It's stunning that we still buy into the notion that the anti-sjw and anti-pc people on the right genuinely care about free speech.

A few days ago it came out that Donald Trump literally urged the FBI director to prosecute journalists. It's a terrifying and outrageous attack on the 1A and fundemental democratic principles, but it completely flew under the radar because he does this all the time.

And guess what? All the conservatives and 'classical liberals' who always circlejerks about the left being against free speech didn't give a single shit and will continue to support him. Yes, there is a clear threat to free speech, but it's not coming from college kids or spooky political correctness. Talking about "SJWs" and political correctness as they're even remotely a big a threat as the actual authoritarians in power are, is just flat out dishonesty and propaganda.

Shapiro is worthless a thinker and his ideas are totally tainted by the fact that he is a partisan hack. Anyone who has written a book that is called How To Debate and Destroy Leftists, has exposed himself as a shill for one side. I think we would do well to dismiss people who demonstrably argue in bad faith, like shapiro.

Also I don't see how this is relevant to Harris.

Thankfully, mpv's scripting layer made it dead-easy to write this little script that let me hit Enter whenever I heard a "you know" (and Backspace whenever I accidentally hit Enter on a "we know"). Some of the timestamps are a little off (by no more than a second), but I do concede that I ~~autistically~~ meticulously ensured the count came out correct.

A couple things to note: 1) Japanese Americans actually received reparations for being interned. African Americans have never received reparations. 2) Because of US immigration policy, Japanese Americans who came to the United States were already highly educated and quite well-off socioeconomically before they arrived. That affects how well you will do when you arrive.

If you're interested, I suggest checking out this book: https://www.amazon.com/Asian-American-Achievement-Paradox/dp/0871545470

I would like to second this observation and consequent sentiment.

There is objective and honest disagreement from people who are still genuinely interested in one's ideas and there is nothing wrong with wanting to influence and rectify them if necessary by presenting new evidence. However, what we're seeing on this sub appears like an onslaught of ideologically charged opponents hiding behind the reddit anonymity, which also allows easy identity multiplication, and that does muddy the water in this space. The speed of some downvotes to some ideas presented that would squarely fit in any of Sam's podcasts make me suspect an orchestrated motion to sway the Overton window to the left.

> but maybe a private forum for his Patreon suppporters might be a good solution.

I know that Sam and NNT hate each other but a little "skin in the game" would be of great help here -- for example if Sam did exactly what you're suggesting but on his page (I am sure that discussion forum web frameworks exist for easy customization and deployment) for only paying supporters. I doubt many of these trolls would be pitching in just so they can smear their propaganda there.

Conspiracy:

>a secret plan made by two or more people to do something bad, illegal, or against someone’s wishes.

It is not a synonym for myth or falsehood or fringe opinion

Sam should really talk to more anarchists, socialists and communists, instead of constantly regurgitating the same tired points of the right every single podcast.

For instance, Mark Bray would make a great guest.

Michael Marshall recently interviewed a race realist on his podcast ‘be reasonable’.

It’s episode 057.

It’s basically someone who wants to distance the self from the negative connotations of the term racist and presents all the white nationalism/ white supremacy arguments in addition to the standard disarming ‘I’m not racist because I also think Asian’s are smart and I have a black friend’ caveats.

https://player.fm/series/30897

There's 50 days worth of "daily meditations" at this point, each ~10 minutes long, plus 16 extra lessons ranging from 3.5 minutes to 29 minutes. Judging by the previous newsletters, he tends to add somewhere in the range of 1-5 new lessons or daily meditations every week.

A better bang for your buck might be a copy of The Mind Illuminated plus a free app like Insight Timer or similar.

There was a part of the conversation where they were agreeing that digital communications was just a way for people to get themselves into social trouble, because basic civility and the reading of body language goes out the window to some extent.

That's true, but there's also numerous advantages to that sort of written asynchronous communication that they didn't mention:

• It's a great equalizer for people who speak different native languages.
• It gives everyone involved a greater chance to reflect on what's said without the immediate expectation of a response
• The time delay factor allows people from all over the world to participate, instead of just people in the same room.
• It's all digitally recorded, so it's easy to refer back to earlier parts of the conversation for fact-checking & referencing, even by people who weren't there (or may not have been born yet).

I think Sam was unduly dismissive of this mode of communication. Yes it takes some discipline, and it can certainly benefit to some degree from occasional in-person meetups, but at the same time it can yield benefits that wouldn't have been possible before. Sam's own website is at least partially hosted on a system whose development is primarily coordinated over E-Mail.

Considering he wrote an entire book on Bill Clinton, I'm guessing he does.

​

https://www.amazon.com/Superpredator-Clintons-Abuse-Black-America/dp/0692736891

Loved "You Are Not So Smart." Really funny and covers a LOT of fallacies/self-delusions:

https://www.amazon.com/You-Are-Not-So-Smart/dp/1592407366

Extraordinary. Just read it. Book in reference is In the Closet of the Vatican: Power, Homosexuality, Hypocrisy by Frédéric Martel.

In case anyone wants to read more on this topic, this is a pretty good book.

The introduction of these algorithms into sentencing is about the worst case scientism I think you can find. The algorithms look for correlations between re-offense and the characteristics of the defendants. There's no way to stop it from taking race or other protected characteristics into account, since it will just find proxies for race if a correlation exists. Here's an example the same effect happening in hiring. Since the algorithms have a false cloak of objectivity they are trusted and used with the illusion of impartiality, but they're tools that look for risk signals based on (often immutable) characteristics of the defendant, which is exactly what discrimination looks like. Even if you could work out the bugs somehow that capture race and other protected characteristics, they still create rules that we wouldn't accept if they were human in origin. Why should nephews of felons be given a harsher sentence and bakers be given lighter ones? In what world does that look like justice.

>Okay, you want to explain to me why the website and amazon disagree on its frequency of publication? Does that seem like something a magazine would do?

The website says bimonthly (link) and Amazon says 6 times a year (link). There's no contradiction here so I have no idea what you're talking about

>Or, uh, there’s an About Page with 3 recommendation quotes, only one of which has a name attached.

And yeah, the quotes are unattributed. They should probably do that. How does this make it a fake magazine exactly?

My overall view is that he's an increadible, but deeply flawed, person.

He's simultaneously transforming the transportation, space exploration, and energy sectors all at once. He's already accomplished multiple things in aeronautics and transportation areas that nobody else had done before. I honestly think he's possibly the most important person alive, and we're really lucky to have him.

