problem is globalist corporations are not beholden to the populations of their countries. that's why they can now virtue signal for the left and ignore the right
@@teksimian true a corporation cannot go to jail or be killed by a mob... So they shouldn't have the right to decide political activity if they can't be held accountable like a human can...
I totally agree with Sam and guest. I can't believe the firing and all the grief resulted from that passage. Dumb as hell. The cancel culture is brain dead.
I haven't read the book but if he is talking shit about specific employees by name that he worked with at previous jobs then I could see why people wouldn't want to work with him.
I just have the biggest problem with his ‘selective’ cancel culture is. Person a can say rather mild things and get canceled but person b and c can routinely say terrible things and nothing happens
He was crazily in love with a woman when he wrote a book about the other women he had encountered in the bay area in comparison and why that woman won him over. This book was written 5 years before he was hired by Apple, and only after they found he wrote this 5 years after he wrote it, they fired him. He said some negative things about other women in the field he had worked in. They were upset and offended that he would say such things about women in tech and in the area he worked and studied. That got him fired because he said in his experience that women he had met were so less of what he wanted then the woman he was in love with.
There's a brief mention of the issue just after the 30 minute mark. As mentioned by @Nathan Hunter, part of the book talks about starting a relationship with a (specific) woman. In the book, he describes the woman in a certain way, in contrast to (a somewhat derogatory characterization of) "other women in the Bay area". It's really just one sentence. Yes, if you were an easily offended woman living in the Bay area and read that passage out of context, you might be offended. Anyone else, especially those who had read the rest of the book, would not even have noticed that as a potential issue. Basically it's a case of people being hyper-sensitive, combined with hypocrisy. It's clear that other people working in Apple had previously said (AND DONE) much worse, but those same "sensitive" employees were fine with them still working there.
It's not cowardace in my eye but a very clinical choice to make. For giant and entreanched operations like theirs, attaining more money is a backseat goal when compared to the ascendant mission of new power gained by politics. Why worry about profits NOW when a company can help shape a future full of truly loyal consumers? It's brilliant really. Just make a statement in support of puberty blockers for ferrets or whatever and half the population in the western world will completely ignore the suicide nets on your factory.
Yeah. It’s globalism though. The socialists have hijacked institutions and they work with their U.N buddies to do the same thing. They are talking about a global tax now. The sickos just want more and more power. This is going to end in a war
A person should be free to write a book some people don’t like. If the readers protest too much, or just protest because they haven’t read it but are supporting the protesters, then the author must surely have hit the mark multiple somewheres. It hurts when someone criticizes you and you recognize the truth of it. Ok. So grow up.
Tl;dr: “I’m going to write a book that will make no one want to work with me” - “I wrote a book that makes no one want to work with me” - “I’m sad. No one wants to work with me…”
No, Sam, not has become a problem, it’s just you’re a little late catching up with those you’ve criticized. I say that, of course, with loving respect.😎. Left cancel culture’s been around at least since 2012.
So, the inner psychopath in me is detecting a fellow psychopath. I like how he throws the sociopath under the bus right away, not realizing he's the sociopath to others. Heh, what a classic narcissist. I wonder if Mr. Harris had detected this throughout the interview. It's almost silly the way he backpedals like he's trying to save himself. The problem with Antonio Garcia-Martinez is that he's right: ‘Most women in the Bay Area are soft and weak, cosseted and naive despite their claims of worldliness, and generally full of shit’. Not only is it correct, it doesn't nearly go far enough. What an absolute coward this man is. Weak, weak like someone with something to lose. Amateur. Edit: Heh, listen to this guy's projection: ""Yeah, I've [laughs] had similar statements made in sort of what's become the confessional booth of Silicon Valley, which is private signal groups. Where--yeah, people say, 'Look, I agree with you but--I mean, one of the weird contradictions--and obviously I'm NOT in this rarefied part of the world, but I have friends who are--you know, once you become wealthy and powerful and, and say you're a venture capitalist, right, you have, you know, hundreds of companies, employees, and dependents that sort of depend on you and your stature, right? So in many ways you're actually more handcuffed around what you can say than when you're just some rando who doesn't have a lot of economic power. Right? And so, yeah, they feel constrained...that, in some sense whatever they