Yesterday, Sam Harris managed to trigger the entirety of every conservative and anti-woke person on Twitter, and it was glorious. What’s ironic is the fact that it’s from a clip when he was recently on a podcast literally called Triggernometry, which is obviously named because all us silly liberal snowflakes get so triggered.
Why were they so triggered? Well, Sam Harris argued that burying the Hunter Biden laptop story was a conspiracy done out of necessity to protect the world from four more years of Trump. This caused these people to lose their damned minds, and although I found it hilarious, I thought it’d be good to discuss the incident from a utilitarian standpoint.
Who’s Sam Harris?
My history with Sam is a little conflicted. I remember my friend introducing me to him years ago when I was early in my sobriety, and I was like, “This dude sounds pretty smart.” I was in my first years of sobriety and recently found the benefits of meditation, and I became really interested in Buddhist philosophy and philosophy as a whole. I was an atheist in Alcoholics Anonymous, so when I discovered Sam Harris had a book called Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion, I had to check it out.
I instantly became a fan, and it’s still one of my favorite books to this day. There are atheists in AA, but we’re a rare breed. Or, maybe there’s more of us, but we don’t out ourselves for obvious reasons. I have no problem doing so because one of the main reasons I allowed the program to help save my life was because I heard a guy with five years sober say he was an atheist, and I realized it could be done. So, I try to teach others that you can work the program without being a believer.
After that book, I went down the Sam Harris rabbit hole and read most of his books. I loved his short books Free Will and Lying, which completely changed my view on the topics and launched me into reading a lot more philosophy. I also read his book The Moral Landscape and loved it at the time, but when I recently reread it, I wasn’t a fan.
But, after years of loving Sam and his work, as I’ve grown into my own maturity through my sobriety, I’ve distanced myself from engaging in his work.
I think Sam has a lot to offer the world, but the anti-woke hills he chooses to die on regularly make me side-eye him quite a bit. When the guys on the Decoding Gurus podcast had Sam on, that was one of the nails in the coffin for me. Sam’s whole thing about how he’s immune from Tribalism didn’t sit well with me, and I just kind of realized he lacks a certain level of intellectual humility.
If you’ve read my work, you know I believe intellectual humility is a must-have virtue. If I’ve never heard anyone admit they’re wrong or at least question their certainty a little, that’s a red flag.
Although I don’t listen to his podcast as much anymore, I check it out when he has interesting guests on. Sam’s website was actually what introduced me to a ton of great books and authors like Paul Bloom. Most recently, I loved his episode with Nicholas Christakis as they discussed the pandemic and the insane cult of anti-vaxxers.
Aside from that, I always tuned in when Sam would make episodes about how terrible and dangerous Donald Trump was/is.
I cannot tell you how much respect I have for Sam for the decisions he made regarding Trump and how he discusses COVID. So many people in Sam’s circle were devoured by Tribalism, like Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson, the Weinstein brothers, and more. Whether it was, “Trump isn’t such a bad guy,” or going full-on anti-vax, Sam wasn’t having it.
It’s hard enough for many of us to leave friends who go off the deep end, but I imagine it’s even harder when you’re in the public eye.
Well, because of this, Sam Harris lost a lot of fans even though he’s doing extremely well. The conservatives and anti-vaxers who loved Sam for his anti-woke and free speech views now hate him, and that’s what led us to what happened yesterday.
The great triggering
Sam Harris went on the Triggernometry podcast, and I’ve never heard of that podcast before. Once I researched it, I realized what it was within two seconds. They have all of the usual suspects on like Matt Walsh, Douglas Murray, Jordan Peterson, and anyone else who might trigger the libs.
By the way, it’s so interesting how there are so many people who are famous for “saying what everyone else is afraid to say.” With all these people making so much money from saying what nobody else will say, it kind of makes you realize that there are, in fact, a lot of people willing to say these things. But I digress.
Here’s the clip that went viral:
Oh, the rage that ensued. At the time of writing this, that clip has over 5 million views.
