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Pop wrote

Reply to comment by quadrungle in by !deleted1759

I'm pretty sure there's a laundry list of reasons to dislike him

a lot of those new atheists are/were colonialist misogynist islamophobic warmongering pricks though

pretty sure you'd get good info looking around ddg for it

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quadrungle wrote (edited )

I was curious about the justification for the simple assertion above, specifically.

I have some critiques of Sam, but he seems to me to have more issues where he sometimes lacks understanding rather than situations where he's actually supportive of any of those things you just mentioned.

Sam seems to downplay colonialism only because he's trying to emphasize his concerns about religion, but he doesn't seem to otherwise in any way support colonialism. He seems not at all misogynist. The Islam issue is more complex, but Sam's clearly focused on the religion and is not like many people who have racism tied into it. I don't know about warmongering, but Sam seems naively willing to accept the claims of good intentions from capitalists and such when not really justified (I saw Sam saying, effectively, that he'll accept the word of people like Bill Clinton or George W. Bush when they say they are motivated by aiming to help people and stop injustice etc., and in that area Sam seems more like a stooge, but he's not actively parroting the warmonger lines).

Meta-addendum: How can one tell the difference between some reactionary who is crafty enough to couch their language versus a good-intentioned person inadvertently using the same language? E.g. white-nationalists who criticize "globalism" to hide their racism versus others who also criticize "globalism" for other reasons unaware that the term can be a dog-whistle for the nationalists… I actually don't know. But since both cases definitely exist, I feel the need to give benefit-of-the-doubt and assume people to be the latter (well-intentioned and unaware of the significance of their language) until I see evidence otherwise.

P.S. EDIT: I only way later even realized that it was notable that you mentioned ddg for searching. Initially, that was so unremarkable to me. But then I remembered how that's not the norm. DDG isn't perfect but geeze, yeah, I don't remember the last time I Googled anything (years ago).

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Pop wrote

I don't really care what people's intentions are, it's how they affect the world and what they enable that is important to me

in the case of sam harris, i'm not sure but I think that more than enough has been written about him and his ilk to toss them in a dungheap

old atheism was always (somewhat) better, and it didn't stink of imperialist white guy careerists who pretty much only have science as their monolens through which they view everything

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quadrungle wrote (edited )

I think tossing people by group and association in dungheaps is intellectual laziness. Sam doesn't even emphasize identifying as an atheist, he's just critical of fundamentalist religion.

Sam is definitely of the science-lens focus of everything, but I'm not convinced that's necessarily bad, it's just often done badly.

Incidentally, the not-caring-about-intentions is explicitly a different opinion. Sam thinks intentions matter deeply, and it's an explicit point of difference and contention between him and various other people. So on that point, you're not just carelessly prejudging, you've got a clear intellectual difference.

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Pop wrote

I think I'm mostly lasily trying to mention arguments that I think already exist against him more than anything else

I don't have much of a dog in the fight since I think it's a mostly boring fight, but it's enough for me to comment on

did you look at any of the stuff I posted about them today, btw?

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quadrungle wrote (edited )

I guess don't tend to feel respectful toward saying that someone is a piece of shit if you don't actually have much knowledge or opinion and are just repeating hearsay. I mean, there's lots of shitty people out there, but I'm not going to go around asserting that status for anyone in particular unless I feel I actually have enough understanding to make that conclusion. In general, I think we need orders of magnitude more assumptions-of-good-faith in our discourse and less tolerance for parroting groupthink. So, with that in mind, I'm not assuming you disagree with that until I hear otherwise. We all may just say specious quick things here and there. I don't live up to ideals of healthy discourse all the time myself.

What "stuff you posted about them today" are you referring to?

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