- Eric R. Weinstein is a managing director of Thiel Capital in San Francisco. He is also a research fellow at the Mathematical Institute of Oxford University. Weinstein speaks and publishes on a variety of topics including, gauge theory, immigration, the market for elite labor, management of financial risk and the incentivizing of risk taking in science. He can be contacted on Twitter: @EricRWeinstein.
Important listen for people who are critical of Harris. Weinstein takes him to task over some very important points.
I didn't know much about Sam Harris before reading about him in these recent posts. I've only listened to an hour of the 2 1/2 hour podcast. I couldn't get through much more of it. This interview has given me a bad taste for Sam Harris.
Right at the beginning of the podcast, he mentions that he gave some false information about a group he labels a cult. He says that he's mentioning the mistake in this podcast because there isn't a good place to announce these mistakes.
There are better places than an unrelated podcast to correct false information. A better place would be either in the original podcast or in the post where the podcast originates. If he wants to announce the retraction in the next podcast, that might make some sense. Placing the retraction where no one would think to look for it isn't very aboveboard. In his retraction, he gave the sense the the misinformation was somehow less important because the wrong fact was about one "cult" instead of another. Misinformation is misinformation. It doesn't really matter if the misinformation is misplaced from another group he doesn't like.
The bigger issue for me was his blaming his audience for how he expressed his views. Weinstein asked him why he doesn't do a better job of expressing his appreciation for religious culture, even on a secular level. He says that he's aware that his audience wouldn't appreciate and understand about Rumi and meditation and that he has an empathy for that segment of his audience. If he's pandering to an audience, trying to express his views based on what he thinks they want, it's not a very genuine expression. His audience will then be based on people who are attracted to what he thinks his audience wants. He seems to think his audience is anti-theist and writes accordingly. If he wrote openly about his appreciation for some of the aspects of religion, his audience might shift in composition.
I agree with Weinstein's position that Harris' view of the religious literalists is itself very literalist.
I stopped listening when Harris talks about creating a better religion than currently exists by removing the misogynist and homophobic aspects of the current religions. I didn't get his entire point, but that's really short-sighted. Creating a new religion will just take into account the current ethics. In 50-100 years, the religion will be outdated again, then it's just a shifting ethical piece. In a few decades, there might be a shift in the cultural view of how animals are treated, how criminals are treated and how the mentally ill are treated, just as examples. If that happens the current religious piece will be criticized again.
When Harris claims that Judaism doesn't really count because their views on religion don't line up with his criticism of religion, I wanted my hour back that I spent listening. Religion and religious criticism interests me. I'm not as interested in anti-theism.
I'm only twenty minutes in (started the podcast on my way home) and it's already really good. I can't wait for my commute tomorrow -- and that's something you don't say everyday.
I am learning more about this Weinstein guy right now. Dude's a serious intellectual powerhouse.
https://twitter.com/EricRWeinstein/status/760650187828101121
I am floored. This is so interesting. I might be staying up later than my bedtime.
The first hour was breathtaking. The level of articulation and eloquence alone was enough for me to sit idly in my car and listen before going inside, but then the content. What exciting stuff.
The middle hour disappointed me. Weinstein just started bungling definitions and the conversation got stuck on his almost willful misuse of the word "faith". Faith on the part of a scientist or entrepreneur in a better if uncertain future, and pursuing that future despite the immediate setbacks, has next to nothing to do with faith in a religious text. And I felt Sam respond quite clearly to his misuse of the word. But for about the middle forty minutes, every time Eric sallied forth with a non sequitur his love for his own Jewishness, or the beauty of Turkish foods (patent tokenism?), as a defense of faith based culture, I would roll my eyes. I get the feeling that, while completely brilliant, Eric doesn't talk much with people who challenge him. It felt like Eric thought he was scoring points by being contrarian.
The last part picked up again. It's heartening to hear Eric chastise his/their own generation for failing to develop new theories and language to describe the world, better ideas and shorthand terms to access them quickly, instead of blaming stagnation or regression on outside forces. If only we all strove to take such ownership and put to rest finger jabbing.
I almost want to listen to it again for all breathtaking turns of phrases and exchanges scattered throughout. There were single sentences more content-dense yet seamlessly expressed than I ever hear in a normal day. Steelmanning? To summarize your opponents argument even better than he could? And then to dismantle that!? A truer standard for intelligent and honest debate could not be set.