I will try to contain my critiques of Harris into a form that would be useful for other kinds of analysis, within the broader scope of the ideological landscape, within which Sam makes his postures.
I guess I have just introduced my remarks in line with a general point that I have been wanting to make for a short while, which has to do with a new kind of discourse, which is sorely needed in the public sphere, which has otherwise remained taboo— for most of recorded history, in every culture I have ever been taught about...
Let me get right to making this point, so then I might move to substantiating it, before it gets too murky with introductions to this subject that I wish to address. I would say, that we have come a long way culturally, as a species, we have a certain mix of resources and technological capabilities, and the right kind of interface and access to media which allows us to experiment with new ideological synthesis;- one of the most advanced manifestations of this, in my opinion, would be something like the Rubin Report, which, is not exactly the chronological fruit of other, similar advancements in cultural progress, although I would still link it— as somewhat related to similar trends on display: in the Pete Holmes show and Last Week Tonight; in this broad movement toward generating an ability, to intellectually take on the delineations between separable spheres of 'social-political function' and 'cultural appeal'.
The edge which I'm trying to describe, is more to do with the "sx" style of communication and approach, which breaks down the "so" narrative, which I believe is the depository of 'mob rule' sentiments, which are the residue of hegemony, which plague most people's, according to their particular societal-inheritances, which, as part of their operation, are aggressive toward any culture of immediate substantiation— that only an individual can possess the burden of confessing. Pandering to 'mob sentiments', does produce a certain unpalatable and inhumane mockery at the level of 'human' communication, which, as the general culture of hegemonic residues gets eroded, by the realism produced from the contemplation of a real sexual liberation that is starkly contrasted with social norms which offer no supporting context or meaningful resolution to the source of these sexual energies, which have been repressed throughout most ages, along with the repression of other socio-political energies (accountability, responsibility and capability are all very intertwined subjects, as they impact on an individual's mangled indoctrination into sexual and social development, and there are cultural manifestations which inhibit each of these forms of individual integrity, that have monotonously persisted in societal inheritances: until someone is capable of challenging it, speaking the truth about it, and holding their ground without subjugation or captivity; and children are by far, the least protected in this regard, in every culture). Sensitivity toward conscientious objection is itself, a very hard thing to police from inside any pluralistic framework (it is probably fundamentally impossible, or would only become affordable in a system that was conceited in its societal orchestration of wealth redistribution, paradoxically curtailing its pluralism, while seeking to procure it (which is exactly the kind of crutch which can grow cancerous according to some inexhaustible ideological threshold that in turn threatens to hold all of society captive***)). Okay... now I'm skating around my central topic a bit too much: my point is that, it has historically been a cultural imperative, for there to be a general societal immunity against the discourse of individual examination of 'intentional-mechanics'. This level of discourse probes the full depth at which people have generated their principle beliefs, and the mechanics which comprise their operational-assumptions. This style of genuine discussion, is the mark of a true philosopher (in the way that Socrates' virtue was expounded by Plato: as a humility which is capable of probing the deceit of presumptuousness [which is often portrayed as a self-deluded position, that is incapable of asking "why" about it's own position, or privately contending within the pessimism, that its position must be preferred over the nebulousness which the position is taken to displace, in its unspoken fear that nothing better might be contended by discerning a divergent nature of that wider nebulousness circumstance <--- this is similarly the position that Scientism falls into, and Sam Harris along with it.])
Sam does a better job at collating the philosophical work of converging the various fields of thought, but he does so in the unshakable presumptuous that Science is the north star that the constellation of all knowledge must coalesce around, even in spite of dealing in all the horribly cherry-picked philosophical sophistry, required to preserve that kind of rigged-narrative. This false religion of blind Hope, that lives through the sentiment 'well, without Science, then we would truly be lost and utterly un-redeemable', is worse than any Nicean Creed. I have not seen Sam answer this charge: but I would love to hear a principled answer without any of the flashy propaganda about tech-advancement and groundbreaking discoveries (which are thrown out and replaced each day by 'new better science!')— as to: why is the Scientific Method worthy of our respect, (without recourse to inductive answers that distract from the substance of that topic).
