3 Disagreements With Sam Harris

If your political theory requires humanity to "evolve", then you do not have a theory.... you have a dream.

-A.E. Samaan

Sam is generally smart and rational. I believe Sam has the best of intentions for those around him as well as for humanity. My issue is when Sam tries to implant his own thought process and rationality onto humanity as a whole. Sam’s Vulcan mindset is his blind spot.

It’s odd to call these disagreements as I agree with Sam to an extent on all these topics. However, pushing Sam’s ideas lead to net negative societal consequences.

1) Religion

Not whether religion is true or not. But whether people should have religion or not.

If we were perfectly “rational”, religion wouldn’t matter… and neither would breast implants. Humans aren’t attracted to silicon. Can’t you see you’re attracted to silicon?! It’s not rational. Why do you want it? It’s innate. Humans aren’t designed to be perfectly “rational”.

The vast majority of people need structure. Religion helps provide a moral and communal structure that isn’t readily available to the atheist community. There’s no out of box structure for atheists. It’s a choose your own adventure, which leads many astray. Some lean into astrology, shamans, or postmodernism. Many Americans fill their void with the woke ideology. Most religious alternatives lead to a nihilist existence.

Atheists can be rational and realize that helping others helps themselves. It feels good to help someone. It’s also socially beneficial as reciprocation is a positive feedback loop in humans. But being intrinsically good actors is not natural. Humans can trick themselves to be good, but left to our baser instincts, humans are naturally deceptive. Humans aren’t a telepathetic species that can read another’s mind. Humans hide their true intentions.

There were historical tribes in the past who didn’t follow religion. But they were few and far between. Most at least had pagan gods and rituals or at least spirits. These formed the framework for their morality.

Ben Franklin was prophetic here in telling Thomas Paine to not publish the Age of Reason. Franklin never said in any of his letters that Paine was incorrect in his writings. Franklin emphasized the importance of religion to the common man. Paine published The Age of Reason after Franklin passed so as not to disappoint his mentor. 

As Kevin Simler writes, religion is not about beliefs. It’s about so much more and is naturally and beautifully human. Forsaking religion is attempting to forsake humanity. It’s ok to look into religion and explore it.

2) Free Will

For the record, we have free will. But this is independent about whether we have free will or don’t have free will.

As a consequentialist, I think we should be judged by the expected value of the consequences of our actions. Convincing the world that free will doesn’t exist does more harm than good.

Sam thinks when we understand that all humans don’t have free will, it increases empathy. There but for the grace of God go I. Sure, that’s an important perspective. We should understand that everyone is born with certain DNA and predispositions and that everyone has their own upbringing they had little to no control over. That’s an important frame to have to relate to humanity. But it’s not worth the cost of the idea of free will.

Those primed to not believe in free will are more likely to cheat. They’re more likely to be bad actors in almost every situation. Whether we have free will or not is of no concern to me. 

Say you can give someone a pill one time that may or may not be a placebo. You know for a fact that the pill has effectively no negative side effects, yet makes them feel more responsible for their actions leading to them being a significantly more principled, moral person. Would you give them the pill? Of course! Let free will be.

3) Inequality

Inequality of outcome feels bad. Especially if someone is making 10,000x more than someone else. 

Sam often speaks on the importance of inequality. There’s an emphasis on US inequality, which is odd since we’re a global workforce at this point. It’s also odd as inequality is not the metric to optimize for. The metric should be productivity, happiness, fulfillment, or almost anything else. It shouldn’t be “this feels unfair… harumph!”. 

If all the smartest, most productive people in society stopped working, inequality would decrease. Less businesses would be founded and funded. Growth of existing companies would halt. Innovation and creativity would slow. Our favorite musicians, authors, actors, and products would cease output. I don’t understand how one could think that is good for humanity. 

A smarter, more effective government makes sense. Power laws are natural in every facet of life and nature throughout the universe. Geoffrey West’s Scale goes over hundreds of examples in detail. The world is full of S curves and power laws. It’s not good or bad. It simply is. We can’t help that 20% of seeds produce 80% of the output. We want all seeds to be treated equally, but some seeds will always produce more. That’s universal. That’s human. 

Conclusion

I wish we lived in a world where everyone could be their own manager. The late Tony Hsieh tried this when he fully implemented Holacracy. It failed miserably. Of course it did. Most people need management and need predictability. Holacracy required humanity to evolve.

Sam’s beliefs require humanity to evolve. To evolve in a way humanity has never evolved before. This is beautiful. This is admirable. But humanity isn’t like Sam. Humans adapt, they don’t evolve. Humanity has hard coded incentives. The ideas we promote should align humanity in a positive direction.