CFI-NYC | Sam Harris: The Moral Landscape 

2023 says “HELLO” 👋 😂

Yes, it would be a utopian world, lol

June, 4th, 2024 is still beyond relevant! Mind blogging!

Yes. But you are "Assuming" that most colleges want critically thinking students graduating and taking those skills out into the world. And that would be a serious mistake on your part. Higher learning simply means a greater level of indoctrination to the system for the most part.

@@tonio19 I can hope can't I?

@@Acecool444 Are you saying that Sam has plagiarized, or perhaps is quoting?

@@Acecool444 No, it isn't considered plagiarism to borrow from authorless and unprotected adage to illustrate a much wider point. That would be ridiculous.

​@@JohnDopping A fool that follows after a fool is more a fool than the fool he follows, easily drawn by shimmering spectacle, those words of pompous eloquence , where it's beauty is luring, yet dangerously deceptive, as a beautiful poisoned apple, truth for a lie, and stolen bread is sweet, as rats led by it's piper, all led to their doom, and awaiting to die.

@@JohnDopping When you're using familiar proverbs, well-known quotations or common knowledge, I would agree. This is not the case. As evidenced by the original comment from *n guemar* i.e. "his moral landscape analogy, of the peaks and troths,....is absolutely beautiful." Again! Sam Harris is clearly misleading his audience by paraphrasing as if his own.

Acecool444 First I have to point out the irony of you choosing the phrase “those words of pompous eloquence,” which pretty much sums up the entire comment in which the phrase appears. Your comment was void of any real wisdom. I would argue that Harris isn’t plagiarizing whoever created the adage about “traversing the hills and valleys of life.” That proverb is about finding happiness in a life where both happiness and suffering are possible. Harris is talking about creating societies whose laws, norms, and institutions allow for the greatest human flourishing, and linking this project to morality. Both draw on the common idea that life can either be very good or very bad. But to talk about the range of possible human experience is not plagiarism, nor does it make one a fool. To accuse Harris of plagiarism for making a philosophical case for the connection between well-being and morality simply because there’s a proverb that expresses a sentiment about the difference between being happy and unhappy is patently absurd. Most proverbs do contain a useful truth and to criticize any sophisticated attempt to distill one such truth as trite, foolish, or an act of plagiarism is quite honestly a very bizarre thing to do. This becomes even more bizarre when you take into account that Harris uses the landscape analogy not simply because life can be good or bad, but because a common objection to his argument is “but what if there are multiple ways to organize a society that maximizes human flourishing.” The landscape analogy shows that even though there may be two peaks of equal height, there is still a difference between being on a peak and being in a trough, thus moral truth is preserved (or at the very least moral relativism is still negated). The moral landscape is truly novel in that aspect.

Copyright avoidance. A lot of these lectures/debates in colleges or other institutions sign over rights for the media pieces to the institution in the contract. Pretty common practice actually

Thomas Mills have you watched his talks with jordan peterson and douglas murray this year? he talks about the dangers of islam quite in depth in those talks.

Hope you're still listening

Well, if you've read the Koran like I have, you would know just how mediocre it really is (very) & how schizophrenic Muhammad was (extremely). You would have one hell of a laugh just as i & the audience did. Ten paged kindergarten level books for 5 year old children have better moral opinions and coherent story lines, then the Koran. It really is like reading the diary entries of a violent, masochistic, misogynistic, retarded, schizo. Truly the biggest waste of time in my entire life other then gaining the wisdom to avoid "die-hard" Muslims. At many points of my read i was not only horrified,& mortified at what i was reading, but i was also disgusted, and felt that my intelligence was being insulted. TL;DR horrible book, would not recommend, I got a refund, strained my patience to finish reading this piece of excrement bound in leather.

staynifty Good response. While the "insecure middle school students" laugh, it's because what he's saying is laughable, not just because he's a charming guy.

***** Well how about for starters much of this implicit anger at the rich is simply unfounded. IMHO, much of it is a vestige of passages in the Bible like "a rich man has less chance of entering Heaven then a camel has of passing through the eye of a needle."

***** Why do you assume that all people who are rich have pushed others down? Why do you assume that everyone who is rich has exploited others?

***** I did read what you said and made a reasonable inference based on what you said. Reread your post and you will see that you spoke of people who are rich as a group and made no distinction. If you meant that you are only bothered by rich people who push down other people and by rich people who exploit others then you should have specified. Yes, you did say that you are bothered by people who only provide for their immediate family and don't care about others but you did not specify whether this is all rich people or only a subset. Let me ask you this, how about simply being bothered by people who exploit others and push other people down? Why assume that there is some connection to being rich? Further, when you claim that the rich "control the government" you have again made a rather hyperbolic statement, have you not? This is exactly whet I see very often and what I am talking about generally.

***** "I was making declarative statements..." ... NO, as I pointed out you had buried assumptions in what you said. Again, if you had simply said "it is bad to push people around and it is bad to exploit people" then that is one thing but you are linking these behaviors, that anyone can engage in, to some nebulous "rich people" set. Again, is it justified to use such a simplistic metric, namely whether a person is rich, to ascribe various negative qualities to the group? "in some cases, people exploit and push others down to get rich or richer" ... And you know what percentage of "rich people" engage in these behaviors? "it's large corporations, large and powerful interest groups, of which the most prevalent are economic interest groups, like oil companies, large banks, etc" ... here you are saying a very commonly held view. And your evidence for this is...? You feel like these groups are controlling the government? Do you have some actual examples where we are being injured by willful manipulation that is against the common persons interests? Where what is being done by the government is motivated by a underlying push to injure us and benefit the rich? "I think we have a *** up system" Are we talking now about the US? What system would you say would work better?

***** 1. fine... I get that sort of reaction a lot, I'm getting used to it. 2. OK, so let that marinated a bit. 3. Well, I think that might bear on some of your thinking... 4. Read a book... that's what you're suggesting? There are all sorts of books written, making all sorts of claims, I'm not sure that that is much of an answer. "A better system... "... What is your opinion of Capitalism? I suspect that, from what you said, that, whether you know it or not, you are not a fan...?