Sam Harris Part II @ Festival of Ideas: Post talk thoughts

Opening talk

Well weather wise it couldn’t have been more different to Oxford! Bristol certainly wasn’t selling itself to us meteorologically, however the Festival of Ideas talk by Sam Harris more than made up for it.

It wasn’t a packed house at St Georges, but it was comfortably filled, (Festival of Ideas tweeted 350 were in attendance) which considering the big draw would have been for the Dawkins talk the night before, is still quite a large number for a talk on morality and neuroscience.

Sam presented the same introduction, which as he told me at the signing afterwards  I should be able to give for him by now! He had however obviously revised things here and there, and in general is sounding far slicker as a condensed 20 minute presentation than it did as the original TED talk he gave.

For some reason I was expecting a different format to the previous evenings talk with Dawkins, and so was surprised to see the same set up on stage indicating that Sam was to be probed by a third party on the book. This worked well with Dicky D and despite initial disappointment that Sam wouldn’t be expounding The Moral Landscape for a full hour, it worked very well in this case too. Again, as with the Oxford talk, it was probably the most interesting segment. The questioner asked great questions of Sam and provoked more seemingly improvised gems that answered some of the objections.

The Q&A was better this evening. One guy asked if there was to be a follow up to The Moral Landscape, perhaps a map as to navigate it! This was only a little facetious (and humorous), as what it’s really asking is when can we expect any of what Sam talks about to be practically useful for civilisation.

Signing my copy of LTACN

We waited in line to get LTACN signed and to get a quick picture, but as you will see they kinda blurred. I think I’ll just ask to pose for one with him on Saturday as Sarah’s father can take a picture for us.  I managed to get a quickly ask him if given enough time, does he think he could reason William Lane Craig out of belief in the resurrection. He said that more than likely not, as WLC isn’t logically reasoning in the same set of tools in the first place. This really makes me think about the utility of Sam’s position on more serious matters like scientific objective morality. Hopefully this little book signing exchange can form the basis of a decent question I hope to ask at the final talk in Cambridge.

Unfortunately there were some sound issues again like in Oxford, which persisted through most of the talk. I’m not sure if this was entirely a technical problem as perhaps the rather drafty cavernous nature of St Georges compounded the sonic problems. I didn’t struggle to hear anything however, as I was nearer the front, I wonder how things were for people in the balcony.

Excellent evening followed by a good thai curry in town. Saturday we go to Cambridge to meet Sarah’s father and his wife for the final stop on his UK visit. This gives me a few days to read through the Blackford essay on the Moral Landscape and to start re-formulating my question.

Feeling good this morning! I got a night of much needed sleep, and now we’re off to the Bristol science museum before heading north once more.

More pics on my flickr

dB