Advertisement
If you have a new account but are having problems posting or verifying your account, please email us on hello@boards.ie for help. Thanks :)
Hello all! Please ensure that you are posting a new thread or question in the appropriate forum. The Feedback forum is overwhelmed with questions that are having to be moved elsewhere. If you need help to verify your account contact hello@boards.ie

Sam Harris in Dublin next July

Options
2

Comments

  • Options
    #32
    [Deleted User]
    Posts: 0 ✭ [Deleted User]


    Just off the phone with him (Sam Harris) Nice guy


  • Options
    #33
    robindch
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,403 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


    nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »
    While Peterson stepped entirely away from the podium and paced the stage saying his piece from memory with a lot of emotion and tone.
    As somebody once said, if you can fake sincerity, you have it made. Where one doesn't need to say anything in particular, this seems a little easier than usual.
    nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »
    But in general a total lack of substance, bolstered solely by sounding good[...]
    Where "good" could be replaced with "full of conviction"? A few lines by Yeats spring to mind:
    WB Yeats wrote:
    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere.
    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
    The best lack all conviction, while the worst.
    Are full of passionate intensity.


  • Options
    #34
    guestwifi
    Registered Users Posts: 26 ✭guestwifi


    Hotblack Desiato wrote: »
    Sucks to be a person who's paid money to listen to that sort of gobshitery :)

    Coming from the account that went on a rant at several users in the Late Late thread because they called out transgenderism being pushed on small children....I'd say that's reason enough to consider buying a ticket :p


  • Options
    #35
    mickydcork
    Closed Accounts Posts: 210 ✭✭mickydcork


    Deleted User wrote: »
    Just off the phone with him (Sam Harris) Nice guy

    Really?

    Do tell?


  • Options
    #36
    Hotblack Desiato
    Registered Users Posts: 34,347 ✭✭✭✭Hotblack Desiato


    guestwifi wrote: »
    Coming from the account that went on a rant at several users in the Late Late thread because they called out transgenderism being pushed on small children....I'd say that's reason enough to consider buying a ticket :p

    WTF are you on about.

    Fingal County Council are certainly not competent to be making decisions about the most important piece of infrastructure on the island. They need to stick to badly designed cycle lanes and deciding on whether Mrs Murphy can have her kitchen extension.



  • Advertisement
  • Options
    #37
    nozzferrahhtoo
    Registered Users Posts: 9,340 ✭✭✭nozzferrahhtoo


    robindch wrote: »
    As somebody once said, if you can fake sincerity, you have it made. Where one doesn't need to say anything in particular, this seems a little easier than usual.Where "good" could be replaced with "full of conviction"? A few lines by Yeats spring to mind:

    There is a heavy dose of all of that yes. It is just a personal thing for me though. If I am going to go see a speaker talk, I want to see him talk. Not read. And I seriously find my respect, even for people I like, eroded when they stand at the front of a podium reading their material in a dead monotone.

    Not sure it is just (not just, but including) fake sincerity and conviction though. In that talk he just seemed to have a bit of capability and presence too. He was talking his usual combination of complete nonsense mixed with empty nothing that he makes sound like something. But at least HE was engaging even if his material was not. Goldstein and Lane just kinda monotoned me into a sleepy trance. Shame to see good speakers wasted on tripe material and good material wasted on bad speakers I guess.

    But it is definitely a testimony to just how poor Lanes material is that, in it's presence, Peterson's actually starts to sound good. That is no small achievement in failure.


  • Options
    #38
    robindch
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,403 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


    Hotblack Desiato wrote: »
    Sucks to be a person who's paid money to listen to that sort of gobshitery :)
    guestwifi wrote: »
    Coming from the account that went on a rant [...]
    Folks - a bit of chill would go down well at this point.

    Thanking youze.


  • Options
    #39
    Hotblack Desiato
    Registered Users Posts: 34,347 ✭✭✭✭Hotblack Desiato


    guestwifi wrote: »
    Coming from the account that went on a rant at several users in the Late Late thread because they called out transgenderism being pushed on small children...

