Is Moral Progress a Fantasy?: A Conversation with John Gray (Episode  

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MMMMMMMM! Mmmmm!

That is a hilarious comment!😂😂😂

LOL! I'm listening to this on Sam's website and just came here specifically for the comment section to make sure I wasn't the only one noticing this. His 'cookie eating' is actually so annoying I can't even finish the episode.

I came here just to make that comment. What do I do with my evening now?

I feel compelled to respond to this as there are evolving factors that may curtail immorality en mass. The few examples I can roughly make are as follows; Medical prevention / intervention of various psychopathologies, Artificial Intelligence and the maturation of education and government to form more effective and efficient justice systems and therefore deterrence from antisocial behaviour, the institutionalization of modern social philosophies that truncate antisocial behaviour. +1 SH & John Gray

I feel compelled to respond to this as there are evolving factors that may curtail immorality en mass. The few examples I can roughly make are as follows; Medical prevention / intervention of various psychopathologies, Artificial Intelligence and the maturation of education and government to form more effective and efficient justice systems and therefore deterrence from antisocial behaviour, the institutionalization of modern social philosophies that truncate antisocial behaviour. +1 SH & John Gray

Exactly

@@annoyingcommentator1582progress morally

Then every few words Sam says, John loudly goes "MMMMM", "mmmm, MMMMmmm", with inflection throughout. Very distracting.

This guy is insufferable. If Sam has him on again ai will skip the podcast that week.

Unbearable! Cutting my loss and skipping this droning logorrhea.

Did you even bother to read his book?

@@keithhunt5328 No. I read all sort of books but not every single book on the planet. I tend to read something that would enlighten me or entertain me. Currently reading The Grapes of Wrath after just finishing East of Eden (both by Steinbeck) and Sabrina Hossenfelder's, Essential Physics. As an Engineer, I read white papers for a living...so I am fairly well read. What is your point about my not having read his book? What profound revelation is in his book that would convince anyone that Gray has a serious grasp on Atheism? What book? Harris has many profound perspectives across multiple subjects and from what I have heard so far, Gray is like a 3rd grader trying to argue with a PhD. He's not even out of grade school yet when it comes to Atheism.

​@@rustyosgood5667I think white papers also have nothing to do with atheism at best you should give your definition.

@@rockthepunchx9547 Atheists don't accept any proposition that a God exist.

Did you listen to this podcast on Sam's streaming site? Because he wasn't saying goodbye here, and there were no interruptions. It just faded into Sam's standatd commentary about subscribing.

Mmmmm, MMMMM

yep, the full version.@@toby9999

What about the future? 16 All Scripture is inspired of God+ and beneficial for teaching,+ for reproving, for setting things straight,+ for disciplining in righteousness,+ 17

hmm but that's true for virtually all of his podcasts

There are certain people who will just talk when they feel the need to almost like its a compulsion for them. You can either get annoyed about it or just adapt. It can be nice because sometimes they dont care if you interrupt them either, they don't see it as offensive they just think it's how talking works.

John doesn’t seem to be a great listener. Thoughts are formulated into words without hesitation 😂

​@radscorpion8 100% false. Sam is famous and admired for having open, two sided conversations. This was a one off.

(This was a monologue, bordering on lecture.) was and I loved it.

I sympathise with your position but, truthfully (and somewhat ironically), it is objectively incorrect. I agree, as a European liberal that western liberal culture is "better" (relatively) than other less liberal (authoritarian) cultures which permit what I consider morally repugnant practices like female genital mutilation, but it simply isn't true that my western liberal culture is objectively better from a moral standpoint, considering morality as we understand it is itself, objectively speaking, an accidental historical construction. God is dead, remember.

Now you just need an argument for why that is true

​@@Bailiolhow is it not objectively better? Everybody seems to want to come here. Not many refugees risking their lives to get into non-Western countries.

@@radscorpion8I imagine if you were forced to choose between moving to Iran or Sweden, you wouldn’t spend too much time on this philosophical problem. The reality is quite clear.

​@@radscorpion8 That's like saying we need a proof for why some air feels warmer than other air.

What is the image of? Attacking Galileo or something?

La mort de Cèsar or The Death of Julius Caesar is an 1806 painting by Vincenzo Camuccini depicting the assassination of Julius Caesar.@@Haliotro

I noticed this too.

It might be the way his brain’s “software” takes the measure of new inputs and files it for internal processing. Different people do this same thing by blinking or nodding at certain points, for example. But yeah, in an audio format it can seem a bit grating, like impatience on the part of the listener.

On the other hand, his guest didn't even take a breath until 15 minutes in.

He is just the same old human I keep running into. Someone who craves attention so badly he can't stop talking. As long as he is talking, he thinks someone is paying attention to him, stroking his ego. He has no communication skills. He can't listen. He can't compare ideas. He can't learn. All too common.

