#482 — More From Sam: The Iran Deal, College in the AI Age, Mamdani's DSA, and More

Sam Harris opens this episode of Making Sense by fielding a series of questions drawn from his subscriber community, covering topics from global governance and the nature of consciousness to the value of philosophy, the meaning of life, and the future of work in the age of AI. The throughline is a skeptical, pragmatic examination of big ideas—whether they are political utopias, philosophical frameworks, or career bets—tested against the messy realities of human psychology, politics, and technological change.

The Unthinkability of One World Government

Harris begins by revisiting a position he held in his first book, The End of Faith, where he argued that the logical endgame for civilization was some form of one world government. The goal, he explains, would be to make war between nations as unthinkable as war between Vermont and Massachusetts. However, he has since changed his mind. The current political dysfunction of the United States alone makes the prospect of subordinating national sovereignty to a global body seem "genuinely unthinkable." While he can imagine a dystopian, tech-enabled one-world totalitarianism, a desirable version where humanity has converged on shared cultural priorities is not in the foreseeable future. He dismisses the idea that a superintelligent AI could solve this, noting that the dystopian outcomes are far easier to imagine than the utopia