.@SamHarrisOrg Perhaps coincidentally, I joined Twitter to defend you from unfair attacks on TYT from the likes of Cenk Uygur & CJ Werleman. Today, I’m using my last thread here to explain why you’ve lost my support as a long-time follower of your work & podcast, Patron, & fan.
The dumbed-down discourse of social media needs more intellectual voices, & less influence from the uncharitable, tribal, childish provocateurs who dominate online culture here. You’d been a firewall against those things, but appear to be succumbing now (as have I, hence leaving).
I think you’re in the process of erecting an echo chamber for yourself. You leap to defend the members of a small clique, while subjecting those outside your tribe to increasingly unfair (or at least, asymmetrical) scrutiny.
Some of your early allies seemed more defensible, but you now look to be using a heuristic based on who is willing to criticize Islam, or poke the PC police. While I fall on the same side of those issues as you, your algorithm needs to be more sophisticated than that.
The way you dealt w/ Christian Picciolini’s (unfair, & maybe outright wrong) claims was the last straw for me, but just one episode in a series of holding the left under a microscope, while lobbing softballs at your establishment center-right peers.
Molyneux is a racist crank, Sam. You don’t need to give his word gospel status. I don’t think he’s a Holocaust denier, either. But, he’s given platform to them w/o challenge to their basic premise, which at least put him on the hook for a public statement.
More importantly, it’s not your job to serve as censor for that dispute. Molyneux can risk losing some of his anti-semitic fans by mounting his own defense here. You can even post his argument, along w/ Picciolini’s, on your blog. Have you run out of pixels now?
Damore did shop his story to questionable right-wing platforms after his (probably unfair) firing. That “exclusively” isn’t correct is a minor point, IMO, & the fuzzy term “alt-right” is flatly not a matter of fact. You don’t apply this word policing to your conservative guests, or even yourself.
You & Douglas Murray tossed around the word “fascist” like it was Halloween candy on your pod. Antifa, despite some being illiberal thugs, are not fascists. That’s not what that term means. I don’t want you to cut it, though, because I believe in free speech & know live convos have rough edges.
On Douglas: he's not wonderful. He’s a paranoid xenophobe w/ Oxford grammar. You seem to mistake his tone for moderation that isn’t there. Also, Mark Steyn isn’t great. He’s a vocal climate change denier, & if people can’t see that issue as vastly bigger than "campus free speech", we're screwed.
On your podcast, Ayaan said (all) women in Europe are not safe anymore (b/c of Muslim immigration). Are you going to fact-check that? We keep crime stats for a reason. You didn't push back one bit.
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I don't endorse SPLC's list, but she did say we are at war with (all) Islam. She's talked of civil war if Islam's issues aren't addressed. If she's not an extremist, she should stop making such noises.
I’m also a fan of talking w/ opponents, but judgment matters, too. Jordan Peterson is a charlatan. He’s smuggling conservative Christian dogma in through some reasonable psych commentary. I didn’t mind a podcast w/ him. Or, a 2nd trying to clean up the first. But, #3, 4, 5 & 6? What the hell are you doing, Sam?
This doesn’t square w/ you saying you’ll be avoiding the far left because of your run-in w/ Ezra. 1st, he’s not part of the far left (we hate him, too). 2nd, you're using personal anecdotes to judge a wide group. 3rd, you have to see how that breakdown was partly the result of your actions, & picking the final fight w/ Klein.
It’s ok to have boundaries for your podcast platform, but please try to apply them consistently. The left hold views I find odious, too. But, so do folks like Ben Shapiro. Someone who thinks it’s ok to openly claim “arabs” like to live in sewage might reveal a line to draw, if you're pruning out leftists.
You say the left isn’t treating you fairly (ok), but routinely take the opportunity to provoke them. The tweet below 👇 is a recent example, but there’s other things like your quote about Ben Carson (vs Chomsky) as POTUS. How do you expect people to react to exaggerated rhetoric like that?
I think it’s fine to have a laugh in private about the Penis Hoax (I did), but maybe that’s not something you needed to promote. It’s embarrassing that a college professor thought that was a good idea, not to mention the conclusions the authors thought they could draw from it.
I stuck w/ you through the statistically empty gun apologetics, the obfuscation & equivocation on consciousness, the anthropomorphic paranoia about AI, & the strange bromance w/ anti-intellectual meatheads Joe Rogan & Jocko Willink, but you’ve lost me now.
The new fraternity of renegades is too much. Time to stop reflexively defending each other. You might start w/ Rubin. My criticism of you (overfixation on "SJW"s & personal vendettas, asymmetrical charity to outgroups, underdeveloped political IQ) are all worse w/ Dave. If you can’t see it in him, I doubt you'll ever course-correct.
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