Photo: Christopher Michel, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Sam Harris public figure — reconstructed profile

This is a reconstruction from published statements, not a real account. Only questions with a documented position are answered, and each one cites its source below. Spotted an error? Bring a better citation to the forum and it gets fixed.

Neuroscientist & author (The End of Faith, The Moral Landscape, Free Will). Positions from his published books — not a member.

answered 22 questions

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Kindred % · overall match

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Twin % · thinks like you

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World % · lives in your world

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Life % · lives like you

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Opposition % · opposite poles, held with certainty

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Bubble

Positions & sources

Question	Position	Source
Which comes closest to your actual position on God?	There is certainly no god or gods	The End of Faith (2004).
Human-caused climate change is best described as:	Real, mainly human-caused, and a serious problem	Making Sense podcast and public debates (2015– ) — treats anthropogenic climate change as settled science.
The standard childhood vaccine schedule, taken as a whole:	Does far more good than harm	Making Sense AMA episodes (2016– ).
Humans came to exist by:	Natural processes — and the question of guidance doesn't even arise for me	Letter to a Christian Nation (2006).
You run a business with a close friend. Your friend's father funded it with his life savings and now has a few days to live. He asks you, not your friend, whether the business is doing well. Stipulate: it will fail within months, the money is gone, he'll die before he could learn otherwise, and nothing he does could change it. You:	Tell him the truth, gently and plainly	Lying (2013) — his book-length argument that lying is never justified, even to spare a dying man's feelings. (scenario answer — inferred from their documented positions, not a recorded statement)
Abortion should be:	Legal in most circumstances, with few restrictions	Letter to a Christian Nation (2006) — defends abortion rights against religious prohibition.
Mainstream news outlets, taken as a whole, mostly:	Systematically distort through bias and incentives, without needing orders	His published critiques of mainstream-media distortion (essays and Making Sense, 2015– ).
Twenty years from now, advanced AI will most likely have been:	A civilizational catastrophe or existential threat	TED Talk (2016) on AI risk.
Organized religion's overall effect on society has been:	Strongly negative — a net source of harm and delusion	The End of Faith (2004) — the book's thesis on religion's social effects.
God exists	Certainly false	The End of Faith (2004).
Conscious existence continues after death	Probably false	Letter to a Christian Nation (2006) — no evidence for survival of death; scored conservatively.
Prayer can change what happens in the world, beyond its effects on the people involved	Certainly false	The End of Faith (2004) — discusses the failure of controlled studies of intercessory prayer.
Human beings arose entirely through unguided natural processes	Certainly true	Letter to a Christian Nation (2006) — evolution defended as established fact.
Consciousness is produced entirely by the brain	Certainly true	Waking Up (2014) — consciousness depends entirely on the brain (his neuroscience position).
With the past exactly the same, our choices could have gone otherwise	Certainly false	Free Will (2012) — the book's entire thesis.
Some actions are wrong no matter what any person or culture believes	Certainly true	The Moral Landscape (2010) — moral truths are facts about the wellbeing of conscious creatures.
Eating meat is morally wrong	Probably true	Making Sense podcast #28, "Meat Without Misery" (2016), and public Q&As — he states he cannot ethically defend eating meat and that factory farming is indefensible.
We owe a stranger overseas as much as we owe a neighbor	Probably true	The Moral Landscape (2010) — wellbeing counts the same whoever has it.
Healthy adults are better off getting every vaccine their health authority recommends	Certainly true	Making Sense AMA episodes (2016– ) — public endorsement of vaccination; calls the vaccine–autism link fraudulent.
Long-standing traditions usually contain wisdom we can't see	Probably false	The End of Faith (2004) — sustained critique of deference to ancient text and tradition.
Advanced AI poses a serious risk of human extinction	Certainly true	TED Talk, "Can we build AI without losing control over it?" (2016).
Human life has a purpose beyond the one we choose for it	Probably false	Waking Up (2014) — meaning is realized in consciousness, not cosmically assigned.