    You must be confused because I have never posted in that thread.

    Fingal County Council are certainly not competent to be making decisions about the most important piece of infrastructure on the island. They need to stick to badly designed cycle lanes and deciding on whether Mrs Murphy can have her kitchen extension.



  • Options
    #40
    guestwifi
    Registered Users Posts: 26 ✭guestwifi


    Hotblack Desiato wrote: »
    You must be confused because I have never posted in that thread.

    My sincerest apologies, I'd gotten your username mixed up with another user, I retract my dig at ya! Hug?

    Also, love him or hate him, he did an exquisite job at picking apart Louise O'Neill's ideological views in this podcast -



  • Options
    #41
    magicbastarder
    Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Sports Moderators Posts: 48,824 CMod ✭✭✭✭magicbastarder


    https://twitter.com/classiclib3ral/status/997847661192663040


  • Advertisement
  • Options
    #42
    magicbastarder
    Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Sports Moderators Posts: 48,824 CMod ✭✭✭✭magicbastarder


    he's a little earnest, i'll grant him that.
    and why is he wearing a hat indoors?
    and why is the cameraman pointing his camera at a person who is clearly insane?


  • Options
    #43
    robindch
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,403 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


    magicbastarder wrote: »
    he's a little earnest, i'll grant him that.
    Earnest? He makes leaps of logic so vast that the rest of us puny males are left spinning helplessly in his manly wake, staring at him with awe and wondering how we too could stride the world like he does.

    Here's Peterson on DNA, stating that he believes that ancient Chinese, Australian Aboriginal and Egyptian artists represented DNA in their artwork, although as for the reasons he believe this? "it's very complicated to explain why":

    https://twitter.com/zei_nabq/status/997575537089564672

    And here, Peterson announces that DNA isn't a chemical, but actually something called "a social construction":

    https://twitter.com/jordanbpeterson/status/930268109159636993


  • Options
    #44
    ancapailldorcha
    Moderators, Category Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Social & Fun Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 37,925 CMod ✭✭✭✭ancapailldorcha


    I don't know what his motive is there. Is he just trolling? He doesn't seem daft enough to believe in nonsense like that. It seems to me like he's packaging the nonsense elements of the modern right along with what your grandparents would have called common sense (Think tidy your room) and phrasing it in such a way that anyone who questions it is made to appear ridiculous for questioning the Messianic figure that some people see him as.

    Anyway, it gets worse:

    Apparently, Feminists have an "unconscious wish for brutal male domination:"

    https://twitter.com/_Saeen_/status/955889027957297152

    He isn't above advocating violence either:
    The letter also calls attention to Peterson’s at times violent tone, quoting one video where Peterson suggests anyone who speaks like a “postmodern neo-Marxist” should be “punched in the nose hard enough to knock you out.”

    https://twitter.com/jordanbpeterson/status/975941537619107840

    And at the end of all this, he is making bank on Patreon:
    Jordan B Peterson, currently raking in $80,000 per month on Patreon, and with a global bestseller to boot, is someone who believes in white male victimhood above all else. Peterson will literally weep, actual flowing salty tears, in front of a video camera, over the fate of the young white male. And then he will upload the result to his YouTube channel, where a small army of devoted followers eagerly lap it up.

    We sat again for an hour and a half discussing maps and figures and always getting back to that most damnable creation of the perverted ingenuity of man - the County of Tyrone.

    H. H. Asquith



  • Options
    #45
    robindch
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,403 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


    ancapailldorcha wrote: »
    I don't know what his motive is there. Is he just trolling? He doesn't seem daft enough to believe in nonsense like that.
    He mixes together a confusing melange of post-modernist/rad-feminist claptrap like the social construction comment above, with things which are obvious ("don't tell lies", "be precise in your speech"), with pseudo-profundities, with things which he should be told to do himself ("don't tell lies", "be precise in your speech"), all the while delivering and validating a sense of victimhood within one of his main target audiences - angry, young, white males.

