Chris and Matt take a break from examining the endless stream of Guru galaxy brain takes to offer their own and calibrate their newly minted Gurometer.The Gurometer is composed of 10 key characteristics of guruosity which the decoders will be using to score the Gurus in future episodes.Listeners will learn about important concepts, like science hipsterism and pseudo-profound bullshit, and discover just how bad both Chris and Matt are at segways!LinksThe Gurometer 'current draft' Google DocGretchen's Blog Review
It's the podcast where two academics listen to content from the greatest minds the online world has to offer, and we try to understand what they're talking about.
But today, Chris, we are not covering a guru.
We are talking about something far more important, which we'll get to.
But would you like to say a few words about the upcoming episode?
So I agree, Matt.
Revolutionary insights are weird to the listeners.
They just need to hold on for a minute.
But they may be wondering why we are not releasing our usual concise short episode about Douglas Murray, I promised.
And part of that...
The content that I convinced Matt to look at was a four-hour interview with Douglas Murray by Eric Weinstein.
So it's taking longer than usual to go through.
But we should have it ready next week.
So there you go.
Yes, I was struggling.
I am struggling to get through it.
But we are soldiering on.
And we will get there.
But in the meantime, we do have some very important work to present.
And that is to talk about our gurometer.
Yeah, so we're sticking out the new field of gurometry, right?
I think you, Matt, just we can label ourselves gurometricians, which I'm particularly down with.
But it seemed a good idea to, as we're going through and Looking at all this colorful cast of characters and noticing the differences and similarities in their guru-ishness to try and produce something that was slightly more quantifiable,
mainly just for our own entertainment purposes, but also to help get our thoughts about things in order a bit more as good social scientists.
So we had various discussions.
And looked at previous papers that we were working on to try and distill some features which we think are recurrent amongst guru types and to make a coding scheme where we can assign our own personal scores for the gurus that we cover on these different dimensions and then tally them up to give an overall guru score.
And obviously people will be able to play at home.
Yes, you are free to play at home and use the Garometer.
It is open license.
There's no intellectual property here.
So far.
So far.
So the other thing too is that it's a work in progress.
We've got 10 categories or themes that we will go through and look at and we might end up combining Some of those are introducing some new ones and hopefully it'll grow and get refined and get better.
And yeah, as you said, organize our thoughts so that we're actually learning something as well as talking about specific people.
Yeah, and Matt being a good academic is adding in...
Disclaimers and hedging that we might not use some of these categories.
We might combine them.
We might drop them.
This is what caused the replication crisis, Matt.
I, on the other hand, am purely concerned with having round numbers of features.
So the fact that we've reached 10...
I have to interrupt you, Chris, and tell everybody that we had nine perfectly good themes.
It was great.
But that nine, It was doing Christopher's head in.
His obsessive-compulsive personality could not comprehend not having a nice, neat round number.
So we did a bit of extra work and we got the 10th one.
Yeah, and it was an important one that we discovered.
And I just also think, imagine a scale where you're like, the top score is 45. Like, what's that?
A top score of 50?
I understand.
Like, 50 out of 50?
Great.
A top score of 45, Matt, no one would understand.
That doesn't make any sense, conceptually.
Fair enough, fair enough.
Well, look, all was well in the end because, you're right, it was a good category.
So we will get to it.
So we're going to do the shout-outs, as we always do, to our fantastic Patreons.
So, Christopher.
Yes, that's right.
Just to note that I don't think we've ever mentioned that we are posting stuff up on the Patreon, so, like, there's extra content there now.
There's a couple of videos about designing this garometer.
Sell it, Chris.
Sell it.
If this discussion is not enough, there's another hour-long discussion where we are trying to identify the features that we're not going to describe and also some things about just asking questions and anti-vaxxing rhetoric and so on.
So there is stuff up on the Patreon.
That might make it worthwhile if you're interested in that kind of thing.
The other thing to encourage people with the Patreon is that when we do eventually get some money, that will pay for the hosting costs.