The original tweet I saw that shared this was discussing how Sam Harris destroyed his career in this one clip. Then, as I saw him start to trend, I saw more and more people saying the same thing.
As you may have guest, all the people saying this had the same thing in common: being part of the anti-woke tribe.
I think my favorite tweet of all was this one, but it was actually the title of a whole ass article:
Let’s dissect this for a second.
"Breaking” in all caps implies urgent news that you need to know about. I don’t know about you, but I’m not sure this warrants a “BREAKING:” intro.
Then it says, “Sam Harris admits”, and that’s when I wish I was drinking something that I could laugh so hard that I spit it out all over my desk. Sure, I’d be upset that I got my computer all wet from a combination of drink and spit, but it’d be worth it because this is so hilarious.
Saying Sam Harris admits to this conspiracy implies that Sam Harris was somehow involved or made some kind of executive decision.
I’m not sure if anyone got the memo, but Sam Harris is a fucking podcast host; not the owner of Twitter. As we all know, that’s reserved for their “free speech” God Elon Musk (sorry. low-hanging fruit.)
Sam Harris was merely expressing his opinion that he agreed with the decision that was made. I listened to the full podcast episode to make sure I got the whole context, and it’s actually a really good episode. I really don’t think the hosts were ready for Sam to spend the majority of his time explaining how Trump is dangerous and equating him to Alex Jones. One of the hosts tried to push back a few times, and Sam buried him.
Sam legitimately thinks Trump has the ability to cause harm to people, and I can’t really say he’s wrong. I remember reading the book The Cult of Trump by cult expert Steven Hassan, and thinking that this guy just sees everything as a cult due to his profession. But this last week has made me see how cult-like Trump’s following is.
I have absolutely no clue how we’re not putting more emphasis on the fact that a man literally died for Trump a week ago by thinking he was going to Rambo an FBI headquarters.
Sam is all about free speech, but he fully agreed with Twitter’s decision to ban Trump after January 6th. Sam hasn’t been shy about this opinion. I’ll never forget Sam saying in a podcast episode something along the lines of, “The man has threatened nuclear war on Twitter. Surely, that’s a breach of the terms of service against threats of violence.”
In the podcast episode, Sam also points out the blatant hypocrisy of the anti-woke, anti-vax and capitalist conservatives who don’t like government in their business. They believe everyone and businesses should be able to make their own decisions, but this is somehow different because it’s against someone they like?
Ultimately, Sam’s logic about the Hunter Biden laptop is very utilitarian, and I love it.
Utilitarianism for the win
I’m new to this whole philosophy thing. I’ve studied it independently for years, but once I learned about the two primary moral philosophy, utilitarianism just made sense. I actually learned about utilitarianism after I got canceled and realized the way I operate making decisions was a primary reason for why I got canceled. I made a very utilitarian decision with how I ran my YouTube channel, and it worked for a while until it didn’t.
For those of you unfamiliar with utilitarianism, it’s basically believing we should make decisions based on what will lead to the most good for the most people. It’s the philosophy founded by Jeremy Bentham, and he was kind of a weird dude.
Not sure how weird he was? Go Google what he had done with his body after he died.
If you’ve ever heard of “the trolley problem”, this is utilitarianism at work. Let five people die, or pull a lever and kill one person. Then, there are variations and all that fun stuff.
Hopefully, I’m never near a trolley lever or standing on a footbridge next to a fellow fatty, but I’d choose the five over the one a majority of the time.
The main alternative is deontology, which is from Kant. Deontology is the philosophy that you always do the right thing no matter what. I’m still working my way through Kant because he’s confusing as hell, but from what I understand, he has you ask yourself, “What if everyone lived by this rule all the time. Would that be good?”
Take lying for example. Most of us think it’s okay to lie sometimes, but Kant doesn’t. He even goes as far as to say if you’re hiding someone in your house from a murderer, and the murderer shows up at your door asking if that person is there, you shouldn’t lie.
People act like utilitarianism is insane, but telling a murderer someone’s in your home due to some set of values is what sounds more insane to me.