Oh my God it drove me nuts. It was asinine.

Yes, I think he said the opposite. I think some said (Deutsch) that true ones outcompete the false ones in the long run. But I guess not if the false ones destroy us first.

Somewhat, but they manage over in britbongistan decently so far.

For 5000 years of human civilisation there was no constitution or bill of rights. Was everyone powerless?

@@keithhunt5328To be very fair, the vast majority of people were fairly powerless in a power heirarchy.

Yeah, I just finished the whole episode, on Sam's site ... I almost made the mistake of calling it a conversation. Some guests need a flashing light system ... Green - keep going; amber - let's wrap it soon; Red - we're dying here. JG spent far too much time in non-green territory. At one point I had to laugh, when he said he liked to state difficult concepts as simply and clearly as possible. Erudite chap, I'm sure, but I almost drowned in his deluge of side comments and tangential excursions.

He wouldn't stop saying "hm" "yeah" "hm" and interrupting every three seconds. It was asinine.

I switched over to RU-vid to vocalize the distracting habit Gray had of sounding each breath or some other need to be an audible nuisance.

There was a conversation... JG had a conversation with himself. Sam was just an observer... and, try as he might... Sam could not find a crack in that wall of words Gray was building to find a place to respond. Worst "interview" I've ever had the displeasure to spend time with.@@TheWanderingPensioner

I had to turn this off after 25 minutes, Gray is a rambling bore.

He sucks, actually.

​@@davidmanckeu and ur mother suck.........each other

​@@davidmancke"MMMMMM? Uh-huh, Hmmm"

I like what you said but would guess that the social aspect is itself a recent emergence based on the fact that we still have greed and selfishness. Qualities that ants and bees don't have (for example).

greed and selfishness are heuristics for arbitrarily defined (not so much defined as vaguely intuited) thresholds of extreme behaviors. they're answers to the question, "what quantities of what resources should i keep for myself?" and then applying them to spheres of relatedness, for example, self, then family, then community, then country. (that's not exactly how it works but you get the point.) these heuristical intuitions are adapted to evolutionary contexts and aren't flexible in accommodating what will maximize utility (however utility might be defined in a given instance) in very many circumstances. in any case, even though our social intuitions of "good" and "bad" are apples and oranges relative to the interests and realities of other species (let alone other humans in different evolutionary contexts), superficially it makes sense to label bees and ants as extremely greedy (in human terms), given their approaches to resource acquisition and defense.@@rustyosgood5667

@@maxungar516 I generally agree and if you read my point, I used the terms in the appropriate context, I would not draw axiomatic lines between self and community etc...either. If individuals were asked to contribute some significant amount of resources to save the community, some would do so willingly and others may not...or have to be forced etc... My point is that although progress along the social evolutionary continuum is slow, it is obvious when you zoom out to the 30,000 foot level. Measuring topography in discontinuous square acre blocks doesn't inform us about the region on the whole. Sam pointed to slavery as an obvious cumulative progression and John still remained on his hilltop. At a wider angle, the view favors Sam's position. Progress has clearly been made...albeit slowly.

@@maxungar516 P.S. I don't agree that Bees behave in any "extreme" way. Relative to what? They are not selfish in the context of this conversation and in the context of human behavior. What is best for humans as a whole, is a recent emergence, informed by science and technology, I might add.

You're smart asf, dude. You deserve a medal

John is an ocean of knowledge.

Koestler

darude, sandstorm, 1642

'The Death of Julius Caesar' by Vincenzo Camuccini, c. 1805.

It's absurd in this context. Getting fired for bad manners may be overkill, but it is far from literal, "kill." This guy's hyperbole is absurd and less-then-historical, but that it's also didactic is fucking insulting.

I believe it's the Last Supper by Leonardo DiCaprio

​@@iainshanky6492😂😂

Glad i’m not the only one who think that Gray guy sounds a little off his rocking chair

Honestly gives off strong „Old man yelling at clouds“ vibes

I am trying to find something useful in his babbling. Nothing yet.

I'm always jumpy when biological evolution and social/moral evolution are spoken about as if they are the same. Darwin and Mother Nature would disagree. Darwinian evolution is only about biological fitness for the current biosphere. It impact all species, animal and plant life. Social/moral evolution is a uniquely human domain concept. And quite recent.

@@valvlog4665 You're probably right, for the reasons you've said, and since I posted that I've thought of many counterexamples which show its not a good idea. Cheers

Look at this lovely liberal exchange of ideas! Warmed my heart 🥰

It's a dull, unoriginal prediction, but imho the future holds nothing but ever more humiliating forms of obsolescence for the vast majority of us.

