Sam Harris

As it was in Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary, and Othello, so it is in life. Most forms of private vice and public evil are kindled and sustained by lies. Acts of adultery and other personal betrayals, financial fraud, government corruption—even murder and genocide—generally require an additional moral defect: a willingness to lie.In Lying , best-selling author and neuroscientist Sam Harris argues that we can radically simplify our lives and improve society by merely telling the truth in situations where others often lie. He focuses on "white" lies—those lies we tell for the purpose of sparing people discomfort—for these are the lies that most often tempt us. And they tend to be the only lies that good people tell while imagining that they are being good in the process.

New York Times bestselling author Sam Harris’s first book, The End of Faith , ignited a worldwide debate about the validity of religion. In the aftermath, Harris discovered that most people—from religious fundamentalists to non-believing scientists—agree on one point: science has nothing to say on the subject of human values. Indeed, our failure to address questions of meaning and morality through science has now become the primary justification for religious faith.In this highly controversial book, Sam Harris seeks to link morality to the rest of human knowledge. Defining morality in terms of human and animal well-being, Harris argues that science can do more than tell how we are; it can, in principle, tell us how we ought to be. In his view, moral relativism is simply false—and comes at an increasing cost to humanity. And the intrusions of religion into the sphere of human values can be finally repelled: for just as there is no such thing as Christian physics or Muslim algebra, there can be no Christian or Muslim morality. Using his expertise in philosophy and neuroscience, along with his experience on the front lines of our “culture wars,” Harris delivers a game-changing book about the future of science and about the real basis of human cooperation.

For the millions of Americans who want spirituality without religion, Sam Harris’s latest New York Times bestseller is a guide to meditation as a rational practice informed by neuroscience and psychology.From Sam Harris, neuroscientist and author of numerous New York Times bestselling books, Waking Up is for the twenty percent of Americans who follow no religion but who suspect that important truths can be found in the experiences of such figures as Jesus, the Buddha, Lao Tzu, Rumi, and the other saints and sages of history. Throughout this book, Harris argues that there is more to understanding reality than science and secular culture generally allow, and that how we pay attention to the present moment largely determines the quality of our lives.Waking Up is part memoir and part exploration of the scientific underpinnings of spirituality. No other book marries contemplative wisdom and modern science in this way, and no author other than Sam Harris—a scientist, philosopher, and famous skeptic—could write it.

In The End of Faith, Sam Harris delivers a startling analysis of the clash between reason and religion in the modern world. He offers a vivid, historical tour of our willingness to suspend reason in favor of religious beliefs—even when these beliefs inspire the worst human atrocities. While warning against the encroachment of organized religion into world politics, Harris draws on insights from neuroscience, philosophy, and Eastern mysticism to deliver a call for a truly modern foundation for ethics and spirituality that is both secular and humanistic.Winner of the 2005 PEN/Martha Albrand Award for Nonfiction.

Belief in free will touches nearly everything that human beings value. It is difficult to think about law, politics, religion, public policy, intimate relationships, morality—as well as feelings of remorse or personal achievement—without first imagining that every person is the true source of his or her thoughts and actions. And yet the facts tell us that free will is an illusion.In this enlightening book, Sam Harris argues that this truth about the human mind does not undermine morality or diminish the importance of social and political freedom, but it can and should change the way we think about some of the most important questions in life.

In response to The End of Faith, Sam Harris received thousands of letters from Christians excoriating him for not believing in God. Letter to A Christian Nation is his reply. Using rational argument, Harris offers a measured refutation of the beliefs that form the core of fundamentalist Christianity. In the course of his argument, he addresses current topics ranging from intelligent design and stem-cell research to the connections between religion and violence. In Letter to a Christian Nation, Sam Harris boldly challenges the influence that faith has on public life in our nation.

