Sam Harris

I've been a critic of the media since college, but lately it has just been getting worse and worse. I was watching Bill Maher last weekend, and then this happened:

Sam Harris espouses a fairly controversial point. Whether he's right or not is irrelevant and I'll leave it up to the reader to make that determination. What annoys me is when the media takes the sound bite of Ben Affleck calling Sam a racist and then that becomes the talking point for the entire week. Not once if rarely are Sam's points even honestly discussed. I've been doing a little digging into Sam Harris on YouTube, and while I disagree with him on a lot of issues, I love his style of argument. This man could talk about for hours about something I disagree with, but because he is so logical and precise, I can't help but find him compelling. Sam Harris is critical on all religions, but he rightly points out that terrorism is -for the most part- uniquely a problem in Islam. It just disgusts me to see such an intelligent man be slandered by being called a bigot.

Discovering Sam Harris has been like uncorking a bottle. Because of him, now I am finding a lot of influential philosophers and speakers. One of the reasons why I was a conspiracy theorist for so long was because instead of anyone explaining why they were wrong, people would simply dismiss them as kooks. Sam Harris and others like him actually take the time to deconstruct an argument and actually discuss the ideas versus name calling.

Even though I disagree with Sam Harris on a lot, if I could meet someone like him, we would be friends instantly simply because I would love the conversations. I don't even think you necessarily need to be super smart. You simply need to be able to admit what you know and don't know and be honest about it. A huge frustration of mine has been getting into a conversation with someone only to have it boil into a heated argument. Then the other person will just give up, say I'm right, and then ignore the conversation we just had. I personally learn more from arguing with people because it helps me get out certain logic traps that I've held onto for years. Sadly, I have only had really good conversations like this with my younger brother, but we tend to agree on a lot of things. Fortunately, I can learn a lot just from watching Sam Harris and other philosophers on YouTube, and I highly recommend it.