were to say would negatively impact the companies and employees they care about and so they can't. It's a weird collective action problem--although to be slightly less clinical about it, I mean, to be honest it's a collective lack of moral courage. [laughs] It's what I think it really is." Obviously you're not in a rarefied world where you can go to your island, obviously, obviously. No, traveling between San Francisco and your cottage are poor people problems. This guy drops that he was around during the PR button push IPO of FB--but he's not a part of that rarefied world. Mr. Harris, please don't believe that this guy is anything more than a bitter loser who didn't understand how to apply his own thoughts to himself. I mean, mindfulness, Mr. Harris. Isn't it all about the mindfulness? Ahh well, another lost comment to the electron sea. Edit2: Ha, oh my God. "Yeah, no, I've had--probably not as illustrious company as you--but I've had similar conversations with such people, and, um, it always strikes me as odd that, you know, these are, you know, these are very enabled people with agency who feel they can land rockets on Mars--". Jesus Christ. I know you're such a cool dude, and your friends are cooler than mine, but one time I was hanging out with Allah, Vishnu, and Quetzalcoatl, and we were talking about how much fun it would be if they would change the rules of reality to allow a mortal like me to join in for their weekly cosmic dice game." Oh, Mr. Harris. The lack of mindfulness is just awesome. Awe. Some. I suppose that even psychopaths deserve a platform. Truly a champion of freedom of speech.
Sam, I really hope you talk with comedian Jim Norton one day. Watch his debate with Lindy West. He's been standing up for comics and free speech louder than anyone else in the comedy scene for over a decade, and has a lot of great points on the same subject here.
Sucks what happened to this guy but he's not a good poster boy for anything. He basically worked at Goldman during The Crash and at Facebook during the building of The Algorithm. He's directly participated in greatly harming society twice over. He seems completely amoral. He's just as much an embodiment of Corporate Cowardice as he is a victim of it.
Jordan peterson in my opinion is making some of the best content right now and feel sam and him need to talk and get over their apparent wall they hit. having listened to all of sam harris's episodes and read his books, he has been truly inspirational for me. but jordan is currently so powerful and thoughtfully brilliant in his comeback and they need to talk!
@@billsimms2511 Well, regardless what you think they need to talk about, they do talk about it, and have done so multiple times. And when they have, Peterson tap dances like a fool. I think they do need to talk about it. So how opinions work?
@@AlanDantes76 JP tap dances like a fool? I admire both and both have good points. I won’t describe anyone as a winner. They both made me think. That’s a great point because many has said the same, instead of the usual fan base on either side saying bad things about the opponent.
Hm. Something about this guy is setting off alarm bells in my head. Should he have been fired for that one paragraph? I dunno, I'm no expert, probably not. But something about this guy is suspicious. I hear narcissism, projection, bitterness. This whole podcast sounds like him trying to backpedal the book and say his shitty take/actions/views were actually "just prose"... in his non-fiction book that is 100% billed as a REAL expose on silicon valley startup culture. And that was none more apparent than when he started reading his own work at the end. This guy thinks he's the protagonist.
The complainants were not even asking for him to be fired. And yet, Apple responded swiftly and canned the guy. All they were requesting was an investigation or an explanation for how this person was hired, when so much about him seems like a bad fit for Apple. This person is not an intellectual and does not deserve Sam's platform, but because Sam is overwhelmed by what happens on Twitter, here we are. This person wrote a very tasteless type of book and then tried to snap out of the persona he was pursuing and is now pretending that memoirs somehow need to be considered under some sort of different category than honest presentation. It's really weird, and Sam just uncritically lets it all unfold because of his blatant agenda. This podcast is interesting sometimes, but I wish Sam would stay away from this trivial nonsense. Apple did not react similarly when another letter was leaked weeks later. It's entirely possible that there was something shady revolving around this guy's hiring and they wanted to avoid having to reveal anything further. Or, as I guess Sam is saying, they wanted to avoid the public backlash when the letter became public. I doubt most people would care, which is what usually happens, so I wouldn't be so sure it's as simple as this just an example of so-called "cancel culture."
It is preposterous that you think Sam has some "blatant agenda" in this case. The dude should not have been fired for what he wrote. Period. Apple knew about the book and the passage and hired him anyway, yet bowed to pressure from its own employees. As for your speculation, provide evidence or your assertion is worthless.
