For his acolytes that hinge off of his every word and call him “Sam” as if they know him personally (lots of Silicon Valley cults of personality do this), I often remind them that he never wrote any peer-reviewed scientific papers, ever. He never practiced being a scientist in a definitive way because he never was a scientist to begin with.
That’s a major reason why I have so much contempt for Sam Harris style takes about consciousness (or that it’s “an illusion” whatever the fuck that means): the source of much of that that crude reductionism, under pretense of scientific cold hard facts, comes from him, a fake scientist hack. And even if it didn’t, the worldview that he promotes is, again, crude and reductionistic and I’ve seen nothing good come of it.
For his acolytes that hinge off of his every word and call him “Sam” as if they know him personally (lots of Silicon Valley cults of personality do this), I often remind them that he never wrote any peer-reviewed scientific papers, ever. He never practiced being a scientist in a definitive way because he never was a scientist to begin with.
That’s a major reason why I have so much contempt for Sam Harris style takes about consciousness (or that it’s “an illusion” whatever the fuck that means): the source of much of that that crude reductionism, under pretense of scientific cold hard facts, comes from him, a fake scientist hack. And even if it didn’t, the worldview that he promotes is, again, crude and reductionistic and I’ve seen nothing good come of it.