Sam used to chase Richard Rorty around. I took every course he taught regardless of its subject matter, just so that I could argue with him about pragmatism. He had been ejected if he ever was in the philosophy department at Stanford, he had been ejected from it. So you've softened a little bit on his view since? Not much. But there's a long time to see these claims explicitly before they can be taken seriously.
We welcome Sam Harris back to the show for a deep dive into Stanley Kubrick’s confounding 1968 masterpiece "2001: A Space Odyssey." How long is the Dawn of Man? What does the second monolith do exactly? Why are the humans so banal and expressionless? What are HAL’S motivations? Has he planned his mutiny from the start, or does the Council’s deception make him manlfunction? Or something else? Who is the Council anyway? Was HAL meant to go through the stargate? What is the final leap forward in consciousness? The hotel room, the starchild, all the rectangles, rectangles everywhere, the music – what does it all mean????
Plus Sam has some thoughts about our Rorty episode and David tries to rile Tamler up about Kanye’s antisemitism.
note: there's a bit of an abrupt transition between our brief opening and Sam telling a story about Rorty in around the 9 minute mark... couldn't be helped.
Special Guest: Sam Harris.
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