If Sam Harris Knows This Little About Politics, What About Everything Else? (TMBS 77) 

It's a bit surreal to watching these old TMBS clips and know that Michael is gone and no longer with us. At least he left us with a treasure of his old works to study up on from time to time, RIP Michael Brooks. You will be missed homeboy .

“I don’t bother with Sam Harris” - Noam Chomsky

What's with people defining "far left" as those who predominately care about identity politics?

Sam continually talks about the dangers of tribalism, whilst being completely ignorant of his own cultists. They protect this guy as though he was their god.

Harris and JBP should co-write a book called ‘Unknown Unknowns: The threat of cultural Marxism on college campuses and other hysterical shit we made up’.

I switched off SH when I read his "Why I don't criticize Israel". Lies and willful ignorance from start to finish.

But you must not disagree with Sam Harris! It's morally wrong!

But remember if you understand him then you are the smartest 15 years old atheist. Very bright.

"Businessman...who is not ethically compromised" This is cute. They don't exist in a capitalist system.

Sam's idea of getting rid of an unqualified "business man" in the presidential office is to replace him with another business man?

Lets have a thought experiment: imagine the worlds largest superpower was being belligerent towards you. It was contstantly plotting coups and invasions. Would you not be justified in taking extreme action to combat this?

Keep dunking on Harris.

You guys are harsh on Sam Harris. You're basically on the same page on most issues yet you treat him like he's Dave Rubin. And come on, if the American people aren't interested in centre-Left politics then Biden would not be polling top consistently.

Very long time ago.. as a H.S kid.. I thought so highly of Sam Harris. He now only means to me someone Chris Hedges exposed as a charade neoliberal & a man Chomsky finds unworthy of his time

Obama said He'd be a 80s Moderate Republican. Which is now a Establishment Centrist.

We need a strong neutral businessman like Augusto Pinochet

Michael sent Sam to wherever Stephan Molyneux is.

Mathematician and Skeptic here; I've been saying this for years! Cheers

"I'm sorry I'm not speaking in thought experiments" LMAO!

Sam Harris is a joke!

I’m glad I grew out of my new atheism phase when I was about 16. I really begun to realise how politically incompetent and simplistic they were.

12 months on and I find myself still watching his work. Rip to the great Michael Brooks.

Intellectual Dark Web - intellectually in the dark as they weave a web of lies

Inb4 Sam Harris's cult drives by to say Out of context

Sam Harris holds the left to a much higher standard than the right. And he is FAR more critical of fringe left wing ideas and actions than right wing.

I will like to see Michael Brooks on Joe Rogen show discussing Sam Harris ... for 2 hours

When I first started hearing about Sam’s positions on politics, I was like ummm huh, then after he went up against Norm Chomsky I was like wtf, he doesn’t have a clue to what he’s talking about.

Sam Harris talks a lot about AI but it's clear he knows nothing technical about it.

People finally coming to their senses regarding Sam Harris.

Sam Harris considers himself a Democrat? Why? What positions does he hold or support that are Democratic or left?

i never bought into sam harris. i found out about him through "four horsemen" with richard dawkins. i used to watch a ton of atheist content, richard dawkins, atheist experience, etc. sam harris always seemed to rely heavily on delivery. i watched some of his content because he had nice comedic timing, and was kind of funny sometimes. but then in a more serious video, he was trying to push an objective morality not dependent on religion. at that point i realized he wasnt very bright. years later he started saying stupid stuff about muslims like what you hear from the far right. i was like, figures... then he tries to take on chomsky and gets humiliated. then it was incontrovertible that he was an idiot. to be fair, people like dawkins or thunderf00t can be facile on things like muslims as well, but its usually confined to relatively infrequent, flippant remarks. harris really leans in heavily on topics has has no real understanding of. thats when you know people are trash. not when they say one stupid thing here n there, but when theyre that self unaware, and starved for attention.

Trust Fund Sam thinks rich people aren't ethically compromised. Cute.

Watch enough commercial tv, get a hefty trust fund, and YOU TOO can be Sam Harris!!!

Sam Harris is a sophist.

Damn this gentlemans analysis were so insightfull, what a great source of educative critical thinking we have lost. Rip michael

Sam Harris wants everything to reflect his own persona and perspective. For someone who practices meditation and self-awareness he has a huge blindspot to his own narcissism.

R.I.P Michael Brooks! Your work spoke to me

This video gave me a very smart or very dumb idea: Bernie on the Joe Rogan Experience.

I can't stand Sam Harris` way of speaking. I just had to say it. Even if I agree with him, he would annoy me.

I was one of these people who was a big fan of Sam Harris because what he says about religion is on point, but the scales fell from my eyes once he started talking American foreign policy. It's been a steady decline ever since.

I think there are a number of valid criticisms to make of Harris, but can't say I was convinced by the ones Michael made here.