The second thing we will divert it towards is getting some help with editing.
And the good thing about that is that will free us up and allow us to...
Release more content, essentially.
So you'll be contributing to the productivity and output of the feed.
Don't give people false hope, Matt.
But yes, so the Patreon stuff is to help the podcast.
So anyway, anyway, the first person is Rebecca C., who is a revolutionary thinker, revolutionary genius.
I can't even get this one right, Matt, but thank you, Rebecca.
Thank you, Rebecca.
Maybe you can spit out that hydrogenated thinking and let yourself feed off of your own thinking.
What you really are is an unbelievable thinker and researcher, a thinker that the world doesn't know.
That's right.
You are.
You are.
And next is Chris Spanos.
I have probably pronounced that terribly, but...
Yes, Chris, a friend of the pod and supplier of useful information.
And I already knew this, but he is a galaxy brain guru.
That's the impression I get from him.
Yep.
Well, we had a strong suspicion from knowing him on Twitter, but now he's paid up.
We have it confirmed.
You're sitting on one of the great scientific stories that I've ever heard, and you're so polite.
And, hey, wait a minute.
Am I an expert?
I kind of am.
Yeah.
I don't trust people at all.
Sorry, Chris.
But you are so polite.
That is true.
That part was accurate, at least.
And you're right not to trust people.
And Dave Lavelle, who is a conspiracy hypothesizer, is the next person to thank.
So thank you, Dave.
Thank you, Dave.
Every great idea starts with a minority of one.
We are not going to advance conspiracy theories.
We will advance conspiracy hypotheses.
That's right.
Only hypotheses.
That's what a real scientist does.
Dave would never advance a conspiracy theory.
That's not his back, man.
No, but he's not alone.
Mark Thorne is in on his conspiracy hypothesizing.
And yeah, so the two of them together are a potent force.
Every great idea starts with a minority of one.
We are not going to advance conspiracy theories.
We will advance conspiracy hypotheses.
And I now realize, Matt, that actually there being multiple conspiracy hypothesizers is kind of contradicting the Fred Weinstein's initial claim.
But the last member of that elite group is Thomas McKenzie for this week, who is also a conspiracy hypothesizer.
So thank you, Thomas.
Every great idea starts with a minority of one.
We are not going to advance conspiracy theories.
We will advance conspiracy hypotheses.
Thank you, Thomas.
I like that, you know, that rising inflection at the end.
Conspiracy hypotheses.
I probably get more joy out of these clips than anyone else.
So sorry about that.
I think it's good.
And we're going to talk about the social dynamics of the gurus, but in that vein.
I'd like to say that I feel like we have a very special and deep relationship to each and every one of our Patreons.
Yeah, and your tone of voice even shifted there.
I got the hair stood up in the back of my neck.
So, yeah, I'm on board your cult, Matt.
Let's make this happen.
So the last navel-gazing component is the reviews.
Which we solicit and duly reward people when they supply them.
And this week, I do have a negative review and a positive one, so I can balance the force.
So let's start with the negative review, which the title is Absolutely Horrendous.
Oh dear.
Oh dear.
Just two leftist sheeple who have been bought and sold by mainstream media.
I didn't know I'd been bought.
I haven't received any funds yet.
What's going on?
I know.
This is disappointing, but they take clips of what more successful people have said.
True, true.
That is true.
And then twist them out of context, react with childish banter while jumping to conclusions, name-calling, judging books by their cover, and using their bias against people who happen to be smarter.
Don't waste your time on this garbage.
That's harsh, Krish.
That's really harsh.
Look, don't listen to him.
The username for this account is also, I think, worth noting.
It's I'm going to cough in your mouth.
I feel like he kind of did.
With that review.
Yeah.
I also, you know, I just like the notion that we spend multiple hours on people going through their content, but we're judging books by their cover.
If only it were that easy.
That's a particularly impressive way to summarize what we do.