“A civil but honest dialogue…As illuminating as it is fascinating.”—Ayaan Hirsi AliIs Islam a religion of peace or war? Is it amenable to reform? Why do so many Muslims seem to be drawn to extremism? And what do words like jihadism and fundamentalism really mean? In a world riven by misunderstanding and violence, Sam Harris—a famous atheist—and Maajid Nawaz—a former radical—demonstrate how two people with very different religious views can find common ground and invite you to join in an urgently needed conversation.“How refreshing to read an honest yet affectionate exchange between the Islamist-turned-liberal-Muslim Maajid Nawaz and the neuroscientist who advocates mindful atheism, Sam Harris…Their back-and-forth clarifies multiple confusions that plague the public conversation about Islam.”—Irshad Manji, New York Times Book Review“It is sadly uncommon, in any era, to find dialogue based on facts and reason—but even more rarely are Muslim and non-Muslim intellectuals able to maintain critical distance on broad questions about Islam. Which makes Islam and the Future of Tolerance something of a unicorn…Most conversations about religion are marked by the inability of either side to listen, but here, at last, is a proper debate.”—New Statesman

FROM THE BEST-SELLING AUTHOR OF 'WAKING UP' and 'THE END OF FAITH', AN ADAPTATION OF HIS WILDLY POPULAR, OFTEN CONTROVERSIAL PODCAST."CIVILIZATION RESTS ON SUCCESSFUL CONVERSATIONS." (SAM HARRIS)Sam Harris - neuroscientist, philosopher, and best-selling author - has been exploring some of the most important questions about the human mind, society, and current events on his podcast., 'MAKING SENSE'. With over one million downloads per episode, these discussions have clearly hit a nerve, frequently walking a tightrope where either host or guest - and sometimes both - lose their footing, but always in search off a greater understanding of the world in which we live. for Harris, honest conversation, no matter how difficult or controversial, represents the only path to moral and intellectual progress.This book includes a dozen of the best conversations from 'MAKING SENSE', including talks with Daniel Kahneman, Timothy Snyder, Nick Bostrom, and Glen Loury, on topics that range from the nature of consciousness and free will, to politics and extremism, to living ethically. Together they shine a light on what it means to "make sense" in the modern world.RUNNING TIME ⇒ 22hrs.©2020 Sam Harris (P)2020 HarperAudio

ABSTRACT from the full study:BackgroundWhile religious faith remains one of the most significant features of human life, little is known about its relationship to ordinary belief at the level of the brain. Nor is it known whether religious believers and nonbelievers differ in how they evaluate statements of fact. Our lab previously has used functional neuroimaging to study belief as a general mode of cognition [1], and others have looked specifically at religious belief [2]. However, no research has compared these two states of mind directly.Methodology/Principal FindingsWe used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure signal changes in the brains of thirty subjects—fifteen committed Christians and fifteen nonbelievers—as they evaluated the truth and falsity of religious and nonreligious propositions. For both groups, and in both categories of stimuli, belief (judgments of “true” vs judgments of “false”) was associated with greater signal in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, an area important for self-representation [3], [4], [5], [6], emotional associations [7], reward [8], [9], [10], and goal-driven behavior [11]. This region showed greater signal whether subjects believed statements about God, the Virgin Birth, etc. or statements about ordinary facts. A comparison of both stimulus categories suggests that religious thinking is more associated with brain regions that govern emotion, self-representation, and cognitive conflict, while thinking about ordinary facts is more reliant upon memory retrieval networks.Conclusions/SignificanceWhile religious and nonreligious thinking differentially engage broad regions of the frontal, parietal, and medial temporal lobes, the difference between belief and disbelief appears to be content-independent. Our study compares religious thinking with ordinary cognition and, as such, constitutes a step toward developing a neuropsychology of religion. However, these findings may also further our understanding of how the brain accepts statements of all kinds to be valid descriptions of the world.Author ContributionsConceived and designed the experiments: Sam Harris, Jonas T. Kaplan, Marco Iacoboni, Mark S. Cohen. Performed the experiments: Jonas T. Kaplan. Analyzed the data: Sam Harris, Jonas T. Kaplan, Marco Iacoboni, Mark S. Cohen. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: Marco Iacoboni, Mark S. Cohen. Wrote the paper: Sam Harris, Jonas T. Kaplan. Performed all subject recruitment, telephone screenings, and psychometric assessments prior to scanning: Ashley Curiel. Supervised our psychological assessment procedures and consulted on subject exclusions: Susan Y. Bookheimer. Gave extensive notes on the manuscript: Mark S. Cohen, Marco Iacoboni.

