labmath2 Posted September 25, 2016 Posted September 25, 2016 Sam Harris discusses why thinks Trump is a worse candidate and around the 7:50 minute mark he discusses why he thinks libertarianism is not currently viable.
thebeardslastcall Posted September 26, 2016 Posted September 26, 2016 Not currently viable? Does he think it will ever be viable? Otherwise, that's not a fair way to characterize his position. Haven't listened to the video and don't know enough about him to say what his opinions are on libertarianism and such, but from what I've seen I never got the sense he was a libertarian. Feel free to share your thoughts on the matter and to share whatever arguments of his you agree with, if you agree with his conclusion, or were you sharing to make him look bad? I mean, do you have a preference of Clinton over Trump or vice versa and if so, why?
Mister Mister Posted September 26, 2016 Posted September 26, 2016 Everyone who's not an anarchist is a minarchist. Everyone fancies themselves a libertarian in the sense that they believe in freedom EXCEPT for the things the government obviously must do.
thebeardslastcall Posted September 26, 2016 Posted September 26, 2016 Everyone who's not an anarchist is a minarchist. Everyone fancies themselves a libertarian in the sense that they believe in freedom EXCEPT for the things the government obviously must do. I don't think a Libertarian is a libertarian, or that a minarchist is really a libertarian either, despite how many classify themselves to the contrary. I think the people who group libertarian with minarchist are holding a contradiction of terms. I think libertarians are anarchists when they get what they're saying. A position your statement helps clarify I think.
Wuzzums Posted September 26, 2016 Posted September 26, 2016 Sam Harris is losing a lot of credibility fast. He says that it simply does not follow that a multi-billionaire has any knowledge about the economy or that Trump is the most incompetent politician ever while accusing him of speaking to the masses in terms they understand. Doublethink of the highest order. We all know here that when blatant idiocy like this is displayed by an otherwise intelligent individual it's not due to a lack of logic but a lack of self-knowledge. I think Sam's emotional response to Trump has to do with the fact that he's an academic. It's all about class. He's from the academic class, he rarely talks with any hoi poloi, you only get to speak to him if you're either famous or have a degree. Most of Sam's time is spent explaining his statements to his fellow aristocrats lest they ostracize him. He laments this in most of his podcasts. He has a degree in neuroscience. What is a neuroscience degree? All you need to know is that it's not recognized as a valid document on most of the globe. It's just a title that gets him into "the club". His high IQ is literally the only thing holding him back from going full-academic which is why so many things he says are true and triggering to his friends. Sam likes his club, he wants to stay in it, he cannot lower his IQ to the required level but maybe he can raise theirs to his level. Now here comes a guy like Trump, a genius whose ridiculously competent in every domain he's interested in BUT he's the enemy. Trump doesn't care about degrees or titles or clubs. Trump is an indication that everything Sam has always wanted to achieve amounts to a massive waste of time. The simple fact that people listen to Trump and not Sam on a global scale costs him sleep. "How can people follow Trump and not me? I have all these degrees, how come people don't know I'm the guy they should listen to?" This whole thing is another example of how no sane person will ever argue against their paycheck. I'm curious if the FDR crew ever attempted to get Sam on? I know Sam commented how he knows of no conversations going on like the ones he has on his podcast even though FDR has been around for a decade. There is no way he hasn't heard of Stefan which leads me to believe he's only interested in conversations only if degrees/credentials are involved. So if you guys haven't tried to contact him maybe you should first start out by listing all of Stefan's degrees and achievements then making your offer. 1
st434u Posted September 26, 2016 Posted September 26, 2016 I really don't see much difference between Donald Trump and Sam Harris. They're both socialists. They just pretend to be different from each other so that they can capture a different spectrum of the hordes of mindless, well-trained seals who just want a socialist hero to clap for while he tells them how he wants to control everyone's lives to the smallest detail.
labmath2 Posted September 26, 2016 Author Posted September 26, 2016 Not currently viable? Does he think it will ever be viable? Otherwise, that's not a fair way to characterize his position. Haven't listened to the video and don't know enough about him to say what his opinions are on libertarianism and such, but from what I've seen I never got the sense he was a libertarian. Feel free to share your thoughts on the matter and to share whatever arguments of his you agree with, if you agree with his conclusion, or were you sharing to make him look bad? I mean, do you have a preference of Clinton over Trump or vice versa and if so, why? As it pertains to his comment on libertarianism, i think i am along the same lines. I also know i am a pessimist so i am probably overthinking how bad people actually are compared to reality, so i could be wrong. I am interested in seeing libertarianism practiced in a large population of at least 1 million people where you can actually get data on what happens when there is no government on that scale. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. My position on Trump is that i cannot reliably trust anything he has said or will say. Just based on his speeches on immigration, i cannot take anything he says seriously. He was first for deporting all the illegals and building a wall. Then he walked back the deportation to we will send them to the back of the line for visa. Then to lets build the wall first then we will deal with the illegal immigrant. Its not quite clear if he will only deport illegals that break the law or all illegals. I cannot trust anything he says as a position he truly holds. The best example comes from his answer to nuclear weapons. I know some people have made arguments about what he means by that answer, but the fact that we have to guess what he means gives me pause. Then you have things like lets torture family members of terrorists. The list goes on. I cannot in good conscience take Trump seriously. On the other side we have Hillary Clinton who is at best incompetent. Even if i ignored the lying and corruption, her experience is just a series bad decisions. I don't expect her to change anytime soon (unless bad decisions suddenly become good ones). So i can't in good conscience support her either. Supporting either candidate because they are better than the other is simply playing Russian roulette with the election. While i do not expect hard line democrats or republicans to take any responsibility for their candidate (depending on who get elected and how bad things get) because they can always blame the other side for everything that is going wrong, it makes me nervous when people like Stefan or Sam show preference for one candidate. How much honesty can we expect if their preferred candidate wins and they make bad decisions? Are we going to see regret for their part in persuading anyone to support said candidate?
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