Oh we noticed. That was when I stopped paying any attention at all to him and dropped my subscriptions, with a polite but disappointed (and truthful) explanation in the inevitable "why are you leaving" follow-up questionnaire.
I like bold, even impractical, philosophical stances and respect those that stick to their guns. I'll tolerate some amount of hypocrisy, because life is full of compromises. But there's a line somewhere around self-serving pettiness and pure absurdity that he crossed.
As far as I have occasionally heard, he has done nothing but evade and double down on the topic since, and failing to admit a mistake is a great way to lose my intellectual respect too.
So that puts him somewhere around charlatan and mediocrity in my book. Chomsky similarly lost my respect around that time with his hard turn toward authoritarianism over covid (notably I vehemently disagreed with both of them on many things, but respected them). Many masks slipped in 2020 and we saw what people were really made of. Crises do that.
Seems like something I had to say. As I mentioned I do still listen to his podcast and still enjoy it, but it's tainted by the fact that he clearly no longer practices what he once so strenuously preached. He seems, as you mentioned, to be sanguine about the fact that he contradicts his earlier exhortations about rational discussion and his mechanical view of truth. Must of felt so good for him at the time! And now he most certainly has abandoned his positions, and rarely if ever bothers to explain. If you think about it long enough it can make you mad, but I wouldn't let Harris be that important. At some level he already knows and he's the one who has to look in the mirror.
By the way (not that it matters really), I think Harvard U Press once sent him a copy of my book, but I've never heard anything back. I would still go on his podcast but we'd of course have to avoid this topic as he's signaled he won't discuss. Head in the sand for sure.
Whenever someone speaks from theory without having applied, felt, or tested it - whether scientifically, philosophically, or personally - credibility is fragile from the start. Even if it appears solid from the outside, it will eventually collapse from the outside in. The hardest reckoning falls on the theorist himself: facing the void of a life built on illusion. Here the irony is stark - a man who claimed truth above all, undone by his own lie.
'If there is no God, everything is permitted.'
Dostoevsky
One of my favorite quotes by one of my favorite authors! Kudos!
Oh we noticed. That was when I stopped paying any attention at all to him and dropped my subscriptions, with a polite but disappointed (and truthful) explanation in the inevitable "why are you leaving" follow-up questionnaire.
I like bold, even impractical, philosophical stances and respect those that stick to their guns. I'll tolerate some amount of hypocrisy, because life is full of compromises. But there's a line somewhere around self-serving pettiness and pure absurdity that he crossed.
As far as I have occasionally heard, he has done nothing but evade and double down on the topic since, and failing to admit a mistake is a great way to lose my intellectual respect too.
So that puts him somewhere around charlatan and mediocrity in my book. Chomsky similarly lost my respect around that time with his hard turn toward authoritarianism over covid (notably I vehemently disagreed with both of them on many things, but respected them). Many masks slipped in 2020 and we saw what people were really made of. Crises do that.
Seems like something I had to say. As I mentioned I do still listen to his podcast and still enjoy it, but it's tainted by the fact that he clearly no longer practices what he once so strenuously preached. He seems, as you mentioned, to be sanguine about the fact that he contradicts his earlier exhortations about rational discussion and his mechanical view of truth. Must of felt so good for him at the time! And now he most certainly has abandoned his positions, and rarely if ever bothers to explain. If you think about it long enough it can make you mad, but I wouldn't let Harris be that important. At some level he already knows and he's the one who has to look in the mirror.
By the way (not that it matters really), I think Harvard U Press once sent him a copy of my book, but I've never heard anything back. I would still go on his podcast but we'd of course have to avoid this topic as he's signaled he won't discuss. Head in the sand for sure.
Whenever someone speaks from theory without having applied, felt, or tested it - whether scientifically, philosophically, or personally - credibility is fragile from the start. Even if it appears solid from the outside, it will eventually collapse from the outside in. The hardest reckoning falls on the theorist himself: facing the void of a life built on illusion. Here the irony is stark - a man who claimed truth above all, undone by his own lie.