Sam Harris's Blog, page 9

Meme #2

Abusing Dolores

In this episode of the Waking Up podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Paul Bloom about empathy, meditation studies, morality, AI, Westworld, Donald Trump, free will, rationality, conspiracy thinking, and other topics.

Paul Bloom is the Brooks and Suzanne Ragen Professor of Psychology at Yale University. His research explores how children and adults understand the physical and social world, with special focus on morality, religion, fiction, and art. He has won numerous awards for his research and teaching. He is past-president of the Society for Philosophy and Psychology, and co-editor of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, one of the major journals in the field. Dr. Bloom has written for scientific journals such as Nature and Science, and for popular outlets such as The New York Times, The Guardian, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic Monthly. He is the author or editor of seven books, including Just Babies: The Origins of Good and Evil and Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion.

Islamism vs Secularism

In this episode of the Waking Up podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Shadi Hamid about the power of religious belief, the failure of the Left, Islamist democracy, free speech, profiling, white nationalism, Obama’s foreign policy and other topics.

Shadi Hamid is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in the Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World in the Center for Middle East Policy and the author of the new book Islamic Exceptionalism: How the Struggle Over Islam is Reshaping the World. His previous book, Temptations of Power: Islamists and Illiberal Democracy in a New Middle East, was named a Foreign Affairs “Best Book of 2014.” Hamid served as director of research at the Brookings Doha Center until January 2014. Prior to joining Brookings, he was director of research at the Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED) and a Hewlett Fellow at Stanford University’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. Hamid is a contributing writer for The Atlantic and the vice-chair of POMED’s board of directors.

Meme #1

Trumping the World

In this episode of the Waking Up podcast, Sam Harris speaks with journalist James Kirchick about the coming Trump presidency, liberalism vs illiberalism, fake news, Russia, Syria, Iran, and the future of American power.

James Kirchick is a journalist and foreign correspondent currently based in Washington. He has reported from Southern and North Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, across the European continent, and the Caucasus. Kirchick’s writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Ha’aretz, Newsweek, Time, Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, Slate, The Weekly Standard, The American Interest, The Virginia Quarterly Review, World Affairs Journal, National Review and Commentary, among other publications. He is a fellow with the Foreign Policy Initiative in Washington, D.C., a correspondent for The Daily Beast and is a columnist for Tablet. His first book, The End of Europe: Dictators, Demagogues and the Coming Dark Age is forthcoming from Yale University Press.

The Dawn of Artificial Intelligence

In this episode of the Waking Up podcast, Sam Harris speaks with computer scientist Stuart Russell about the challenge of building artificial intelligence that is compatible with human well-being.

Stuart Russell is a Professor of Computer Science and Smith-Zadeh Professor in Engineering, University of California, Berkeley and Adjunct Professor of Neurological Surgery, University of California, San Francisco. He is the author (with Peter Norvig) of Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach.

Personal website: https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~russell/

Story discussed in this podcast:

E.M. Forster. 1909. “The Machine Stops.”

Finding Our Way in the Cosmos

In this episode of the Waking Up podcast, Sam Harris speaks with physicist David Deutsch about the foundations of knowledge, the moral landscape, possible futures for conscious beings, and other topics.

David Deutsch is best known as the founding father of the quantum theory of computation, and for his work on Everettian (multiverse) quantum theory. He is a Visiting Professor of Physics at Oxford University, where he works on “anything fundamental.” At present, that mainly means his proposed constructor theory. He has written two books – The Fabric of Reality and The Beginning of Infinity – aimed at the general reader.

The Most Powerful Clown

In this episode of the Waking Up podcast, Sam Harris talks about the results of the 2016 presidential election and the prospects of a President Trump.

In this episode of the Waking Up podcast, Sam Harris talks about the results of the 2016 presidential election and the prospects of a President Trump.

The Borders of Tolerance

In this episode of the Waking Up podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Ayaan Hirsi Ali about Islamism, the migrant crisis in Europe, and other topics.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a Senior Fellow with the Future of Diplomacy Project at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at The Harvard Kennedy School, a Fellow at the Hoover Institute at Stanford University, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She was named one of TIME Magazine’s “100 Most Influential People” of 2005, one of the Glamour Heroes of 2005 and Reader’s Digest‘s European of the Year for 2005. She is the best selling author of Infidel (2007) and Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now (2015). She runs the AHA Foundation which seeks to elevate the status of women and girls globally.

Lifting the Veil on “Islamophobia

The Lesser Evil

In this episode of the Waking Up podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Andrew Sullivan about the 2016 presidential election.

Andrew Sullivan edited The New Republic from 1991 - 1996 and was an intellectual architect of the campaign for marriage equality. He is the author of The Conservative Soul and Virtually Normal. Sullivan’s blog, The Dish, pioneered online journalism from 2000 - 2015. He is at work on a collection of essays and a book on the future of Christianity.

Andrew Sullivan. “I Used to Be a Human Being.” New York Magazine. September 18, 2016.