@@AlanDantes76 I provided some evidence, you insufferable dipshit. A similar letter happened weeks later and nothing was done. No one was asking for this person to be fired. Generally, the public doesn't care about this finely grained stuff. I presented all of that as a premise to the idea that we should AT LEAST be a little more skeptical as for the motivations of Apple. Sam is drawing conclusions that are premature and produced a horrific podcast as a result. To be fair, maybe the chump version (pay wall) had some tying up of loose ends that did not happen on the free portion, but if that's the case, what was presented didn't seem too enticing to hear more.
Sam, please do a podcast about Neo-Marxism. The USSR and the CCP. Read the Gulag Archipelago. You are perfect for the job of reminding the public about what history tells us about the far left and Communism
Dude really just blabs about his entire professional career for 15 minutes without taking a breath, and when Sam asks him about the only issue he's even on the podcast to begin with, he says oh I can't talk about that. Pure savage
That's a very lazy and inaccurate synopsis of this discussion, which isn't even complete here. He's under a non-disclosure agreement with Apple dude, what do you want him to do? It takes 90 seconds to look up online what he said. He read the "controversial" comment that he was canceled for. What else do you want? The only questions he said he couldn't answer was when Sam asked him how he learned he had been canceled.
@@AlanDantes76 actually for that comment I was writing from the point of view of a character who would be ignorant enough to believe those words. Call it literary non fiction. But really it was a direct reaction to that entire bibliographic crescendo immediately followed by Sam getting shut down with his first pressing question. C'mon you could virtually hear that cliche bummer sound effect "beoowww beoowwww"
@@Kira-qc4qi Sure, but what difference does it make how he found out about it? None at all really. It's what happened, not how or when it happened. I'm sure he told Sam before their discussion that he was under an NDA. It was a decent episode, even if the dude is a douchecanoe.
@@AlanDantes76 Living in a conservative at-will state where you can be fired for basically any non-federally protected reason, where most people work under conservative bosses with conservative ideas about the world, who fucking cares that somebody was fired at Apple for "wokeness"? If Sam actually gave a shit about this issue, he would be talking about labor rights. Instead he's idiotically bitching about the "wokes". Perhaps if he didn't hate the far left so much, he might for once listen to them on labor issues and make an actual argument as to how to protect people from the arbitrary moral values of their coworkers. Instead he's just a bigoted pussy who hates the left and could care about even understanding what the actual problem is.
When he said he can't talk about it because he was under an NDA, that's when I thought to myself, then why are you even on the podcast? The only reason you're even here is to talk about this one issue, and now we find out after 15 minutes that you can't even talk about it. So you're just wasting everyone's time.
Better guest please Sam. Not interested in these silicone valley Yuppies. Let's revisist the good old atheist days and bring on Dilahunty for good measure. Now that would be a barnburner
That would be an interesting podcast. Dillahunty is a brilliant guy when it comes to philosophy, logical fallacy and moral reasoning. He's also way to the left, socially and politically. I saw him and Peterson debate live in Toronto, and I think I was the only one in the building who was a big fan of both guys.
Dr. Harris, thank you for your debates, lectures, and conversations about atheism and religion that are on RU-vid. It took me way too long to question my faith or the reality that I had been raised in. When you are raised from birth in a certain reality it can be slightly painful trying to reforge those synaptic pathways, I guess. I don't really know, I'm not a neuroscientist after all. Waking up to the truth about religion occurred only after being exposed to the concepts that you, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, and Richard Dawkins have democratized on RU-vid. For me the damage of living a religious, you could even say monastic, lifestyle had already been done in numerous ways. I'm not complaining about religion in a "Woe is me" fashion, but the dangers of religious fanaticism are very real. If anything in my life has helped at least one person escape the clutches of religious fanaticism and anti-science dogma then all of my pain and suffering was worth it and I can die having done at least one good thing. Anyway, thank you for your career of empowering the leaders and thinkers of tomorrow and for fighting against the psychological despotism of religious extremism.
@@emilyjones5830 Wtf is "white adjacent?" lmfao did you just make that up? If I live on the south side of Chicago, does that mean I'm "black adjacent?" I love the interwebs.