But... he's probably a narcissist, and at least appears to be an asshole.

Like many people who are increadible workers, he demands incredible amounts from the people around him. Often enough that he hurts them. If you read his biography it's replete with stories of Elon hurting people close to him because he doesn't seem to understand how they see the world. His ex-wife, Justine, wrote a really sad article about their divorce back in 2010. This doesn't excuse anything, but his biography strongly suggests he was abused as a child by his father.

He seems to share a lot of traits, both positive and negative, with some of the most successful people in history. It's possible to be that driven that something inside of you needs to be broken, or that you demand so much of yourself that you despise mediocrity in others.

I agree, much of the centrist media did approach McCain's legacy in an anodine way. But certainly the progressive left was at pains to point out his support for things like the Iraq war and his social conservatism. I also think many on the more center-left did the same. Just listen to this Vox podcast on the topic called "John McCain vs. the idea of John McCain":

https://player.fm/series/voxs-the-weeds/john-mccain-vs-the-idea-of-john-mccain

Yes. Glenn Beck for example:

http://www.israelhayom.com/2017/07/23/glenn-beck-jordan-is-palestine/

That’s just the first one I checked on this list of their contributors. I’m sure there are many more.

https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmXoypizjW3WknFiJnKLwHCnL72vedxjQkDDP1mXWo6uco/wiki/List_of_CNN_anchors.html

FWIW there is an excellent book on the psychology of climate change denial that I can recommend, if you can deal with the seemingly relentless series of challenges to get people to stop denying and start to act.

Don't Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change Paperback – August 18, 2015 by George Marshall

Unsurprisingly, everything JP says and does fits into the mould very neatly.

In Sapolsky's new book Behave, Robert talks about hormones and how much of what we think of serotonin and testosterone is misleading. It is contradictory to what Jordan thinks or argues.

For example, many people think increasing testosterone leads to increasing aggression. This is false. Increasing testosterone leads to behavior that is needed to maintain your place in the social-hierarchy, regardless of if it's violence, empathy, etc. This means that if your society rewards pacifism, you rise up the social hierarchy because of your generosity. Increasing testosterone will increase your altruism, not aggression. Give a community of pacifist monks a shot of testosterone and you will have them running around trying to out-do each other by being the nicest monk in the community.

This is antithetical to Jordan's view that social hierarchy is inevitable and a product of human nature. Since humans have historically fought nature, having the strength to overcome and master nature was the historical modus operandi. However, since we have now evolved as a species with urbanization, the industrial revolution, and the division of labor, our battle is no longer against nature, but against ourselves. Therefore, we are no longer in a battle for dominance against nature, but against ourselves, which does not need to happen anymore if we as a species decided we would no longer reward dominant, aggressive, social-hierarchy-enhancing behavior.

The thing is, he could make a better religion than most. Christian apologetics is just an attempt to reinterpret 2000 year old fables into something that fits the present moment. It's about as valid as trying to reinterpret Aristotelian astronomy.

But because it's about God, people twist themselves into pretzels.

Sam believe (as do I) that spiritual experiences are real. It's the explanation for the experiences that falls woefully short.

Instead of tying it all back to a myth about how to get to Heaven, we're better served by focusing our attention on understanding how humans are wired.

I know JP is a psychologist so I don't dismiss him out of hand, but I'll take Man's Search for Meaning over Maps of Meaning.

Just to provide one example for /u/yoyomamayoyomamayoyo's devastating point, Jake Angeli was apparently an active user.

Would this change your opinion on Glenn Greenwald? He's obviously either blatantly lying or so obviously wrong as to lose all credibility.

Did Kimberle Crenshaw edit a book about the writings that influenced CRT wherein she commented that CRT derives its legal ideology with the help of Gramsci's hegemony? Did she explicitly call Gramsci an "Italian neo-Marxist"? :D

https://www.amazon.com/Critical-Race-Theory-Writings-Movement/dp/1565842715

CRT is Marxist AF.

Thanks! Snyder is a great writer. Bloodlands is definitely worth the read -- it's a look at the mass killings under the Hitler and Stalin regimes. If that sounds like both-sides-ism or something, it's more like 'political mass murder' is itself the center of the story, often told from the point of view of its victims.

Two things -- state usury laws: that is why banks wrote the law that allowed them to base their credit card businesses in any state they want, to circumvent usury laws. [Someone smart once said that violence is the crime of the poor, white collar crime is the crime of the middle, and when you're rich, you don't need to commit crimes because you can write the laws to let you do what you want. I would love to know the source...]

Second, the psychology of scarcity (see the book https://www.amazon.com/Scarcity-Having-Little-Means-Much-ebook/dp/B00BMKOO6S) makes it difficult to make good choices under conditions of scarcity. Not just money-wise, btw, but also affection (hence people behaving counter-productively needy when they're lonely, even though they may know on some level it is repellent).

Somebody even wrote a book about how insane that is

>Princeton University’s Omar Wasow studied protest movements in the 1960s and found that violent upheaval tended to make white voters more conservative, whereas nonviolent protests were associated with increased liberalism among white voters. “These patterns suggest violent protest activity is correlated with a taste for ‘social control’ among the predominantly white mass public,” wrote Wasow in his study.
>
> Stephan and Erica Chenoweth produced a book, <em>Why Civil Resistance Works</em>, which found nonviolent resistance movements were twice as likely as violent movements to achieve their aims in the 20th and early 21stcenturies.

Important message here. It shows that violence is counter-productive.

Effective altruist here. For those effective altruists who are interested in alleviating the suffering among the extreme poor, charities are evaluated based on their effectiveness in saving not lives per se, but quality-adjusted life years, which is the metric used by both the EA charity evaluator GiveWell and the World Health Organization, as well as various other development organizations. It is a measure of not of lives saved, but for how many years of life saved, adjusted for how healthy those years are. The "1 life saved per $3500" figure is somewhat of a shorthand for, IIRC about 40 or 50 QALYs saved per $3500, and it's used because it's a metric that people can more easily digest than the QALY unit used in development economics.

As to your other concerns about the counterfactual of giving development aid to Africa and your various other concerns, all of them are addressed in William MacAskill's book Doing Good Better. I suggest checking it out if you're interested in the EA approach to the world's problems. As it is right now (and I don't mean this in a pejorative way at all), it seems that you haven't really done enough research on this.