The difference between believing and disbelieving a proposition is one of the most potent regulators of human behavior and emotion. When we accept a statement as true, it becomes the basis for further thought and action; rejected as false, it remains a string of words. The purpose of this study was to differentiate belief, disbelief, and uncertainty at the level of the brain. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to study the brains of 14 adults while they judged written statements to be “true” (belief), “false” (disbelief), or “undecidable” (uncertainty). To characterize belief, disbelief, and uncertainty in a content-independent manner, we included statements from a wide range of autobiographical, mathematical, geographical, religious, ethical, semantic, and factual. The states of belief, disbelief, and uncertainty differentially activated distinct regions of the prefrontal and parietal cortices, as well as the basal ganglia. Belief and disbelief differ from uncertainty in that both provide information that can subsequently inform behavior and emotion. The mechanism underlying this difference appears to involve the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and the caudate. While many areas of higher cognition are likely involved in assessing the truth-value of linguistic propositions, the final acceptance of a statement as “true,” or its rejection as “false,” seems to rely on more primitive, hedonic processing in the medial prefrontal cortex and the anterior insula. Truth may be beauty, and beauty truth, in more than a metaphorical sense, and false propositions might actually disgust us.READ THE FULL PAPER Functional Neuroimaging of Belief, Disbelief, and Uncertainty READ THE EDITORIAL ABOUT THE STUDY WRITTEN BY OLIVER SACKS & JOY HIRSCH Neurology of Belief

Sam Harris responds to the Danish cartoons controversy.

Learn how Free Will is all an illusion and how you cannot control your thoughts and actions.

1 Hr and 51 Minutes: This is an interview between Bart Ehrman, a former Christian turned Atheistic writer, and Sam Harris. In this interview, Sam asks Bart about the experience of a born again believer in Christ.

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È davvero sbagliato mentire? La risposta può sembrare scontata, ma non lo è. Pensiamo alle "bugie bianche", quelle verità che alteriamo per non ferire qualcuno a cui teniamo ("Sembro grassa con questo vestito?"). Oppure a casi estremi, quando una bugia potrebbe essere necessaria per sviare un assassino dalla sua preda o per rassicurare un malato preoccupato. Ebbene, anche in questi casi mentire potrebbe innescare una serie di effetti a cascata difficilmente prevedibili che rischiano di fare più male che bene. In questo libro scorrevole e stimolante, Sam Harris ricorre agli attrezzi del mestiere del filosofo per analizzare lucidamente questo dilemma morale e perora la causa di un approccio radicale all'onestà che non ammette eccezioni (o quasi).

If you say something about artificial intelligence (AI) and your concerns about it, well this is a very interesting topic. The question to how to build artificial intelligence that isn't going to destroy us is something not only I began to pay attention too, a rather deep and consequential problem. I went to a conference in Puerto Rico to focus on this issue organized by The Future of Life Institute and I was brought there by a friend, Elon Musk who undoubted many of you have heard of. And Elon recently said publicly that he thought AI was the greatest threat to human survival here, perhaps greater than nuclear weapons and many people took that as an incredibly hyperbolic statement.Now knowing Elon and how close to the details he's apt to be, I took it as very interesting diagnosis of the problem. But I wasn't quite sure what I thought about it, I haven't really spent a much time focusing on progress you could make with AI and its implications. I went to this conference in San Juan held by 4 other people who were closest to doing this work, this was not open to the public. There was 1, maybe 2 or 3 interlopers there who just hadn't been invited who got themselves invited and what was fascinating about that was that the collection of people who were very worried like Elon and others who felt that this was something to pull the brakes, even though that seemed somewhat hopeless, to the people who were doing work most energetically and most wanted to convince others not to worry about having to pull the brakes. And what was interesting there is what I heard outside this conference, once you hear say on edge.org or general discussions about the prospects making real breakthroughs in artificial intelligence. You hear a time frame of 50-100 years before anything terribly scary or terribly interesting going to happen.In this conference, that was almost never the case. Everyone who is still trying to ensure doing this as safely as possible was still conceding that a time frame of 5-10 years admitted of rather alarming progress. And when I came back from that conference, the edge question for 2015 just happened to be on the topic of artificial intelligence, so I wrote a short piece, distilling what my view now was.Perhaps I'll just read that, it won't take too long and hopefully it won't bore you."Can we avoid a digital apocalypse? It seems increasingly likely that we will one day build machines that have super human intelligence. When you only continue to produce better computers which we will unless we destroy ourselves or meet our end some other way. We already know that it's possible for mere matter to acquire a quote, general intelligence.The ability to learn new concepts, and employ them in unfamiliar context. Because the 1200 cubic centimeters (cc's) of salty porridge inside our heads is manageable. There's no reason to believe that a suitably advanced digital computer couldn't do the same. It's often said that the near term goal is to build a machine that possesses, quote, human level intelligence but unless we specifically emulate a human brain, with all of it's limitations, this is a false goal. The computer in which I'm writing these words, already possesses super human powers of memory and calculation, it also has potential access to most of the world's information. Unless we take extraordinary steps to hobble it, any future artificial general intelligence known as "AGI" will exceed human performance on every task which is considered a source of intelligence in the first place.Whether such a machine would necessarily be conscious is an open question, but conscious or not, an AGI might very well develop goals in compatible with our own. Just how sudden and lethal this parting of the ways might be is not a subject of much colorful speculation.