People tend to latch onto things that make them feel good and then when presented with evidence that challenges that good feeling they tend to be resistant. It's why most people don't ever continue learning they just hear something they like and stick with that narrative for as long as possible.
Wow. That's all it takes to get "Cancelled" these days? Wake me when we return to sanity. That said, it took 40 min to get to the point? Brevity is a virtue!
I'm glad that in a time of the greatest level of income inequality since the feudal ages and mass homelessness, Sam is making sure to talk about important issues, like a rich tech guy having slightly less money.
I know right. The guy said he's under a non-disclosure agreement. So why even have him on the show? The one thing that makes him interesting and worth talking to is the thing he's not allowed to talk about.
@@Shiggystardust I've tried working it out on my own but I can't trace out far or wide enough. The rough idea is to encourage or assist in some manner (could be honest encouragement with disagreement) to increase the overall harm of types of mob rule that are believed to be catastrophic in some manner. The setting is that these types of mob rule are 1. popular enough that it is a problem and 2. is sufficiently pragmatically infeasible to open a discourse on, for any number of reasons. Instead of trying to convince with words, or combat with some type of force legal, social, or otherwise, one alternate method is to segregate. Is it my incredibly lacking understanding that a more extreme version of segregation may be to encourage, or even assist what one may believe to be an enemy's flaws such that they self-destruct. The term enemy here is important due to setting #2 where discussion is pragmatically infeasible. Some problems many and just to name a few. 1. The opposition of your opposition (yourself and your group) may be in danger due to contrasting moral systems and this is amplified by the act of emboldening them to embrace what is believed to be the worst flaws. However, many other approaches have this problem as well. 2. There might be a worry of harm to the unrelated, but many other approaches also have this risk. 3 & 4. Possibly what I take to be one of the harms unique to this approach is that since it is systems learning rather than individual learning, 3: your side may just be entirely wrong and the ones to self destruct may be the accelerationists, and 4: systems learning necessitates a change in behavior which if stubborn (and politics is), would require the stubborn to die off. Die off hopefully in a spiritual manner such as character death, but actual death also accomplishes this result with the latter being much more reliable so there's an argument for less assistance behavior which could be harmful to everyone regardless of side. Two pros I've noticed is that 1. it speeds things up, and 2. it may be lower on the violence end relative to many other approaches. I've recently realized that the character of CHAR in the mobile suit gundam series may be an accelerationist. He is nearly always exclusively the big bad. :x
Here's what I gather from this situation. I think that Apple got "cold feet" about hiring him afterwards. Somebody talked to a higher up and convinced them he was not trustworthy, that he "might write another book and talk bad about us one day". They knew they would look stupid AF for firing him for writing the book, since they already vetted him. Then somehow this "sexism" angle came by cherry picking a couple sentences. I think the whole petition was astroturfed, and was not organically formed by female Apple employees. Who orchestrated that, I have no fucking idea. But it's not hard to send an email chain to employees pointing out this book, you know? And then the outrage ensued. But I think Apple saw him as a threat to their reputation down the future for his critiques about FB and whatnot. Unfortunate situation for the guy, and corporations weaponize the current socio-cultural climate when it suits them and to protect their bottom line, they don't give a shit about this stuff out of the goodness of their hearts.
So he was cancelled for the "Most women in the Bay Area..." part??? I'm genuinely asking (although also shocked, obviously), because it wasn't 100% clear to me what the reason was.
Sam, the more you abandon your identity politics the better. The Dem party is a trojan horse to our country right now. Speak out against it. We need you!
@@skonther0ck what ever reason you may have for disliking both of them has nothing to do with me. But calling them boring and childish in my opinion is a wimpish critique.
Antonio Garcia-Martinez wrote and published the offensive passage and therefore he owns it. His firing was the result of his own poor choices. Apple did the necessary thing. Sexism/racism can not be tolerated in a good society.
They knew about the book and the passage, but they hired him anyway. They let their employees dictate to them what they should do. You're absolutely clueless on this topic. Apple employs Dr. Dre, who has said things about women (and allegedly physically abused them too), that would make what this guy said look like it came from the Pope.