> I'm loathe to admit it, but the regressive left is growing and eating into ordinary liberalism/progressivism, and the result is that outlets like Salon are becoming as dishonest and irrational as Fox News and Breitbart.

Salon has been declining in popularity since the mid 2000s and has been getting hammered lately. To make the argument that its getting worse, you would be elevating and picking apart hot takes that are getting less popular over time.

>It's really a disgrace to the left, which for quite a while had some legitimate claim to being more sophisticated, rational, and well-informed than the right.

How is it a disgrace to the left? As salon gets crazier, its readership declines . . . which seems to be the appropriate response.

I think its more disgraceful that you choose to beat a dead horse (Salon) rather than criticize the preminent sources of liberal news - NYT, WaPost, MSNBC, Slate, Vox etc. I'm sure those deserve to be criticized as well in someway, but why pin Salon to the left when it is literally declining in standing amongst the left?

>Junk like this makes it harder and harder to not throw up one's hands and say "both sides are equally batshit insane".

Sorry, but selecting Salon from the left and Fox News from the right and portraying them as remotely equivalent is ignorant and dishonest. Fox News is an arm of the administration. Brietbart is an arm of the administration. Salon is not the arm of anything mainstream left.

> We need a new political identity whose paramount principle is truth and rationality. Where the only things that really matter are facts, honesty, and clear reasoning.

Have you considered reading the New York Times? You have options out there so why are you choosing to flog yourself with Salon when even other leftists are backing away from the outlet?

I keep on being reminded of this, where Bertrand Russell articulates his refusal to debate a fascist. Especially with someone like Bannon, I don't think there can be an honest conversation about his ideas, because at the very least he won't act in good faith ( and likely, if I were to debate him, neither would I). He'll lie so things sound good for him, if you show him he's wrong, he'll ignore it, and so will the proponents of his ideas.

It is possible that someone would change their mind ( let's say for the better, and not start supporting Bannon), but where to draw the arbitrary line of how many minds need to be changed. How many times do these ideas need to be proven wrong? I just don't see anything but a stalemate. No one gains anything from this.

edit: typos

If the delay is stopping you from meditating, look at this meditation guide or get a copy of The Mind Illuminated, Mindfulness in Plain English or another similar guide.

OP: "The sky is blue."

Viol: "You got a source on that, buddy?"

<em>&quot;Hijab is not oppression for women but a symbol of empowerment.&quot;</em>

This also mirrors what people like Sarsour and Ilhan say. I guess everyone already forgot how Sarsour hijacked the womens march to tell everyone how vieled women was a sign of female empowerment and that sharia law was feminist. Anyone who disagreed was labeled all sorts of nonsense.

A quick glimpse of what a modern feminist government is like.

PS: A note on copyright. It is my understanding that such a small part of a podcast, with proper attributions and linking, should go under Fair use and the right to cite a work. I obviously can not profit from this, and I hope it will help Sam get his message out and get more listeners. I really wish he would publish with a Free cultural works Creative Commons license, so that sharing like this would be explicitly legal from his side. After all spreading his ideas is what he wants to do, I assume. But in the absence of that I'll depend on the good will of him and this community.

I don't know what to tell you about those things. I find it alarming that he had a Raytheon executive as Secretary of Defense, a literal Rothschild banker as Secretary of Commerce, a former CIA torture site chief as head of the CIA, and Goldman Sachs as usual taking up positions in any economic capacity they can. But, as you'll likely point out, that's all just the run-of-the-mill corruption that we have sadly gotten used to over the last 60 years. And you'd be right, of course, if you were to say that.

&#x200B;

You're dead wrong about the rhetoric of the Dems to Trump, though, and is indicative that you may be getting your information from heavily biased sources. They're repeating a lot of the same bullshit Republicans did to Obama. Again, it's sad, but it's certainly not new.

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> There have been a lot of "new" things during this election cycle. The "resistance" and "not my President" movements

Here's a &quot;Not My President&quot; pin with Obama's face on it that has a listing date of November 20, 2008.

&#x200B;

My main point is that all of this garbage, from the corruption of the Trump administration to the rhetoric of the Dems has been a mainstay in our politics for decades. But a President refusing to commit to a peaceful transition of power and demanding vote counting stop in places he is losing is bonkers insane and completely new. It's alarming.

Hahaha McWhorter is a prescriptive linguist? Seems him and Harris will get along.

https://www.amazon.com/Doing-Our-Own-Thing-Degradation/dp/1592400167

I thought people would enjoy a current events podcast by josh zepps on the recent topic of Sarah Jeong, recently hired by The NY Times.

For those new to content by Josh Zepps, he interviewed sam harris on this very podcast roughly a year ago,

https://player.fm/series/wethepeople-live-1425329/ep-86-sam-harris-part-1

People with Asian names apparently get 28% less interviews (or call backs) compared to Anglo names, according to this.

Interesting data point, given the generally higher income of Asians in the US, and I assume Canada.

How would you explain tha neo-nazis were really happy about the way he spoke about that event?

> I would tend to agree, but if you read Putin’s playbook, that’s exactly what they want. They want people to throw their arms up in disgust and disengage. It makes their job of being corrupt assholes much easier.

Well, that was more meant to be a reference along the lines of what was discussed in the Ezra Klein podcast episode 'Jaron Lanier’s case for deleting social media right now'. At some point, it's probably good to disentangle the notion of engagement with some of the more toxic trappings of social media. But please don't take that to be a call for apathy or even away from activism.

1 is Rationally Speaking, #2 is Making Sense.

If you want a comprehensive record of what ~this sub~ a subset of this sub which is probably fairly representative thinks, check out this post of my survey results, and scroll down to Question 10.

The bias is a result of targeted advertising, and tribalism.

Women account for 80% of US consumer purchases. 75% of women are responsible for shopping in their households. Women spend 40% more time on social media than men. Whites are second in income per household. Whites are a majority in the US. All this adds up to the average middle aged white women having tremendous spending power.

https://www.slideshare.net/jackmortonWW/jack-mortonwpbeyondpink

Marketing firms know that middle aged white women are the strongest purchasing demographic. Companies don't purchase ad space on a platform unless their target demographic is represented. MSM can't have an audience if they're not selling ads.

The result... stories about tragedy involving the white woman tribe.

Missing White Woman Syndrome is not evidence of implicit national racism. It's about making money.