But like, yes, thank you for that review.
I'm going to cough in your mouth.
We're not everyone's cup of tea and we're certainly not his.
Yeah, different strokes for different folks.
You can't please everyone.
Left the sheeple, Matt.
That's what you are.
I mean, I knew you were, but I'm surprised that he extended that to me.
It's hurtful.
Yeah, well, hurtful.
But there we go.
We ask for reviews and this is what you do when you get them.
So the next one is...
Quite long, but I think it's very funny.
So I'm going to read it.
The title is Utterly Lacking in Metaphysical Substrate.
Again, it's pretty on the nose.
Already it's sounding very promising.
I'll try to do this in one take because I think that will honor it.
You might say, for example, that another podcast that seeks to share knowledge and offer critiques of nefarious ideas is a good thing.
But no, you'd be wrong.
That's not...
It depends entirely on your definition of good and podcast and knowledge and thing.
Without the requisite analysis of the metaphysical substrate that underpins these definitions, making a good podcast is meaningless and so is writing a bad review.
And even now, this is assuming that this is a review at all and not simply...
Using one-way conversation to develop my ideas in public.
It may just be an exercise in free speech, which is a secret foundation of our existence, of course.
What is clear, though, is that we connect through our faces.
And this is a podcast that has no faces, only voices.
And voices are used to tell you what to do and what to think.
What do you think about that?
Anyway, it should come as no surprise that if n is the number of podcasts prior to the existence of this podcast that serves a usual function in upholding Western democratic values, and that each of these podcasts represents an individual sub-process within a metaphorical quantum computer of enlightenment,
the computing power of negative n is now negative n plus one.
Clean your rooms.
Five stars.
Slow clap.
That was a work of art, Chris.
I am floored by that.
Yeah, take that cough in your mouth.
That's how you do a review cough in your mouth.
That's how it's done.
This was submitted by the Intergalactic Panda Wrangler.
I mean, that's a more fun name.
That's a much better name, too.
It's slightly less violently graphic.
So, yeah, I think we've covered, you know, the broad spectrum of our followers in this review of reviews.
I think that was just a wonderful review.
That was parody.
It's finest.
Yeah, that's better than I could have done.
And also, they got Eric Weinstein's weird use of mathematics.
Mathematical analogies.
And obviously, Peterson is in there.
But I also like hints of JP's ears as a recipe for guruism.
This is chef's kiss.
Very good.
And the other great thing about it is that our listeners are providing content for the podcast, so we don't have to do it.
So the circle is...
It's good.
That's true.
But like I say, Matt, self-indulgent book-reading banter.
That's what we're fuming for.
And that's what we deliver.
So I'm content.
Moving right along, Chris.
I have to write you in sometimes.
You said that was our last bit of navel-gazing, but it isn't.
We have one more final bit of navel-gazing with help.
Of Gretchen, a friend on Twitter who very kindly wrote a blog post about us, which we thought was really good, very nicely written, and mentioned a couple of interesting points.
So did you get a chance to read that, Chris?
I did, Matt, so don't dare try to call me out and do my homework.
I also should note that Gretchen is a nice illustrator, artist kind of person.
She drew up a sketch of the heterodox man.
The heterodox finger.
So also deserves credit for that.
So we'll post a link to the blog post.
Gretchen did raise a couple of little interesting topics I thought we could briefly touch on.
One of the interesting points she made was just pointing out that dilemma we've got in terms of collecting those snippets and playing those audio clips and then talking about them in a piecemeal fashion.
It tends to suit what we do in terms of focusing on the form and the manner of presentation.
It obviously isn't so great for providing a comprehensive overview of the actual content.
I should say Gretchen said very kind things about us that these were just offered as observations.
But I thought that was very true.
And I don't know if there's anything we can do about that or whether...
I felt this in the last episode on ContraPoints that we dove straight into some of the aspects of the presentation and then we tried to provide a bit of an overview of...
Her argumentation as well.
