Obviously the "admit you were wrong when the evidence goes against you" decision is hard for anyone under any circumstance. But I think COVID is going to be far worse.
Admitting you misjudged climate change severity in either direction, or didn't properly account for inflation or something like that... Embarrassing, but not forever catastrophic to your sense of self.
But giving up a year of your life to live in fear and inflict all the mental health, education, substance abuse, other afflictions on the nation? That goes well beyond making a bad economic decision (though it was that as well).
If that was you, then you want it to mean something. More so if you were in a position of authority or influence (as Harris was). You NEED it to mean something or you'll have a very hard time trusting your own judgement again.
Analogous maybe to Harry Truman getting told a year after Hiroshima that "no, actually the Emperor was writing the surrender notice as the Enola Gay took off.... You would have won without nuking them if you had waited a day."
Would he EVER believe such a thing, no matter how much evidence he saw?
Thank you Rav for the excellent review of Harris' utter lack of intellectual rigor/integrity when it came to Covid. Since you don't want to get conspiratorial, allow me to go there for you:
If Sam Harris were approaching Covid with an open mind and intellectual honesty, would he host on his podcast as his primary "Covid expert" Dr. Eric Topol, to the exclusion of any actual world-class epidemiologists like John Ioannidis, Jay B., Sunetra Gupta, etc.? A five-minute Google search yields the following information about Topol:
(from wikipedia): He is the founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, a professor of Molecular Medicine at The Scripps Research Institute, and a senior consultant at the Division of Cardiovascular Diseases at Scripps Clinic in La Jolla, California.
NOTE: Scripps is one of Fauci/NIH's primary research partners.
How much money did Topol and Scripps get from the NIH in recent years?
(more wikipedia): In 2016, Topol was awarded a US$207 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to lead a significant part of the Precision Medicine Initiative
This is in addition to his role as principal investigator for a $35M grant from the National Institutes of Health to promote innovation in medicine and the education and career training of future medical researchers.
So Topol/Scripps received at least A QUARTER OF A BILLION DOLLARS from NIH since 2016!
What are Topol's specialty areas?
(from his Scripps bio page) His principal scientific focus has been on the use of genomic and digital data, along with artificial intelligence, to individualize medicine. He is also a practicing cardiologist.
A very brief scroll through his publications on Google scholar suggests that he did cardiology-related research in the years prior to his job/s at Scripps (pre-2006), but has focused almost exclusively on the future of medicine (genomics, digital data, AI etc.) since then. Then, when Covid hit, he suddenly became interested in research supporting the NIH's Covid narrative. Not just about Covid and cardiac events, but also things like "Prevalence of Asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 Infection: A Narrative Review" -- clearly topics completely outside his areas of medical/scientific expertise.
One of Topol's Scripps colleagues, Dr. Kristian Andersen, notoriously pointed out (in FOIAed emails) that SARS-CoV-2 looked like it could be engineered, and then did a 180 two days later and signed onto the natural origins paper. (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9).
Subsequently, Scripps received another $60M+ from the NIH
Would someone trying to present real scientific/medical aspects of Covid choose Dr. Topol as their only expert scientist? If not, based on the above info, why might Dr. Topol have been the chosen "expet" and what does it say about Sam Harris's motivations?
Wasn't it Reiner Fuellmich who said something like "Start with the vaccine and work backwards from there. Then it all makes sense." Covid was a scam in order to force untested experimental drugs on people. The damage these 'vaccines' caused is starting to be revealed - and cancer is one of them. Who knows what the longer term impact will be. We all know that the powers that be want massive depopulation by 2030 and to do that you could start a world war, or you could enforce a new drug. Right now it looks like they are taking both approaches.
I really appreciated Sam’s take on BLM issues, specifically the lack of data supporting the narrative that cops were engaged in a killing spree on Black men. He’s really lost my respect for his reasoning skills, however, with his takes on C19 and the vax.
When a public figure with a huge ego has been able to wield his "golden hammer" with such aplomb, as has Harris, it is nigh impossible for him to back away from the edge. His only choice, if he wishes to maintain his favored status, particularly among the midwits who worship him, is to double down. And here we are...