    In the above, he's not unlike the odious Tory politician Jacob Rees-Mogg who revels in tactics like these, though Rees-Mogg seems to aim his wayward comments at older people.

    As to whether Peterson is a troll? That judgement is best made by him, since he's the only person who knows whether he actually believes all of the frequently incomprehensible prose he generates. On the basis of what I've seen, it's unlikely he'll ever convince me that he's not a troll and it seems unlikely he ever will make that effort anyway since he's making far too much money to want to stop.


  • Options
    #46
    ancapailldorcha
    Moderators, Category Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Social & Fun Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 37,925 CMod ✭✭✭✭ancapailldorcha


    robindch wrote: »
    He mixes together a confusing melange of post-modernist/rad-feminist claptrap like the social construction comment above, with things which are obvious ("don't tell lies", "be precise in your speech"), with pseudo-profundities, with things which he should be told to do himself ("don't tell lies", "be precise in your speech"), all the while delivering and validating a sense of victimhood within one of his main target audiences - angry, young, white males.

    Exactly. He's basically selling victimhood to working class whites á la Tommy Robinson, Nigel Farage, etc... I know he has that book out but I don't see too many people actually doing anything useful because of it.
    robindch wrote: »
    In the above, he's not unlike the odious Tory politician Jacob Rees-Mogg who revels in tactics like these, though Rees-Mogg seems to aim his wayward comments at older people.

    Rees-Mogg has, unusually for an Etonian Tory, upped the level of "poshness" where the likes of David Cameron tried to appear less so. Rees-Mogg has turned himself into a one man freakshow where the accent makes the soundbytes that he spouts on cue appear intellectual. Peterson has precise phrasing in that he structures in arguments such that questioning them at all serves to make the critic look foolish. Rees-Mogg's accent and manner appear to make him intelligent when the only work he's ever had to do is to gain acceptance among his peers in spite of his Catholic faith.
    robindch wrote: »
    As to whether Peterson is a troll? That judgement is best made by him, since he's the only person who knows whether he actually believes all of the frequently incomprehensible prose he generates. On the basis of what I've seen, it's unlikely he'll ever convince me that he's not a troll and it seems unlikely he ever will make that effort anyway since he's making far too much money to want to stop.

    Hmm... If I ever ask him, he'll probably tell me that I don't know what a troll is.

    We sat again for an hour and a half discussing maps and figures and always getting back to that most damnable creation of the perverted ingenuity of man - the County of Tyrone.

    H. H. Asquith



  • Options
    #47
    Hotblack Desiato
    Registered Users Posts: 34,347 ✭✭✭✭Hotblack Desiato


    ancapailldorcha wrote: »
    I don't know what his motive is there.

    $80k a month sounds like plenty of motive to me.

    Fingal County Council are certainly not competent to be making decisions about the most important piece of infrastructure on the island. They need to stick to badly designed cycle lanes and deciding on whether Mrs Murphy can have her kitchen extension.



  • Options
    #48
    NIMAN
    Registered Users Posts: 33,229 ✭✭✭✭NIMAN


    Pelvis wrote: »
    €55.00 - €143.00 according to Ticketmaster?

    Eh, no.

    You're having a laugh? Are those serious prices?

    To listen to a few guys chat?


  • Options
    #49
    silverharp
    Registered Users Posts: 17,849 ✭✭✭✭silverharp


    ancapailldorcha wrote: »
    Exactly. He's basically selling victimhood to working class whites á la Tommy Robinson, Nigel Farage, etc... I know he has that book out but I don't see too many people actually doing anything useful because of it.

