Oh, look. “Pangburn Philosophy” the guy who’s been sponsoring these talks by alt-right asshats all over the place, maybe isn’t doing quite so well lately.
So @SamHarrisOrg & @MaajidNawaz have backed out of the NYC conference for the following reasons (that are being communicated to me by their respective teams): The reimbursement payout schedule for NZ audience refunds isn't to their liking & some Sydney bills owing.
In Reality:
— Travis Pangburn (@ThePangburn) September 21, 2018
Can’t pay his speakers? Sam Harris and Majid Nawaz refusing to go on stage? Wow.
Can this get any more embarrassing for them?
I want to be transparent about this. I will also release a video & do a live Q&A next week. We could also not meet the deposit demand for @jordanbpeterson & @Ayaan , so their teams asked that they be removed from the billing as well. New speakers will be added to the lineup.
— Travis Pangburn (@ThePangburn) September 21, 2018
Whoops. There go Jordan Peterson and Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Whatever will happen to this conference?
They just lost 4 of their 5 headliners. That’s a catastrophic collapse.
The topics:
“Has #MeToo gone #TooFar?”
“Can we move beyond race?”
LO fucking L.
It would be hard to make a parody of that poster. It already reads just like one.
Free speech advocates aren’t so free, huh? People are replying with tweets about how much they are asking to get refunded. Thousands of dollars for this shit?
These folks think they’re intellectuals, but as the Brits would say: This Pangburn bloke saw them coming.
My favorite “rationalist”:
Just. Uffda.
Am I interpreting the references to deposits and reimbursement/refund schedules correctly? Because I read that as suggesting that ticket sales aren’t great, and the speakers are pulling out because their guaranteed number (as opposed to whatever % of the gate they’ve been offered) isn’t sufficient?
That would be wonderful, because it would suggest that public interest in attending (yet another) conference with these bozos is waning. But if I’m wrong, this could just be a matter of Harris et al having so many lucrative offers that their minimum price is going up and so they can dump their lower-paying conferences.
Ah well, at least Pangburn still has Glenn Loury, who can explain to everyone how Obama blew it by not lecturing blacks to behave like social conservatives.
These “dark web intellectuals”, “free speech advocates”, “rationalists” blah blah blah are very obnoxious. They critique Liberals while ignoring the rising authoritarian and extremism of Conservatism. Apparently these free speech rationalists think internment camps at the border, rise of bigotry, the curtailing of human rights, the attack on higher education and more that the Republicans are doing are not worth noting. At this point these “Classical Liberal” Libertarian political independents types are just useful idiots for Republicans.
Not necessarily.
The competition for right wingnut/fundie xian dollars is intense.
There are so many grifters and conpersons going after that market, that it is amazing there hasn’t already been a shakeout.
Don’t forget that the all powerful creator of the universe is always broke and always wants more of your money.
Even D listers like Kurt Cameron, Kent Hovind, Ken Ham, Rush Limbaugh, or Ann Coulter etc. can eke out a impressive living selling hate, lies, bigotry, delusions, and logical fallacies.
Main Event: Is Reason Sacred? Wow! Now that’s a conundrum! Well, it’s a conundrum that might appeal to 15-year-olds, but I’m thinking most 15-year-olds don’t have the $499 registration price (+ $45 Booking Fee, per pass, which is inclusive of the 8.875% local sales tax, AND a $5 Merchant Transaction Fee).
Just who is going to pony up $549 for “A Day of Reflection” even if all the advertised speakers showed? Just FYI: You can get in to see Beyoncé and Jay-Z for as little as $80 (though admittedly the top super-VIP number is three grand).
The kind of person who wants to sneer about how the unwashed masses “waste” their time and money on “frivolous entertainment,” while enlightened folks like themselves prefer to “expand their intellectual horizons.”
“while enlightened folks like themselves prefer to “expand their intellectual horizons.””
Shouldn’t that be “ineffectual horizons”?
I saw that Majiid and Sam canceled because they were upset about audience reimbursements in New Zealand. Jordan Peterson because they couldn’t pay his deposit. Don’t know about the others.
It is profitable to be a Known Name, because people will happily spend money on a person who tells them things they want to hear. It seems a tad less profitable for those that are trying to actually organise some sort of community – who knew rancid arseholes weren’t very community-minded??
Sam Harris. Jordan Peterson. A Day of Reflection. Hahahahahahahaha.
Pablo Campos @ 6:
I suspect that is a mix between ‘well, those don’t affect me or people I know’ and the useful idiots you note. It never seems to occur to them that they are only allies as long as they are useful and the ‘not affecting people I know’ can change.
chrislawson, #13
Maybe the event was gonna happen in a house of mirrors.
They were just going to spend their stage time staring at their reflections in a pool.
They’ll spend it gazing into a mirror and thinking about how wonderful they are.
Sorry, missed #16 before posting #17!
I really want to know what people get from these conferences in the first place?
Also, I love that literally every panel is a textbook case of Betteridge’s Law of Headlines.
Has #MeToo Gone #TooFar? No. It was an attempt to expose what hasn’t been talked about and swept under a rug vis-a-vis sexual harassment and assault, and to that end it’s probably underperformed
Can we move beyond race? Not yet, not when we have a US president saying all mexicans are rapists, and racially selected concentration camps in the US, and Australia. There’s obviously some big questions that can’t be ignored because Sam Harris feels uncomfortable.
Does Islam Pose A Unique Problem to Modernity? Not at all. We can see the undercurrents of reactionary misogynistic violent right wings everywhere, from Buddhist movements in myanmar, to radical Christian movements in Uganda(or fundies in the US), to Hindu movements in India, or atheists in New Zealand, there’s a recurring right wing reaction in human culture that transcends a single religion and causes so much strife.
Is Reason Sacred? Fuck no. Reason is a tool. Hammers aren’t sacred. Biology isn’t sacred. Urban Planning isn’t sacred. They’re all useful, but beyond reproach, fffffffffuck off.