Exactly what percentage of dems, or even "woke" people do you think would be able to tell you who Barbara Applebaum is?

https://www.amazon.com/Being-White-Good-Complicity-Responsibility-ebook/dp/B003T0G6VU

Oh man, what an influencer. Her book has a whopping FIVE reviews on amazon!

>Where the hell are you getting this notion?

Critical race theory : an introduction (Third ed.). New York. ISBN 978-1479802760.

&#x200B;

>You mean, according to the definition that you pulled out of your ass?

I mean according to the theory as it is laid out by its authors.

&#x200B;

>Holy Christ, where are you getting this information from? Steven "Run Away From Sam Seder" Crowder? Ben Shapiro, perhaps?

I am reading first and second hand sources and discussing the theory as it is laid out by its proponents. I am a progressive and a liberal, and unlike you its appears that I actually have engaged with the substance of the theory and its logical frameworks.

>I don't think I've ever met a more confused person. Please go learn what CRT actually means before you blow another gasket.

I think what is happening is that your understanding of CRT goes as far as your understanding of those who are most visibly opposed to it: ie "Conservatives oppose it, therefore I defend it."

I think what I've said is so alarming to you specifically because you don't understand CRT and what I've described it as is offensive to you.

That's okay, because CRT is far-right trash and if you are progressive you should be offended by it.

>Working for a dairy company doesn’t require an advanced set of skills in which qualifications would come into question, so using that as an analogy to modern day conversations over affirmative action stances, which revolve entirely around jobs that require advanced degrees or college admittance race rates, isn’t legit.

There's no 'analogy' being made at all -- only a description of King's position and it's irreconcilability with what Hughes' claims it is. Moreover, you're just factually wrong here:

>Their requests include jobs, advertising in Negro newspapers, and depositing funds in Negro financial institutions.

...

>you’ll hear leftist activists claiming it’s just like the days of slavery or Jim Crow or MLK.

Sure, no doubt. Every semester when my students read <em>The New Jim Crow</em> and I ask them what the argument of the book is, at least one of them will say something like "Racism is just as bad as ever" or "Mass incarceration works just like Jim Crow" or something similar. Of course, the book doesn't actually say that, and in fact says something directly contradictory: that each of these is a distinct racial caste system with its own set(s) of philosophical rationalizations, political formations, material consequences, etc. etc. etc. I do my best to patiently walk them through this argument, but I'm sure some of them still walk away with the mistaken impression (and, obviously, I'm not in the room every time someone outside of my classes reads the book).

Saying that "nothing has changed" isn't just incorrect; frankly, I think it's an insult to the folks who spilled their blood, sweat, and tears to fight for change. I fully agree with you here.

> By the way the only one of those categories that is a challenge to capitalism is the bleeding heart liberal.

&#x200B;

This is true. The real threat to capitalism are the bleeding heart liberals, such as comrade Bono, Robert "Red scare" Redford, and Paul "little Gulag" Mcartney.

&#x200B;

>The far left will get her hair dye at Walmart or Amazon

&#x200B;

I recognize this rhetorical rapier well. You must be a pupil of the Shapiro method of Leftist Destruction, unquestionably. Former practitioner of the art, I am. I once found myself debating a female and I was like listen you tainted whore, you claim you are a leftist, and yet I see you are wearing shoes that where made by CAPITALISM. Heroic victory.

Here's a book by an actual expert on the topic--

https://www.amazon.com/Color-Law-Forgotten-Government-Segregated/dp/1631492853

It has all the things your token black conservatives won't mention.

It will be interesting to see where they go, if I recall correctly when Stormfront was kicked off their registrar & russian host they moved to Perfect Privacy LLC. Currently there are also a few crypto payment processors that are trying to "win" gab's business after Stripe terminated their accounts, I saw one offering a bounty on /r/bitcoin for anyone who could get them in contact with gab's operator. It seems to me there are enough free market solutions that gab will be back and stable in the coming weeks.

1. Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Khaneman. I feel like this book might have been life-changing for me had I read it when I was younger. I understand that a lot of the studies have failed to replicate, but the foundation this builds for how to think is still very valuable to me.
2. The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt. This helped me to better understand (and empathize with) red tribe members in the Age of Trump.
3. Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang. A collection of really interesting sci-fi short stories, including the one the movie Arrival is based on. I think it landed way better as a story - the movie kind of disappointed me.

There is a reason that the prefrontal cortex is called the "slow" brain. If you read Daniel Kahneman's "Thinking, Fast and Slow", you'll be familiar with this terminology.

When we are talking about imminently dangerous situations, your prefrontal cortex is inherently incapable of making a good judgment within such a short period of time. You may have only a few seconds or a minute to react, and your prefrontal cortex is just not useful in those scenarios.

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.

That's pretty much it. Maybe I should look into audible, because I just don't read books anymore. Podcasts are such an appealing alternative and I struggle to keep below 40 of those in my subscription list.

I love newsmagazines, though. Definitely addicted to The Atlantic.

> nonsensical Marxist or a total crackpot

Because psychoanalysis, Lacan, critical theory, or anything else that makes you ask what he's on about isn't mentioned in the quoted text. The mentioned animosity also extends to Chomsky.

> Unless you are talking about the bearded guy in the public television discussion with Jordan Peterson saying "Uhmmm basically it is not correct that there's such a thing as biological sex but I don't have time to explain that now"

NIcholas Matte.

Thats funny, I was listening to NPR yesterday (I listen to NPR 90% exclusivly every time I am in my car) and I do get white guilt shoved down my throat. Here was the interview I endured yesterday.

Although I haven't heard that particular segment you are referring to, I find it hard to believe that there isn't a heavy dose of tribal non-white pride at the least

>ow the hell do we talk to one another when our savage brains are constantly looking for gaps in other peoples solidarity with our self perception and ego?

Work with what we know about the brain, not try to force a square through a round hole. Encourage complete freedom of association, and remove government from as many peoples lives as possible. Racial tensions will decrease the more these 2 things are 'implemented'

> I guess the question for me is, when someone creates a work of fiction where the viewpoint character is an arsehole, are they doing it because they want to say something about unreliable narrators, or are they doing it because they don't have the imagination to write as anyone but themselves, and they are that arsehole?

This particular book is actually an autobiography, if that helps you decide...