    I'd say the opposite, his outlook is more Libertarian, he is pulling these lads back from the brink and getting them to fly straight and take responsibility for their lives , literally the opposite of all identitarians left or right who promote victimhood over personal responsibility

    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



  • Options
    #50
    robindch
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,403 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


    silverharp wrote: »
    I'd say the opposite, his outlook is more Libertarian, he is pulling these lads back from the brink and getting them to fly straight and take responsibility for their lives , literally the opposite of all identitarians left or right who promote victimhood over personal responsibility
    Here's a more interesting interaction with Peterson, where he's interviewed by Philip Dodd:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b3fk63

    Suffice it to say that there's much less of Peterson's trademark irritation on show, but as much as ever of his scattergun commentary, the cutting across, the postmodern claptrap and generally confused comments, many of which make superficial sense on an individual basis, but which, when bundled together, constitute confusion and little else.

    BTW, in Peterson's view, one of the greatest threats to the world is - not, for example, an odious, corrupt Tangerine Maniac in the White House bereft of every talent necessary for statecraft, or the nuclear-rattling criminals running the Kremlin, but instead - wait for it - the political side-effects of courses such as "Gender Studies" in Canada.

    As somebody else said, he'd make a much more convincing self-help guru if he could say something useful and/or avoid getting angry all the time.


  • Options
    #51
    Blowfish
    Registered Users Posts: 5,112 ✭✭✭Blowfish


    This article is well worth a read, it's from a professor who worked pretty closely with Peterson:

    https://www.thestar.com/opinion/2018/05/25/i-was-jordan-petersons-strongest-supporter-now-i-think-hes-dangerous.html


  • Advertisement
  • Options
    #52
    Hector Savage
    Registered Users Posts: 8,810 ✭✭✭Hector Savage


    ancapailldorcha wrote: »
    Exactly. He's basically selling victimhood to working class whites á la Tommy Robinson, Nigel Farage, etc... I know he has that book out but I don't see too many people actually doing anything useful because of it.

    Rees-Mogg has, unusually for an Etonian Tory, upped the level of "poshness" where the likes of David Cameron tried to appear less so. Rees-Mogg has turned himself into a one man freakshow where the accent makes the soundbytes that he spouts on cue appear intellectual. Peterson has precise phrasing in that he structures in arguments such that questioning them at all serves to make the critic look foolish. Rees-Mogg's accent and manner appear to make him intelligent when the only work he's ever had to do is to gain acceptance among his peers in spite of his Catholic faith.

    Hmm... If I ever ask him, he'll probably tell me that I don't know what a troll is.


    My God, you don't half spout some utter VERY SMELLY BIRD POO!!!

    .


  • Options
    #53
    Hector Savage
    Registered Users Posts: 8,810 ✭✭✭Hector Savage


    Hector Savage wrote: »
    My God, you don't half spout some utter VERY SMELLY BIRD POO!!!

    .

    :D:D


  • Options
    #54
    nozzferrahhtoo
    Registered Users Posts: 9,340 ✭✭✭nozzferrahhtoo


    I have always loved how Stephen Fry could load a single word with so much meaning. Debate here where he was on the same side with Peterson. Not a great debate, but this whole "Identity politics" and "political correctness" stuff has never interested me so that is probably more an evaluate of me than of the debate itself. But it did little for me.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxYimeaoea0

    Anyway in his opening sentence Fry made a point of pointing out that it is unusual he sits on the same side of the debate with Peterson on any issue. And the way he said it was great. He described Peterson as someone with whom he has "....... differences". And somehow Fry loaded that single word with so much weight and feeling you could tell how much he meant it.


  • Options
    #55
    nozzferrahhtoo
    Registered Users Posts: 9,340 ✭✭✭nozzferrahhtoo


    I have yet to see anything that insightful from him really. There was one line he came out with, one time, which I liked. About how evaluating people with anxiety is the wrong question, when the right question is why the rest of us are NOT anxious and in terror the whole time.

    Other than that I have yet to see him say anything noteworthy, insightful, useful or........most of all...... in any way meaningfully actionable.

