“Cognitive biases are so pervasive and subtle that it’s hubristic to ever claim we’ve escaped them entirely.” Totally – but it seems clear to me that Harris wouldn’t disagree with you. He’s explicitly said he’s as susceptible to bias as anyone else, and continually trying to correct for it.
It’s the specific accusation of ‘tribalism’ that (I think) is warping the conversation. In the context of the Klein/Harris conversation, ‘tribal’ is really synonymous with ‘group identity-based’ – i.e. if you’re white, you’re going to bring a certain perspective and everything you say on any issue will be affected by that (as Klein argues). Harris believes it is possible to say things that aren’t dependent on your group identity, and I’m pretty sure you believe that too. Surely outgrowing the problem of tribalism is part of how we avert the apocalypse, at least in the sense of expanding our sense of the tribe to the whole planet?
I’ve listened to Waking Up, now Making Sense, with Sam Harris for well over 5 years. Sam’s greatest character flaw is his lack of self awareness. I have a lot of love for Sam, but he’s much better at monologues than he is at listening, he rarely addresses the exact critique being made of him, and he relies on well worn talking points that longtime listeners of his like me have heard dozens and dozens of times. I’ve been listening to and reading Sam for longer than most people have known his name, and whether or not he is tribal or anti-tribal, I think what’s undeniable is simply that Sam is bad at recognizing his own bias. Join the club. What disappoints me is that as a mindfulness teacher, which thanks to Sam I’ve been practicing myself for a few years now, this should all be obvious to Sam.
After the podcast aired Decoding the Gurus hosted a live hangout for Patreon patrons, you can go watch it now if you subscribe. What really stuck out to them is that in the world of academic dialogue there is a back and forth, give and take, one listens and learns and updates their beliefs accordingly when reasonable arguments are made. Listen to Sam talking to Chris and Matt and you hear none of that. Sam is literally talking at them, frequently interrupting, and reacting impulsively without really considering whether or not a good point is being made. Chris and Matt made a lot of good points, but you never would have known that just listening to Sam.
I don’t say any of that to dismiss Sam, I just think he’s doing a disservice to himself and his fans (like me) when he champions logic and reason and then so glaringly fails to apply it to himself.
The greatest gift my mindfulness and secular Buddhist practice has given me is that I don’t have to defend my ego. I can be impulsive and defensive and then pretty quickly catch myself and admit I was wrong, apologize if appropriate, and laugh at myself for my deranged behavior. Once I stop identifying with my ego, why defend it? I’ve heard Sam say that he does the same with his daughters, and granted it’s much much much more difficult putting your ego in check when you’re in a heated debate with someone you feel is attacking you, but is that really the situation Sam was in on the Decoding the Gurus podcast? Or his podcast with Ezra Klein? Or his exchanges with you Bob? Those conversations/debates all seemed pretty civil to me. The critiques were fair-minded and well reasoned, and often times characterized the Sam Harris I’ve been a fan of for so long extremely accurately. It’s obvious to anyone who has a well established mindfulness practice why Sam reacts the way he does, the question is why can’t someone experienced as Sam seem to cop to it? Perhaps it’s asking too much of him in the moment, but upon reflection he should be able to see clearly that he’s responding impulsively in a defensive way that isn’t well-reasoned or considered and displays his impressive talent for rhetoric well above his also considerable talent for logic.
You could flip things round and say Harris’s evident conversancy with mindfulness/meditation means there’s more reason to think he has a genuine grievance here, and it’s not just an ego-driven response to polite critique.
In the Exra Klein case, I think he sincerely felt he was being subject to a potentially career-ending attack, given the potency of the race issue, and probably felt more aggrieved that it was coming from someone who (in general) is pretty committed to rationality and open debate. Harris has since tweeted in praise of Klein’s ‘Why We’re Polarized’ which I thought was to his credit.
In general, I think Harris has an impatience for offering soft disclaimers that he thinks shouldn’t be necessary—it’s a tonal thing that makes his delivery more powerful, but more likely to annoy people.
Your point about the 'tonal thing' is a good one. I'd go further and say he's prone to hyperbole--not just disclaimer-free truth telling--and that this, too, gets him both more followers and more detractors. (e.g. "we are at war with Islam.")
