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Sam Harris in Dublin next July
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23-03-2018 12:39PM#1
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mickydcork wrote: »Douglas Murray is generally great though!!
Does Douglas Murray have anything to say other than whinge about the number of Muslims in Europe and about how they don't like him because he's gay?
The man is a piece of vermin; a 21st century Titus Oates. I might go along just to throw something at him.
Peterson, I am new to, but some of what he says is interesting. Harris is just a humourless "celebrity atheist", the sort of which Frankie Boyle wanted to consign to Room 101. To general approval.
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Snickers Man wrote: »Does Douglas Murray have anything to say other than whinge about the number of Muslims in Europe and about how they don't like him because he's gay?
The man is a piece of vermin; a 21st century Titus Oates. I might go along just to throw something at him.
Peterson, I am new to, but some of what he says is interesting. Harris is just a humourless "celebrity atheist", the sort of which Frankie Boyle wanted to consign to Room 101. To general approval.
Yes, Douglas Murray has more to say on many topics and his position on immigration is little more nuanced than that to be fair.
Can't agree in anyway with you about Harris, so much so that I assume you are trolling by posting as such in this thread.0 -
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Snickers Man wrote: »Harris is just a humourless "celebrity atheist", the sort of which Frankie Boyle wanted to consign to Room 101. To general approval.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22cYcsVPOok
This made me chuckle. But having said that, I think he's a committed atheist. Humour is not his main aim here.0 -
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€55.00 - €143.00 according to Ticketmaster?
Eh, no.
even at €55 they would need to be doing a couple of sets after
, 20/25€ is about as much as I would pay for such an event. A belief in gender identity involves a level of faith as there is nothing tangible to prove its existence which, as something divorced from the physical body, is similar to the idea of a soul. - Colette Colfer
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What worries me with such things is that even the most out there nonsense fad tends to be "substantially on target". And a 90-10 split while numerically true might not focus enough attention on how bad, or how much nonsense, the 10% CAN be.
Diet fads are a great example of this. People telling you that cayenne pepper is this magic substance for example. So people go putting it in everything, and ingesting huge quantities of the stuff. And testimonials roll in as to the efficacy of the fad.
But like all diet fads, 90% of it is on target useful stuff. WHILE taking on this cayenne pepper en masse.... the fad also has you taking on more water, using more fresh produce, preparing your own food and meals instead of using pre-prepared or overly processed variants. And so on. But because their diet is based on Cayenne Pepper.... the testimonials from people tell you how powerful they found that pepper to be in their life.
That is an innocuous example, but it is not always so. Sometimes that 10% can be built around positively damaging and harmful things. Religion is an example of that for me. While perpetuating unsubstantiated nonsense about their sky fairy of choice, or mystical notions of power.... the core 90% tends to be about things like getting people together socially, fostering a notion of togetherness, packaging and shipping a moral system and so forth. All good stuff. But the harms and damages that 10% nonsense perpetuates into the world is measurable in real world conflict, suffering, division, and harm.
Which end of that spectrum Peterson lies on, I am not in a position to say. I have listened to some of his stuff on Harris' podcast, Joe Rogan, and two of his own solo talks but I still feel ignorant about what his actual message and approach is. Perhaps I need to read some of the articles more critical of his views. And for the most part I found it all to either be A) Stating the absolute blatantly obvious or
Stating a few hand wavey "deepities" that sound profound but I could find no way to translate them into anything actionable or parse them into any kind of real world relevance.
But the overall tone and content for me contained nothing more than your average self help book. Though I have not read a LOT of such books in the past, usually just when I was in someone elses house who had one and I sped read them for something to do, very little seemed to distinguish them from Peterson's offerings.0 -
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nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »And for the most part I found it all to either be A) Stating the absolute blatantly obvious or Stating a few hand wavey "deepities" that sound profound but I could find no way to translate them into anything actionable or parse them into any kind of real world relevance.
I listened a little more to Peterson in another conversation he had on stage and I have to say that what I just wrote above there seems to keep holding true.
For example I listened to the first 8 or 9 minute of it, then went and listened to it again three times. Twice in high speed and once at normal. And the entire monologue from Peterson seemed to have not actual content. There is a few phrases he clearly thinks SOUND like he is saying something like "metaphorical substrate".... and he very much likes dropping names. But listening to the same monologue a total of 4 times found no actual content in anything he said. He basically seemed to be using as many words as possible to simply say "I am not (can not?) rebutting anything atheists say, but I do not think they take what they say seriously enough because words".
Then this interaction following that substance devoid monologue just blew me away:
Dillahunty: "I agree people take drugs and report experiences they describe as mystical. We have no way to confirm something supernatural actually happened".
Peterson: "It stops people from smoking"
Dillahunty: "Well you can stop smoking without supernatural intervention".
Peterson: "No, not really"
Dillahunty: "You CANT stop smoking without supernatural intervention?????"
Aside from this navel gazing being demonstrably false by the most cursory look at reality where people stop smoking all the time, he at this point started to try to construe people having such an experience, and it being trans-formative, as evidence the experience actually was of a supernatural event. You would think someone who is meant to be a public intellectual would know the difference between the effects of a belief on the individual, and the implications those effects have for actual evidence about reality. Which is almost none. A belief can have all the most wonderful effects in the world, that does not mean one iota of it is actually true.
There is another 1 hour 20 minutes left in this conversation. I hope it gets better.0 -
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I once had the vagaries of how ticket prices are set explained to me. It was a deep and complex issue far beyond my ken. Suffice to say that while the actual act itself can be blamed for SOME of it, a huge aspect of it is out of their control.
Anyway I have to give SOME credit where it is due. I went full masochim and watched the 2 hour Peterson-Lane talk, which actually included Rebecca Goldstein. And even when talking complete nonsense, Peterson is a charismatic and competent speaker. He is engaging even when his material is not.
And, perhaps a personal thing, my respect for peoples speaking abilities shoots up when they do not read from cards or notes but pace the stage speaking their subject from their mind. Even with MANY years of practice Lane for example read his opening speech out from cards in mostly a monotone (though he put some emotion into reading quotes from a book). While Peterson stepped entirely away from the podium and paced the stage saying his piece from memory with a lot of emotion and tone.
Still most of what he spoke was nonsense OR coherent but devoid of anything substantive. But context changes a lot and next to Lane the same stuff that seemed total nonsense in other contexts started to sound somewhat moderate and meaningful. I did like some opening lines he made about how we ask the wrong questions in psychology sometimes. Such as when we ask "Why is this patient anxious all the time?" we should be asking "Given the human condition, why are the rest of us NOT anxious and living in perpetual terror most of the time?".
But in general a total lack of substance, bolstered solely by sounding good compared to the total appeal to emotion trip Lane comes out with.
Anyway I endured the 2:20 hours so you all don't have to You're welcome hehehehe 0
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