@@joejohnson6327 now that's an exciting prediction!!

@@joejohnson6327 Lots of historians point out a pattern where people's lives actually get worse for a while whenever there's some revolutionary new technology. The society can't adapt and lots of bad lessons are learned quite painfully. I've thought that way about the internet for a long time, but they just invented an even more revolutionary technology before we're even done with this one.

Mmmmm.... Yes .. MMMMMM... hmmm, uh-huh, mmmmmmm

I think it is a result of academic proffessionals seeking their perceived self-interest in a landscape of diminishing career opportunities where the only remaining competitive advantage one can have is to claim moral superirority on one's competitors. So the status-seeking behavior manifests itself mostly in the form of bettering one's image.

She talked about it on UnHerd

@@rodblues6832 and what was HER opinion about sudden changes of HERS is SHE agre with HER? What is SAM HARROIS OPINIOIN...lol

Thank you for being the first brave one. You've given me the courage to also come forth and admit that I, too, am an ass, an impatient, uncompassionate ass, who can suffer w/grace neither the audible intrusions, nor the rambling monologs, of your first guest/podcast ever to actually NOT stimulate me one way or the other but rather bore me through and through and through....and through, until I'm no longer interested whatsoever in what's being said (my AUDACITY and HUBRIS and OCD are shameless and are to be despised and shunned).

It does nothing

It is puerile for Gray to claim that "constitutions/bill of rights by themselves do nothing to prevent abuses." No shit Sherlock. Good people make laws. Good people enforce these laws. Good laws do not make good people.

@@jraelien5798 Jefferson was an early hero of mine, partly because of his scientific interests (which very much helped to mould his political philosophy), but mostly because he, almost more than anyone else, was responsible for the spread of democracy throughout the world. The idea - breathtaking, radical and revolutionary at the time (in many places in the world, it still is) is that not kings, not priests, not big city bosses, not dictators, not a military cabal, not a de facto conspiracy of the wealthy, but ordinary people, working together, are to rule the nations. Not only was Jefferson a leading theoretician of this cause; he was also involved in the most practical way, helping to bring about the great American political experiment that has, all over the world, been admired and emulated since. He died at Monticello on 4 July 1826, fifty years to the day after the colonies issued that stirring document, written by Jefferson, called the Declaration of Independence. It was denounced by conservatives worldwide. Monarchy, aristocracy and state-supported religion - that's what conservatives were defending then. In a letter composed a few days before his death, he wrote that it was the 'light of science' that had demonstrated that 'the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs', nor were a favoured few born 'booted and spurred'. He had written in the Declaration of Independence that we all must have the same opportunities, the same 'unalienable' rights. And if the definition of 'all' was disgracefully incomplete in 1776, the spirit of the Declaration was generous enough that today 'all' is far more inclusive. Jefferson was a student of history - not just the compliant and safe history that praises our own time or country or ethnic group, but the real history of real humans, our weaknesses as well as our strengths. History taught him that the rich and powerful will steal and oppress if given half a chance. He described the governments of Europe, which he saw at first hand as the American ambassador to France. Under the pretence of government, he said, they had divided their nations into two classes: wolves and sheep. Jefferson taught that every government degenerates when it is left to the rulers alone, because rulers - by the very act of ruling - misuse the public trust. The people themselves, he said, are the only prudent repository of power. But he worried that the people - and the argument goes back to Thucydides and Aristotle - are easily misled. So he advocated safeguards, insurance policies. One was the constitutional separation of powers; accordingly, various groups, some pursuing their own selfish interests, balance one another, preventing any one of them from running away with the country: the Executive, Legislative and Judicial Branches; the House and the Senate; the States and the Federal Government. He also stressed, passionately and repeatedly, that it was essential for the people to understand the risks and benefits of government, to educate themselves, and to involve themselves in the political process. Without that, he said, the wolves will take over. Here's how he put it in Notes on Virginia, stressing how the powerful and unscrupulous find zones of vulnerability they can exploit: "In every government on earth is some trace of human weakness, some germ of corruption and degeneracy, which cunning will discover and wickedness insensibly open, cultivate and improve. Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves therefore are its only safe depositories. And to render even them safe, their minds must be improved . . ." Jefferson had little to do with the actual writing of the US Constitution; as it was being formulated, he was serving as American minister to France. When he read its provisions, he was pleased, but with two reservations. One deficiency: no limit was provided on the number of terms the President could serve. This, Jefferson feared, was a way for a President to become a king, in fact if not in law. The other major deficiency was the absence of a bill of rights. The citizen, the average person, was insufficiently protected, Jefferson thought, from the inevitable abuses of those in power. He advocated freedom of speech, in part so that even wildly unpopular views could be expressed, so that deviations from the conventional wisdom could be offered for consideration. Personally he was an extremely amiable man, reluctant to criticize even his sworn enemies. He displayed a bust of his arch-adversary Alexander Hamilton in the vestibule at Monticello. Nevertheless, he believed that the habit of scepticism is an essential prerequisite for responsible citizenship. He argued that the cost of education is trivial compared to the cost of ignorance, of leaving the government to the wolves. He taught that the country is safe only when the people rule. Whatever the problem, the quick fix is to shave a little freedom off the Bill of Rights. Yes, in 1942, Japanese-Americans were protected by the Bill of Rights, but we locked them up anyway - after all, there was a war on. Yes, there are Constitutional prohibitions against unreasonable search and seizure, but we have a war on drugs and violent crime is racing out of control. Yes, there's freedom of speech, but we don't want foreign authors here, spouting alien ideologies, do we? The pretexts change from year to year, but the result remains the same: concentrating more power in fewer hands and suppressing diversity of opinion - even though experience plainly shows the danger of such a course of action. One reason the Constitution is a daring and courageous document is that it allows for continuing change, even of the form of government itself, if the people so wish. Because no one is wise enough to foresee which ideas may answer urgent societal needs - even if they're counterintuitive and have been troubling in the past - this document tries to guarantee the fullest and freest expression of views. There is, of course, a price. Most of us are for freedom of expression when there's a danger that our own views will be suppressed. We're not all that upset, though, when views we despise encounter a little censorship here and there. But within certain narrowly circumscribed limits - Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes's famous example was causing panic by falsely crying 'fire' in a crowded theatre - great liberties are permitted in America: • Gun collectors are free to use portraits of the Chief Justice, the Speaker of the House, or the Director of the FBI for target practice; outraged civic-minded citizens are free to burn in effigy the President of the United States. • Even if they mock Judaeo-Christian-Islamic values, even if they ridicule everything most of us hold dear, devil-worshippers (if there are any) are entitled to practice their religion, so long as they break no constitutionally valid law. • A purported scientific article or popular book asserting the 'superiority' of one race over another may not be censored by the government, no matter how pernicious it is; the cure for a fallacious argument is a better argument, not the suppression of ideas. • Individuals may, if they wish, praise the lives and politics of such undisputed mass murderers as Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin and Mao Zedong. Even detestable opinions have a right to be heard. • Individuals or groups are free to argue that a Jewish or Masonic conspiracy is taking over the world, or that the Federal government is in league with the Devil. The system founded by Jefferson, Madison and their colleagues offers means of expression to those who do not understand its origins and wish to replace it by something very different. For example, Tom Clark, Attorney General and therefore chief law enforcement officer of the United States, in 1948 offered this suggestion: 'Those who do not believe in the ideology of the United States shall not be allowed to stay in the United States.' But if there is one key and characteristic US ideology, it is that there are no mandatory and no forbidden ideologies.