I was my understanding that it wasn't fictional. It was based on his real life experiences in Scilicon Valley. If you read the amazon description it says:

> Now, this gleeful contrarian unravels the chaotic evolution of social media and online marketing and reveals how it is invading our lives and shaping our future. Weighing in on everything from startups and credit derivatives to Big Brother and data tracking, social media monetization and digital “privacy,” García Martínez shares his scathing observations and outrageous antics, taking us on a humorous, subversive tour of the fascinatingly insular tech industry. Chaos Monkeys lays bare the hijinks, trade secrets, and power plays of the visionaries, grunts, sociopaths, opportunists, accidental tourists, and money cowboys who are revolutionizing our world.

https://www.amazon.com/Chaos-Monkeys-Obscene-Fortune-Failure/dp/0062458191

Like personally I don't hate the guy. I'm just saying it's kind of a shitty way of describing / viewing women.

Every facial recognition system to date has ran into the latter problem, some to extreme degrees. It is not rare by any stretch whatsoever.

https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2019/12/nist-study-evaluates-effects-race-age-sex-face-recognition-software

The first is not rare, either.

https://www.amazon.com/Invisible-Women-Data-World-Designed/dp/1419729071

I have Mindfulness in Plain English by Henepola Gunaratana and find it to be pretty good. (Caveat: There are a couple weird comments about psychic powers, but they are extremely minimal and do not detract from the overall quality of the book.)

I've heard Joseph Goldstein's book is good, Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Awakening, but I haven't read that one.

I feel I have a good sense about how to meditate now, but when I was starting I found the app (not a book) Headspace to be very helpful.

In response to this comment:

>Frequent debate around hijab in this sub and western liberals staunch defense of hijab
>
>Which ones?

I brought up three people:

Linda Sarsour a prominent member of the women's march, a self proclaimed feminist that is clearly on the left, and an outspoken proponent of the hijab

Ilhan Omar a sitting member of congress with a 'D' next to her name, a self proclaimed feminist and progressive “I wear a hijab. I’m a feminist. Deal with it.”

Sidra Binte Islam another self proclaimed feminist who is clearly on the left, that wrote an article for HuffPo titled &quot;I Am A Hijabi Feminist&quot;

It's relevant because he asked for western liberals that defend the hijab, so I provided three examples including a member of congress. It couldn't be more relevant.

To be fair, I think we should distinguish between centrists and left-liberal commentators like Chris Hayes and Rachel Maddow. I heard a podcast with them today where they specifically criticized some of the media for acting like Bush wasn't a bad president because he's nice to Michelle Obama. They also said Bush had been worse than Trump has been (so far).

I can never tell when we are fighting anymore. In either case, I'll leave you with this:

http://www.thesaurus.com/browse/articulate?s=t

Synonyms include "coherent," the opposite of which is "incoherent."

https://www.amazon.com/Critical-Race-Theory-Writings-Movement/dp/1565842715

> "[Gramsci's] concept of hegemony allows these [Critical Legal Studies] scholars to explain the continued legitimacy of American society by revealing how legal consciousness induces people to accept or consent to their own oppression."

> Critical scholars derive their vision of legal ideology from the work of Antonio Gramsci, an Italian neo-Marxist theorist [who] ... articulated the concept of hegemony, the means by which a system of attitudes and beliefs, permeating both popular consciousness and the ideology of elites, reinforces existing social arrangements and convinces the dominated classes that the existing order is inevitable" Crenshaw, p. 108

Insofar as CRT derives its legal ideology from neo-Marxism, it is descriptively accurate to characterise it as Marxist in character, or neo-Marxism if you wish to split hairs.

> One thing you may not realize is that the idea that people have "worldviews" is itself an entirely right-wing idea not accepted by the scholarly community or even most regular people. Psychologists, for instance, have never believed that people have one consistent explanatory model though which they interpret all evidence and observation around them.

Lol.

No problem.

To be clear, I'm not here tooting the horn of how everyone should be reading their Hegel or Zizek. Either is years of work going through a whole history of thinkers, very few of whom are easy reads. I'm far from an expert. My problem here was how often you see people can replacing their ignorance or disinterest towards something with this fantasy of how a lack of understanding is in itself a form of knowledge (rather, it is a desire for ignorance). Regardless, the 20th century that we know could not have happened without Hegel, this is trivially true. Understanding why and how this is the case, and how Hegel is still read, interpreted and reanimated in new ways, has been exciting and informative for me. Along with Zizek, the other most prominent 21st century reading of Hegel is rooted in the anglophone analytic tradition. This might surprise the /r/samharris reader who only really reads hard science like Graham Hancock, yet has heard that analytic philosophy is good and continental means word salad for idiots. It's honestly exciting to me that some of the most prominent 21st century analytic thinkers are spending their lives studying the German idealists, even if I totally disagree with what I know of their reading of Hegel.

Either way, my reading of philosophy has changed my personal, political and social thinking in too many ways to go into here. It's even improved my health and made me a better person, maybe. I think some people might call it useless because to justify the practice, I need to answer "What is it for?", but then again, they listen to podcasts and smoke weed. Me too, perhaps later today. But that's about the most useless thing I ever do.

https://www.amazon.com/Fear-Loathing-Las-Vegas-American/dp/0679785892

>Books› Biographies & Memoirs› Arts & Literature

&nbsp;

>>>>Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream is a 1971 novel by Hunter S. Thompson, illustrated by Ralph Steadman. The book is a roman à clef, rooted in autobiographical incidents. The story follows its protagonist, Raoul Duke, and his attorney, Dr. Gonzo, as they descend on Las Vegas to chase the American Dream through a drug-induced haze, all the while ruminating on the failure of the 1960s countercultural movement. The work is Thompson's most famous book, and is noted for its lurid descriptions of illegal drug use and its early retrospective on the culture of the 1960s. Its popularization of Thompson's highly subjective blend of fact and fiction has become known as gonzo journalism.

For anyone who hasn't read &quot;Surly you're joking Mr. Feynman&quot;, you should. Highly recommended.

> there are states of "well being" that require certain amount of suffering to be experienced prior to that state of consciousness, and the people that go through those changes say they were worth it. Can we ever know that any particular state of suffering does not have a greater good associated with it?

Daniel Kahneman about this discrepancy between the "Experienced" self and the "Reflective" self, and the peak-end rule. An example in his book "Thinking, Fast and Slow" is a person who has undergone a colonoscopy:

If colonoscopy A ended with considerable discomfort, whilst being on average only slightly uncomfortable, the person will remember this as being worse than colonoscopy B, which was on average worse than colonoscopy A.