Personally, I don’t think deontology is realistic. I also think hardcore utilitarians can be pretty cold-blooded. I actually wrote about that in a recent piece about effective altruism.
I think too many of us think in black and white, but there’s a grey area. What I mean is that I’m a utilitarian when it comes to tough decisions, but I strive for deontology when possible. You can do both.
But in the case of Hunter Biden’s laptop, Sam Harris’ opinions made my utilitarian heart swell with joy.
Sam Harris sees Trump as the murderer at the door asking if the soon-to-be victim is inside. Harris switches from his hardcore free speech views to thinking about what’s for the greatest good.
I forgot about it, but in the episode, Harris discusses how the Hillary email investigation happened right before the election, and it helped Trump. While I don’t know if we have evidence of that for sure, it definitely wasn’t good.
For my own mental health, I try not to catastrophize since I’m prone to anxiety. But when Trump won, I had never been more scared in my life. We survived those four years, and it gives me optimism if he happens to run and win again, but I really hope we Americans and the world don’t have to go through that again.
Sam Harris said in that episode that whatever Hunter Biden or even Joe Biden scandal was in that laptop is nothing compared to even the smallest Trump scandal. And he’s absolutely right.
Sorry to be blunt, but Trump’s body count of associates who has been charged with crimes involving him is way too big for him not to be involved.
On a regular basis, I think about how democracy is the best system in the world, but it’s also insanely flawed. Do you realize how crazy it is that you have to drug test for the lowest level shitty job, but not to become a congressperson or president? You don’t need a psych evaluation or anything.
We have literally conspiracy theorists in the most powerful positions in the country, and then we had one as president. We had a man who told more lies than truths, and I have to stop there or I’ll write all day about what a piece of shit he is.
Most politicians are pieces of shit, but Trump took it to a whole different level, and I don’t understand how people can vote for him. He’s literally grifted money from his cultish followers on numerous occasions, and they never learn.
But back to the topic at hand, Sam Harris’ utilitarian view on the Biden laptop story was gangster, and I loved it. The laptop is nothing special, and the social media platforms made a decision not to platform it.
In addition to that, the story was terribly sourced and reported when it first came out. Nobody wants to discuss that. Jonathan Rauch did a great thread on Twitter about this a while back if anyone wants to search for it. But he explained how the sources weren’t credible and even the publication was reluctant to run it because of how shady it all was.
Anywho, this was a fun story that lit the internet on fire yesterday, and as I write this, people are still freaking out.
I’m all for bridging political divides and think we’re way too polarized, but stories like this are just funny because they’re purely part of the culture war. Again, Sam is a podcast host and not someone making decisions for millions of people. So, I simply see this as a “win” for my team as I watch the other side cry about it. This stuff is so silly, it’s basically just a sport at this point.
So, stop taking life so seriously and laugh about it a little.
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So to Sam the ends justify the means? I like and respect Sam, but this is not a matter of getting triggered, it’s just wrong.
I take you at your word that the story may have had issues when it was first reported. That said, my understanding is the main points of the story have been verified. In essence, the laptop story was true. I’m pretty sure this is a matter of record at this point. A mainstream Politico journalist wrote an entire book about it.
I get what you’re saying about utilitarianism, and I completely agree. Deontology is stupid, imho. But it’s a mistake to look at this particular instance in relative isolation as you and Harris have done here, imho. There are several bigger questions here, like whether it’s a good thing for a few companies with monopoly power to have almost unilateral control over our political discourse, why the average American is so disillusioned and mistrustful of our institutions, and what relationship that fact has with the political success of our most recent former “president” (not a fan, in case you couldn’t tell. I do my best not to even speak his name).
When monopolists decide what information is suitable for public consumption, that’s a form of authoritarianism. You and Harris should both talk about that if you’re going to talk about hunter biden’s laptop, imho.
Imho, this kind of “you’re too stupid to be able to handle this information” approach is exactly one of the kinds of things that led to that asshole winning the 2016 election. It erodes trust, and we’re currently reaping what we’ve sown for the last several decades because of exactly that type of behavior (among many others, to be clear).