The expression of such views is protected, and properly so, under the Bill of Rights, even if those protected would abolish the Bill of Rights if they got the chance. The protection for the rest of us is to use that same Bill of Rights to get across to every citizen the indispensability of the Bill of Rights. What means to protect themselves against human fallibility, what error-protection machinery do these alternative doctrines and institutions offer? An infallible leader? Race? Nationalism? Wholesale disengagement from civilization, except for explosives and automatic weapons? How can they be sure? In his celebrated little book, On Liberty, the English philosopher John Stuart Mill argued that silencing an opinion is 'a peculiar evil'. If the opinion is right, we are robbed of the 'opportunity of exchanging error for truth'; and if it's wrong, we are deprived of a deeper understanding of the truth in 'its collision with error'. If we know only our own side of the argument, we hardly know even that; it becomes stale, soon learned only by rote, untested, a pallid and lifeless truth. Mill also wrote, 'If society lets any considerable number of its members grow up as mere children, incapable of being acted on by rational consideration of distant motives, society has itself to blame.' Jefferson made the same point even more strongly: 'If a nation expects to be both ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.' In a letter to Madison, he continued the thought: 'A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will lose both, and deserve neither.' The values of science and the values of democracy are concordant, in many cases indistinguishable. Science and democracy began - in their civilized incarnations - in the same time and place, Greece in the seventh and sixth centuries BC. Science confers power on anyone who takes the trouble to learn it (although too many have been systematically prevented from doing so). Science thrives on, indeed requires, the free exchange of ideas; its values are antithetical to secrecy. Science holds to no special vantage points or privileged positions. Both science and democracy encourage unconventional opinions and vigorous debate. Both demand adequate reason, coherent argument, rigorous standards of evidence and honesty. Science is a way to call the bluff of those who only pretend to knowledge. It is a bulwark against mysticism, against superstition, against religion misapplied to where it has no business being. If we're true to its values, it can tell us when we're being lied to. It provides a mid-course correction to our mistakes. The more widespread its language, rules and methods, the better chance we have of preserving what Thomas Jefferson and his colleagues had in mind. But democracy can also be subverted more thoroughly through the products of science than any pre-industrial demagogue ever dreamed. In matters of criminal justice, the Bill of Rights recognizes the temptation that may be felt by police, prosecutors and the judiciary to intimidate witnesses and expedite punishment. The criminal-justice system is fallible: innocent people might be punished for crimes they did not commit; governments are perfectly capable of framing those who, for reasons unconnected with the purported crime, they do not like. So the Bill of Rights protects defendants. A kind of cost-benefit analysis is made. The guilty may on occasion be set free so that the innocent will not be punished. This is not only a moral virtue; it also inhibits the misuse of the criminal-justice system to suppress unpopular opinions or despised minorities. It is part of the error-correction machinery. New ideas, invention and creativity in general, always spearhead a kind of freedom, a breaking out from hobbling constraints. Freedom is a prerequisite for continuing the delicate experiment of science which is one reason the Soviet Union could not remain a totalitarian state and be technologically competitive. At the same time, science - or rather its delicate mix of openness and scepticism, and its encouragement of diversity and debate - is a prerequisite for continuing the delicate experiment of freedom in an industrial and highly technological society. Once you questioned the religious insistence on the prevailing view that the Earth was at the centre of the Universe, why should you accept the repeated and confident assertions by religious leaders that God sent kings to rule over us? In the seventeenth century, it was easy to whip English and Colonial juries into a frenzy over this impiety or that heresy. They were willing to torture people to death for their beliefs. By the late eighteenth century, they weren't so sure. The Bill of Rights uncoupled religion from the state, in part because so many religions were steeped in an absolutist frame of mind, each convinced that it alone had a monopoly on the truth and therefore eager for the state to impose this truth on others. Often, the leaders and practitioners of absolutist religions were unable to perceive any middle ground or recognize that the truth might draw upon and embrace apparently contradictory doctrines. The framers of the Bill of Rights had before them the example of England, where the ecclesiastical crime of heresy and the secular crime of treason had become nearly indistinguishable. Many of the early colonists had come to America fleeing religious persecution, although some of them were perfectly happy to persecute other people for their beliefs. The founders of our nation recognized that a close relation between the government and any of the quarrelsome religions would be fatal to freedom - and injurious to religion. Justice Black (in the Supreme Court decision Engel v. Vitale, 1962) described the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment this way: "Its first and most immediate purpose rested on the belief that a union of government and religion tends to destroy government and degrade religion." Clinton Rossiter (from Seedtime of the Republic, 1953): Under the pressure of the American environment, Christianity grew more humanistic and temperate - more tolerant with the struggle of the sects, more liberal with the growth of optimism and rationalism, more experimental with the rise of science, more individualistic with the advent of democracy. Equally important, increasing numbers of colonists, as a legion of preachers loudly lamented, were turning secular in curiosity and skeptical in attitude. Moreover, here too the separation of powers works. Each sect and cult, as Walter Savage Landor once noted, is a moral check on the others: 'Competition is as wholesome in religion as in commerce.' But the price is high: This competition is an impediment to religious bodies acting in concert to address the common good. Rossiter concludes: the twin doctrines of separation of church and state and liberty of individual conscience are the marrow of our democracy, if not indeed America's most magnificent contribution to the freeing of Western man. Now, it's no good to have such rights if they're not used - a right of free speech when no one contradicts the government, freedom of the press when no one is willing to ask the tough questions, a right of assembly when there are no protests, universal suffrage when less than half the electorate votes, separation of church and state when the wall of separation is not regularly repaired. Through disuse they can become no more than votive objects, patriotic lip-service. Rights and freedoms: use 'em or lose 'em. Due to the foresight of the framers of the Bill of Rights - and even more so to all those who, at considerable personal risk, insisted on exercising those rights - it's hard now to bottle up free speech. School library committees, the immigration service, the police, the FBI or the ambitious politician looking to score cheap votes, may attempt it from time to time, but sooner or later the cork pops. The Constitution is, after all, the law of the land, public officials are sworn to uphold it, and activists and the courts episodically hold their feet to the fire. However, through lowered educational standards, declining intellectual competence, diminished zest for substantive debate, and social sanctions against scepticism, our liberties can be slowly eroded and our rights subverted. The founders understood this well: 'The time for fixing every essential right on a legal basis is while our rulers are honest, and ourselves united,' said Thomas Jefferson. "From the conclusion of this [Revolutionary] war we shall be going downhill. It will not then be necessary to resort every moment to the people for support. They will be forgotten, therefore, and their rights disregarded. They will forget themselves but in the sole faculty of making money, and will never think of uniting to effect a due respect for their rights. The shackles, therefore, which shall not be knocked off at the conclusion of this war will remain on us long, will be made heavier and heavier, 'til our rights shall revive or expire in a convulsion." Education on the value of free speech and the other freedoms reserved by the Bill of Rights, about what happens when you don't have them, and about how to exercise and protect them, should be an essential prerequisite for being an American citizen - or the citizen of any nation, the more so to the degree that such rights remain unprotected. If we can't think for ourselves, if we're unwilling to question authority, then we're just putty in the hands of those in power. But if the citizens are educated and form their own opinions, then those in power work for us. In every country, we should be teaching our children the scientific method and the reasons for a Bill of Rights. With it comes a certain decency, humility and community spirit. ~CS

