Sam Harris' View of Donald Trump

I follow 2 very smart people on the internet. Scott Adams creator of Dilbert and Sam Harris the "New Atheist."

I've gotten Scott Adams to challenge Sam Harris to a debate on Trump.  Scott is pro-Trump and Sam is anti-Trump.

As one of the many undecided voters, I find they both make good arguments on the internet. Scott through his Periscope channel and blog and Sam Harris from YouTube and his blog. Both of these guys are as Scott Adams calls it "Master Persuaders."

Sam Harris' Dissection of Trump via Joe Rogan experience (57 minutes). This is a YouTube video that can be accessed from http://bit.ly/SamHarrisVsScottAdams

Here are Sam's arguments below that I transcribed from the video.

Lying

• If someone gets caught in lies again and again
• Trump is lying or some cases changing his mind in an incoherent way
• Functional equivalent of lying
• Functionally unpredictable
• Stance A on Monday and B on Wednesday
• When discrepancy is pointing out he tells you to go "fuck yourself"
• 2:23 Why people love Trump
• New kind of authenticity
• This is the new way of being honest
• A new form of integrity
• Sam Harris sees

• Dishonest and theatrical hucksterism
• Pretending to be things he isn't
• Doesn't care what's true
• Going to tell you to "fuck yourself" every which way
• Knows he predicted incorrectly (in reference to primaries)
• Couldn't imagine people would find this compelling enough for Trump to be on cusp of getting elected
• It's terrifying
• Doesn't care about truth
• Witnessing something new with Trump that good people aren't willing to put up with the process
• Anti-establishment mood. Jam a stick in the wheel in the system
• No version of the truth that makes Trump look acceptable
• Bill Clinton wasn't a rapist in 90s but now he's a rapist for purely opportunistic reasons
• He's probably lying about the amount of money he has
• 38:40 He's almost certainly lying about giving money to the vets
• 39:49 He can't acknowledge that he did anything wrong
• He pays no price for [lying] among people who like him

His Intelligence

• Advertising his lack qualifications for the office
• I'm not bothered by his racism, misogyny, demagoguery, bullying because guess it's an act and in truth he doesn't have a racist bone in his body.
• Hunch he's far more liberal than he seems
• The thing that can't be true, is he's brilliant and well informed on the issues
• He's not pretending to be incoherent and irresponsible about the issues
• The vacuousness of his speech
• He'll say the same thing 3 times in a row and it was meaningless the first time
• He says "It's gonna be amazing, so very, very amazing, trust me it's gonna be amazing
• He's never strung together a string of sentences that was interesting
• There's never a moment where I think he's smarter and better informed than I realize
• Image of an urn and you pull things out and all you pull out of it is junk, chicken bones, broken marble, gum
• It's possible the Hope Diamond is in there
• But minds aren't like that when I see what this guy says he doesn't say anything that a well informed intelligent person would say and ideas are connected
• You can't fake this stuff, being uninformed or  well informed
• Building a wall is a stupid idea among many stupid ideas
• Smart people see he looks like a buffoon 
• 21:22 There's no reason to believe that if he was president he would be a totally sober and presidential person
• Climate change is a hoax
• People assume that he's a successful business man he must understand the economy
• I guarantee you [Trump] doesn't know anything about the difference between Sunni and Shia

Illegal Alien Policy

• Rounding up 11 million illegal aliens and send back to Mexico
• This one policy claim is so impractical and unethical
• Your gardener, housekeeper, car wash person, person who picks the vegetables gets a knock on the door by the Gestapo 
• Vast number of people are law-abiding
• Many have kids that are American citizens
• Are you going to send that person back to Mexico and do it by the hundreds of thousands and millions
• This one point alone should be enough to disqualify a person's candidacy 
• So crazy
• More energizing to the people who already like him
• Round them up
• Send them back to their country
• Waste of law enforcement resources to focus on this and not on real terrorism is pure insanity totally unethical
• People are rallying around this

Climate Change

• His policy is insane and dangerous
• He thinks it's a hoax
• We should pull out of the Paris accords
• Bring back the coal jobs
• It's important to understand what the truth is on climate change
• With Trump saying this is all bullshit in defiance of all of the science ... is on every other point
• It really matters who's right about climate change

