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PaperclipPerfector  22hr ago (text post)   653 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for January 17, 2025

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https://open.substack.com/pub/samharris/p/the-trouble-with-elon?r=4gi50d

Somewhat related.

Elon Musk apparently owes 1M USD to some charity based on a very silly bet, from Elon's side, made with Sam Harris about the covid pandemic. A braindead move from Musk's side and he started hating Harris instead of admitting he was wrong.

He can't stand to be made to look stupid.

I can definitely believe that Elon would make the bet and then renege.

That said, Harris is himself an icky creature at times. Particularly, he advocated tactical lying to help prevent Trump getting elected. Understandable? Maybe, except that Harris is also the author of this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lying_(Harris_book)

Lying is a 2011 long-form essay book by American author and neuroscience expert Sam Harris. Harris argues that we can radically simplify our lives and improve society by merely telling the truth in situations where others often lie.

Harris has a Trump sized blind spot that makes him beclown himself regularly. Trump is living rent free in his head, ruining the quality of his content. And, more importantly, why should we listen to someone who admits to tactically lying to us?

Particularly, he advocated tactical lying to help prevent Trump getting elected.

Is that really true? From the linked post:

Not only have I never advocated lying to defeat Trump (despite what that misleading clip from the Triggernometry podcast might suggest to naive viewers), I’ve taken great pains to defend Trump from the most damaging lie ever told about him. Elon knows this, because we communicated about the offending clip when it first appeared on Twitter/X.

What is the evidence here?

I just love going for these source hunts that you assign me!

https://x.com/Brian_Kennedy/status/1878561046362791991

Sam Harris said that burying the Hunter Biden laptop was a left-wing conspiracy to deny Trump the presidency and that it was absolutely warranted.

Maybe we can charitably say that Harris wasn't advocating lying, only hiding information. But the Biden laptop story was also (falsely) called "right wing propaganda" by the media. Harris gets destroyed in this interview and he doesn't have really any defense.

I wish that clip actually went on. I'm going to search for the entire interview. It's true Harris looks bad here, but he's not wrong about Trump necessarily, he's wrong about everything else. In other words, he isn't wrong that Trump has a laundry list of obvious cashgrabs and scams--which should give anyone pause --he's wrong that he and the big brains should do any and everything to impede Trump's election. He also doesn't seem, when he says "but that's not conspiracy," to realize that he is perfectly describing conspiracy.

Yeah, not a good look. Some claim that the context makes a difference but none of them explain how and I don't want to go further into the sam Harris cinematic universe so I'm going to call this one confirmed.

It's believable, and reflects badly on Musk if true.

Which makes it a little awkward when Harris has to interrupt his 'trust me bro' with 'oh, and that Triggernometry episode that keeps getting thrown around tots is being misportrayed, don't believe your lying eyes'. I don't follow Harris, so maybe his interpretation was right, or that speech was a one-off and he's spent the last four years trying to bend over backwards to admit that he was wrong then. But it makes a surprise reveal of a three-and-a-half-year-old need a little more proof than 'it's believable, and reflects badly on Musk if true'.

((And that Harris can't make it through a substack piece of this short length without dumb asides like the Gaetz comparison, leaves me skeptical that he is trying to bend over backwards.))

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