The trouble with Harris is more prosaic
Jonathan Rash points out that Sam Harris doesn’t know as much as he thinks he does.
A recent episode of Sam Harris’ podcast Making Sense features Jared Diamond, author of Guns, Germs, and Steel and, most recently, Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis. According to Harris’ website, he and Diamond discuss
the rise and fall of civilizations,…political polarization, disparities in civilizational progress, the prospect that there may be biological differences between populations, the precariousness of democracy in the U.S., the lack of a strong political center, immigration policy, and other topics.
Most of these categories have little to do with Diamond’s work. Rather, they concern Harris and his well-worn personal grievances with “The Left.” These grievances cover everything from “PC culture” and feminism to psychological research methods and immigration policy. What holds them all together is the following unifying idea: Progressive opinion-makers are dishonest hacks willing to destroy the livelihoods and reputations of those who deign to question the elite liberal consensus on hot-button issues concerning race, gender, culture, and politics, and their political correctness is destroying the country and rendering reasoned debate impossible.
Like most episodes of Making Sense, this one consists mostly of Harris rehashing the myriad ways he feels he has been mistreated or misunderstood by progressives. As any consistent Harris listener can attest, the man sustains an immense amount of self-righteous anger over this. The problem is the measure of anger outpaces his understanding of the topics he’s angry about.
The problem is also the vanity and egotism. I find Harris unreadable (and god knows unlistenable and unwatchable) because of it.
Like his late friend Christopher Hitchens, Harris is a gifted rhetorician who possesses the preternatural ability to speak not only in complete sentences but complete paragraphs. This talent can be mesmerizing, but it masks something The Hitch never had to hide and of which the Diamond episode is a prime example: a general hollowness of mind reinforced by a stunning lack of intellectual rigor and curiosity.
See that’s why I don’t find the talent mesmerizing, and never have. He may be good at talking in complete paragraphs but the paragraphs are not interesting, and neither is he. Hitchens was interesting in himself and he said interesting things in his paragraphs. Harris just drones.
Harris’ association with the Intellectual Dark Web, his constant focus on “identity politics” and “liberal delusion,” and his obsession with his own “bad-faith” critics, just to name a few examples, have made him the bête noire of the left.
Along with his smug sexism, his contempt for almost everyone else, his lack of affect, his unearned air of superiority.
Well over a million people follow Harris on Twitter and listen to each of his podcasts. But as his platform has grown, he has ventured into areas far outside his core competencies, which are limited to mindfulness/meditation and perhaps (though this is debatable) certain subdisciplines of neuroscience and philosophy of mind. As a result, Harris often finds himself in avoidable confrontations with experts on controversial topics about which he knows very little.
This means that much of the criticism of Harris currently out there is misplaced. In recent years he’s been repeatedly assailed as a bigot and racist. He is neither. The trouble with Harris is more prosaic: he just doesn’t know what he’s talking about. The Diamond episode is just one example of how Harris’ issues are mostly the result of his own ignorance. The problem isn’t that he’s not an expert at everything—obviously no one is. The problem is that Harris is deeply assertive, outlandishly so, in precisely the areas that are thorniest for non-experts to meaningfully wade into.
The episode begins with Harris asking Diamond about his career and a couple of his books, but within the first half hour the conversation turns abruptly to “race and IQ,” a perennial favorite. Harris asserts, as he has many times before, that it simply must be the case that there is significant genetic variation in intelligence across “populations” (by this he means “race,” crudely defined), and that to deny this is to ignore clear science in favor of one’s ideological precommitments.
Diamond’s response is typical of anyone who’s spent time studying the issue:
Theoretically that’s a possibility. The problem is that despite a lot of effort by a lot of people to establish differences in, say, cognitive skills, differences at a population level have not been established. Instead there is an obvious mass of cultural effects on cognitive skills.
So Harris changes the subject.
Rash covers his embarrassing dispute with Chomsky, and one where he tried to set a security expert straight via his personal intuitions, which went as well as you’d expect. Then there are his reading habits…
When asked in an earlier AMA what kind of “art, music, and fiction” he likes, Harris all but acknowledges that he’s not really into all that. “I love music but I almost never listen to it.” He has no time, you see. “I’m afraid fiction falls by the way for the same reason.” But don’t worry, he used to read. “Fiction is really my roots,” he claims. “Back in the day, I was very into Kafka and Nabokov and Joseph Conrad. … Back in the day, I was a big fan of The Lord of the Rings, and I also watch things in that genre. I watch Game of Thrones. … I’ve also read a few plays recently.”
Thud. Of course he was; of course he does.
