Sam Harris at TED: Science can answer moral questions

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Comment count is 20

facek

- 2010-03-28

Comments are hysterical.

Konversekid - 2010-03-28

This is basically all drivel. Surely science gives us information which can then be used to create our basic understanding for morality, but science itself is not a means of answering moral questions; its basis is to find information. He doesn't actually prove that morality has any relationship to facts, and basically goes on the 'right is right' idea even though they have different definitions. His arguments are poorly explained and he uses examples so obvious that we should all have an implicit moral response to them.

I'm not going to vote, but don't waste your time on this.

Monkey Napoleon

- 2010-03-28

5 for your comment. You contradict yourself, then go on to make his very same point.

HankFinch - 2010-03-28

I don't think you understood Kon's comment

Konversekid - 2010-03-28

No, I explain how science is relevant to morality and explain that he didn't do that which a the most important of points. Then my point is this guy is a really bad presenter and not very clever, which I guess you could assume was actually his point all along.

Syd Midnight - 2010-03-29

You have to be pretty bad to not get your point across a TED speech. People who can't dress themselves get their points across at a TED speech.

Syd Midnight

- 2010-03-28

Too bad. I guess this is like Bill Gates book club, TED has a lot of fantastic speakers but also a few flakes, also Bedtime Stories for Smug Athiests.

I'll give 4 because the comments really are worth a gander.

Rosencrantz - 2010-03-28

I don't even need to watch this to know it's retarded.

HankFinch

- 2010-03-28

This guy is full of shit, but the last four minutes of bullshit where he's interviewed is great.

splatterbabble

- 2010-03-28

"I'm the Ted Bundy of String Theory"

delicatessen

- 2010-03-28

i would prefer the al bundy of string theory.

dueserpenti

- 2010-03-28

Eventually PoE's Atheist Evangelicals will come to reflexively 5-star this question-begging mental mush, but for now I can do my part.

Still, I can't one-star TED.

Urkel Forever

- 2010-03-28

This talk boils down to this: People say that you can't infer any moral truths from the non-moral truths alone. But I can by making (with little support) some moral claim (i.e., morality is about human flourishing) and inferring more moral claims from that...

1 Star: Terrible yet not evil.

oswaldtheluckyrabbit

- 2010-03-28

I know Richard Dawkins, and you sir are no Richard Dawkins.

memedumpster

- 2010-03-28

You know Richard Dawkins!? Tell him I said "the Selfish Gene was dope, yo!"

I couldn't watch this past "72 virgins." I don't think this guy has any concept of what scientists actually do. Extra star in case I missed something worth it later on.

Baldr - 2010-03-28

In his defense, he has a doctorate in neuroscience from a highly regarded university.

Baldr

- 2010-03-28

Sam Harris has taken rehashed utilitarianism and declared it to be science.

Watching this talk cost me twenty-three minutes of my life without providing information or entertainment. It is antithetical to human flourishing.

voodoo_pork

- 2010-03-29

There are 900 million completely sane Muslims on this planet, and this jackass want to pick on the 10,000 or so insane ones.

Did he come up with this theory in the Starbucks line?

fatatty

- 2010-03-29

None of the women in Saudi Arabia are allowed to drive or leave their homes without a male companion. That the women embrace this existence and are proud of the fact they are hidden from the world and forbidden from becoming engineers doesn't seem sane to me.

There are many Muslim societies that aren't structured like this where women thrive and contribute to society and even become political leaders. There are thousands of ways to measure how the moral codes have benefited those societies and measure if they are better or worse. Why do we need to defend those that are clearly inferior?

Maybe he doesn't prove his hypothesis in this 20 minute speech but I don't think that invalidates it.

Personally I think Democracy and a strong justice system are a much better approach to finding answers to moral questions. Both of which are basically scientific approaches as compared to the authoritarian declarations of a theoretical omnipotent creator.

Chizmurder

- 2010-03-29

wut hee sed

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