Why? You just posit it has to be like that and that's it? No argument for your statement? What is a conscious creature? Is an ant a conscious creature?

@@Alnivol666 I am not yet sure about insect consciousness. At the moment I don’t believe they are conscious. Note that this would’t mean we can never harm ants, same as it doesn’t mean we can never harm humans. The argument for my post is that all moral questions are fundamentally about wellbeing. This is not my idea. Wellbeing has been in the center of several moral frameworks such as utilitarianism and consecuentialism. I didn’t invent this I simply see it as logically coherent. If questions about morals aren’t about maximizing pleasure and minimizing suffering, what’s their point?

@@domsnow6418 I guess you would have to read a lot of moral philosophy to understand things. Harris tried to reduce things to well being. Obviously, it does not work. Why? I don't know exactly. I myself think consciouseness as a measure is not all that's cracked up to be.

@@Alnivol666 reducing the question to wellbeing is the most consistent way I know currently. Also assuming people haven’t done their reading doesn’t leave a good look. Makes you look kind of arrogant.

I agree. It's a crude but extremely useful thing to keep in mind when morality is discussed and debated. There's a lot of hairs to split about what "well being" means of course.

In the big picture there is nothing but violence and genocide.

They guy is a moron. He whines about cancel culture today while he memory-holes the McCarthy era, the lavender scare and any many number of instances where people in the US lost jobs and more for being contrarian. For a stunning intellect, the guy should try reading a 10th grade history book, hell, just watch Oppenheimer.

Gray -- best I've heard for a long while.

This John Gray is worth the listen.

Gaza was not occupied. Stop talking shit. This is Orwellian language. Gaza is a shithole with people who dance in the streets and cheer for the death of people openly. Stop acting like these people are like you and me. They are not. They like death more than life. And not even other Muslims want anything to do with them.

Why put a label at all?

@@Wildminecraftwolf Because they are useful, short descriptions of our beliefs :)

I.dont know what a centrist conservatarian is, but i do know that conservatism is in the extreme right.

Human nature is unchangeable lol

And a dumb lecture at that.

​@@JulesJunk😂😂😂

​@@JulesJunk Actually, a fair bit of what he said was downright moronic. He specifically said he couldn't imagine Hayek could foresee the cancel culture of today, and he equivocates this with the downfall of liberalism. Hayek was around for the McCarthy hearings. He was around for the Lavender scare. And in case you don't know, lives were ruined by these events on a greater scale than the cancel culture of today, often for unjustified suspicion and mere innuendo. Those pilloried often got their unjust desserts in public at the hand of government actors. However bad modern 'wokeness' might be, these harms in the name of anti-communism, which Gray proudly identified himself with, are far worse and more egregious than cancel culture today. So Gray seems to think Hayek had a shit memory and no imagination. Gray seems to very much share these faults he inadvertently projects into Hayek. Dumbest guest ever. Sam's still great though.

This guy is completely insufferable. He just drones on and on and on. A point should be made in a couple short sentences not infinite run on sentences.

​@davidmancke "on a greater scale"? Hmm, idk about that. Cancel culture still isn't quite over.

Wanst he referencing isaaiah Berlín.

I like Prof. Berlins ' theory on; 'Two Concepts of Liberty.' @@gonx9906

Prof. Berlin's essay on 'Two Concepts of Liberty' is interesting, don't you think?@@gonx9906

He was the guest speaker so what's your problem?

​@@valvlog4665These commentators are insufferable

Is progress just different or „better“?

It maybe finite sure. But I think we still have a long way to go before we reach its limit.

@@infidelheretic923 You do, I don't. Someone needs to discuss this.

Here here!

Did you even bother to read his books?

@@keithhunt5328 Nope. And I won't be wasting my time.

@@keithhunt5328 The guy says Hayek could not have imaged the cancel culture of today, despite that Hayek lived through two red scares, a lavender scare, Oliver Wendell Holmes and any other number of actual instances of actual state censorship destroying people's lives over mere innuendo and suspicion. This guest is a fucking moron.