    While some of it is patent nonsense. His "There are artists and poets who think they are godless." line of non-reasoning is just a regurgitation of the "no atheists in foxholes" nonsense and his "You cant stop smoking without supernatural intervention" canard even worse.

    And lately I came across him looking at ancient Chinese paintings showings things like intertwined snakes and declaring that he "really believes" that the paintings are representative of an innate knowledge of the Double Helix Structure of DNA which the painters probably acquired while out of their heads on something like Ayahuasca.

    When people offer claims and conclusions however, I am less interested in ruminating on their psychological state of mind than I am in evaluating the arguments, evidence, data and reasoning they offer while making a claim.


  • Options
    #56
    robindch
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,403 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


    /every/some/

    453334.jpg


  • Options
    #57
    bnt
    Registered Users Posts: 12,968 ✭✭✭✭bnt


    There was an interesting interview with Harris in the Independent (UK) last week - here. There's definitely some academic friction going on between Harris and Peterson - on several issues they aren't on the same page at all.
    I think there’s a legitimate crisis that’s not limited to white young men. There’s a crisis of identity, there’s a crisis of meaning. Everything seems to be conspiring to fragment human life now. Just what we’re doing to ourselves with social media and smartphones, and the way in which advanced economies are stratifying with respect to skills and educational attainment. You’re getting a massive spread in with inequality and job prospects based on all that. It’s a difficult time to find a durable sense of what your life is for. Confidence that you’re living your life in a way that is guaranteed to be meaningful is hard to come by now. There’s sort of ready-made ways of pacifying these concerns and religion is the classic one. Insofar as Peterson’s making an overt appeal to religion, he is (in my view) pandering to ancient fears and modern instability in a way that is intellectually dishonest, and he should know that much of what he’s saying is bull****. That’s the stuff we’ll disagree about. Everything he says about the Bible and its primacy or the necessity of grappling with Nietzsche or Dostoyevsky… I don’t agree with any of that, but it’s easy to see how that’s landing with people who feel that their lives are a boring story and Peterson is providing an interesting one, or a grandiose one. People who can’t figure out what they’re doing with their lives between playing video games and checking Instagram, and Peterson is telling them “no, you don’t understand, you really should be slaying a dragon and rescuing the maiden and returning with untold riches, and that’s your birthright.” And it’s a compelling story for some people, but on that level, I don’t think it’s an especially interesting one.

    But the problem he’s unmasked in the largely secular world of this crisis of meaning and purpose, I think that is a legitimate problem and I think his unmasking it has been a very important sociological phenomenon. That’s why I’m doing these events with him: not because I think that our podcasts together suggest that we have much more that we need to keep talking about, I just think that there’s a need that needs to be served here in the secular community which is being badly served. The success that he is having at the moment is unmasking that need, and showing that there’s a need for a rational conversation about meaning and value and human flourishing and the defence of civilisation. We have to have this conversation better than we’ve been having it.

    From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, ‘Look at that, you son of a bitch’.

    — Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 14 Astronaut



  • Options
    #58
    CerebralCortex
    Registered Users Posts: 3,809 ✭✭✭CerebralCortex


    vapor trails wrote: »
    Whatever about Peterson, I am going to listen to Sam Harris. The guy delivers his points in such an articulate and calm manner I can't help but admire him.

    You should try.


  • Options
    #59
    vapor trails
    Registered Users Posts: 384 ✭✭vapor trails


    I bought a ticket to this about 3 months ago but I had to take annual leave this week so I can't go. Its dead centre 5 rows from the front. Any takers? Cost me €140! Will give it away for free


  • Options
    #60
    nozzferrahhtoo
    Registered Users Posts: 9,340 ✭✭✭nozzferrahhtoo


    I know two people who might take that, just trying to get in touch with them now. They are awkward to get hold of. If they go in the meantime to someone else, let me know.


  • Advertisement
  • Options
    #61
    [Deleted User]
    Posts: 0 ✭ [Deleted User]


    Pm sent


Advertisement