@@skonther0ck uhh I know because crusading against someone's career for writing a humorous and milquetoast critique of women from a certain region is a sign of real grit, dummy. He implied that most bay area women were soft, weak, cosseted, naïve, worldly and full of shit...they showed him he was wrong.
How is it that no one is commenting on this persons FOUR YEARS 'settlement' project on that Seattle island? I mean, this is something he does WHILE he has a family - a child - back in San Fransisco? Listen from cirka 20 minutes where he talks about this period of his life. It started as just the writing project - which is fair enough allthough I hope he was not a father already - but then continued the wildlife after the publishing. I totally lost track of the point of the conversation after hearing that part. Wtf?? He was planning to become this isolated writer out in the nature for real, while in a relationship in SF, also with a child there somewhere in the picture? I felt that this was very much worth a little bit further explanation.
30:00 I hadn't put it together before but there's a parallel here between how certain political regimes have viewed art as a functional tool and the idea I've heard several times from proponents of a modern form of critical theory that "art / comedy deconstructs power" (as they define power), "anything that's not punching up is not art / comedy."
They didn't even read out the whole passage. I don't remember where I found it, but the full excerpt is significantly worse. That said, if he really was fired for what was in his book, his employers should've known the contents of the book beforehand and made the decision whether they could overlook it or not.
Antonio's sprinkled comments comparing capitalism to communism to nazism are pathetic. It's a common syndrome of the "educated" person that thinks if he's an expert in one field that he can comment coherently on other topics outside of his competency.
If I may play Devil's advocate: if a person manages to withstand education sufficient to become considered an 'expert' in one area, then that person is probably competent enough to develop a few coherent comments on other topics. Admittedly though, 'ism' generalizations do tend to be poor arguments. Especially when they crest with nazi(ism).
@@AlanDantes76 The first commenter was generalizing. It's a reasonable to suppose that expertise may lead to an eventual (inflated) comfort with one's own confidence. Ever have a cocky professor who'd squirm rhetorically under tough questions? Just as one might become too used to being filthy rich, or being the boss, or occupying any other position of privilege, the human psychology is a ratcheting mechanism that's better at adjusting to an upward move in status than to its inverse, loss. Modesty is a tough pill to choke on; I suppose that's why we like to stay under the warm blanket of our own specialization.
@@pocket83squared Everything you said is common sense, I'm not sure what you are getting at. Whether it's general or not, this idea that you can't speak on a topic intelligently because it's not in your area of expertise (if you even have one), is silly. Further, just because you may not like what someone said doesn't mean their views are "pathetic," or that they are somehow treading outside the boundaries of their own aptitudes. There are many people who would agree with Antonio's views on capitalism.
@@AlanDantes76 And now everything that _you've_ just said is common sense, and I'm not sure what _you_ are getting at. To me, it doesn't really read as though the commenter was making the claim that you seem to think; commenter just appears to be fed up with experts' lateral liberty of opinion. Anecdotal, sure, but who hasn't noticed how many annoying actors voice opinions that are far outside of their field? If I may offer an olive branch, at minimum, the point stands that specialized expertise is not a universal license. But what do I know? Exchange is not very easy on this medium. Maybe I'm being presumptuous.
Good morning, Sam. The issue with Dr. Dre still not being “Cancelled” has to do with the targeted audience; pure business, not at all personal. People into Dr. Dre and that hip-hop/rap-related ilk is a much different yet very profitable market, according to the lyrics of the most famous/infamous hits, that whole genre appears built on threats, hate, violence, misogyny, promiscuity, etc. As long as it turns out the type of current profits, forget about Dr. Dre and His kind ever becoming canceled.
One of the most pointless episodes in recent memory, I gained pretty much no information from this and I'm sure most people agree. This dude is so full of himself and went into so little detail it was maddening.
What he said about hyper-capitalism being as cultish as communism is interesting, tho the difference is *scale*. The capitalist cults are mostly centered around certain individual companies, not the entire economy.
I've listened to quite a few of these podcasts and I find this particular guest to be the worst. Not for what he did, but just the way in which he tells his story. I've noticed that he keeps skipping over important details in his life. He alluded to there being a story behind why he left Facebook but then never brought it up again. He said he couldn't talk about what happened at Apple because he's under a non-disclosure agreement. Don't those expire after a few years? Maybe you should have waited until then in order to interview him. What really makes this particular guest stand out is just the lack of information he is giving about what happened to him. I learned more from reading about him on Wikipedia than I actually did from listening to him talk about himself on your podcast, which entirely defeats the purpose of the podcast.