You both make good points. My partner is an I-O Psychologist who works primarily in personality and cognitive assessment. She makes a really strong case that Sam is below average in self awareness, above average in narcissism, and has significant blind spots in critical thinking, particularly when the subject is himself or people he perceives as friends or enemies. None of that is unusual for someone who has deliberately built a career as a public intellectual, and the more extreme examples of this are Eric and Brett Weinstein.
When they wander outside of their limited areas of expertise, they start getting a lot wrong because of the Dunning–Kruger effect. They don’t know enough about the history, the literature, the breadth of study in any given field to correctly access how much they don’t know. If they were higher in self awareness, they may not fall victim to the effect so easily. That requires humility. When Sam is on the attack he makes sweeping statements, e.g. his attack on anthropology in Decoding the Gurus. It was a silly straw man, but if you don’t know the first thing about the enormous range of study and ideas within contemporary anthropology one may find that argument compelling. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve heard Sam talk about academics who believe there are no differences between the two sexes. The way Sam frames it, this is the state of the social sciences in the Academy. Any academic in the social sciences would laugh that claim off as a joke, but fans for whom the culture war is a significant part of their identity this is cause for moral panic.
Meditative practice can cultivate awareness of one's phenomenological experience and help one see through the conceptualization of that experience, but it doesn't necessarily reveal one's shadow, one's unconsciousness. I doesn't disclose one's unexamined assumptions, one's developmental stage. It doesn't mean one is good at mutually vulnerable reflective dialog or necessarily increase the complexity of consciousness. The lucidity of awareness can be helpful in all those other dimensions of development but it does not require them. I think Sam has a a good deal of self awareness, but lacks humility, curiosity, and relational vulnerability, which creates some significant blind spots. Meditative practice profoundly important, but we need to stop making it the answer to everything. There is ample evidence that meditative practitioners are weak in other areas of development. So too here.
You’re absolutely right Geoff. Pema Chodron often writes about humility and curiosity as the necessary precursors for developing ones mindfulness practice. In my experience being part of a secular Buddhist Sangha is really important, other teachers and experienced practitioners help me see my blind spots (of which there are many). As you say vulnerability is another important characteristic, without which I don’t see a strong development of wisdom as we typically characterize it in Buddhist practice.
“Cognitive biases are so pervasive and subtle that it’s hubristic to ever claim we’ve escaped them entirely.” Totally – but it seems clear to me that Harris wouldn’t disagree with you. He’s explicitly said he’s as susceptible to bias as anyone else, and continually trying to correct for it.
It’s the specific accusation of ‘tribalism’ that (I think) is warping the conversation. In the context of the Klein/Harris conversation, ‘tribal’ is really synonymous with ‘group identity-based’ – i.e. if you’re white, you’re going to bring a certain perspective and everything you say on any issue will be affected by that (as Klein argues). Harris believes it is possible to say things that aren’t dependent on your group identity, and I’m pretty sure you believe that too. Surely outgrowing the problem of tribalism is part of how we avert the apocalypse, at least in the sense of expanding our sense of the tribe to the whole planet?
I’ve listened to Waking Up, now Making Sense, with Sam Harris for well over 5 years. Sam’s greatest character flaw is his lack of self awareness. I have a lot of love for Sam, but he’s much better at monologues than he is at listening, he rarely addresses the exact critique being made of him, and he relies on well worn talking points that longtime listeners of his like me have heard dozens and dozens of times. I’ve been listening to and reading Sam for longer than most people have known his name, and whether or not he is tribal or anti-tribal, I think what’s undeniable is simply that Sam is bad at recognizing his own bias. Join the club. What disappoints me is that as a mindfulness teacher, which thanks to Sam I’ve been practicing myself for a few years now, this should all be obvious to Sam.
After the podcast aired Decoding the Gurus hosted a live hangout for Patreon patrons, you can go watch it now if you subscribe. What really stuck out to them is that in the world of academic dialogue there is a back and forth, give and take, one listens and learns and updates their beliefs accordingly when reasonable arguments are made. Listen to Sam talking to Chris and Matt and you hear none of that. Sam is literally talking at them, frequently interrupting, and reacting impulsively without really considering whether or not a good point is being made. Chris and Matt made a lot of good points, but you never would have known that just listening to Sam.
I don’t say any of that to dismiss Sam, I just think he’s doing a disservice to himself and his fans (like me) when he champions logic and reason and then so glaringly fails to apply it to himself.
