haven’t looked at that. There were no buildings surrounding it that were damaged at the time that this was done. There was no fighting going on at the time that the shell was fired. The building was marked as a fertility clinic in Arabic, but with also an international symbol that it was a medical facility.

Mark Holtz: No, no, there was no I’ve got the picture. It wasn’t.

Chris Sidoti: It was

Mark Holtz: And you said at a press conference that you have no evidence and you actually believe the tank driver or shooter who didn’t know it wasn’t.

Chris Sidoti: Now, that I can respond to. I said that. Yes.

Mark Holtz: Good.

Chris Sidoti: But I also said that it was quite clear to us that the targeting authorities that those who were responsible for targeting would have known that it was a medical facility and what the medical facility was used for. It was the largest by far fertility clinic in Gaza and was well known as such. And are you saying that the Israeli intelligence didn’t know that a medical facility providing fertility services was a medical facility providing fertility services? So, I said that the tank crew didn’t know and we don’t know what the tank crew knew.

Mark Holtz: Why did you intentionally not listen, your own expert said they can’t say it was an Israeli tank. The evidence is online. You interviewed the lady. Her name is Professor Parrin. She came from Chicago to Geneva. You deposed her. The evidence is online. I’ve got the transcript. I’ve watched the evidence. But what she said that there weren’t 5,000 embryos. So, there were either 3,000 embryos or no embryos. But you’ve got that, you just ignored it.

Chris Sidoti: Look I’m stumbling and I know that I shouldn’t be stumbling in front of this particular audience, but I don’t want to answer the question unless I’ve gone back and looked at it again.

Are the full (subscriber) transcripts of Sam’s podcast episodes available somewhere? I poked around the web site and came up empty.

A discussion between conservative Bret Stephens (prior guest I believe) and liberal Frank Bruni. Bret brings up a lot of the concerns of Mamdani and El-Sayed that Sam does, but I agree with Franks position that there are much bigger issues and the Democratic Party is not a monolith like the Republicans and can better handle less than perfect candidates. Frank states what I’ve been thinking and been frustrating me about Sam - much clearer and calmer than I could. Good read.

Im pretty sure some of y'all have listened to this already. A fascinating conversation about anthropomorphizing AI tools. For someone who's instinctively turned off by AI for the most part but hypocritically uses it a bit to make some parts of work easy, I find it truly interesting that a lot of people turn to bots for regular and intimate conversations.

Quite a few things I took away and ponder but I would like to hear y'all thoughts and experiences.

1) "We nurture things we love and love things we nurture" (but) also "We dont care about people because we love them. We love them because we care."

2) I seen this personally myself where some people justify their reliance of these bots as them training the chatbot but really the bots are the ones training us. As a result, we expect people to behave a certain way and run from friction, which is arguably a greater good for society.

3) The problem with using chatbots for therapy is that they don't care. Their "care" is just a reward function that is controlled by corporations with arguably conniving motives. There's also mention of distinction between care vs contract. How it shapes commitment, the metrics of a good relationship and why that matters to the people involved in that relationship/transaction.

4) As physical human connections are becoming harder to establish and maintain, reliance on chatbots for exactly that erodes a very human need to have a wide spectrum of conversations. Paradoxically, that depends on our ability to tolerate uncomfortable situations and conversations.

Can someone explain Sam's obsession with Hasan Piker? All I know about the guy is that he's a twitch streamer who doesn't seem all that serious. It's like watching a grown man go into moral panic and have an existential crisis over an unserious pewdiepie rant. The latest "more from Sam" he goes on and on about "we" shouldn't be talking about Piker. But the only person I know who constantly brings him up is Sam himself.

Long-time Sam and Bret fan here. Bret was right about so much, and Sam publicly disowned him as a charlatan. Sam is a genius and rarely misses. It is my contention that he was so so wrong on this one and owes the Weinstein’s an apology. I hope their friendship can heal. Try to change my mind.

'The feeling of not liking, this feeling of outrage, this feeling of disgust, this feeling of 'Sam, what the fuck is wrong with you? Why are you even touching this topic? This feeling... isn't an argument. It isn't, or shouldn't be, the basis for your believing anything to be true or false about the world. Your capacity to be offended isn't something that I or anyone else needs to respect. Your capacity to be offended isn't something that you should respect. In fact it's something that you should be on your guard for, perhaps more than any other property of your mind. This feeling can mislead you. If you care about justice, and you absolutely should, you should care about facts and the ability to discuss them openly. Justice requires contact with reality. It simply isn't the case, it cannot be the case, that the most pressing claims on our sense of justice need come from those who claim to be most offended by conversation itself.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xs9XSKCoCAI

Haviv gives his perspective here, and it mainly aligns with what Dara Horn told Sam in their recent podcast chat. Mainly that in history antisemites have repurposed words/language like this in the past and dropping the word doesnt change anything anything, and it shouldnt be dropped.

