25. Sam Harris: “Spirituality Is a Loaded Term.”

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**Steve Levitt** (0:33)
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**Steve Levitt** (0:50)
Sam Harris came to prominence in 2004 with the publication of his first book, The End of Faith.
It was a harsh criticism of organized religion and has spent 33 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. He's got a PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience and he's been described as an evangelical atheist. So how is it even possible that 15 years later, Mind-Body-Spirit Magazine identified him as the 13th most influential spiritual person on the planet?

**Steve Levitt** (1:21)
Welcome to People I Mostly Admire with Steve Levitt.

**Steve Levitt** (1:26)
I think like a scientist, I view the world through the lens of data, skepticism, and hypothesis testing. And I'm not the slightest bit religious. In spite of that though, I have to confess, I've always been curious about spirituality. But I was embarrassed about it, and I kept that curiosity to myself because I felt like there was no place for spirituality in the scientific mind. Well, that all changed when I read Sam Harris' amazing 2014 book, Waking Up, A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion. It's a rigorous scientific exploration of spirituality, and it made him the thinking person's guru. The subsequent release of the wildly popular Waking Up app, his 2020 book Making Sense, Conversations on Consciousness, Morality, and the Future of Humanity, and his Making Sense podcast have further cemented his guru status.
I've never spoken to Sam Harris before, and I'm so curious to see what he's like. Will he talk like a scientist or a guru? Will he be full of ego or free from ego?
I can't tell you, Sam, how much I've been looking forward to getting to talk to you after reading so much of your amazing work.

**Sam Harris** (2:43)
Oh, nice. Thank you. It's a pleasure.

**Steve Levitt** (2:45)
I know lots of scientists, and I find it easy to talk to neuroscientists. And I know lots of people who are students of meditation and mindfulness, and I know how to talk to them, and I know how to talk to atheists, I know how to talk to best-selling authors, but I talk to them all differently, and I'm not sure how I'm going to talk to you because here all these things rolled into one.

**Sam Harris** (3:03)
I had to talk to a Venn diagram, that's the problem.

**Steve Levitt** (3:05)
Exactly. So you have this sort of intimidating effect on me. Do you think you have that effect more generally, or is that something weird about me?

**Sam Harris** (3:11)
Certainly, there's no reason for it, but I've spent a lot of time criticizing what I consider to be bad ideas. So many people come into a conversation, at least trying to take the other side of issues. So that negative halo accompanies me into many conversations, but indeed not because there are many things that I'm simply for rather than against, and meditation, neuroscience, rationality are among those things.

**Steve Levitt** (3:37)
I'm surprised that people try to take an adversarial stance, because it's always been my view that when I'm talking to someone super smart, it's better to try and find the common ground rather than to try to pick a fight that I'm likely to lose.

**Sam Harris** (3:51)
Yeah. My appetite for debate has diminished more or less along with the realization that it doesn't work all that well. It's really hard to change people's minds in real time. People tend to change their minds in private. I think I can count on one hand the number of times I've witnessed somebody fundamentally change their mind, which is to say relinquish fairly core cherished beliefs under pressure in the conversation itself. It's like witnessing a supernova burst or something. It just doesn't happen very often. So insofar as the goal is to have satisfying conversations, it's usually the wrong strategy.

**Steve Levitt** (4:31)
Yeah. I'm surprised to hear you've ever convinced anyone to change a core belief. I can't think of a case I've ever been that persuasive. Yeah, I gave up on persuasion a long time ago.