With due apology for replying to myself, something else dawned on me. This quote, from Harris, in "Waking Up" from 2014, is telling, "In a few decades, many of our current [medical] practices will seem barbaric. One need only ponder the list of side effects that accompany most medications to appreciate that these are terribly blunt instruments.” And yet, here we are, with him not only accepting, but championing a treatment modality that is, objectively, worse than any of the "current [medical] practices" he lamented. Why? Mike Tyson supplies us with one answer, "Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth." My own take, riffing on another quote from long ago, is this. Fear makes idiots of us all. Harris was not immune.
Well said. I found Sam's fanaticism around COVID completely broke my trust in him. He was clearly delusional. And being a member of his waking up app, I found his complete blindness to his own rational mind/hypocrisy stunningly embarrassing. He needs to apologize PROFUSLY to so many, for his irrational blasting of treating others who dared to question and think for themselves outside of the ridiculous narrative. Shame on him. So much for his search for truth and enlightenment. He is another guru clown.
I fail to understand the seeming reverence that people show towards Sam Harris. He displays a lack of the most basic understanding of statistics in his attacks on Jay Bhattacharya's statements early on in the Covid debacle - when Jay was trying to ask for a reasonable analysis to be done in order to determine the real fatality rates that were needed in order to accurately judge the magnitude of the pandemic and it's actual danger to the public in general and the groups which needed focused protection. If Harris were as bright as everyone thinks he is - he should have been able to understand this and properly represent it. I think, however, that he is just as subject to his biases and pre-conceived notions as the rest of us, rendering his intelect - if he really has such - unable to properly analyze the situation.
One small but significant correction: The reanalysis of the trial you refer to showed an estimated 1 in 800 rate of *serious* adverse events (SAEs), not adverse events.
3. Hospitalization (initial hospitalization or prolongation of hospitalization)
4. Disability or Permanent Damage
5. Congenital Anomaly/Birth Defect (after administration to the mother)
6. Other Serious Events (Reported when the event does not fit the above outcomes, but the event may jeopardize the patient and may require medical or surgical intervention (treatment) to prevent one of the above outcomes.)
Yes! And we don’t fully know what the long term reproductive effects will be, both as regards fertility and birth defects. It’s frightening to see what is happening in the short run, and no doubt will worsen in the years to come.
".....of one of the most brilliant, intellectually honest, and sophisticated minds of the 21st century."
Why is everyone repeating this BS about Sam Harris?
I identifyed Harris a "fake" in November 2019, before his Covid stupidity finally outed his true nature nd intellect, after listening to him for about 5 months.
I admit, I was initially smitten by his talent of using words and thoughts very effectively but within a few months my BS detector moved very quickly to the red area.
I just happen to know a few things about spirituality and meditation and after reading his book "Waking up" it was obvious, that this brain is full of airy wrderful phrases but lacks any significant substance or real experience on the topic.
The fact that he spent months or years in meditation retreats doesn't mean anything. I met guys that did 20 Vipassana 10-day-silent retreats and never anything happened to them. Meditation is not a PhD where you get a certificate if you put the hours in and write a clever essay.
People mistake his very good intellectual understanding of meditation and conscioussness for real spiritual experience. In short, he is - so-far - a failed meditator and spiritual seeker. Watch his podcast with Rupert Spira and you see the difference between fake and real.
He is deeply transhumanist by nature but either totally ignorant about himself or very clever in covering it up.
Sam Harris is a textbook narcissist. Grandiose, global, definitive, conversation-ending statements litter his output, all arrived at through torturous sophistry which comes delivered as carefully reasoned conclusions.
A long time ago I realized that Harris is a machine with one skill. Wrapping strongly-held, often culturally toxic, short-sighted, and ultimately parochial beliefs in the language and trappings of an public intellectual who does all his calculations where everyone can see them.
That doesn't happen- over and over- by accident. It's engineered and where the public is paying attention and has real skin in the game, the sophistry becomes apparent.
Harris' worst witness against him to posterity will be his own podcasts and videos.
Obviously the "admit you were wrong when the evidence goes against you" decision is hard for anyone under any circumstance. But I think COVID is going to be far worse.
Admitting you misjudged climate change severity in either direction, or didn't properly account for inflation or something like that... Embarrassing, but not forever catastrophic to your sense of self.
But giving up a year of your life to live in fear and inflict all the mental health, education, substance abuse, other afflictions on the nation? That goes well beyond making a bad economic decision (though it was that as well).
