Sam Harris talks about current events professionally, and I consider him a very intelligent person based on his work. Do you not agree that he is smart?brimstoneSalad wrote:It's a reasonable assumption about the average person without a degree or professional experience in it.
I wouldn't be prepared to debate this guy on the spot either.
If Harris thinks he can reliably counter anything this guy says on politics is indication of Dunning-Kruger at work. If Harris doesn't think that and doesn't care, then he's just being irresponsible.
How do you that Sam Harris hasn't done his research, though?Something Harris clearly hadn't done...
There are people who are careful debaters and do their research, these are the exception to the rule, though.
Sam Harris gave Ben Shapiro publicity, but he also disagreed with him on a number of points which they debated about. Sam Harris didn't invite Ben Shapiro to give a speech; he invited him to debate.But Harris isn't spreading truth and countering the other side. He's giving the other side a platform and making them look good.
It's important for anybody and everybody to be critical of these harmful beliefs, but having a debate means you put the other person in front of a megaphone too. If the other person has more experience in the subject than you do, it doesn't matter if you're right: they're still going to run circles around you. Not every debate is a win for the side of reason, look at the Nye Ham debate, which just gave Ham publicity and made Nye look absurd since he was utterly unprepared.
Why? During slavery, there were states that were majority black. America has also become increasingly diverse, but Trump was still elected in 2016. Increasing racial diversity doesn't necessarily mean that racist politicians won't still hold power.It can't happen due to population dynamics.
I disagree... I don't think that someone having political beliefs that are wrong makes them a bad person.It's very unlikely, with mainstream conservative beliefs today.
They'd either need to have not been exposed to other arguments from living under a rock, or be at odds with modern conservatism.
Your beliefs can be unreasonable, and you can be reasonable, at the same time.You can't hold mainstream conservative economic views, like the recent tax reform bill, and be reasonable. Not possible.
Kasich was critical of it. You could make an argument for him being a reasonable conservative, but to a large degree that's just because he's more liberal. He still holds plenty of other unreasonable positions, though.
I disagree. When conservatives speak at colleges, for example, students often have protests to prevent them from speaking, and it is sometimes successful. In my opinion, this happens way to frequently too consider it just a small minority of students. It may not be a majority, but that doesn't mean it's not a lot of students.First, I don't think the support is overwhelming so much as very visible minorities being loud.
Things like intersectionality (Crenshaw style, at least) have serious issues at their theoretical roots like critical race theory.
But most people are cheering these things on naively as part of tribalism.
Secondly, even most of these radicals will move away from radicalism as they get older and grow out of this.
Milo Stewart: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZi1vCLW1dE
Laci Green: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQ1ga8yuM50
This is an unfortunate mainstream pressure when it comes to things like veganism, which people may adopts wholeheartedly during college in a stage of not caring about social pressure and having a desire to do the right thing, then abandon after a year or so.
But we have to remember that these moderating psychological pressures exist for extreme political positions too.
There's no evidence that we actually need to worry about any of this beyond the sound bites from the radicals empowering Republicans and driving people to the polls and into the alt right.
What?These protests are ultimately serving the conservative agenda because they can complain about being oppressed (something they can put on blast because it's not prohibited speech)
I don't think the optics are the problem, because even if they weren't helping conservatives, their actions would be wrong. I think the problem is that many students are against freedom of speech.Students need to be more careful about the optics.
It would be best to HAVE the speaker, and get somebody in there to debate them (or follow it up) who is actually competent.
I think we need to make a distinction between conservative beliefs and conservatives. While conservative beliefs may be wrong, this doesn't make conservatives, the people, bad.Yes.
There are rare exceptions like Kasich who aren't quite so bad (still terrible relative to typical Democrats), but most conservative beliefs are very damaging in virtually every way.
A person isn't defined by their beliefs. For example, I think religion is outdated and wrong, but I don't think religious people are stupid.
I think there is a distinction. Your political views don't determine if you are a good or bad person. If someone volunteers at homeless shelters, donates a lot of money to charity, and treats everyone with kindness, they are not a bad person just because they are a republican.I don't think there is much of one, no.
You can talk about Hitler having terrible beliefs but being a good person if you want, but at a certain point people are so thoroughly indoctrinated by and identify with their beliefs that in an important existential sense they are what they believe.
E.g. people don't just happen to believe in Christianity, they ARE Christians. So much so that when they convert they consider the old person as good as dead, and they've been "born again".
Both politics and religion tend to be closely tied with personal identity for many people.
If people just happened to believe that trickle down economics was effective in the way they believe any common misconception, and just happened to vote Republican without being Republicans, and could be quickly corrected by pointing to some basic evidence, that would be another thing.
Identity politics isn't as big of an issue as political identity.
As for Hitler, he was a bad person because he murdered millions of innocent people... That's not an idea comparable to whether or not we should have stricter gun control.
Politics is important to many people, but it is just one piece of the puzzle for most. There are other things that define a person.
Near zero? The republican party is in power right now.Well, if you think that then weigh in that slightly increased probability (since they'd probably do it anyway, and they're perfectly capable of making up a dishonest justification like they do anyway) with the probability of that side (and not a watered down liberalized version of it that survives the liberalization of society in general) coming to power at all.
Near zero.
If we outlaw the KKK's speech, the KKK are not going to come into power next and outlaw any talk of racial equality.
So far, Holocaust Denial is illegal across much of Europe and there really haven't been any notable negative consequences to that.
If it were illegal in the U.S., maybe enough of the people who helped put Trump in office would be silenced that we'd have the first Female president right now.
There's a stir in Poland which you maybe could argue follows from the precedent of restricting speech, but it's started a shit storm large enough to suggest that other nations don't sit by when things go too far and that the slippery slope of restricting speech is not that slippery after all:
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/02/poland-holocaust-law/552842/
We aren't talking about the KKK or Holocaust Denial. You said, from my understanding, that democrats should ban the expression of mainstream conservative views. You didn't say they should just ban KKK and Holocaust Denial speech.
Other people will want to hear it too, because by banning it, you make it trendy.To people who already wanted to hear it. It seriously impairs message propagation, and message extinction is a thing.
If the extinction rate is higher than the propagation rate, it dies out.
I don't think you can get the extinction rate higher than the propagation rate with the existence of the Internet.
That response will likely not happen for vaccines, but it could happen that if democrats ban republican views that republicans will ban democratic views. Once you establish a precedent that banning certain forms of free expression of ideas is legal, you open a can of worms. You can no longer defend free expression on the grounds of it being free expression... Speech will then be able to be regulated based on whatever who is in power believes to be harmful, which will lead to speech you support being banned when the opposite side gets in power.It's not reasonable to believe that if we ban anti-vaccine speech, then the next political term we will see an equal and opposite reaction of banning pro-vaccine speech.
The most likely outcome is that thousands of children are saved and the meme dies out with the people who held it and were unable to effectively spread it.
Why?I imagine nearly all of them. Those on the tax bill, for one.