Pandering

• Smart people who are voting for him thinks that's he's pandering
• Not disavowing the white supremacy vote
• If it's true how weird and unethical that is
• No compunction about lying

Crazy Things he's said/did

• Climate change is a hoax concocted by the Chinese to destroy our manufacturing base
• He likes Putin and has said favorable things about him
• Round up the illegals
• Build a wall
• He's a birther
• Bill Clinton wasn't a rapist back then but now he is one
• Dismantle NATO
• He's created a wormhole in our political process of craziness
• He could get on twitter and say I'd like to fuck Nicki Minaj and create a twitter storm
• Parody of disabled reporter

Islam

• I guarantee you [Trump] doesn't know anything about the difference between Sunni and Shia Muslims.
• Which countries are predominantly Sunni and which are Shia?

Head in the Game

• 28:00 His head has never been in this game
• It's obvious from everything he says

Character Flaws

• He has them

Future back to decision

• Crystal ball doesn't tell you who won but tells you it's a disaster
• Worst president we ever had

 Sam Harris Policies

• We should be able to defend our borders
• No good argument for a porous border that we can't defend and figure out who's coming in
• Building a wall is almost certainly a  stupid idea among his many stupid ideas
• Great to know who's coming in and have a purely legal process
• Against open borders or porous borders

Smash the window

• People are voting for change and not for Trump
• Light a fire
• Almost any process that you would change the system is more intelligent than that

Likely to Screw things up Argument

• If things are screwed up who more likely would cause it?
• Clinton is perfectly predictable

General Statements Election

• Joe Rogan (JR):
•  Anybody that you want to be president wants to be president
• Play Super Bowl with 3 worse teams
• Drunk inmates, high school kids
• SH
• People want to change the system but they're not thinking about the implications of radically changing the system
• It's astonishing that out of 300 million people these are the choices
• Each candidate should be more impressive than the next like watching a slam dunk contest
• Smart on all the topics but also ethically wise
• Wasn't obviously an asshole
• Mature relationship to changing his mind
• Taboo to change your mind, system is broken in that respect
• Watching the debates will be like watching the Super Bowl, 100 million people watching debates
• Even if we do everything perfectly there will still be a tsunami of risk and hassle, waste and rest of world's chaos
• Even if our house was in order we still have
• Terrorism
• Global Climate Change
• China and India complying with climate goals
• Virtual certainty that there's gonna be a pandemic
• The shear fact that in 1918 there was a killer flu and there's gonna be another killer flu
• We need smart people to optimize the system to deal with these kinds of things
• If we're promoting religious maniacs, crazy narcissists, liars, ignoramuses and only those people how could this end well?

Positive Statements on Trump

• He's dissected out the religious factions of the Republican party
• Trump pretends to be religious

General Statements on Trump

• Vast difference between Clinton and Trump
• Trump isn't an adult (by implication)
• 7:50 Trump will run civilization off a cliff (by implication)
• Hillary is lesser of 2 evils
• JR: 
• Trump is a powerful character in more ways like a show man character
• He's putting on a great show and he's gonna win because of great show
• He's not in touch with reality (We need someone who is in touch with reality)
• Not only is he ignorant but he doesn't care, keeps doubling down
• Putting Trump at the helm is basically putting chaos at the helm 
• He believes what he believes regardless of the information coming in and regardless of the consequences
• It's worse than having no one in charge, because you put the power in this person's hand
• Every decision has to go through Trump that is like an information scrambling device
• Best case is he'll get into the oval office and he'll be scared that he's running the better part of human civilization and will hire the best people 
• All Trump thinks is that bluster, banality and bullying will win in every situation 
• He's an incoherent demagogue
• He's a liberal and tolerant on one hand and getting ready to be Hitler and you guys are still prepared to vote for me
• We need a qualified person to deal with all the hassles and dangers

Trump is Winging it

• He's winging it. 
• It could not be more obvious that he's winging it on every level.
• There's no way to signal that he's winging it more clearly with everything he's doing, yet there's no penalty.

