Harris is one of the people who helped changed my mind on Free Will. (I couldn't change my own mind - because I wasn't free to do so... KEK)
That's one of 2 or 3 'important' subjects about which I have changed my mind, having being fairly certain I had them nailed down.
The other main one was "passive smoking is a risk to health": when I was encouraged by a senior colleague to read the published research that supposedly buttresses that claim, there's no "there" there. That was in 1994, in my first year as PhD student and Junior Minion at a CGE-modelling think-tank.
People who smoke near me make my clothes stink, and that'll have to do as justification for my (lifelong) calumniation of that stupid habit.
"First they came for the smokers, and I thought 'GREAT. Fuck those inconsiderate arseholes'."
FWIW I won't even smoke weed. Edibles or tincture are perfectly satisfactory - fun, even. That said: NOBODY WILL SELL ME WEED (to make tincture) because if you're a weed dealer I look like a cop.
True story bro: during the Victorian COVID Gulag I did an entire lap of Australia in an RV, and approached every sketchy-looking motherfucker in every caravan park, and came up dry every time.
FFS I get it - risk management and so forth. So I really have to get a neck tattoo? In my jurisdiction weed is still illegal and tobacco isn't [FFS again].
So anyhow... Harris writes OK, but he's no Mencken.
Harris - like Adams - is another example of "High-V, and nowhere near as smart as you're encouraged to think", which is my version of Taleb's "IYI".
The Moral Landscape addresses some deeply uncomfortable issues about whether insane people who commit crimes are actually capable of being punished. In fact, his theory questions whether they're even "guilty" at all.
It's well-sourced and scholarly but still readable.
But his political takes served well getting him to all the right DC Cocktail Parties.
Harris is one of the people who helped changed my mind on Free Will. (I couldn't change my own mind - because I wasn't free to do so... KEK)
That's one of 2 or 3 'important' subjects about which I have changed my mind, having being fairly certain I had them nailed down.
The other main one was "passive smoking is a risk to health": when I was encouraged by a senior colleague to read the published research that supposedly buttresses that claim, there's no "there" there. That was in 1994, in my first year as PhD student and Junior Minion at a CGE-modelling think-tank.
People who smoke near me make my clothes stink, and that'll have to do as justification for my (lifelong) calumniation of that stupid habit.
"First they came for the smokers, and I thought 'GREAT. Fuck those inconsiderate arseholes'."
FWIW I won't even smoke weed. Edibles or tincture are perfectly satisfactory - fun, even. That said: NOBODY WILL SELL ME WEED (to make tincture) because if you're a weed dealer I look like a cop.
True story bro: during the Victorian COVID Gulag I did an entire lap of Australia in an RV, and approached every sketchy-looking motherfucker in every caravan park, and came up dry every time.
FFS I get it - risk management and so forth. So I really have to get a neck tattoo? In my jurisdiction weed is still illegal and tobacco isn't [FFS again].
So anyhow... Harris writes OK, but he's no Mencken.
Harris - like Adams - is another example of "High-V, and nowhere near as smart as you're encouraged to think", which is my version of Taleb's "IYI".
The Moral Landscape addresses some deeply uncomfortable issues about whether insane people who commit crimes are actually capable of being punished. In fact, his theory questions whether they're even "guilty" at all.
It's well-sourced and scholarly but still readable.
But his political takes served well getting him to all the right DC Cocktail Parties.