If someone is already a proponent of the Bell Curve, I think you already don't have to worry about how much they know about politics.

Harris has said many many times that he has no issue with Moderate Muslims. The issue is Islam, which he has said many times to take the Koran as literal.

I still don't understand where this idea that Sam Harris wants a Muslim genocide comes from. From what I've seen he's pretty careful when talking about Islam and the percentages of people who hold specific beliefs within Islam. If there is some video or podcast out there where he is talking about and supporting a Muslim genocide please show it to me.

Stop taking him out of context by listening to the words he says and responding to those words

A philosophy teacher of mine actually lent me The End of Faith, telling me I would like it. As soon as got to his sloppy criticism of Chomsky, I gave it back.

Accusing Harris of wanting to crush the poor...wow! If you know so little about Sam Harris, what else don't you know.

Don't you just love it when people think the "far left" play identity politics? I'm sure there are some (ie some Bernie supporters) that do. But they're far less likely to given they are supporting an old white guy (the "standard" in American politics right now). Hillary Clinton and her more centrist wing went ALL IN on identity politics. Her slogan was literally "I'm with Her". She had Madeleine Albright at rallies spewing her "special place in hell for women that don't support other women" BS. Whenever I try and debate people supporting Kamala Harris on twitter...obviously it never goes well, but almost every time I hear "I'm voting for her because she's black and a woman". Obviously they are more than welcome to do that but, but bear in mind there are women and black people on the Republican side actively fighting against policies that address issues faced by those groups, so if that's your standard, its a fucking poor one

I remember reading Ken Wilber in college and I found him to be very underwhelming. A bit too much man-centric mysticism for my taste.

We need the best white dude we can get. Like OG lit Bloomberg, but not all wrinkly.

What's the instrumental at the start?

Have Harris on and we'll see how much dunking you're doing then. With Rubin the dunking is warranted, with Harris it's just embarrassing.

Really keen on Michael’s book.

Looking at Sam Harris through my 18 year old lenses, he was the most ‘logical’, ‘cold and rational’ atheist. It was great. Now he is, to me, a grifter who still has interesting discussion but not more so than when my friends and I drink/smoke and discuss ethics and politics. I just don’t get paid to do this grift.

Man, do we still need the careful equitable contextualisation, and ever compassionate analysis of our Michael B. And I say that with assuming he'd be happy, that we all have gained a part and parcel of this dear empathetic man from whom we can then refer to him and have him as 'OURS.' Thank you Michael, RIPeace/Power, the POWER of LOVE you forever brimmed.

Brilliant. Once again.

This is a pathetic hit piece. I heard the Rogan interview and this is completely straw manning and misrepresenting Sam’s View’s.

How do socio-economics explain Mike Pence.

I loved hearing Cenk obliterate Harris in their debate. Yet every Harris teenybooper fan boy flooded the comments with hate for Cenk! Cenk is an underated debater and excellent political speaker and contrary to public opinion, he owned in that debate. RiP MB!

"Identity Politics" = Legitimate concerns which we are never going to address because of one group's identity politics. Fine. Can we at least deal with the other issues swiftly and without the handwringing?

Immediately - Ascribes malicious beliefs and motives to Sam Harris - Fails to support claims with sources This is a shit debunk, but better than his usual 10 minute rampage of pure snark.

I love how he says "Newtonian physics", as if it's some weird abstract branch that no one knows a thing about.

Who is Michael talking about at the beginning of the video?

I wonder when Brooks's book is coming out? He should talk about it more, this is the 1st time I heard him mention it.

he definitely knows very little on Philosophy.

The Sam Harris Story: He said something racist and ppl said to him "it's racist" that upset him so much that he's now a right winger, well done leftists!

I think they completely missed the point on this one. Harris was talking about the kind of candidate who could beat Trump given the current political climate, not the kind of candidate he personally wants to lead the country.

Its too bad, because “Waking Up” is a legitimately great book by Harris that I recommend to people. But I have to give the caveat that Harris shuts down his reasoning skills and apparently forgets his neuroscience background also when it comes to politics.

Sam Harris can make anything boring. Atheism, Buddhism, neurology, and now politics. Amazing.

Why can't you just debate each other then? It's hard to trust these videos where each adversary is essentially siloed from each other.

Not that it matters that much, but you possibly reading more into what S.H is saying than he really meant? To my ears he could just as well mean any respected figure whos economy and ideas are sound. Seeing that many American voters seems to be drawn to two things; celebrity culture and the thought that running a business is like running a country. I think S.H has a point when he's pointing out that certain fractions of democrats are focusing on the wrong, petty things, instead of banding togheter and booting Trump and republicans out of the white house.

I think he's wrong; doesn't necessarily make him an out and out idiot

I just wish there was more visual of Michael especially when he's talking because seeing Sam Harris the entire time is making me want to punch my screen.