Because Navalny was a nobody; just another expendable CIA asset.

Who is that?

Lol you're paranoid

That much is clearly true, is as much as you are saying it about Gray.

12,000 lol citation needed. Sorry but you can't go by Hamas' figures and that is all we have.

Islam since its inception has murdered its way across the globe to rob the lands of Christians Jews Zoroastrians Buddhists Hindus from Morocco to India 5,000 miles across! The Islamic goal of land acquisition propelled the Arabs to acquire as much land as possible to the present day. One instance of this Imperialism is the will and attempt to annihilate the few Jews that live in a sliver of land 600 times smaller than the Lands of Islam ! When will Islam stop murdering for land- It already has more land than it knows what to do with . Will Islam always remain land hungry- How much of the world has to be brought into the Caliphate for Islam to finally be land satisfied? Read “ Islamic Imperialism “ and “ The Legacy of Jihad” other scholarly books about the Islamic program

​@@samuelgoldring9691yes islam is a genocidal cult

In philosophy one way to define ethics is: What is a way to interpret moral statement that makes them rational statements? And rational thinking is subject to insight. At least sometimes.

we got rid of slavery seems like progress

​@@radscorpion8it's been reinstated in many parts of the world. And what about wage slavery

I suppose if one group just has access to less information and is making the best moral judgments it can with its primitive available data then maybe you could make a case for relativism in some instances. But with the internet and centuries of data and history to learn from this is increasingly impossible to do. We ought to be converging on the most important points rather than diverging.

Your conclusion is not actually the case. Even if the notion of moral relativism is a fiction, the assumption that it's real and achievable is not a moral position, it's just an error.

Not sure how that qualified as a conversation. Conversations involve an exchange of information/ideas and what happened here is a monologue by Gray. He wouldn't let Sam get a word in edgewise.

@@bowowski936agreed. Sam asked an introductory question, literally 15 mins later, the guy was still talking. A conversation this wasn’t 😂

Fair

[Infinity and zero, theology, soul]: in·fin·i·ty MATHEMATICS a number greater than any assignable quantity or countable number (symbol ∞). (In counting numbers 0 is the subject where positive integers "1, 2, 3 and 4 etc" are the objects). What is the meaning of zero in Webster's dictionary? a. : the arithmetical symbol 0 or 0̸ denoting the absence of all magnitude or quantity. b. : additive identity. specifically : the number between the set of all negative numbers and the set of all positive numbers. Zero is the most important number in mathematics and is both a real and an imaginary number with a horizon through it. Zero-dimensional space is the greatest dimension in physics and is both a real and an imaginary dimension with an event horizon through it. Isn't⚡God⚡supposed to be outside of space (1D, 2D, 3D) and time (4D)? Well, 0D is outside of space and time: 0D (not-natural) = dimensionless and timeless 1D, 2D, 3D (natural) = spatial dimensions 4D (natural) = temporal dimension Read Leibniz's Monadology 📖 and consider that the Monad is the zero-dimensional space binding our quarks together with the strong force (it is). The other side of the Monad is Monos (Alone) and this side is Monas (Singularity) and there's an event horizon between them. So El/Elohim or Theos/Logos etc pick your language. Quarks are dimensionless (no size) and timeless (not-natural). The two main quark spin configs two-down, one-up (subatomic to neutron) and two-up, one-down (subatomic to proton) could easily be construed as the male (upward facing trinity) and female (downward facing trinity) image that Elohim made us in during Genesis 1. Quarks (no spatial extension) experience all 3 fundamental forces plus have a fractional electric charge⚡and that's why protons and neutrons (spatial extension) have electrons orbiting around them. In Geometry any new dimension has to contain within it all previous dimensions. This holds true with it being impossible for atomic protons and neutrons (spatial extension) to exist without subatomically containing within themselves quarks (no spatial extension). "Something (spatial extension) from Nothing (no spatial extension)". A) The postulated soul, 👻, has 1. no spatial extension 2. zero size 3. exact location only B) Quarks are mass with no size measured in Megaelectron Volts. Mass with no size is a unique equation in that it has no spatial extension. Conclusion: A and B are the same thing.

The intellectual dark web as a label was fuckin' gay, dude. The Weinsteins tried to push it because they think they're in highschool

I am wondering: Would you consider the last sentence of the Declaration of Independence, with its invoking divine providence and sacred honor, libertarian? I ask because I find libertarianism whether economic or social very troubling and would move you

@@jkg7661 I don't understand your point here. The structure of the US Constitution is pretty well understood historically, to grant liberty to its citizens. It is a foundation. "Libertarianism" means different things to different people but in the context of my point and in the context of the Constitution, it means that I am free to do pretty-much, whatever I want as long as it doesn't interfere with your liberty (freedom). I hope you don't have a problem with this. If you do, maybe there are other places that you prefer over the US, in terms of rights etc... "Rights" are not granted or defended by "God" or any divinity. They are protected by the people who agree with the program...the government, in the case of the US.