That convo with Dara was as follows:

[46:15] Dara: Just to be clear to your listeners, Zionism is the support for a Jewish state in the historic homeland of the Jewish people people in the land of Israel. And that's literally it. It has nothing to do with any particular Israeli government, there's nothing about Zionism that precludes palestinian independence or dignity, and that's really it.

Dara: And what that means in reality in terms of like living in 2026 for most Jews around the world, what it means to be a Zionist is 'I dont want the state of Israel to be destroyed'

[...] [59:47, Sam asks about dropping the word]

Dara: Why would you give those people ground by ceding your own word that is 3000 years old? [...]

Dara: This is a 3000 year old word, Zion, it's on like every other page of the traditional prayer book, right? [...]

[Sam asks what it means to be a zionist today]

Dara: [...] it means in practicality you dont want your friends and family in Israel to be murdered

Speaking for myself this is exactly what it means to me!

In Sam's last podcast episode (#497), discussing the new documentary about Elon Musk, Sam admitted that watching it made him realize Musk was already a terrible person back when they were friendly. He acknowledged that Musk had already done or said horrible things, but claimed he simply wasn't aware of them at the time.

This is a repeating pattern. We all have blind spots (Sam has admitted them), and being bad at some things (he has also admitted being a bad judge of character) is only human, but the repeated inability to learn from identical past mistakes is more difficult to excuse.

Over the last year, when questioned about alleged horrible statements or actions, or more generally about his opinion about people of his circle (Bari Weiss, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Douglas Murray...), his default defense remains: "I haven't been paying attention," "I'm not aware of what happened," concluding with a "these people are amazing in my view." Obviously, he shouldn't blindly believe his audience, but a critical person would spend at least one minute researching online to check if serious allegations are true, rather than maintaining the same lack of skepticism that failed him in the past.

I have to admit I have no theory of mind that explains why he does that. Is he just lazy? This behavior is at odds with his reputation as a careful thinker. If someone has a hypothesis that explains this inability to learn from past mistakes, please share it in the comments.

Disclaimer: In Max Stirner’s philosophy of Egoism, “spook” is a translation of Spuk and refers to an idea, belief, or social construct that comes to dominate or possess an individual. Social constructs aren't bad, it's when we become possessed by them that they become spooks. Stirner’s use of the word "spook" has nothing to do with the racial slur that it sometimes resembles in English.

I am an Egoist as described by Max Stirner, and I'm a Christian. Egoism is the philosophy that the individual should act according to their own will, desires, and interests rather than being bound by external moral or ideological obligations (for example, I am good to people because I want to be good to people). I would say this is (at least somewhat) different from having a guiding set of principles, given that a person's will and desires are constantly changing. Social constructs are not bad, and can be quite good, it's when one becomes possessed by them that they become a spook.

I also believe in some concept of natural moral law. I agree with much of anarchist and Christian Gary Chartier’s natural-law philosophy that there are objective moral principles discoverable through reason, grounded in what helps human beings flourish and live well. I combine this with Egoism ultimately by using my own ego and conscience to determine what I recognize as true and worthwhile.

I use ideologies and philosophies that align with my conscience and ego. I am under the umbrella of left-libertarian because my ego and conscience aligns with it on most things. I'm not sure that I'd consider myself an anarchist.

I fully agree that I shouldn't be possessed by the social constructs that I utilize, but with one exception: my Christianity. I am indeed "possessed" by my Christianity in a way that I'm sure Max Stirner would have criticized. But I'm also not devoted to all of Stirner's opinions (that would violate my egoism and I'm sure he wouldn't want that anyways). After all, my philosophy is a form of Christian Egoism that is seen as contradictory by most egoists, but not by me.

My ego is capable of choosing its own subordination. I choose to belong to Christianity, and therefore my belonging to Christianity is not a defeat of my ego but an act of my ego. As St. Paul/Paul of Ephesus said, I am a slave to Jesus Christ. Or at least, I want to be a slave to my understanding of Christ.

The greatest act of fulfilling my ego is being possessed by the greatest social construct of all time. A social construct I believe to be both transcendent of all other social constructs, and nevertheless still a social construct. I know how to fulfill the wants of my ego better than anyone else does.