And I think we did, but we've got that dilemma that we don't want to just rehash the material because if you want to get the material, you could go watch the original thing.
So what are your thoughts about that?
Yeah, I think there's a definite trade-off in some respect.
And it doesn't just extend to the individual content that we cover because often the individuals...
Grander themes are not always represented, but they bleed into the content that we're looking at.
And I think in general, we do try to highlight those where that happens.
But part of it is by design, because if we dip into people's content on any given week, I think if we were to go back...
For example, to Scott Adams in a year's time.
I think that we would find pretty much the same kind of stuff, even if the topics that he was talking about had greatly shifted.
And so my hunch is that the better thing to do is to focus not so much effort on the individual content, except as a jumping off point.
We need to deal with the material.
And the individual points being made in whatever the material we've selected.
But I think the important thing is to try and link those to broader themes.
But it is a trade-off.
Yeah, yeah.
We're sort of analysing stuff on a meta level.
So yes, we are looking at the arguments they're putting together.
But really, we're not about debating with them or offering our own hot takes on whatever it is they're talking about.
If the arguments are just non-secretors or contradictory or just bad reasoning, then that's more what we're interested in detecting and pointing out.
I think we definitely do give our impressions on things.
And we flag this up more than most, that we know that we are letting our opinions and views color our responses in some respect.
And there's simply, there's just no way that you can completely avoid that.
And I think it's okay, because you're trying to give your opinion.
But I agree that it's important not to make that purely...
That's the point, right?
I don't agree with Jordan Peterson's social prescriptions or conservative worldview.
So that's what I want to focus on.
No, it's fine for him to want to promote conservative views and for me to disagree with it.
In analyzing his content, that isn't the salient feature, right?
It might be what motivates people to look at people critically or that makes them salient to you, but I don't think it should be the reason that we are looking at.
Yeah, I mean, we're doing our best to set that aside a little bit.
I think a good example is Ritka Bregman, where I do basically agree with his progressive utopian worldview or his ideological stance.
But perhaps it's just from being a grumpy professor marking...
Graduate students, bad writing and with red pen, in that I think at least to some degree I'm able to put that aside and grumpily point out the points where the argumentation isn't good.
All we can do is try to not be too opinionated, but it's fine for our opinions to bleed in there as well.
So the other interesting thing which Gretchen pointed out, which I don't think we really explicitly got into, although we did hint at it when we mentioned that In covering ContraPoints, we were interested in stretching our wings a little bit to not only get in a bit more ideological diversity or political diversity,
but also get someone who just wasn't like a middle-aged white guy.
And Gretchen points out that there's probably a good reason why the majority of gurus do tend to be these pretty well-off middle-aged white guys.
And I think there's something to that.
What do you think, Chris?
Yeah, I think there's two things that go together.
One is that there is an over-representation of men in the guru sphere and that white, middle-aged men with privileged backgrounds do definitely seem over-represented in the guru sphere,
right?
So inevitably, if we are dipping into gurus, we will over-sample.
From that demographic just because there's more of them available.
So I agree with her that that is the case and that there's things worthwhile discussing about why that might be the case in terms of the societal structures and the way that media attention is divvied up and whatnot.
But the second point that I think contributes to this is that us being who we are We are not people that are particularly active in the YouTube youth communities or the radical far-left podcasting and so on.
So there's an over-representation, but there's also that we are more familiar with people that fall into the category of centrist, heterodox, IDW types.
So that's going to bind to color things because I don't think it's true to say For example, that there aren't a ton of women in the health and wellness guru sphere, right?
There's plenty.
And in alternative spirituality spheres as well, there are a bunch of people who don't fall into the white male demographic category.
So those two things contribute together to make the white male middle-aged demographic overrepresented in the gurus we look at.
What do you think?
Yeah, I agree with that.
I think that's a pretty good summary, really.
I think it would be interesting for us to branch out and look at people in the health and wellness or anti-vaxxer communities as well, perhaps, at some point.
