#307 — Twitter, Elon, & Free Speech

Making Sense with Sam Harris

Waking Up with Sam Harris

Samharris, Currentevents, Politics, Ethics, Religion, Neuroscience, Science, Society & Culture, Philosophy

4.6 • 29.1K Ratings

🗓️ 30 December 2022

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Sam Harris discusses Elon Musk's behavior on Twitter and the illusion of "free-speech absolutism."

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast. This is Sam Harris. Just a note to say that if you're
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0:46.7	Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast. This is Sam Harris.
0:49.6	Okay, the end of the year is upon us. I'm going to talk a little bit about Twitter and Elon
0:59.2	and Free Speech here. The end of my year was marked by, among other things, my deleting
1:05.9	my Twitter account, which has been surprisingly significant. I've talked about this a little bit
1:11.9	on the podcast and on other people's podcasts, but it was really like leaving a bad relationship.
1:21.2	And psychologically, it was a pretty interesting thing to do. But Twitter has been everywhere.
1:27.6	I'm still seeing the signs of its chaos everywhere in the press. So I feel like I should take
1:33.7	a few minutes to reflect on what I think is happening there and how it relates to what's happening
1:38.4	in American society generally. My Twitter is in many ways the seat of our societal dysfunction.
1:47.1	Social media is surely the seat of that dysfunction. But Twitter in particular because
1:54.8	journalists and politicians appear immovably anchored to it. But as I'm going to say,
2:01.9	a few things about Elon, let me just confess my uncertainty about doing this. As I've said,
2:09.6	or implied before, Elon has been a friend. I'm not sure what the status of that friendship is now,
2:18.0	frankly. And that has a lot to do with Twitter. And I've had to confront this problem before.
2:24.9	I've had many friends and now former friends who have large public platforms and who have said and
	...

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