THE SHIFTING "MORAL LANDSCAPE" OF SAM HARRIS
How pure reason has been abandoned by it's most ardent proponent
The internet has been abuzz lately following Sam Harris' interview on the Triggernometry podcast. True to the name of the podcast, the segment was triggering to some, especially but not exclusively to those on the conservative side of the political spectrum.
His comments on the episode, have been described by many as hypocritical, uncritical, biased, immoral and wanting in logic and consistency. Hardly qualities one would associate with Sam Harris.
Because I'm a bit of a contrarian, I find myself drifting ever so often to the opposite direction of whatever seems to be popular opinion at any given moment, whether or not I agree with the said opinion, perhaps this is a way to insulate myself against group think or simply to test the merit of any position before I accept it.
Given the negative commentary I had received about Sam before watching the video, the contrarian in me forced me to be more charitable to Sam Harris, to listen to him with more open-mindedness and try to understand where he was coming from.
Haven been overly primed for egregious comments, I listened intently waiting to find the moment Sam said those things that got the internet in an uproar, surprisingly, I ended up agreeing with some of his points and even understanding those points I did not agree with.
My overall impression of Sam Harris in that episode was that while I did not agree with a lot of his positions, I understood the arguments he was making and their validity within his subjective framework.
The biggest flaw I found with Harris was that he revealed himself to be a moral relativist, even though he's previously claimed otherwise.
Harris was both right and wrong on the issues discussed, but how can one be both right and wrong on an issue? I will try to explain by examining some of the points he raised, and highlight the strengths and weaknesses I observed.
Sam Harris begins the interview by laying out how important it was for one to be intellectually honest and consistent while being open to new information and change as new perspectives open up to you. This point would be important later on as this would serve as the metric for judging his ideas.
In this article, I would like to steel man some of his controversial points, and later on, offer a rebuttal of my own.
First, he argued that, private companies such as Twitter should have the right to discriminate against any position, idea, person or group, and that they should have the right to have an ideological position and try to promote it. That they should not be forced by the government, to have people, whose ideologies they do not like. In effect, private companies can be partisan and risk the penalty for that from potential customers boycotting them, but not from the government.
To steelman him, I would say, yes, private companies should have the right to do all this, and not be forced by legislation or executive authority to act in any particular way. They should reserve the right to lean one way or the other ideologically and promote it. I think in a free market, such should be allowed, as long as there is no compulsion by a private company in furthering their ideology.
As a rebuttal, I would state that these companies should declare their biases, and state their affinities whether political, ideological or otherwise. News networks already do this, for example, CNN is a known left-wing liberal news network, and Fox News is a right-wing conservative news network. People know what they are consuming when they choose to listen to either of these news networks. This should apply to social media sites like Twitter as well. They should not promote themselves as impartial arbiters. They should be explicit about their ideological bent so that people can decide for themselves.
Sam talked about urging Twitter to ban Trump and how happy he was that that happened. Again steel manning Sam, Twitter should have the right to ban Trump or anyone for violating its policies.
My critique of this position is that Sam could not demonstrate the specific Twitter policies Trump violated, but rather posited that Trump was so egregious that "he sure violated any terms of conditions twitter should have had," meaning, even if Trump's behaviour on the platform did not violate any stated twitter policy, they are so bad that Twitter should have had those terms and conditions in the first place. To me, this is akin to changing the rules of the game in the middle of the game, just because the side you like is losing.
Sam's best example of Trump's violation of Twitter policy was that, once he picked on anybody, he in effect unleashed thousands of "moronic" Trump supporters on those people, thus making their lives hell. I doubt if Twitter has a rule that says, someone must be responsible for the behaviour of their followers if they have not specifically tasked their followers to act in a certain way. This is an example of a policy I don't believe Twitter has that Harris believes they should have, just so Trump can be found to have broken them. This doesn't make sense for the fact that this rule could apply to Sam himself, if his followers decide to attack someone who disagrees with him even though he hasn't asked them to do so, should Sam be held responsible and should he be kicked off Twitter on account of that?
The second general point Sam made that I'll like to steelman and then critique is "Trump was so bad, unfit and a threat to democracy, that it becomes morally incumbent on well-meaning people to actively conspire to have him out of office, even if that means subverting the rules of democracy.
To be charitable, let's say, with what we now know of Hitler if we go back to the 1920s and Hitler was rising to power in a general election. Knowing that he would be responsible for the deaths of 6 million Jews, would it not be morally incumbent on anyone to subvert the electoral process to prevent Hitler's rise?
Granted, Trump cannot be equated with Hitler in any reasonable sense, but it is clear that Sam has an obvious disdain for Trump, that he could very well see Trump to be just as dangerous as Hitler.
So, put yourself in Sam's shoes. Wouldn't it be right, just, and morally obligated to do everything to stop Trump politically?
There are two valid positions in conflict here, one the moral imperative to save democracy from this "dangerous" man and on the other hand, the sanctity of respecting and allowing a free and fair election to occur with all the facts bare, and trusting that the electorate would make the right choice while also respecting that choice whatever the outcome of it.
My critique of this is, first, we cannot punish someone for a future crime not yet committed, so if the fear was that Trump was going to destroy the country in the future, you can't punish him for any future action, he'd had four years to do that, but didn't. So where was Sam getting that level of alarmism from? The sort of alarm that justifies a conspiracy to get a sitting President out of office.
My second critique is that, if Trump was so bad, then we have to trust in the electorate and the electoral process to weed him out. Not doing that, shows Sam either obviously doesn't respect and trust the electoral process, or he believes the electoral process should be at his whim or he believes the electorate is so stupid, that they would elect an obvious threat to the country for a second time if nothing was done by the likes of Twitter and other social media giants to shape the narrative in a way that overwhelmingly places Trump at a disadvantage.