@@rustyosgood5667My point would be to read Gray. Oh well, I accept the mutual misunderstanding in our exchange

@@jkg7661 I think that Gray takes a purely "Historical" view of history but misses the data contained therein. That societies rise and fall is historical but not factual...if that makes sense. We have evolved morally and while there may be ups and downs, the trajectory is up and to the right if you scale appropriately. Pinker does a great job of making this point and Harris only had to point to slavery to drive this home in this discussion. That Gray failed to acknowledge this point and just tried to Gish Gallop around it, says all I need to hear from him. He does have an extensive knowledge of history and some unique perspectives but I think he is wrong. So why would I read him? In my mind, he failed the Harris logic stress test in this discussion. Failing a logic test is lethal in my mind. Either he is intellectually dishonest or limited. I am uninterested in either. If I thought there was a chance that I am missing something that might be revealed in his writings, I would seek them out with vigor. Unfortunately, I remain unconvinced that I am missing any key points. Please feel free to take a shot because, as Harris says, "You could change my mind with the next sentence"!

@@rustyosgood5667"Whatever role it may have had in the past, belief in progress has become a mechanism of self-deception that serves only to block perception of the evils that come with the growth of knowledge." Leave his books alone

Your thesis up top is vacuous.

Diversity Equity inclusion

Sam is a World Champion Pseudo intellectual. Sammy The Pseudo Harris.

@@CP-nl2zbwhat makes you use the qualifier “pseudo”?

​@@ericgraham8150 They say this verbatim comment on multiple episodes' comment sections. I suspect they're subscribed simply to spam this comment each new release and then fly away until the next notification lol

@@tomwolfe7782 Ah okay, fair enough. :)

Morals don't exist. Only physical world exists and what happens there is always 100%. Homo sapiens apes really do think too much of themselves

What is popular is not always right, and what is right is not always popular. Don't conflate influence with accuracy, it's stupid. Thanks!

@@davidmancke We can't always agree on what's right and I didn't say that. But based on the respect Nassim earned as an intellectual, we can safely listen when he says someone is an real intellectual and then go see for ourselves. And I read John's two books: straw dogs & false dawn. He really is an intellect worth his salt. You should check his works before you jump and scream with no background about what you're talking about.

@@ephi124 On the A point, you completely ignored my point above, and really just repeated the notion that because this guy has prestige what he says should carry weight; that notion remains illogical. On the B point, being an intellectual of any rank does not in itself mean that person has anything of value to contribute, it certainly doesn't insulate them from errors. The guest makes some serious errors and the cancel culture he derides is neither new, or as bad as instances of the past. In fact, the anti-communism he claims to have championed years ago is linked to many cases of depriving people of careers and ruining lives far more than the woke culture of today, and included the application of state power to those destructive ends. Even if wokeness is bad, McCarthyism was far worse. That he conveniently forgets all this to grind an axe is peek intellectual dishonesty, especially from such a decorated "intellectual"

“Let us all eat first, then we talk morality.”

Did you even bother to read his book?

They both were mmmm, mmmm'ing at one point. Jesus

He's just saying what we're all thinking! :P

@@carnivalminds its kind of funny in retrospect :)

yeah maybe read his book lol

@@radscorpion8 seems like it'd be a waste of time n money after having listened to the video in full tbh.

theism is the belief in god. atheism is the disbelief in god.

In the strictest sense yes. There maybe other points that atheists disagree on. So it's interesting to see their ideas picked apart in this way.

@@infidelheretic923 that doesnt even make sense though, to be an atheist is simply to reject the claims of there being a god. Thats it, theres literally nothing else there.. lol thats so dumb of you to say any of thay

I've had to start saying things like "is rae l" in youtube comments because they're using AI to shadow ban wrongthink.

Evolved in what way? Better? Towards something? How doeS the mecanics work

@@Alnivol666 yeah like how jesus was pro slavery and we only recently all agreed thats bullshit and it should always be banned and attack those institutions. Stuff like that.

@@Alnivol666 yeah i mean jesus thought slavery was fine, now we agree that he was wrong and slavery is absolutely unacceptable across most of the planet now. Morality evolves.

@@ChillAssTurtle You are using "evolve" as a synonym for "getting better". Evolve just means changing. The worst attrocities in history happened just last century. There is nothing to say there are not worst attrocities still to come

@@Alnivol666 the gradual development of something, especially from a simple to a more complex form. Morality has evolved to be better over time. Thats an undeniable statement. Stay mad virgin.