If that was you, then you want it to mean something. More so if you were in a position of authority or influence (as Harris was). You NEED it to mean something or you'll have a very hard time trusting your own judgement again.
Analogous maybe to Harry Truman getting told a year after Hiroshima that "no, actually the Emperor was writing the surrender notice as the Enola Gay took off.... You would have won without nuking them if you had waited a day."
Would he EVER believe such a thing, no matter how much evidence he saw?
Sam Harris is so narcissistic that he believes his ability to reason through an issue is superior to the facts or the truth. Kind of insane, really.
Thank you Rav for the excellent review of Harris' utter lack of intellectual rigor/integrity when it came to Covid. Since you don't want to get conspiratorial, allow me to go there for you:
If Sam Harris were approaching Covid with an open mind and intellectual honesty, would he host on his podcast as his primary "Covid expert" Dr. Eric Topol, to the exclusion of any actual world-class epidemiologists like John Ioannidis, Jay B., Sunetra Gupta, etc.? A five-minute Google search yields the following information about Topol:
(from wikipedia): He is the founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, a professor of Molecular Medicine at The Scripps Research Institute, and a senior consultant at the Division of Cardiovascular Diseases at Scripps Clinic in La Jolla, California.
NOTE: Scripps is one of Fauci/NIH's primary research partners.
How much money did Topol and Scripps get from the NIH in recent years?
(more wikipedia): In 2016, Topol was awarded a US$207 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to lead a significant part of the Precision Medicine Initiative
This is in addition to his role as principal investigator for a $35M grant from the National Institutes of Health to promote innovation in medicine and the education and career training of future medical researchers.
So Topol/Scripps received at least A QUARTER OF A BILLION DOLLARS from NIH since 2016!
What are Topol's specialty areas?
(from his Scripps bio page) His principal scientific focus has been on the use of genomic and digital data, along with artificial intelligence, to individualize medicine. He is also a practicing cardiologist.
A very brief scroll through his publications on Google scholar suggests that he did cardiology-related research in the years prior to his job/s at Scripps (pre-2006), but has focused almost exclusively on the future of medicine (genomics, digital data, AI etc.) since then. Then, when Covid hit, he suddenly became interested in research supporting the NIH's Covid narrative. Not just about Covid and cardiac events, but also things like "Prevalence of Asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 Infection: A Narrative Review" -- clearly topics completely outside his areas of medical/scientific expertise.
One of Topol's Scripps colleagues, Dr. Kristian Andersen, notoriously pointed out (in FOIAed emails) that SARS-CoV-2 looked like it could be engineered, and then did a 180 two days later and signed onto the natural origins paper. (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9).
Subsequently, Scripps received another $60M+ from the NIH
Would someone trying to present real scientific/medical aspects of Covid choose Dr. Topol as their only expert scientist? If not, based on the above info, why might Dr. Topol have been the chosen "expet" and what does it say about Sam Harris's motivations?
Wasn't it Reiner Fuellmich who said something like "Start with the vaccine and work backwards from there. Then it all makes sense." Covid was a scam in order to force untested experimental drugs on people. The damage these 'vaccines' caused is starting to be revealed - and cancer is one of them. Who knows what the longer term impact will be. We all know that the powers that be want massive depopulation by 2030 and to do that you could start a world war, or you could enforce a new drug. Right now it looks like they are taking both approaches.
I really appreciated Sam’s take on BLM issues, specifically the lack of data supporting the narrative that cops were engaged in a killing spree on Black men. He’s really lost my respect for his reasoning skills, however, with his takes on C19 and the vax.
When a public figure with a huge ego has been able to wield his "golden hammer" with such aplomb, as has Harris, it is nigh impossible for him to back away from the edge. His only choice, if he wishes to maintain his favored status, particularly among the midwits who worship him, is to double down. And here we are...
With due apology for replying to myself, something else dawned on me. This quote, from Harris, in "Waking Up" from 2014, is telling, "In a few decades, many of our current [medical] practices will seem barbaric. One need only ponder the list of side effects that accompany most medications to appreciate that these are terribly blunt instruments.” And yet, here we are, with him not only accepting, but championing a treatment modality that is, objectively, worse than any of the "current [medical] practices" he lamented. Why? Mike Tyson supplies us with one answer, "Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth." My own take, riffing on another quote from long ago, is this. Fear makes idiots of us all. Harris was not immune.