I am 74, I have not heard 2 hours of such a silly meaningless stupid conversation in my life. except during 60s.sometimes after after we got really stoned. 1
@@AlanDantes76 Hi Alan So What? You may be right, if you will feel happy say it was less then1 hour As I said when I listened to it I felt stoned it sounded long and meaningless LOL indeed
Just read the New York lady who was fired just 24 hours of her racist rant is suing. Or maybe she was scared. You have big problems. Hard call considering it's the 100 anniversary of the Tulsa massicare.
I'm gonna have to agree with the commies on this one. "Cowardice" suggests compromising one's values out of fear. A corporations primary value is maximizing profits, and "brave" or "cowardly" expressions by them are just window dressing.
exactly - for a corporation to be "brave" or "cowardly" would suggest it's deviating from its fiduciary responsibility to its shareholders. That's not necessarily a commie position either, but a conservative position of market forces. It comes down to a basic understanding of economics and not getting sucked into the rabbit-trail distraction of culture war.
What happened to the bro culture I thought was permeating Tech/SF? More seriously, I’ve argued that classic progressive values (feminism, anti racism etc) have become too popular. So now we got idiots espousing our beliefs (they’re the default, they no longer require unusual tastes, sensitivities and intellectual abilities), they’re recreating “on the left” the puritanical and gossipy idiocy of cultural conservatism/of village life (to quote Marx). Another thing: For Apple but indeed anyone including the signatories of this petition, it’s easier to fire one dude than to really try and make space for women, for young mothers etc. Remember, signaling that isn’t costly is posturing.
Corporate drones need to be obedient and boring. This guy obviously has some flare to him. Giant corp is not a good fit for him - the drones at apple recognized it at once. If this guy wanted to simply work in tech, doing these interviews isn't doing him any favors. I guess he's back to being on twitter all day.
Sounds like ole Sammy Boy is starting to see what millions of people have seen for years now. Trump wasn't the best we had, but he was the best we had available in that moment to push back against this lunacy. I spent the first 3 years of his presidency despising him and buying into Russiagate and a lot of the media lies. It was only upon doing a bit of digging myself that I realized my errors and now I only despise his (innumerable) character flaws, but I don't let it cloud my judgment on his attempt to give a voice to 10s of millions of unheard "deplorables" in this country that get nothing but disdain from our ruling class, media class and corporate class daily. Trump wasn't the fascist they all pretended he was, obviously, but they're going to create a real one for us, then even the spaghetti monster won't be able to save us.
Buzzwords like "communist Cuba," "communist China etc," are very lazy and don't say anything meaningful. I had to shut it off when I heard the guest say that. Or "rabid bernie bro."
What does that have to do with America. Society or culture? And if you wanna play this game...Every person who cries foul about the mistreatment of minorities in America where are those voices in the Middle East for women in Muslim countries? For atheists in Muslim countries? For gays in Gazza?
Haven't listened yet but I imagine that the cowardice of corporations is that they "bow down" to pressure from the "woke". There can't be any other reason Sam Harris would criticise capitalism can there?
Corporations literally destroying the prospects of human survival. No comment from Sam Harris. He only deals with the really important (on twitter) issues.
On this memorial day weekend I think we should show our sympathy for the New Zealand Mosque shooting victims and again demand justice. Sam Harris wrote the book on the New Zealand Mosque shooting.
@@marty9660 You still use fact Check when the fact checkers have been lying to us about the Wuhan leak for over a year. They said Trump was spreading misinformation not in order to help us get to the truth which would save lives , but for political reasons. The fact checkers, social media companies, the medical establishments and corporate America are now more or less a national security threat including Biden's neo racist democratic party.
More time talking about philosophy and less time talking about SJW’s please. There are better things Sam Harris the intellectual juggernaut should be addressing
The SJW / woke movement is a serious threat and an issue worth discussing. And in my opinion, more interesting than recycling the same old philosophical stuff we've been listening to for decades.
