Let's remember that this dude came after me in his AMA 17 episode, strawmanning my 🧵 below where I found a heap of factual errors he and Topol made in their podcast.
He focused on the fact that I said VAERS has a terrible UI, leading to underreporting.
Not only did he fail to tear down his own strawman, he actually misconstrued my argument completely.
Oh God were only a few seconds in.
"Not only can you mot conform to a tribe, you cannot conform to who you were yesterday, if your master value is to be honest and rigorous and available to new data, new arguments, and new insights".
Unless it's about covid, in which case, the CDC is the word of God.
Here's Mr. Honest and Rigorous explaining away dissident doctors by the fact that, well, someone's got to be schizophrenic, right? Rigor mortis, perhaps.
He compares Twitter banning people with him not having people on his podcast. He appears to be completely unaware that he is a publisher responsible for what he puts out there and twitter is afforded special protection specifically because they're not a publisher but a platform.
Sam Harris: I like discrimination I'm cool with. But not discrimination I'm not cool with. Like racism bad, right? But if twitter wants to discriminate against people i don't like? Sign them up, amirite?
Nobody tell this guy about what happened to Parler?
Good god man, he doesn't even have the up to date BS.
The quiet part. He said it out loud. This is a document for the ages.
In which, Sam Harris says that it's ok to conspire against Trump getting elected, because he was the equivalent of an asteroid headed towards earth. Literally literally. Worth watching just for Francis' reaction at the end. Omg.
Thread paused for dinner and/or night.
Suffer in silence.
He might have thought you're schizophrenic, just like the voices in his head.
Look dude, it's only bad when Iran puts in a caste of unelected mullahs to select which candidates are allowed to run in elections. I mean, think about it. Mullahs! Bro, do you even technocrat?
Given Sam's position on free will, I'd love to understand what he thinks the difference is between censoring input to the brain in a way that alters the output (vote) from straight up altering the votes. I don't think he can find any.
The way Sam talks about institutions and expert opinion confirms my sense that the true split of the heterodox world was between those defending the institutions and those who defend the truth. When the institutions separated from the truth, we saw who was who.
Lol, I think this thread got Sam Harris trending. The clip about the kids in hunters basement is getting something like 10k views a minute 😂
I usually completely ignore what's trending, but you must admit this is hilarious.
If you're wondering if his authoritarian streak is new, listen to this clip from a podcast with @BretWeinstein from the time before COVID was in the news, where Sam comes out in favor of forced vaccination.
Yes, @EricRWeinstein, the problem is the clip. Watch the whole podcast. Please explain to me what exactly the clip conveys inaccurately. Or are you saying that Sam Harris is not good at expressing his thoughts clearly? Is that the issue?
In other news, Konstantin Kisin wants us to link to @triggerpod. Happy to comply with the request, WHICH I WOULD HAVE SEEN EARLIER IF HE HADN'T BLOCKED ME FOR DISAGREEING WITH HIM.
What makes Sam special is that he understands that the institutions can be captured by an activist mob in the throes of a moral panic, with unforeseen consequences. And he still thinks all principles should be thrown out to maintain this system in place.
OK. Having listened to the rest, not much to report on. But do go listen to the whole thing. You can't really appreciate it from the clips.
Some people didn't like the tone. They thought it was biased and glib. This is true. I tried to reason with Sam when I felt he was going off the rails. I know he read some of those threads because he commented on them in his pod.
Yet his responses were awful strawmen. He didn't try to engage or steelman whatsoever. His next podcasts on covid were even worse. Go and listen to his Topol or Christakis episodes given what we know today. They already sound much worse.
He wants the right to slander, misrepresent, and humiliate people, with no accountability. And then he wants to claim that he's all about conversation.
Sorry, there's only so much i can handle. After some point, I flip the bit and enter "anthropological observation" mode.
So this thread was meant as a lighthearted thing for people on my corner of Twitter to have a laugh. Then it blew up. I guess it struck a cord.
By the way, this doesn't mean that I didn't mean what I wrote. I stand by every claim in here. Just want to give y'all some context.
I still hope Sam will see reason at some point, but let's face it, the odds are extremely slim.
At the very least I'm grateful to him for being clear and forthcoming. The podcast, it turns out, really needs no commentary. I do think it will be a milestone that Sam will never live down, if only for the straightforwardness of his positions, such as they are.
Holly takes apart Sam's "clarification" like only a long time reader can. Packed with quotes from sam's books, including the one on lying. Worth your time to read this, i think: hollymathnerd.substack.com/p/a-response-t…
Oh, and she also showed me this quote from Sam's book "Lying". For those of us following along the past few years, this is about as stunning as the recent podcast.
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Allright everyone, let's do this. Send me all the various reasons that have been cited by the US government, or the broader regime, for the US operation on Venezuela. Ideally with quotes or video attached to your replies so we can put them all together.
The EU has sanctioned Jaques Baud, one of the most lucid and evidence based analysts of the war. Apparently, this means that as a Swiss citizen, he cannot even fly over EU territory, which means he cannot leave his country. This is just one of many consequences the penalty, imposed with no due process or any kind of court hearing, has for this former Swiss intelligence analyst and former NATO advisor.
His crime? Quoting the words of Ukranian officials verbatim. Read on.
This is the entirety of the accusations against Colonel Jaques Baud, as written by the EU: ""Jacques Baud, former colonel of the Swiss army and strategic analyst, is a regular guest on pro-Russian television and radio programs. He acts as a mouthpiece for pro-Russian propaganda and spreads conspiracy theories, for example by accusing Ukraine of having orchestrated its own invasion in order to join NATO. Therefore, Jacques Baud is responsible for actions or political measures attributable to the government of the Russian Federation that undermine or threaten the stability or security in a third country (Ukraine) through participation in the use of information manipulation and influence operations, implements them, or supports them.""
You will note that they accuse him of SPEECH CRIMES only. Now lets dig into the specifics a little because the insanity of the situation is off the charts.
Did you now that the PRINCIPLE trial out of the UK found that IVM was superior to the usual care in practically every subgroup it tested, but it sat on the results for ~600 days? When it finally published, it buried these results in page 346 of the appendix.
The main body of the paper they published is even more bizarre --
1. They claim that "clinically meaningful" meant 1.5 days improvement in median time to recovery. 2. They admit that ivermectin showed >2 days to recovery. 3. Their main conclusion is that ivermectin is unlikely to provide clinically meaningful improvement in recovery.
The secret sauce in their conclusion is that their target metric of HR 1.2 is based on 9 days of recovery needed (after randomization). Even though they had ran many hundreds of patients by the time they started the ivm arm they knew the days needed for recovery were >14.
Let's do a thread doing a close reading of Douglas Murray's article in the NY Post, in which he writes about his encounter with Dave Smith on Joe Rogan's podcast.
If you care about facts and truth and stuff, I promise this will be highly illuminating. 🧵
"Having not spoken to Joe since the wars in Ukraine and Israel started, I had become increasingly irked that the guests he has had on have been almost entirely anti-Ukraine and anti-Israel."
As many have demonstrated, this is false.
Since late 2023, at the very least these guests with strong pro-israel views have appeared at least once on the podcast.
Gad Saad
Mike Baker
Peter Zeihan
Douglas Murray
Coleman Hughes
Konstantin Kisin (3 times)
So, the Ukranian constitution gives the president the power to declare martial law, and explicitly says that parliamentary elections can be delayed until after martial law is lifted. For presidential elections it says they must happen every 5 years with no martial law exception.