Ok pals I have a fun Friday treat for you: for the past SEVERAL YEARS, someone has managed to convince Sam Harris & Eric Weinstein that aliens are real and that the Intellectual Dark Web members will be the ones to help reveal it to the world https://skepchick.org/2023/03/whos-pranking-sam-harris-eric-weinstein-about-ufos/
Who’s Pranking Sam Harris & Eric Weinstein about UFOs?

Transcript: Let me take you back in time to, oh, 2008 or so. I was enjoying my life as a noted atheist and “skeptic,” traveling the world giving talks alongside luminaries like Michael Shermer (edi…

Skepchick
@rebeccawatson @donmelton The problem with the new atheist guys was they decided that they could write Philosophy treatises without consulting anything. So they're writing papers for 101 classes, but their prestige in other fields means its financially successful. That means no one is going to call them out on the fact there's an entire history of discourse rebutting and reinforcing their arguments. Once the IDW thing happened they had sycophantic fan bases willing to treat it all as gospel
@rebeccawatson @donmelton The whole thing with Charles Murray and Sam Harris was unironically just him parroting the South Park Family Guy episode; I'm not sure that dude has had anyone around him who questions that maybe he's disappearing so far up his own ass as to create a small singularity.