I've never really considered debating my religious views previously because I know I'd be asked for proof of my beliefs, and to that I would say my ego informs me of its validity. That's all I have, and all I need. Christianity is true for me because my ego and my conscience tells me it's true. The parts of the Bible I believe are true because my ego tells it's true, and the parts of the Bible I don't believe are because my ego tells me it's not true. If that answer isn't sufficient to someone, it isn't a problem because they don't have to believe the same things I do. All other Christian religions (Evangelical, Catholic, Methodist, etc.) are wrong to me because they don't align with my views. All other non-Christian religions (like Buddhism) are also wrong to me for the same reason.

I believe that some level of free will probably exists, and that if it does, it is likely some sort of emergent property. Regardless of if we have free will or not, it is imperative for me to function as if I have free will.

I also believe that without Egoism or something similar, Christianity and all other religions can become dangerous, because people can believe bad things that are blindly taught to them in the name of their religion.

The chaplain had mastered, in a moment of divine intuition, the handy technique of protective rationalization, and he was exhilarated by his discovery. It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character.

-- page 363, 50th anniversary paperback

A few days ago, a 20 year old climbed over a tall fence than has to drop about 12-15 feet down into a tiger enclosure. He reportedly had a history of mental illness and had spoken of wanting to be a lion tamer. He was mauled and killed by the lion. While it was happening the zoo officials fired a couple of warning shots to obstensibly scare the lion. It did not work.

It didn't seem like to zoo keepers had a clean shot while the victim was still alive. However, If they did have a clean should they have taken it?

Does a human life outweighs the life of an animal? If a curious toddler had wandered into that enclosure, no one would hesitate. And it seems strange for the answer to depend on how the person got there.

But many people feel a competing intuition just as strongly. The lioness did nothing wrong. She was acting on instinct exactly as a tiger normally behaves, in the one place she was supposed to be. She could not leave. Humans brought her there. The 19 year old made an extraordinary effort to put himself in harm’s way. Killing the tiger to rescue him from his own decision seems, at the very least, unfair. Was it unethical to not take the shot?

What interests me is that this second intuition depends entirely on the notion of free will. It assumes the man authored his choice in a way the tiger did not. But did he?

He did not choose his genes. He did not choose his illness. He did not choose the desire to become a lion tamer, nor the conviction that he could survive the attempt. Each of these simply appeared in his mind, produced by causes he did not create and could not see. Had we found a tumor pressing on his frontal lobe, everyone would immediately grant that he was a victim of his biology. The uncomfortable truth is that the ordinary workings of a brain are no less exculpatory than a tumor. The difference is only that we can name the tumor.

Once we see this clearly, the man and the tiger occupy the same moral category. Neither could have done otherwise. Neither deserves blame. We should no more hate the tiger for attacking him than we should hate him for climbing in. We might as well blame a hurricane.

The question is no longer who deserves what. It is what action best serves the wellbeing of conscious creatures. And here the answer seems clear. A human being has a richer inner life, more relationships, and far more future experience at stake. If the shot is truly clean, the shot is warranted. Right? Not because the tiger is guilty, but because she isn’t, and neither is he.

So it seems to me that abandoning the illusion of free will settles this case rather decisively. But I’m curious whether anyone sees a coherent path to sparing the animal that does not bring blame back in through the side door.

How is the author of The Moral Landscape not even a vegetarian, for christ sake?

He’s written a book arguing that morality should be grounded in the wellbeing of conscious creatures.

He then proceeds to pay others to torture, bully and kill animals as sentient as human toddlers because he can’t be bothered to get his protein from other sources.

Did I mention he’s a multi-millionaire who could afford (if he doesn’t already have) a personal chef. He could eat delicious meat-free food with zero effort and can’t even muster up the courage of his convictions to make that (non) sacrifice.

Sam Harris speaks with Alex Gibney about his new documentary, Musk. They discuss Sam’s former friendship with Musk, the line between visionary and con man, the myth of Tesla’s founding, the staged self-driving video, Musk’s lurch to the right, DOGE and the dismantling of USAID, his feud and reconciliation with Trump, Starlink and the war in Ukraine, the case for future investigations, and other topics.

Link to the episode: https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/497-the-confidence-man

He wrote the book “Taking Religion Seriously” in 2025. Sam Harris really had a way of overlooking red flags whenever he has liked bigotry/racism. In the end nearly every writer he has made friends with has ended up selling out and traded their integrity for more book sales from the masses.

The subject of this podcast that everyone here looks up to defended this man as definitely a misunderstood intellectual of the highest rationality who was above biases like racism. And then spent years attacking Ezra Klein for telling him on Twitter a few times that he was wrong about Murray and should stop calling him either good or a scholar. Ezra's main argument was that Sam should be careful and speak to a different IQ scholar who could debunk Murray easily, but instead he spent years doing no such thing while defending Murray.