This is the story of an unlikely love which springs between two people. Although they were looking for it, will this be the right match for them? Will love flourish and grow or will it fade like it so often does.

In a digital world saturated with consumerism, The Middle of Somewhere brings a voice of an unaffected childhood in a remote corner of the world, the Southwest of Australia. With a warmth and candour rarely seen, Sam Harris focuses his lens on his daughters' childhood, in a place where they are free to experience the wonder of their surroundings. The trees and the shadows, the sunlit faces and the passing seasons, are movingly brought to life by his evocative photography. This body of work spans a twelve-year period in the life of the photographer's family, since they have boldly decided to leave the rat race in search for a simpler existence. A Travelogue insert is included in the book from the family's life on the road in Australia and in villages in India where they lived for several years and birthed their second daughter. Simultaneously expressing something about the meanings of love, growing up, sisterhood, family, landscape, and the rhythm of nature, Harris' work is at once both intimate and all embracing and is a memorable and inspiring collection of images that will both please the eye and stir the soul.

Prose by Sam Harris, Carmel artist and writer.

Poetry by Sam Harris, Carmel Artist.

"This novel is a hidden gem in the realm of historical fiction. The writing is elegant, the characters are well-developed, and the story delves deep into themes of love, betrayal, and triumph. I was completely engrossed from start to finish."Keaton, the daughter of the esteemed Mahogany family, is thrust into a world of turmoil and despair when her dreams of inheriting the barony in Timber Milan are shattered. In an instant, she loses her fiancé, her future, and even her cherished home.Forced into a loveless marriage in a foreign land by her own brother, Keaton finds herself trapped with a husband who betrays her at every turn and servants who harbor nothing but contempt. Despite her dire circumstances, Keaton possesses an indomitable spirit that unwittingly captivates those around her, as she struggles to navigate a treacherous world and carve out her own path.As the web of deceit tightens around her, Keaton fights for survival, drawing upon her inner strength to defy expectations and rise above the adversity that seeks to break her spirit. In this tale of resilience and redemption, Keaton discovers that true strength lies within oneself and that love and hope can blossom even in the darkest of times.

Da millenni il genere umano si interroga sulla possibilità di esistenza di vita extraterrestre. Nonostante i numerosi avvistamenti e testimonianze, ad oggi non vi sono prove certe della loro esistenza.Di fronte a tali elementi la convinzione che si tratti di complotti governativi si fa strada. Tuttavia, anche in questo caso la questione va affrontata con metodo ed è possibile affermare che nessuna forma di cospirazione è in atto.In definitiva quando si parla di alieni si resta nell’ambito del mistero e, dunque, di fatti ignoti.L'atteggiamento giusto nei confronti di tali credenze dovrebbe essere quello di non repressione, ma simultaneamente di non eccessiva speculazione, in maniera tale da affrontarlo con serenità ed equilibrio.Non si dovrebbe escludere la possibilità di un'esistenza aliena, ma in assenza di prove deve rimanere un’aspirazione, in quanto reprimendo tale speranza si impedisce di credere in qualcosa di superiore.