My experience is that the vast majority of people (at any/all levels of formal education) cannot read political philosophy...
...nor can they even deal with the plain facts of science set out in lab reports on brain damage caused by (legal and illegal) drugs, efficacy or inefficacy, etc.
The belief in determinism (vs free will) is an especially instructive example, the supposed scientific benefits of Buddhist meditation, too, and both beliefs tend to overlap with 21st century Utilitarianism: people just become addicted to the feeling of their own (imagined) intellectual superiority over others, and when you put your finger on the text and explain, "this doesn't say what you think it says", they simply lash out in anger.
Sam Harris exploits his audience's appetite for this (emotional rather than rational) desire to feel intellectually superior, while failing to have basic reading comprehension of what the scientific sources say that he's vaguely alluding to, again and again.
"Video games increase intelligence: this study proves it."
And of course we've seen this mode of reasoning ten thousand times over with the invocation of "social science research" to vindicate everything from the handing out of leaflets on sidewalks to extremely violent protests branded as non-violent.
These people wear their ego like a blindfold, rather than using it as a washcloth to clean their glasses: the ego can let you see things more clearly —it need not blind you to the words right in front of you, on the desk.