Harris is a specialist, and like all other specialists he knows a great deal about one or two things and essentially nothing about anything else. This is not per se objectionable; there is nothing wrong with narrow expertise. One objects only when the specialist pretends to a more eclectic intellectualism than he has done the hard work to develop, when he demands a degree of deference and respect wholly incommensurate with his level of learning. It’s exactly this type of hubris that causes Harris to believe that he invalidated David Hume’s foundational is/ought distinction by simply observing that we can’t act on our values without knowing the facts.
Exactly. I despise The Moral Landscape and that sums up why.
Harris hides a vast ignorance with a vast vocabulary and silky turns of phrase. He is dangerous because millions of us listen to him, even when there’s no reason to. Acknowledging this fact is the first step toward achieving the productive “experiments in conversation” that Harris champions but rarely delivers.
Which is to say, pay no attention to Sam Harris, he is of no interest.
Hitchens was interesting even when you didn’t agree with him, even when you virulently disagreed. He could manage to make cogent points that you thought were wrong, and defend them with arguments you may see as wrong, but not shallow or limited. He showed clear signs of high level thought processes.
Harris is more like “Because I said so, that’s why” or “Nuh uh” or “I know you are but what am I”, but said with words and phrases that sound thoughtful and sciency and important. For most people, who themselves are not experts, that can be enough. For me, when I’m not an expert on a subject, things can sound right or wrong, but I know that even experts probably disagree, so I might find it worthwhile to withhold judgment until I know more.
Something not true about any of the other big names writing in similar fields. Dawkins can discuss art and music cogently and with passion. Gould could as well. Dennett can do the same. Failure to engage with art, music, and literature is not intellectual, it is stunted. I read more non-fiction than fiction, but I would never dismiss fiction in such a cavalier manner; I am simply choosy about my fiction. I want it to be enjoyable and literate, and not have middle aged male writers inventing nubile young women who are eager and ready to jump into bed with the middle aged to elderly hero (why do I suspect that might be the kind of fiction Harris would like?).
And I cringe at the idea of being an expert on mindfulness. He meditates. Yeah. Mindfulness is my least favorite buzz word right now. What’s wrong with being aware? Conscious? Why should I be “mindful”?
Sam is … hard to listen to. I often think that he is far too focused on winning a discussion to have it. To some extent that’s an understandable outcome from years of debate and from years of defending himself against those who conflate criticism of Islam with anti-Muslim bigotry. Being understandable doesn’t make it okay, though.
We get it, Sam: there are people who misrepresent your positions. Welcome to the world. Now stop whinging on about it and move on.
Plus, also – he’s not. If meditation is compatible with being Sam Harris why bother?
Another person who seems to think meditation is crucial is Greta Christina. I can think of few better arguments against meditation than: Sam Harris. Greta Christina.
I know meditation supposedly has benefits, but every time I’ve tried it, it just made me more tense and nervous, so thanks, I’ll leave that to the shouty obnoxious ones. Maybe some day it will make them less shouty and obnoxious.
“the preternatural ability to speak [ . . . ] in complete sentences…”
Talk about lowering the bar! (Is speaking in complete sentences an impressive feat these days?)
@Ben #5
Well, speaking in sentences is beyond our current president, so yeah.
Hm. But perhaps, then, we should look at the subjects in which he lacks expertise but is “deeply assertive” in an “outlandish” way, and see if there is a pattern? (My question is rhetorical — Rash kind of does this himself in the article.)
1. Pushing the “IQ racial differences” stuff.
2. Insisting that “subject all Arabs to extensive and harassing searches” is a sensible security policy.
3. Accusing Chomsky of appearing not to understand the obvious moral differences between Islam and the West despite being such an intelligent man (the implication being, Chomsky has deliberately chosen the morally worse side).
Not mentioned in the article is the “estrogen vibe” stuff, but it fits the pattern. Harris isn’t just some blustery dude who just has such incurable intellectual curiosity that he wades in over his head on EVERY topic. He’s a blustery dude who wades in over his head to push the superiority of men over women, whites over non-whites, everyone else over Muslims, the Right over the Left.
Ben @5:
Take it from someone who reads transcripts frequently: people, even intelligent ones speaking within their areas of expertise, often do not speak in complete sentences. That’s not even necessarily a failing, because there’s no reason to assume that the most effective way to communicate verbally just happens to be the most effective way to communicate in writing.
Harris and Trump have at least one thing in common. They represent a bundle of beliefs, actions and behaviours that put them solidly in one camp, but they crave the adulation and respect of a camp that find their beliefs, actions and behaviours wrong headed and distasteful. Hence both of their piteous cries that the elite progressive left don’t like them.
Harris isn’t just some blustery dude who just has such incurable intellectual curiosity that he wades in over his head on EVERY topic. He’s a blustery dude who wades in over his head to push the superiority of men over women, whites over non-whites, everyone else over Muslims, the Right over the Left.
applause
For a man priding himself as a communicator, he sure seems to be misunderstood a whole bunch.