I'm not going to try to repeat all, the many arguments I have developed against the ""philosophy around Science""; but science does fall pray to two major, and incurable defects:
I will summaries the effect of these two defects before explaining them both~ Science can't discover the truth, its always promising us that its going to give us a[,or the] full answer, and its fundamentally incapable. I have gone into specific examples of how it fudges understanding itself or the phenomenon it supposedly explains with its "scientific description", but I will just illustrate now, how this basic Ponzi-scheme, defectively perpetuates itself.
Science is only useful, after its been relegated into some form of epistemological-'junk' (that has become totally irrelevant for producing the 'full Scientific answer'); because for Science to give us something that people can use for engineering, it needs to develop a fully cached out level upon which to maneuver all the mechanical pieces; which is something that can only be done safely, after we have finished approximating all 'forces' [which we have yet to fully understand] into a significant figure, maintained only by the God of Statistic, so that we may {blindly} hope to never exist to witness a spoon levitate because of sheer 'quantum improbability'.
Its as if, Science is the erroneous supposition that the world is deterministic, and as it deploys itself in search for proving this supposition~ it regurgitates levels of mechanical operations in "nature", after it has already surpassed that area of "nature" for its ability to prove that there is a fixed-form/dead-state/temporal-signature of order, which is the operative source that vindicate's Scientific proof as the only species of moral agency worth living through. (<--- I don't think that many people who <3 Scientism will understand what I just wrote there, but sadly, I think Sam knows exactly what I'm describing, because this is what I see him advocating).
Oh, I need to edit this post a bit also...
But just to finish another important point that I was trying to weave into my thesis, is that Harris is much too similar to those who he critisizes. I consider his form of belief, to be almost indistinguishable to those who believe in the 'sky-father'. I am not an atheist, but I find it alarming that I believe many of the philosophical forefathers of Science would be more inclined towards me my mystical interrelation of the Christian Scriptures, than the Atheistic cult of finding a pinnacle of undeniable [source of] 'factual' authority; such an article, is to my mind, indistinguishable from idol worship, only in a slightly more perfected guise~ the idol has not yet been found, and the search for this idol, must take precedence over every other source of human edification as the basic corner-stone of flourishing. It is the same style God as the fanatics, it just calls for a broader stream of devotion that seems more congruent with modern life, and seemingly compatible with pluralism although at its heart its broadcasting nihilism (notwithstanding Sam's project to brand it as something mystically akin to Buddhism).
I have not given mr Harris's work nearly enough attention to have a concrete opinion, I remember his remarks from the four horsemen youtube videos that were around, and most recently his interview on the Rubin Report, and I remembered something from around the controversy which involved Chomsky on political issues...
More importantly, I wanted to make a further overarching point, about how personality style is part of some kind of ideological matrix, and that the next step in Public Discourse, is to seep into the depths of this dimension, which is probably something Paul Rubin is on the cusp of, although it might be very hard to accomplish this style of discourse: depending on the 'spiritual' maturity of all the participants, in their capacity to reach the limits of their confidences and the full dynamic machinery of their ideological preferences.
*** addendum: there is a further economic point to be made here, on the politics that's involved with money, and the interface that money provides individuals, and the utility it collectively affords to the functional aspect in society, but that is an entirely different topic, something I was thinking about to create a private system of sustainable, accelerated arrangement of communicating relative utility and signaling an individuals preference of interfacing with relative utility; conceptually experimenting with systems of token-currencies that represent pieces of an economy modeled into a game that maximizes productivity per man-hour and has some kind of systematic capital investment mechanism to crank out some kind of wealth creation: or some rudimentary financial theory that a private organisation could use to institutionally delegate between its organs, a functioning secondary economy, capable of expansion (synergistically providing a floor to labour prices in Capitalism, as a secondary private economic alternative, or operating independently as an Anarcho Syndicalism).