Winning?
Sam Harris just keeps getting more tiresome. (Not more smug. He started out at maximum smug so he can’t get any more so.) (Unless he performs a miracle.)
Ooh edgy.
Tip Jar
Sam Harris just keeps getting more tiresome. (Not more smug. He started out at maximum smug so he can’t get any more so.) (Unless he performs a miracle.)
Ooh edgy.
What the hell is that logo in the triangle supposed to represent? A brain with a backpack?
A grenade.
Oh but maybe a grenade/brain. I was thinking that was just a suggestion of the bobbles on grenades.
Never heard of the third guy, but the first two deserve each other. What Greenwich did to deserve either of them, though, I can’t imagine.
And yes, I think the logo is clearly intended to be a grenade with a brain as the go-bang-fill-the-air-with-nasty-sharp-metal-shards part. The symbolism doesn’t really work, somehow — we win the war of ideas by exploding heads? Ideas are explosive and fragmentary? (I’ll agree with that last in the case of Harris and Peterson)
Oh, I see. It’s “Caution! Challenging Intellectualiness ahead!” Featuring middlebrow white dudes promoting neoconservatism and whatever the hell you call it that Peterson promotes (his signature blend of Jung, Men’s Rights, and libertarianism.)
In the immortal words of Miss Jean Brodie, “For people who like that sort of thing, that is the sort of thing that they like.”
I don’t expect anyone’s minds to be blown, I expect them to be soothed.
I don’t know much about Murray except that he is strongly critical of Islam and that he’s one of those dreary people who describe themselves as atheist but a ‘cultural X’, in his case, Christian.
‘Never heard of the third guy’ Isn’t that the tesseract guy from A Wrinkle in Time? I guess in theory I could go to this…it’s a really odd venue for talks though. I would be very much surprised if they were able to fill it.
@guest
Well that’s a hell of a good point. They’re in the Dublin 3arena a couple of days earlier, too. That has a capacity of 13000. I don’t know what the O2’s capacity is, but it’s had audiences of 14000 in the past.
I looked at Harris’ site and there are no details of the event. At all. Clicking the various links to ticket sales and venues lead to a maze of twisty URLs, all the same. There are no details about content or even ticket price. In fact, tickets haven’t gone on sale yet, but the gig is in July. I seem to remember that a Monty Python gig at the O2 sold out in forty-odd seconds, perhaps Harris and his friends are counting on the same thing?
I’m guessing these venues have a shipping crate full of folding chairs in the car park to accommodate the less popular acts. Either that or Harris, Peterson and the Other Guy are in a position to hire exactly two venues with capacity in excess of 10k.
Time will tell.
@latsot I did too, with the same result. No description at all of what the ‘event’ is supposed to be, which seems bizarre. It looks like tickets are currently only available for ‘pre-order’ for members of the group that’s putting it on, but no indication at all of what the rest of us might be be paying once the privileged have had access.
It’s not only the size, and the fact that this place usually hosts blockbuster pop music shows, but the general logistics–I can’t imagine either being able to clearly hear (let alone see) speakers, or effectively manage a Q&A. I think you’re right, though; didn’t they host a Monty Python anniversary/reunion/something some years back? They’d have needed the huge venue to accommodate the fans.
It looks like the “winning the war of ideas” title came from a segment on Bill Maher’s show.
So yeah. Great. To quote Harris early in that show:
“We have to win a war of ideas with the Muslim world and we need allies”.
Oh rilly? Why? He goes on to say that this isn’t *just* about Muslims…
Well, check it out for yourselves if you can bear it or be arsed, it’s Core Harris: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LV7eVvph69Y
Is that what the mind-blow gig is all about?
Of course it fucking is.
Sorry – I meant to quote Harris as saying that it’s not *only* about immigration, not Muslims.
I was listening while typing and typed what I was listening to.
Harris distracted me by talking about the (claimed to exist by him) war of ideas that – according to him – “HAS to happen within the Muslim community and only “we” can help “them” win it”.
No wonder my typing failed me, I mean WHAT THE FUCK.
