Posts by slimboyfat

6

Do You Think Trump And His Whole Team Of Advisers Should Drop Acid?

by Brokeback Watchtower in

jw
friends

i mean back in the 60's when lsd was legal they did experiments with the drug to find out it's problem solving ability and the results were amazing.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/psychedelics_in_problem-solving_experiment.

psychedelic agents in creative problem-solving experiment was a study designed to evaluate whether the use of a psychedelic substance with supportive setting can lead to improvement of performance in solving professional problems.

the altered performance was measured by subjective reports, questionnaires, the obtained solutions for the professional problems and psychometric data using the purdue creativity, the miller object visualization, and the witkins embedded figures tests.

slimboyfat

Key question : was the research finding that acid helped problem solving itself conducted while the researchers were on acid?

103

Sam Harris on Trump - The Most Powerful Clown

by cofty in

harris is at his incisive best in his latest podcast.. he likens the situation to being on an aeroplane where the pilot has died and somebody with no experience of flying has grabbed the controls.

we should all be committed to his success.

prize for the best line goes to - "caligula with a iphone".. even if you love trump and despise harris you should appreciate his clarity.. waking up with sam harris....

slimboyfat

You won't like this comparison, but Sam Harris has a phrase that if you can't stand up to radical islamism and condemn it without 'but's, that's failing a moral litmus test.
Supporting Donald Trump is IMO such a test. I can't understand why it is not black and white clear that a candidate who so openly says he WILL erode constitutional rights and institutions is not fit to be president, issues that are unaffected by whatever mean things the supporters of the other candidate might say.

I agree rejecting Donald Trump should be a litmus test and Douglas Murray, Gad Saad and (sadly) Slavoj Zizek failed miserably. Trump is a man who suggested violence and imprisonment of his opponent, encouraged supporters to throw punches, intimidated reporters who said things he didn't like, and promoted war crimes involving killing civilians, among many, many other other things, each of which should have disqualified him instantly. It's hard to fathom how awful his election is. I would take some convincing that a good and proper thinking person would have any hesitation in rejecting him completely. Bye, bye Saad, Murray and Zizek.

By the way I have no trouble condemning radical Islam without reservation if by radical Islam we have in mind people like ISIS, the Saudi regime, and extremists who plot terror across the world. Who really has reservations about that? Are there good examples Harris points to? The trouble with Harris is when he attempts to extend and smear Muslims in general and paint the whole religion as essentially evil.

103

Sam Harris on Trump - The Most Powerful Clown

by cofty in

harris is at his incisive best in his latest podcast.. he likens the situation to being on an aeroplane where the pilot has died and somebody with no experience of flying has grabbed the controls.

we should all be committed to his success.

prize for the best line goes to - "caligula with a iphone".. even if you love trump and despise harris you should appreciate his clarity.. waking up with sam harris....

slimboyfat

On my side I just noticed Zizek said he would vote from Trump.

https://youtu.be/b4vHSiotAFA

Although he's backtracking a bit since. Even as he admits Trump is ("almost"?) proto-fascist.

https://youtu.be/AyRMLwJ4KjU

I'm done with that guy too. When the history of this period is written ( if there are people alive to write it) it should be noted where the "intellectuals" of our time stood.

103

Sam Harris on Trump - The Most Powerful Clown

by cofty in

harris is at his incisive best in his latest podcast.. he likens the situation to being on an aeroplane where the pilot has died and somebody with no experience of flying has grabbed the controls.

we should all be committed to his success.

prize for the best line goes to - "caligula with a iphone".. even if you love trump and despise harris you should appreciate his clarity.. waking up with sam harris....

slimboyfat

LoveUni since the whole thread is about Harris I took that as given. Harris opposed Trump but in many ways supports Trumpism. He agrees with Trump about Islam, racial profiling and bombing civilians in principle, he just thinks Trump is not the guy to execute the policies because he is crazy. I have listened and read a lot by Sam Harris, probably more than you.

103

Sam Harris on Trump - The Most Powerful Clown

by cofty in

harris is at his incisive best in his latest podcast.. he likens the situation to being on an aeroplane where the pilot has died and somebody with no experience of flying has grabbed the controls.

we should all be committed to his success.

prize for the best line goes to - "caligula with a iphone".. even if you love trump and despise harris you should appreciate his clarity.. waking up with sam harris....

slimboyfat

The world needs more voices like Sam Harris, Ayan Hirsi Ali, Maajid Nawaz, Gad Saad, Jonathan Haidt, Jordan Peterson and Douglas Murray.

Gad Saad supported Trump. Murray refused to say if he supported Trump but said he opposed Clinton. I don't know about the rest, where did they stand?

It's amazing you'd hold up as admirable a list including people who supported Trump. Why does the world need more voices of people who are so confused in their moral thinking that opposing Trump is not a no brainer for them?

103

Sam Harris on Trump - The Most Powerful Clown

by cofty in

harris is at his incisive best in his latest podcast.. he likens the situation to being on an aeroplane where the pilot has died and somebody with no experience of flying has grabbed the controls.

we should all be committed to his success.

prize for the best line goes to - "caligula with a iphone".. even if you love trump and despise harris you should appreciate his clarity.. waking up with sam harris....

slimboyfat

Yes that's the game Harris plays. He says using nuclear bombs on Arab civilians may be necessary, but because he also says it's horrible you are not allowed to criticise him for arguing it is necessary. Somehow this makes sense to him.