Wake up Call for Republicans

• He's not aligned with the Republican platform in most ways

Trump's Policies and Changing Position

• The truth is no one knows what his policies are because he keeps changing his position on things like taxation
• He's talked on both sides of core republican issues
• In many ways he's left of Hillary
• Isolationist
• War both extremes
• We're gonna get out of the world's business, isolationists which is deeply anti-republican
• I'm gonna be the maniac who you never gonna know who I'm going to bomb next
• We're gonna wipe out ISIS, not a man left standing
• I'm not gonna take shit from anyone including China, North Korea 

Trump vs. Media

• He shouts down press pool
• Sam Harris says that the press is
• Highly imperfect
• partisan
• false stories
• exaggerations
• screw people over
• there are reason to not trust the press

Sam Harris on Hillary

• "She's terrible in many ways" 
• JR: She was anti-gay marriage until 2013
• 5:15 to use the sexist term, she has a shrill voice, yelling when she doesn't need to yell
• 5:41 she's a bad candidate
• 5:45 she's very smart, well informed, qualified
• Who I will vote for given the choices
• 5:57 I understand people's reservations with her
• 5:58 She's a liar, opportunist
• She's predder[sic] naturally inauthentic
• She focus groups every third sentence
• People who've met her behind closed doors say "she incredibly impressive"
• I'm for Clinton despite all my reservations about her
• On Facebook
•  I get thousand points of pure pain [about Hillary]
• No one loves Hillary
• Liar and opportunist
• Get your reservations about her
• At least she's a grown-up (implying that Trump's a child)
• She's not going to change the system
• She's not going to run civilization off a cliff (implying opposite)
• People energized about Sanders and Trump but none for Clinton
• 8:22 Maybe somewhere someone loves Clinton
• Does not have her defenders the way Trump and Bernie do
• The main gripe against Hillary is she's politics as usual. She's not going to change the system
• Clinton will be predictable, a politician, centrist on foreign and domestic policy, liberal on social issues
• Will not dismantle NATO, go to war with North Korea, get into a alliance with Putin
• She's not going to do something insane (implication Trump might do something insane)
• 28:07 For all of her flaws or how much you hate her as a person, she understands what's going on in the world
• 31:22 When you have a choice for someone that's been in the game for long enough to be really well informed and capable of compromise and not breaking the entire machine vs someone who just stepped off the step of his reality TV show
• 48:28 She's very knowledgeable. If she feels like she doesn't have the knowledge she's going to go to source of the knowledge, grab the best experts she can find
• She will be aware as [Joe Rogan] or I as to the consequences of not knowing what's going on

Who would make a good President

Sam uses this question to show a difference between Hillary and Trump

• Someone who is deeply ethical and wise
• Well informed about the way the world works
• When not informed he recognized his ignorance so quickly and remedies it as fast as possible
• He seeks out the best experts, defers to them and 
• He's mindful about the limits of his knowledge and his expertise is vast

concludes that "You could not begin to say that about Trump.  Honestly, you could probably say that about Clinton."

Subtle Put Down of Trump

• It's like saying his hair is so natural

On the Scott Adams side:

• Hypnotist
• Studied persuasion
• Flame-thrower to a stick fight

Please note I'm still working on this document but thought Scott Adams could address the issues raised.

The issues

• Gun control
• Confiscation guns in Australia
• War
• Terrorism
• Crazy Trump
• Special interests
• Taxes
• Immigration
• Black Lives Matter
• Political Correctness
• Global Warming
• The Media
• Trump's intelligence
• Trump's persuasion skills

Scott Adams is very persuasive. If not for him I wouldn't have considered voting for Trump.

Hillary issues

• Experience
• 2 Criminal Investigations
• server in basement
• Anti gay marriage
• Wouldn't admit she's wrong
• Clinton foundation
• Health
• Politician
• Her inappropriate laughing
• The way she talks
• Attacks on trump instead of policies
• Media bias
• Super predators

Trump issues

• Trump University
• 4 Bankruptcy's 
• SA: that's okay because he's had 500 successful businesses
• Not releasing tax return
• SA: if the IRS is okay with it I'm okay
• He bragged about not paying taxes
• Racist
• SA: He's pro-america if you're on our team
• Misogynist
• Extreme position
• SA: His first offer in a negotiation
• Ghost writer for Art of Deal
• Miss Piggy incident
• Trump foundation
• Interruptions during the debate
• Thin skinned
• Dismantle special interest groups, corporations, lobbyists
• Narcissist

My own thoughts

• Violence 
• Media bias
• Cognitive dissonance - examples on video (Bill Maher)
• China
• Deficit
• Terrorism