It’s a war *on* not *of* ideas he’s interested in, we’ve known that for years.
Xtian apologists aren’t ‘allies’ against violent Salafism. They’re just competing for the market of hopeless Rage-Boys.
They’re doing this in a huge arena?? That’s hilarious. They must be confusing niche fame with just plain fame.
@14: With luck, the event will be a flop, and Pangburn will have to leave off this sort of thing for a while they recoup their finances.
From Wikipedia:
‘The O2 Arena has the second highest seating capacity of any indoor venue in the United Kingdom, behind the Manchester Arena, but took the crown of the world’s busiest music arena from New York City’s Madison Square Garden in 2008.’
Check out the pic:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_O2_Arena
OTOH, it may be like the Excel Centre in that the whole thing is gigantic, but there are some relatively tiny rooms for smaller events (no way to tell from anything online, as latsot’s pointed out). Even so…I’m sure there are plenty of lecture-hall sized (and lecture-hall configured) spaces in London; why go out to the middle of nowhere, in London terms, to hold an event like this if you’re just expecting a lecture-hall sized crowd? Why am I even spending my time thinking about this?
guest, the O2 does indeed have smaller rooms for business conferences and such-like, to keep the money coming in when the main arena isn’t being used.
As inflated as Harris’ ego is, I doubt he’s a big enough draw to warrant a full-sized arena tour, as much as the advertising above appears to suggest.
So…they’ve booked a normal-sized room at the ‘O2 Arena’, even though there are probably cheaper, more convenient, and more fit-for-purpose rooms of the same size in more easily accessible parts of London, just so they could write ‘O2 Arena’ on their publicity. I get it now.
Peterson is currently enormously popular among young white males. I’d love to join you all in predicting that this event will be a flop, but I can’t.
OTOH: http://nationalpost.com/news/canada/after-misconduct-complaint-jordan-peterson-agrees-to-plan-for-clinical-improvement?utm_campaign=Echobox&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook
Harris announced this even on Twitter, of course, and one of the responses pointed out a potential copyright violation that the designer of the ad may have committed.
Whoops, sorry about my mistake. One has to scroll down a ways to get to the image in question. The brain grenade in a triangle is a nearly exact replica of one found on a can of the energy drink Dynami:t, which was pointed out by Alex Jay Brady in the thread.
One more comment, sorry: Alex Jay Brady contacted the energy drink company and asked if they had authorized the use of their image. Their reply: “No, we didn’t [shocked face emoji] It is a shame, that someone is writing about ideas and stealing them at the same time [frown emoji]”
No need to be sorry!
Lady M @ 19 – But is JP really “enormously popular among young white males” in general? Popular like a football player or similar? I strongly doubt that. He’s popular with the faction of ywms who have a hobby of complaining about women on Twitter, but that’s still a niche. I really don’t think he’s arena-level popular.
However the Arena includes smaller rooms (thanks guest and AoS) so he doesn’t need to be.
On a related point, Ezra Klein at Vox has a good piece responding to a snotty tweet by Sam Harris, who seems to think that having Charles Murray on his podcast was a brave venture into “forbidden knowledge” rather than just another chapter in a tired history of white people discussing the supposed inferiority of blacks. (Frankly, Klein is a lot nicer about the whole thing than I would be, and bends over backwards to assume good intent by Harris and Murray.)
That is a good piece, thank you.
God, Harris is infuriating.
Just two minutes ago I received email from the Sam Harris web site declaring the Klein essay a “disingenuous hit piece”.
I initially confused event panelist Douglas Murray with Charles Murray. I don’t know who Douglas Murray is; Wikipedia lists a political commentator by that name, is that the correct person?
Arena-level, no, but he’s apparently a lot more popular than I was aware. https://www.vox.com/world/2018/3/26/17144166/jordan-peterson-12-rules-for-life
(It’s long, fair warning.)
Sackbut, yes, writes for the Spectator.
Sam Harris is pitching a Trump-level tantrum at Ezra Klein. God he’s an unpleasant character.
https://samharris.org/ezra-klein-editor-chief/