You're taking him out of context! I haven't looked but I assume there are already a ton of his fans saying this in the comments. And trust me, Yanks: your problem is not that your political system has too little an influence from supposedly apolitical billionaires.

Sam doesn't recognize obvious flaws in his position on free will. He asserts that we have no free will while at the same time offering suggestions on how the legal system should operate. If we have no free will, why bother making suggestions? Nobody can choose whether or not to follow his suggestions.

As Frans De Waal says about the biggest divide in humanity is not religious vs irreligious but dogmatic vs open mindedness and Harris can reliably classified in the dogmatic group.

Sam Harris is neither a Neuroscientist nor a Philosopher.

Really good substantive debunking of the myth of Sam Harris. Great job, Michael.

It's a logical fallacy to say that, because someone was wrong about one thing they are wrong about everything. We're all focused in just a few areas of life.

"Racism is important BUT it's not important" -Sam Harris (translated his bullshit for ya)

I’m a trained historian and I cringe at the lack of context of Harris

I cannot stand the way Sam Harris talks.

Harris speaks so much about AI yet he doesn’t know crap about AI or how it works, he’s also at his worst when it comes to politics and also economy, he imagines far too much when it comes to economy, no surprise there since he would rather have us all live in this perfect utopia that would never exist, sorry to tell you Harris but economy doesn’t work like that, neither does AI.

I agree with some of your issues with Sam, but you know if it really comes down to it, he’s voting and promoting any dem candidate over Trump. The man sees Trump as the greatest threat to the US.

"Identity politics" is a smear term for legit movements of social justice.

I love Sam but he doesn't understand politics. We have the same issue in Canada with Steven Pinker. He is brilliant but he doesn't understand politics either. They are both a bit naive politically.

How is it possible that a person like Sam Harris, who claims to rail against the socially regressive views of theocratic countries, argues that people similarly calling for social justice in America are just playing 'identity politics'?

Politics is on a different spectrum from why the neuroscientist Sam Harris is listened to

"promoting racism" That's an interesting claim. I listened the whole episode when it came out and nowhere did he promote racism.

How ironic your opening is because I then feel like, “if MB is willing to do so little homework on the person he’s about to criticize then...” MB is misrepresenting Harris’s views on economics. However, what this conversation is really missing is calling out Harris as quintessential identity politics because Sam’s identity is the anti-anti-racist. His whole worldview is shaped by this identity which is why the ideal candidate in his mind is also an anti-anti-racist. Props to Ezra Klein for articulating this in their discussion. Now that it has been identified I see this toxic bias seeping through almost all of his opinions. As for MB I think his best criticism of Harris is his consistently being ahistorical.

The guy voted for Hillary "vote for me cause I'm a woman" Clinton in the primaries now his wants to lecture people on identify politics

"Al Qaeda; therefore, 1 billion people." That is not at all what Sam Harris argues about the harm of Islam.

Sam pretends to be against “identity politics” but all his politics are tailored for wealthy secular Jewish people. Hawkish on Islam and limited welfare

You basically described why I stopped idolizing Sam Harris in the first 2 minutes

I think it’s really irresponsible and abit dangerous of Micheal Brooks to say Sam Harris’s name of his platform, he is promoting him. Michaels going right wing

God... why did I click this. Forcing myself to read the sycophantic rantings of Michael Broosk fans. How has this guy gotten his own show?

I almost hopped on the Sam Harris wagon You guys helped me get out before I was hooked I was all in for atheism and insulting Christianity but I didn’t agree with the Islam leads to terrorism garbage I definitely would have bailed on the bell curve nonsense but I saw the majority report criticism first so I can’t say for sure I wish that RU-vid didn’t automatically direct atheists to his work, it’s a problem when you find someone possibly for the first time publicly in support of your lack of religious views so you think oh he’s right about this so what does he think about other stuff... then if you have no pre formed opinion on that next topic you think hey this guys smart so maybe he’s right about this IQ test thing And because human nature is to confirm your own bias these are the people that want to argue and defend him on everything because if one of those things he taught them was a lie then everything comes into question And honestly if they can’t question Sam Harris’s perspectives on things I’m confused how these people came to be atheists, because questioning the religion your parents taught you and the existence of god should be a bigger deal than questioning a man you’ve never met But I guess questioning yourself and your own judgment is hard for most people, lucky for me I doubt myself all the time 😂

Taking Scam Harris seriously, is the motherlode of bad ideas.

This video aged extremely well ... kinda a perfect description of Bloomberg's presidential bid

The sad fact is that Michael Brooks is threatened by Harris because he has his number. Brooks essentially is a guy who sits back and takes pot shots at others. Identity Politics is philosophical tenet of Brooks....to wit he is immensely bothered by someone like Harris. It extends to other things....but principally revolves around this idea that Harris wants to have discussions/conversations and people like Brooks don't...they act as "trollish commentators". Bleh!