There is Intelligent Life on Earth

Though Sam Harris often comes off as a pretentious douche (and his podcast has absurdly bombastic theme music) but despite this shortcoming of charm, I really like him and appreciate what he's doing for intellectual discourse; his 100th episode (he makes the Spock-like claim that the number has no special inherent meaning to him, of course) is fantastic-- Harris doesn't speak much, instead he lets Nicholas Christakis do the talking-- Christakis directs the Human Nature Lab at Yale, and he attained some viral video prominence because he was at the center of the Yale Halloween videos with the shrieking African-American girl who had some serious misunderstandings about free speech in America . . . Christakis discusses the current attacks on the first amendment that are happening on college campuses, mob mentality, and some of the clever AI research they are doing at his lab and he comes off as rational, extremely intelligent, empathetic, and compelling . . . so much so that Sam Harris makes an orgy joke!

2 comments:

zman said...

He was great in Pollock.

Dave said...

wrong harris. sam harris HATES when you get him confused with ed.

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