I agree that the lack of self awareness is striking and, in light of the meditative practice, ironic.
The greatest gift my mindfulness and secular Buddhist practice has given me is that I don’t have to defend my ego. I can be impulsive and defensive and then pretty quickly catch myself and admit I was wrong, apologize if appropriate, and laugh at myself for my deranged behavior. Once I stop identifying with my ego, why defend it? I’ve heard Sam say that he does the same with his daughters, and granted it’s much much much more difficult putting your ego in check when you’re in a heated debate with someone you feel is attacking you, but is that really the situation Sam was in on the Decoding the Gurus podcast? Or his podcast with Ezra Klein? Or his exchanges with you Bob? Those conversations/debates all seemed pretty civil to me. The critiques were fair-minded and well reasoned, and often times characterized the Sam Harris I’ve been a fan of for so long extremely accurately. It’s obvious to anyone who has a well established mindfulness practice why Sam reacts the way he does, the question is why can’t someone experienced as Sam seem to cop to it? Perhaps it’s asking too much of him in the moment, but upon reflection he should be able to see clearly that he’s responding impulsively in a defensive way that isn’t well-reasoned or considered and displays his impressive talent for rhetoric well above his also considerable talent for logic.
You could flip things round and say Harris’s evident conversancy with mindfulness/meditation means there’s more reason to think he has a genuine grievance here, and it’s not just an ego-driven response to polite critique.
In the Exra Klein case, I think he sincerely felt he was being subject to a potentially career-ending attack, given the potency of the race issue, and probably felt more aggrieved that it was coming from someone who (in general) is pretty committed to rationality and open debate. Harris has since tweeted in praise of Klein’s ‘Why We’re Polarized’ which I thought was to his credit.
In general, I think Harris has an impatience for offering soft disclaimers that he thinks shouldn’t be necessary—it’s a tonal thing that makes his delivery more powerful, but more likely to annoy people.
Your point about the 'tonal thing' is a good one. I'd go further and say he's prone to hyperbole--not just disclaimer-free truth telling--and that this, too, gets him both more followers and more detractors. (e.g. "we are at war with Islam.")
You both make good points. My partner is an I-O Psychologist who works primarily in personality and cognitive assessment. She makes a really strong case that Sam is below average in self awareness, above average in narcissism, and has significant blind spots in critical thinking, particularly when the subject is himself or people he perceives as friends or enemies. None of that is unusual for someone who has deliberately built a career as a public intellectual, and the more extreme examples of this are Eric and Brett Weinstein.
When they wander outside of their limited areas of expertise, they start getting a lot wrong because of the Dunning–Kruger effect. They don’t know enough about the history, the literature, the breadth of study in any given field to correctly access how much they don’t know. If they were higher in self awareness, they may not fall victim to the effect so easily. That requires humility. When Sam is on the attack he makes sweeping statements, e.g. his attack on anthropology in Decoding the Gurus. It was a silly straw man, but if you don’t know the first thing about the enormous range of study and ideas within contemporary anthropology one may find that argument compelling. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve heard Sam talk about academics who believe there are no differences between the two sexes. The way Sam frames it, this is the state of the social sciences in the Academy. Any academic in the social sciences would laugh that claim off as a joke, but fans for whom the culture war is a significant part of their identity this is cause for moral panic.
Meditative practice can cultivate awareness of one's phenomenological experience and help one see through the conceptualization of that experience, but it doesn't necessarily reveal one's shadow, one's unconsciousness. I doesn't disclose one's unexamined assumptions, one's developmental stage. It doesn't mean one is good at mutually vulnerable reflective dialog or necessarily increase the complexity of consciousness. The lucidity of awareness can be helpful in all those other dimensions of development but it does not require them. I think Sam has a a good deal of self awareness, but lacks humility, curiosity, and relational vulnerability, which creates some significant blind spots. Meditative practice profoundly important, but we need to stop making it the answer to everything. There is ample evidence that meditative practitioners are weak in other areas of development. So too here.
You’re absolutely right Geoff. Pema Chodron often writes about humility and curiosity as the necessary precursors for developing ones mindfulness practice. In my experience being part of a secular Buddhist Sangha is really important, other teachers and experienced practitioners help me see my blind spots (of which there are many). As you say vulnerability is another important characteristic, without which I don’t see a strong development of wisdom as we typically characterize it in Buddhist practice.