"sad fall" explained in full.
Brilliant analysis and hopefully Sam follows your advice .
Well said. I found Sam's fanaticism around COVID completely broke my trust in him. He was clearly delusional. And being a member of his waking up app, I found his complete blindness to his own rational mind/hypocrisy stunningly embarrassing. He needs to apologize PROFUSLY to so many, for his irrational blasting of treating others who dared to question and think for themselves outside of the ridiculous narrative. Shame on him. So much for his search for truth and enlightenment. He is another guru clown.
He also needs to be in prison, if he encouraged/coerced others to get it.
Harris’s covidiotism is part and parcel with his TDS. He’s lost a lot of credibility. He should apologize and repent.
100%
I fail to understand the seeming reverence that people show towards Sam Harris. He displays a lack of the most basic understanding of statistics in his attacks on Jay Bhattacharya's statements early on in the Covid debacle - when Jay was trying to ask for a reasonable analysis to be done in order to determine the real fatality rates that were needed in order to accurately judge the magnitude of the pandemic and it's actual danger to the public in general and the groups which needed focused protection. If Harris were as bright as everyone thinks he is - he should have been able to understand this and properly represent it. I think, however, that he is just as subject to his biases and pre-conceived notions as the rest of us, rendering his intelect - if he really has such - unable to properly analyze the situation.
Wow Rav, such a well researched and balanced article. I admire your ongoing charity to Sam, despite his belligerence. Keep up your amazing work.
One small but significant correction: The reanalysis of the trial you refer to showed an estimated 1 in 800 rate of *serious* adverse events (SAEs), not adverse events.
And SAEs are indeed *serious*.
The following are to be reported as SAEs (according to the FDA here: https://www.fda.gov/safety/reporting-serious-problems-fda/what-serious-adverse-event)
1. Death
2. Life-threatening event
3. Hospitalization (initial hospitalization or prolongation of hospitalization)
4. Disability or Permanent Damage
5. Congenital Anomaly/Birth Defect (after administration to the mother)
6. Other Serious Events (Reported when the event does not fit the above outcomes, but the event may jeopardize the patient and may require medical or surgical intervention (treatment) to prevent one of the above outcomes.)
Yes! And we don’t fully know what the long term reproductive effects will be, both as regards fertility and birth defects. It’s frightening to see what is happening in the short run, and no doubt will worsen in the years to come.
+100
".....of one of the most brilliant, intellectually honest, and sophisticated minds of the 21st century."
Why is everyone repeating this BS about Sam Harris?
I identifyed Harris a "fake" in November 2019, before his Covid stupidity finally outed his true nature nd intellect, after listening to him for about 5 months.
I admit, I was initially smitten by his talent of using words and thoughts very effectively but within a few months my BS detector moved very quickly to the red area.
I just happen to know a few things about spirituality and meditation and after reading his book "Waking up" it was obvious, that this brain is full of airy wrderful phrases but lacks any significant substance or real experience on the topic.
The fact that he spent months or years in meditation retreats doesn't mean anything. I met guys that did 20 Vipassana 10-day-silent retreats and never anything happened to them. Meditation is not a PhD where you get a certificate if you put the hours in and write a clever essay.
People mistake his very good intellectual understanding of meditation and conscioussness for real spiritual experience. In short, he is - so-far - a failed meditator and spiritual seeker. Watch his podcast with Rupert Spira and you see the difference between fake and real.
He is deeply transhumanist by nature but either totally ignorant about himself or very clever in covering it up.
I fully agree!
100%
Rav, great journalism! This article is one of your best!
Sam Harris is a textbook narcissist. Grandiose, global, definitive, conversation-ending statements litter his output, all arrived at through torturous sophistry which comes delivered as carefully reasoned conclusions.
A long time ago I realized that Harris is a machine with one skill. Wrapping strongly-held, often culturally toxic, short-sighted, and ultimately parochial beliefs in the language and trappings of an public intellectual who does all his calculations where everyone can see them.
That doesn't happen- over and over- by accident. It's engineered and where the public is paying attention and has real skin in the game, the sophistry becomes apparent.
Harris' worst witness against him to posterity will be his own podcasts and videos.
Not shocked.. the atheist would be expected to fall. But from where?