Surprisingly, Sam agreed that the impeachment proceedings were a left-wing conspiracy to get Trump out of office, but that would only be necessary if those at the helm of affairs do not trust that the electorate would make the right call, that they have to step in. The danger with this is, that if this becomes the stated norm, then almost anyone can claim a candidate they don't like is an existential threat and promote his removal by any means necessary as a moral imperative.
Perhaps his greatest failing in the interview was when he tried to shift the goalpost on the point he made about the left-wing conspiracy when he realized that was a shaky ground to stand on. He immediately revised it to mean the conspiracy wasn't just left-wing, but included those in Trump's camp as well, citing Liz Chenney as an example. The problem is, a conspiracy is a conspiracy and there is no positive connotation to a conspiracy, not even when members of one's family are involved.
Following up with that, he tried to redefine conspiracy as what happens when people agree openly to avert a disaster using people working together to avert a meteor hurtling towards earth as an example. The example was so ridiculous as to be laughable.
My charity for Sam's points has finally run out, I have nothing left now other than criticism. Sam claimed Trump is so obviously corrupt citing Trump university as an example, and that nothing in Hunter Biden's laptop could be as corrupt as what Trump has done. While that may be true, here is the twist. Sam said this with the certainty of one who knew the content of Hunter Biden's laptop when minutes earlier he confessed to not knowing much about the Hunter Biden laptop.
That is such a massive leap in logic, how can he make such a conclusive statement without first having concrete and definitive information on both sides from which to draw such a conclusion? How could he be so certain that Trump university was worse than some other bad thing he knew very little about?
This makes me agree with the quote that people are not rational, rather people rationalize, meaning people already come to a conclusion, they already have a set of beliefs, and from these already held beliefs, they work to find justifications. This means the conclusion does not derive from the premise but dictates the premise, and that was exactly what Sam was doing.
When Sam mentioned he didn't care if Hunter had dead babies in his basement, because Hunter isn't his father, true, but he demonstrates a double standard here he knows full well that if it was Donald Trump junior who had those babies in the basement, then it would be taken into account even though Trump Jnr isn't his father. Sam feels very strongly about Trump, that a double standard is justifiable as a means to get rid of Trump, and this is where he revealed his moral relativity.
Getting Trump out of office by a double standard is moral if fits Sam's perspective and agenda of being rid of Trump, yet on other occasions, it would be immoral or inconceivable to entertain such double standards especially if it doesn't fit Sam's agenda. But this is perfectly consistent with Sam's ideology as an atheist and goes to prove that the best sort of morality you can get from the atheist worldview is a relativistic one. If morality cannot be derived from something external to man and his social interactions, then the sort of morality that can be gotten from man and his social interactions can only be relativistic, because it can at best derive its legitimacy from consensus.
Sam struggled to show how bad Trump was, and had to rely on associating him with Alex Jones to make a point on how bad Trump was. Trump is infinitely more popular than Alex Jones, and his badness should readily be more expressable than Alex Jones. Using a lesser-known person to buttress that a better-known person has a certain flaw just shows that Sam was grasping seriously at straws to make Trump look bad. I'm not saying Trump is not as bad as Harris claims, I'm saying he couldn't prove his claim.
Sam states that he agrees with many of Trump's policies, yet finds him distasteful as president. What should be more important? Trump's policies or his personality? Would Sam rather a nice, pleasing, but ineffective and incompetent person as president? It is not the job of a politician to meet the emotional needs of his constituents, it is his job to meet their policy needs, infrastructure needs and so on.
Yet, in all of this, Sam is in order to hold these biased and logically incongruent opinions, after all, he's only human and despite his intelligence, he can fall prey to bad logic and double standards. The greatest challenge, however, is that this has done some damage to Harris' brand of being logically consistent and fact-based and demonstrates that pure reason fails as a reasonable methodology for organizing a functional society, for even its greatest champion would readily abandon it for convenience.
One comment I read somewhere which captures this mood succinctly says, "credibility is like virginity, once lost, you can't ever get it back" this is perhaps the greatest uphill battle Sam Harris has to face as fallout from that interview, how could he ever be trusted again to make an objectively rational argument.
Charles Ekokotu (Pharm. D.) is a bibliophile, prose fiction writer, poet, and playwright. His first self-published novel, Hotel Shendam—a crime fiction novel featuring a debate on race and colonialism—is available on Amazon. A very fun read! Grab a copy now!
Excellent article. Reasoning by counterfactual, as Sam does with matters regarding Trump, is a kind of abandonment of his principles. It would be far better ("more intellectually honest") to assess things based upon how they are presenting in the real world. Your point regarding twitter ToS and Trump is an accurate one, regardless of my personal feelings. I think he did give out specific names of citizens or addresses (I could be mistaken) - eg that's doxxing and punishable. But Sam's stance on "he's an existential threat every time he's on twitter" is not a sound basis for the type of reasoning he espouses.
"Sam states that he agrees with many of Trump's policies, yet finds him distasteful as president. What should be more important? Trump's policies or his personality? Would Sam rather a nice, pleasing, but ineffective and incompetent person as president? It is not the job of a politician to meet the emotional needs of his constituents, it is his job to meet their policy needs, infrastructure needs and so on."
What is more important? Character or policy?
Policy changes with time and changing circumstances. Unexpected and unforseeable events keep happening to nations and leaders keep having to respond in ways that they and their peoples are unprepared for.
Sam is concerned about Trump's character. Sam isn't nearly as concerned about Trump's policies.