This illustrates that the "experiencing self" (being sampled continuously during the operation) would have 'preferred' colonoscopy B, and the "reflective self" would prefer colonoscopy A. I think this is similar to what you mentioned. We often go through experiences in life (raising children?) which causes considerable discomfort to our "experiencing self", but is wholesome and fulfilling to our "reflective self".

A thought experiment in this vein: Would you go on a holiday which was guaranteed to be extremely comfortable and enjoyable on the condition that you would forget about it when you return home? Most would not be very excited about this. This has to be factored into any moral argument, I think!

edit: typo

"One of the crucial points raised in Doing Good Better is the fact that it isn’t about how much good you achieve; it’s the difference between the good you achieve and what would have happened otherwise. When you take a job at a non-profit, you’re undoubtedly helping people. But had you not applied for the job, it would have been given to the next person in line. Assuming they chose you because you were the most qualified applicant, it’s fair to assume that you would have been doing more good than your replacement. But by how much? The key question is: where do your skills give you the best chance to have the biggest impact?"

Well, I think it's a stretch to go from making lewd remarks about women and philandering to golden shower orgies in Russia. It's more like these accusations are on the cusp of absurdity, but in the realm of possibility. Any good lie has some truth to it. Also, this document just seems too good to be true. I don't like Trump, and I hope these claims are backed up.

If there is no evidence behind these claims, then Trump will be able to use that to his advantage to discredit future accusations.

Also, from the NYT article on this topic, "The appendix summarized opposition research memos prepared mainly by a retired British intelligence operative for a Washington political and corporate research firm. The firm was paid for its work first by Mr. Trump’s Republican rivals and later by supporters of Mrs. Clinton. The Times has checked on a number of the details included in the memos but has been unable to substantiate them."

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/10/us/politics/donald-trump-russia-intelligence.html?hp&amp;action=click&amp;pgtype=Homepage&amp;clickSource=story-heading&amp;module=a-lede-package-region&amp;region=top-news&amp;WT.nav=top-news

> It is foolish, generally speaking, for a philosopher to set fire to another philosopher in Smithfield Market because they do not agree in their theory of the universe. That was done very frequently in the last decadence of the Middle Ages, and it failed altogether in its object. But there is one thing that is infinitely more absurd and unpractical than burning a man for his philosophy. This is the habit of saying that his philosophy does not matter, and this is done universally in the twentieth century, in the decadence of the great revolutionary period. General theories are everywhere contemned; the doctrine of the Rights of Man is dismissed with the doctrine of the Fall of Man. Atheism itself is too theological for us to-day. Revolution itself is too much of a system; liberty itself is too much of a restraint. We will have no generalizations. Mr. Bernard Shaw has put the view in a perfect epigram: "The golden rule is that there is no golden rule." We are more and more to discuss details in art, politics, literature. A man's opinion on tramcars matters; his opinion on Botticelli matters; his opinion on all things does not matter. He may turn over and explore a million objects, but he must not find that strange object, the universe; for if he does he will have a religion, and be lost. Everything matters—except everything.

—<em>Heretics</em>

Julius? That’s his new party. He was with the ruling party until he got fired for singing “Kill the Boers.”

Even if we weren’t talking about race at all, we’re still talking about land redistribution, which is a practice with a track record.

It only makes perfect sense that whites would own most of the farmland, btw, for any number of reasons. a) Half the country’s population is under 15—do you think blacks or whites are driving that? b) What black businessman with the money to buy farmland would want to be a farmer anyway? c) If there’s anywhere you can’t fault whites for being richer, it’s the continent of Africa. There’s nowhere in Africa you can go where the average white person isn’t many multiples richer than the average black person.

https://thepiratebay.org/torrent/7074965/TTC_-_African_Experience_from_Lucy_to_Mandela_(Audio)

Listen to that sometime, especially the latter lectures that deal with colonialism and post-colonialism. You won’t find anyone on planet earth who treats both sides fairer and with less malice than this dude. He’s a saint.

This relates to Sam Harris because he frequently discussed social media, online censorship, and the attention economy. He's spoken with Jack Dorsey the CEO of Twitter.

Minds is an open source alternative to online communities like Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter and is designed to be more resistant to online censorship, privacy breaches, and corporate abuse in a few ways.

1. By being open source the broader community can not only audit the code and verify it behaves as advertised, but can also contribute to the development and direction.

2. Personal data is encrypted meaning Minds cannot monetize it and governments can't use it for surveillance

3. Minds can also work as a Patreon alternative and is designed to set up a direct connection between a creator and their supporters. By eliminating themselves a middle-man, even if called for it would be impossible for Minds to intervene.

Disclaimers, I'm not an employee of Minds or a contributor to their code. I am a professional software engineer very interested in open source software and decentralized networks. I've been on Minds for a week or two and think it has a lot of potential so I'm seeing if I can spin up a community. If you're creating an account and want to help me out use this referral link:

https://www.minds.com/register?referrer=captainstack

https://www.amazon.com/Critical-Race-Theory-Writings-Movement/dp/1565842715

> Critical scholars derive their vision of legal ideology from the work of Antonio Gramsci, an Italian neo-Marxist theorist [who] ... articulated the concept of hegemony,the means by which a system of attitudes and beliefs, permeating both popular consciousness and the ideology of elites, reinforces existing social arrangements and convinces the dominated classes that the existing order is inevitable" Crenshaw, p. 108

You are precisely NOT disputing my underlying claim. I am waiting for you to do so.

And politics is downstream of culture. The sun certainly is setting on conservatives. History is littered with dead parties. Those that get their history lessons from Instagram think that conservatives are the eternal norm, and they, Prometheus like are expressions of the repressed spirit of truth and good finally liberated and manifested with every ‘call out’ post, chorus of chants and Foucault quote...the so called ‘right side of history’ is the left. Not realizing they are part of the life cycle of so many civilizations that ended in decadence. Socialism having achieved 40% popularity in the US, all you can say is, “communism, great idea, wrong species” -ant expert.

When you read Leslie Keans book it becomes clear that it’s simply impossible for it to be Russian and Chinese.

https://www.amazon.com/UFOs-Generals-Pilots-Government-Officials/dp/0307717089/ref=nodl_

That isn't thought terminating, though? You could easily ask which principles of science it is that critical theory is unmoored from, for example, or what pedagogy has to do with it.

My vagueness was a direct response to, and does not negate, yours. If you called me a nincompoop I'd hit you back with ignoramus. I'm sorry if you expected me to carry on for both us.