Two devout Christians, Bush and Blair, launched war on Iraq (that Bush described as a crusade) which killed hundreds of thousands or perhaps millions of civilians. Both cited their Christians faith. Is there any good reason this shouldn't count? And doesn't it dwarf all the smaller terror attacks combined?

103

Sam Harris on Trump - The Most Powerful Clown

by cofty in

harris is at his incisive best in his latest podcast.. he likens the situation to being on an aeroplane where the pilot has died and somebody with no experience of flying has grabbed the controls.

we should all be committed to his success.

prize for the best line goes to - "caligula with a iphone".. even if you love trump and despise harris you should appreciate his clarity.. waking up with sam harris....

slimboyfat

No Sam Harris said them, long before Trump even ran for president.

Racial profiling, Muslim faith evil, using nuclear bombs on Arab countries may be necessary. Check it out.

When people argue Islam is an especially evil religion they often point to verses in the Koran that promote killing non-believers or sexism or homophobia. But what about the Bible verses that do the same? That's different they say because Christians don't take those verses seriously. Yet history shows they did and some still do. And on the other side you have devout Muslims whose religion moves them to peace and tolerance. So if isn't the text and it isn't the bahaviour that sets Islam apart, what is it but pure bigotry?

103

Sam Harris on Trump - The Most Powerful Clown

by cofty in

harris is at his incisive best in his latest podcast.. he likens the situation to being on an aeroplane where the pilot has died and somebody with no experience of flying has grabbed the controls.

we should all be committed to his success.

prize for the best line goes to - "caligula with a iphone".. even if you love trump and despise harris you should appreciate his clarity.. waking up with sam harris....

slimboyfat

Harris doesn't deny labelling Islam, being in favour of racial profiling, or floating the idea of using nuclear bombs on Arab countries. Instead he attempts to justify. And Harris has this weird way of behaving that involves making stupid and obnoxious statements, such as using nuclear bombs, and then crying foul that anyone should take him at his word. Because he says it would be "terrible" somehow cancels out that he says it may be "necessary". It doesn't cancel it out.

Stigmatising religious groups is wrong. Racial profiling is wrong. Arguing for using nuclear weapons on civilians is wrong. Sam Harris said all these things. He is wrong. When someone is as far gone as Harris is I guess it would be near impossible to get him to realise his programme of stigmatising Muslims is harmful and has contributed to where we are right now.

103

Sam Harris on Trump - The Most Powerful Clown

by cofty in

harris is at his incisive best in his latest podcast.. he likens the situation to being on an aeroplane where the pilot has died and somebody with no experience of flying has grabbed the controls.

we should all be committed to his success.

prize for the best line goes to - "caligula with a iphone".. even if you love trump and despise harris you should appreciate his clarity.. waking up with sam harris....

slimboyfat

Labelling a world religion as evil, promoting racial profiling, and floating the "idea" of nuclear bombing Arab countries is in no way "addressing legitimate concerns". It helped stigmatise a minority group and Trump ran with it.

103

Sam Harris on Trump - The Most Powerful Clown

by cofty in

harris is at his incisive best in his latest podcast.. he likens the situation to being on an aeroplane where the pilot has died and somebody with no experience of flying has grabbed the controls.

we should all be committed to his success.

prize for the best line goes to - "caligula with a iphone".. even if you love trump and despise harris you should appreciate his clarity.. waking up with sam harris....

slimboyfat

Quite clearly, anyone with a bit of honesty and reasoning abilities realizes that "buffoonery", "clown" "awful man", "pathological liar", "jackass" are insults, not evidence.

I would drop "jackass" because I'm not sure what it means beyond a pure insult. However Trump is demonstrably a pathological liar. This is not an insult it is pure description. Meaning that he lies habitually and even lies when it should be obvious to himself that the people he is lying to know that he is lying. But he can't stop himself. And if his behaviour toward women does not qualify him as an "awful man" then I don't know what ever could. I think he is also a clown in the precise sense that people don't take his problematic behaviour as seriously as they should. "Buffoonery" I am not sure about. He certainly does have a track record of messing stuff up if that's what's intended.

I agree with Harris's description of Trump's character, his lack intelligence and lack of humanity. If Sam Harris is overly emotional then it may be because on some level he realises that his Islamophobic rhetoric of the past ten years has helped create Trump.

But I would argue emotion is not inappropriate at this moment either. America has entered a very dark place and the way out of this situation is not at all obvious. It was especially unsettling watching Obama sit with Trump the other day. He was acting as if this was simply a handover to someone of a different party and a different political persuasion. But really this is a handover from a thoughtful, intelligent, humane president, to an narcissistic, angry, impulsive, abusive, pathological liar. I guess Obama and the rest have to pretend that Trump is a normal human being in the faint hope that treating him as such may prompt him behave like one. What else can they do? It's a terrible situation.