@Holms, funny how often that seems to happen, isn’t it?
Something else that seems to happen quite often: Harris’ arguments being demolished from orbit by experts.
Am I right in remembering that Harris has spat his dummy on at least one occasion by trying to ‘curate’ discussions (by which I mean crossing out the bits where he comes across badly)? He certainly likes to pad his introductions to discussions with how much he is persecuted. I genuinely think he expects everyone to agree with him that it’s all the other people who are wrong, rather than him. When in fact, everyone just sits quietly until the tumbleweeds have exited the building and then change the subject.
His exchange with the security expert Ophelia mentioned (Bruce Schneier) is an excellent example of what Rash is talking about. I can say this with some authority having some expertise in the subject myself. Harris’ analysis is as simple as:
My description of his position, obviously, not a quote from Harris ;)
Schneier answers this by explaining that security is always a trade-off and it’s rather important to understand the threat and what the costs and benefits are in addressing any given threat. And furthermore that one of the costs might well be giving in to the terror part of terrorism by adopting useless security measures that can do nothing more positive than foment dissatisfaction and distrust. He explains that, based on mountains of research, we know that profiling at airports provides worse security at higher cost than not doing it.
Harris basically says that he thinks those objections are easily answered but then fails to answer them, moving swiftly on.
The crux of Harris’ argument is about a very specific, deliberately targeted, rare and deeply racist scenario. Schneier’s is that even if that scenario were accurate, it would not be a reasonable basis for a security response. We try hard in the business to avoid protecting against highly specific threats because protections like that can be so easily defeated. I think Schneier makes the point that if we detain people at airports who ‘look arab’ then that security might easily be defeated by a bottle of blonde hair dye.
I think you can see even from this brief summary which viewpoint is the more knowledgeable, thought-through and, well, correct. Harris seems to think that his understanding of fields in which he has no expertise is profound in ways that the people who have been studying and working in those fields can’t achieve. He… isn’t right.
NOTE: it’s the people with the expectations rather than the hypothetical terrorists who are the jingoistic arseholes in my summary of Harris’ position.
Damnit, I’m obviously going to have to re-read that exchange between Harris and Scheier again, aren’t I?
One thing I distinctly remember because it pissed me off so much at the time, is Harris’ opening salvo, where he introduces the scenario of a suicide bomber and elaborate details of his family and faith and asks Schneier what’s the likelihood of that hypothetical bomber being muslim, to which Scheier obviously replies “high” because that’s the only honest answer to that question, which Harris deliberately phrased that way to elicit exactly that answer, which is hugely dishonest in itself.
But then a little later he says that this means Schneier admits that the likelihood of the next plane bomber being muslim is high, which is obviously nothing like the same thing. Someone mentioned above that Harris seems to like ‘winning’ discussions more than having them. He certainly seems delighted to use any and every dodgy, dishonest rhetorical device to give the appearance of having won.
Good grief.
Isn’t ‘Butterflies and Wheels’ part of the, vaguely defined, (((dark web))) as well? Bari Weiss’ obnoxious coinage certainly extended to anyone resisting the trans-woke crusade.
Yes.
Well, of course I read the transcript again (here ’tis: https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2012/05/to_profile_or_not_to_1.html) because I’m always worried about the veracity of my memory and whether or not I was being a cock at the time I read something.
In this case, I remembered correctly. Harris’ argument falls to bits under Schneier’s gentle, expertise-driven analysis. The number of times Schneier says something like “but it doesn’t actually matter whether your insistence that muslims are more likely to be terrorists is true, it is still not a basis for security engineering…” is embarrassing.
Sorry, I know I’m boring everyone but I’ve said above that Harris painted a very specific picture of what he feels is a muslim threat to air travel so I’d be negligent if I didn’t paste it here.
I mean, holy fuck, right? Harris invents a hypothetical terrorist who is obviously muslim then later (several times) pretends that everyone agrees that this weird hypothetical means that the next plane-bombing terrorist will almost certainly be muslim and therefore that racial profiling works.
This is not the argument of an intelligent person. It’s not just that security doesn’t work like that (a fact that Harris refuses to learn, even from someone whose expertise on the subject is well established). It’s that nothing works like that. The world is littered with terrible systems that were built the way they were because some idiot in charge was an idiot. We’ve come across all sorts of people before, haven’t we, who think their intuition trumps expertise. Harris is very much one of them.
Oh lord. I could only get part of the way through it. Harris insisting, over and over, that his hunches are better than Schneier’s expertise, and that it’s obvious that they are. It is embarrassing, and also maddening. “Dude, be less confident!”
Yeah. Schneier has been researching and writing about security for a long time. From time to time he’s been wrong. You know what he did? He flipped on a fucking dime and said well… yeah, I was wrong about that, here’s why I was wrong and this is why I changed my mind.