You do understand that Protestantism, a movement similarly made up of disparate faiths and creeds defined primarily by their opposition to the RCC has been the subject of some of the most thorough and notable investigations of ideology and its effects that you can find in the academic literature, right?

You can buy the episode on Amazon Prime Video. Though in my opinion, it's not worth watching.

The show is clips from a recorded interview with Harris interspersed with live panel discussion. The panel consists of Neil deGrasse Tyson, a comedian, and a neuroscientist (not Harris). The comedian wastes time with mockery and blatantly wrong statements like, "We only use 10% of our brains." Tyson & the neuroscientist try to correct him or change the subject. The neuroscientist also seems to misunderstand some of Harris's points, causing him to attack a position Harris doesn't hold.

I personally am not a paying Waking Up user.

I will say this though:

The reason Netflix is $13/m and the Waking Up app is $15/m is because of the number of users.

150 million users are subscribed to Netflix.

vs

100- 200 of thousand of Waking Up App users. (I am going by the number of installs, the link I provided only shows the Android user Installs and therefore I'm making a conservative estimate of between 100,000 users on android and add another 100,000 apple users -- even though I think there are far less Apple users).

But back to the math.

It easy to understand why Netflix can charge "so little" compared to Sam's app. If Sam's app ever get to be so ubiquitous that millions of users are using it, It would make sense to charge a lot less!

Great book. All of his books are worth reading. The Language Instinct is fascinating. I think his best book is either How the Mind Works or The Blank Slate. The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century looks interesting. I saw him give a talk about it but I haven't read it yet.

A Gallup poll of British Muslims seems to support that stat: The most dramatic contrast was found in attitudes towards homosexuality. None of the 500 British Muslims interviewed believed that homosexual acts were morally acceptable.

Also, the 2013 Pew Research poll on global Muslim views on morality list dozens of other countries which found the same 0% or near-0% statistics regarding the percentage of Muslims that view homosexuality as morally acceptable.

That's interesting. She says "we received a threat saying people will come here and execute every single person they see on campus". To be fair, she has a point. That is not protected speech even in the US.

This is an article with some insight on what the pink-haired girl meant. And of course the woman who wrote that was dox'ed and received death threats.

And I know many people hate the huffing post but they also tried to present an alternative viewpoint.

> At least one researcher that Damore cited in his memo has explicitly disagreed with Damores interpretation of that research.

Of course he had to disagree, or he'd lose all future funding for associating with a sexist bigot. Some discussion/speculation from the /r/news subreddit about this

I won't take a position myself here, but when you put all this into perspective, it shouldn't be very surprising that a few of the authors have taken steps to distance themselves from the controversy.

> California is an "at-will" state, and Damore is most likely an at-will employee.

California also has some of the strongest laws in the nation protecting political views. Ironically, originally intended mainly to protect left wing employees from conservative employers/companies.

Putting his dubious morality to one side for a minute, this guy isn't smart, in fact I'd go so far as to say that he's an idiot. He's on the same level as your typical young earth creationist because that's what he is.

He wrote this paper which is embarrassingly ignorant:

The Sparsity of 99%: Evaluating Human-Chimp Genetic Similarity

And this is somebody that claims to be an academic...

It's a vestige of postmodern imprint on the academic community. If someone's scientific opus is tailored as to be able to be understood by a wide audience who don't have formal training in the field, and thereby actually have practical value in their lives, ivory tower spectators despise it as vulgar or too simple. They want the sacred knowledge retained within the confines of their ranks.

I attended K12 in Europe and coming to America for college was a refreshing breeze of practicality after repeated inundation with highly abstract, obscure, and utterly inapplicable curricula. Because European education, at least when I attended it, has even more disdain for practicality as something more befitting blue collar than properly educated snobs.

Excerpt from John Searle on Foucault and the Obscurantism in French Philosophy:

> Chomsky's criticism of Lacan and the others provoked a wide range of comments from our readers. Today we thought we would keep the conversation going with a fascinating audio clip (above) of philosopher John Searle of the University of California, Berkeley, describing how Michel Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu--two eminent French thinkers whose abilities Searle obviously respected--told him that if they wrote clearly they wouldn't be taken seriously in France.

So, yes, it is all about monopoly on the subject.

Fryer did find that there's no statistical difference, but he did find a very skewed use of nonlethal force. His own bio includes the following:

> AS A teenager, Roland Fryer had “unpleasant” run-ins with police. Officers pointed guns at him six or seven times. Even now, the youngest African-American to get tenure at Harvard wonders why police shout loudly at him as soon as he forgets to indicate when driving.

If I had to guess, I would bet that a lot of black people can name at least one friend who was unnecessarily harassed by the police. So when they hear about a shooting they probably think black people are in more danger.

You might say, "well they're wrong and they should get over it." I agree, but then I remember that Majority Of White Americans Say They Believe Whites Face Discrimination.

So instead of saying "All lives matter" I think the more appropriate saying is "all people are biased when it comes to perceived racial injustice."

I’ve heard Fukuyama’s “take” on identity politics in another podcast. It’s as generic and boring as you can expect from a liberal professor whose claim to fame is a post-Cold War meme that is cool to cite because of how stupid and wrong it turned out to be.

The UK is a nation of immigrants. They might have been "White" immigrants, but they were still immigrants.

>Ethnicities above 1% (percentage within the average resident) in the UK: British (36.94%), Irish (21.59%), Europe West (19.91%), Scandinavia (9.20%), Iberian Peninsula (3.05%), Italy/Greece (1.98%), Eastern Europe (1.84%), European Jewish (1.46%), Finland/Northwest Russia (1%)

"Europe West" in the above categories is French/German. Of course it is true that

>The majority of eastern, central and southern England is made up of a single, relatively homogeneous, genetic group with a significant DNA contribution from Anglo-Saxon migrations (10-40% of total ancestry).

But a relative homogeneity is 10-40% of total ancestry doesn't really do much to support any kind of purity argument, and that argument gets even weaker outside of those specific parts of England.

>I'm strongly against limiting the length of comments and replies.

Same. People on Windows might consider using this app:

http://www.cross-plus-a.com/balabolka.htm

You can listen to long posts while doing other things :)

This feigned, arbitrary concern about sources only exists because I didn't sing the praises of your hero and makes me even less inclined to do so. He isn't an expert. Get over it.

