The Pornography of Doubt and Conspiracism

Sam Harris is an author, podcaster, public intellectual, ex-New Atheist, card-returning IDWer, and someone who likely needs no introduction. This is especially the case if you are a DTG listener as we recently released a full-length decoding episode on Sam.

Following that episode, Sam generously agreed to come on to address some of the points we raised in the Decoding and a few other select topics. As you will hear we get into some discussions of the lab leak, what you can establish from introspection and the nature of self, motivations for extremism, coverage of the conflict and humanitarian crisis in Gaza, and selective application of criticism.

Also covered in the episode are Andrew Huberman's dog and his thanking eyes, Joe Rogan's condensed conspiracism, and the value of AI protocol searches.

Links

• Our Decoding Episode on Sam
• Our interview with three virologists on the Lab Leak
• Kevin Drum's blog. 'I read the entire Slack archive about the origin of SARS-CoV-2. There is no evidence of improper behaviour'
• New York Magazine article by Eric Levitz 'Sam Harris’s Fairy-Tale Account of the Israel-Hamas Conflict' 
• Making Sense Podcast Episode 351: 5 Myths about Israel and the War in Gaza
• Making Sense Podcast Episode 352: Hubris & Chaos- A Conversation with Rory Stewart
• Global Catastrophic Risk Institute: The Origin and Implications of the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Expert Survey. 
• The Israel Democracy Institute. War in Gaza Public Opinion Survey (2): See Question 15. 
• Atran, S. (2016). The devoted actor: Unconditional commitment and intractable conflict across cultures. Current Anthropology, 57(S13), S192-S203.