An actual international relations professor, excerpted from their book on the subject of expertise itself:

>The expert community is full of such examples. The most famous, at least if measured by impact on the global public, is the MIT professor Noam Chomsky, a figure revered by millions of readers around the world. Chomsky, by some counts, is the most widely cited living American intellectual, having written a stack of books on politics and foreign policy. His post at MIT, however, was actually as a professor of linguistics. Chomsky is regarded as a pioneer, even a giant, in his own field, but he is no more an expert in foreign policy than, say, the late George Kennan was in the origins of human language. Nonetheless, he is more famous among the general public for his writings on politics than in his area of expertise; indeed, I have often encountered college students over the years who are familiar with Chomsky but who had no idea he was actually a linguistics professor. > > Like Pauling and Caldicott, however, Chomsky answered a need in the public square. Laypeople often feel at a disadvantage challenging traditional science or socially dominant ideas, and they will rally to outspoken figures whose views carry a patina of expert assurance. It might well be that doctors should look closely at the role of vitamins in the human diet. It is certain that the public should be involved in an ongoing reconsideration of the role of nuclear weapons. But a degree in chemistry or a residency in paediatrics does not make advocates of those positions more credible than any other autodidact in those esoteric subjects.

Podcast Addict is an incredible app on Android for Podcasts (and even downloaded audio books).

I use Audible as well, and would never choose it over PA for podcasts.

Edit: On IOS I used Pocket Casts which seems to have a similar design philosophy to PA. Definitely not as good though.

>he's a bit credulous

FTFY.

I don't mean that as a huge dig against Lex -- I've enjoyed several of his podcasts and he seems like a standup dude. But... when he's talking to folks outside of his specialty, he comes across as a bit gullible.

I'm reminded a bit of Oppenheimer (the namesake for my handle). By his own account, after he finished his doctorate and became a professor at Cal, he joined just about every leftist organization under the sun in the 30s, including some that were pretty nakedly Stalinist fronts. Of course, he was never actually a Stalinist and not even much of a leftist. He explained after the fact that he had spent his entire life prior to that sheltered in the world of physics, and was wildly naive about politics -- if someone told him this or that group was 'fighting for working people,' he generally took them at face value. That was a compelling enough explanation to clear him to head the Manhattan Project, but the whole affair did come back to bite him in the ass during the McCarthy era.

I think this naive. There's an implicit assumption here that Trump's support base is drawn entirely from the Evangelical right. And while there's no denying that many Evangelicals do support Trump, there's also a good reason why Amazon and other online retailers sell "Atheists for Trump" merchandise, its because hate doesn't have a religion. The ideology of hate is the mainstream American narrative. One thing that unites American atheists and Christians is their shared hatred for ethnic and religious minorities. Not all Christians and not all atheists, obviously, but pretending that Trump is just a Christian problem is almost guaranteeing that he wins the next election because you're only addressing one half of the problem.

Oh awesome.

You can hit a high protein requirement on a vegan diet. I drink protein powder too, and while I tried two vegan protein powder brands that were gross, Orgain Creamy Chocolate Fudge has been really good, and doesn't include soy. There's also Ripple brand Pea Milk, that's more protein dense than cow milk, which doesn't include soy, and there are nut milk which have a high amount of protein which are also soy free.

While tofu and soy based alternative meat are off-limits, there's Seitan, which is very protein dense (100 calories have 20g of protein) and apparently can be used to make a legit steak, which is still crazy to me.

Reading his book How to be a Stoic right now. Bill Irvine’s A Guide to the Good Life is another great modern look at practical stoicism. Would love to have either on the podcast if they were discussing stoicism’s potential as a philosophy of life or its parallel’s to buddhism, but if Massimo wanted to make fool of himself defending religion or unwarranted agnosticism then no thanks.

> What sort of objective morality could in fact exist plausibly in such a way that the moral object did not have an intent attached to it?

Sorry, I'm not really sure I'm following here. What's "the moral object"?

> how would each of these systems prove that they aren't merely subjective?

I'm again not sure I'm following you. The way ethics works, at least in a secular context, is by providing reasons in support of the claims being made, and what's what one finds, e.g., in the Nicomachean Ethics, and so on. If you're just asking for an overview of what the various positions in the field argue, the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy and Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy have a number of articles on ethics and particular topics and theories in ethics, though the best option for an overview would be an introductory text like Shafer-Landau's Fundamentals of Ethics.

> But one then has to question the validity of these systems...

Sure, go ahead!

Mindfulness in Plain English was a very good guide for a noob like me for understanding the basics of Vipassana meditation. It's fairly comprehensive and addressed any concern a non-practitioner would have about meditation and does not introduce religion to an extent that would make me uncomfortable.

I recently finished Hillbilly Elegy, Why Nations Fail , and It's Even Worse Than it Looks. I'd highly recommend all three.

Currently I'm reading The Wisdom of Finance and Mindfulness in Plain English.

I just started When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi. It's a memoir written by Kalanithi detailing his life as a neurosurgeon up to his death from lung cancer at 36. I worried it might be a little Oprah's Book Club-y but so far it's fantastic and heartbreaking.

Also Letters from a Stoic by Seneca again. Always a good one.

> riedman's theories inspired some very unsavory policies in Latin America in the 60's and 70's, well documented in The Shock Doctrine, written by left wing nut Naomi Klein (although I don't agree much with Klein's political temperament, the book has its historical facts in order).

To my knowledge, Freidman-esque prescriptions for Chile made it the most successful and wealthy country in Latin America. Compare and contrast to instability in populist Argentina. What am I missing here?

>I'm not sure I've ever experienced or considered myself to even have this aspect of me

Who rationally came to the conclusion that you don't have the self in your head? Who is grasping to figure this puzzle out and feeling frustrated that you can't figure it out? That's the "I". The fact that you can simply observe that, that is the pure consciousness.

I highly recommend reading Eckhart Tolle's The Power Of Now after Waking Up. These two books are very complimentary, and Sam Harris has joked that he describes his book as "Eckhart Tolle for smart people". It does have some metaphysical stuff that a Sam Harris reader will balk at, but Eckhart's more colorful language really helped me connect some of the dots and understand what Harris was talking about. You can really tell these two guys are talking about the same thing and getting two perspectives really helps you 'get it'.

This is reacted to the thesis behind the book "Dying of Whiteness" - a truly bleak outlook on the situation. Basically, whites in middle America are voting for policies that make their lives bad because they simultaneously prevent the betterment of non-whites.

There's a really good interview with the author here. Yeah, I like Chris Hayes - shoot me.