Yeah, I mean, I think that our general...
We'll get to these people, right?
If the podcast is here in the long term, then we'll branch out.
We'll have times when we maybe do several episodes on a specific type of guru or so on.
So I think that this is partly also an artifact of that we only have nine gurus covered so far.
So, yeah, let's see how badly skewed we are when we get the 100.
Sounds good.
Sounds good.
And we don't need to do anything then for another 90 episodes.
Okay, so the other thing that Gretchen mentioned, which I agree with heartily, is that main feature of that sense of grievance and victimhood.
That seems to be a theme with some, but not all of the gurus that we've covered.
And indeed, even elements of narcissism.
But we won't say too much about that right now, I think, because that segues nicely into the features of our gurometer.
Very good, Matt.
That was like almost a beautiful transition, except you flagged it up.
Which I think you're not supposed to do when you're doing a segue.
That's not a segue.
Well, no, it is, but if you say you're doing a Segway, is it still a Segway?
I was quite proud of the fact that I did a Segway, so I want to make sure that people didn't miss it.
We might develop a reputation for being too self-reflective and have the navel gazing at this, considering that we're now discussing the nature of Segways.
That's on you, Chris.
That is from me.
That is from me.
So I'll shut up now and allow you to segue in peace.
Okay, segueing away.
Let's start off with number one.
We've decided to call this Galaxy Brainness, which, okay, so we should say that we're giving all of these things labels.
There's no perfect label that sums everything up.
So what we're going to do is we're going to summarize them now.
We're going to give the label, and we're probably going to put this document or something like it.
For reference, on the Patreon, so we don't have to rehash it every time.
So starting with galaxy brainness, that's a fun term, but it's meant to capture the sense in which the individual is projecting themselves, an image of themselves as a polymath.
Being a kind of expert at everything because of their unique wisdom and insight makes them qualified to have hot takes and special insights and wisdom on every topic under the sun.
So to contrast that with someone who is a bona fide expert, a bona fide expert will often restrict themselves to their particular area of expertise.
We don't think it's in the least bit guru-like when they do speak authoritatively from that.
And a bit of a flag, I think, for this galaxy brain-ness is, I guess, signaling this smartness, using things like unnecessary references to high literature, complex theories or mathematics, or citing scientific,
say, psychological studies in an offhand kind of way, and doing that stuff in a way that isn't really...
You know, it's often not particularly appropriate and doesn't actually add anything to the dialogue.
It more seems to be about the signaling.
I think an important point to emphasize here is maybe some people are thinking, yeah, but not all gurus do that.
And that's the point.
With all of these features, there will be some who engage with it more than others.
And there are gurus who...
Restrict themselves to a limited number of topics, but it certainly is a feature of a whole bunch of them that they feel qualified to discuss almost every topic under the sun and often favorably compare their own insights as better quality,
more insightful than relevant experts in a given field.
And the point about making unnecessary references, the key point here is not that people referencing specialist literature is necessarily guru-ish.
It's perfectly fine for people to have expertise and to be aware of references or mathematical concepts that might be applicable.
But I think the key component here is that it's performative.
In making the references, it's often not really about flagging the content to people, but more demonstrating how much the guru knows and how widely read they are.
This is the point of this.
These 10 features are exploratory.
They're like our themes or tags.
And we're going to see what pops up and which ones tend to go together.
So we're going to apply it to the gurus that we've already covered, and then we're going to cover it to each guru that we do in subsequent episodes.
And yeah, we don't know what we're going to find.
It's just going to be an interesting little investigation, I suppose.
So number two is cultishness.
So this is the cultivation of unhealthy social dynamics, in particular fostering a strong in-group versus out-group.
Atmosphere.
It doesn't necessarily mean that they're establishing, you know, a cult community in some backwater part of the American side.
Cultish, Chris.
Cultish.
Yes, cultishness.
So some features that would be worth mentioning are use of flattery and indication that followers are a special group of free thinkers able to see past mainstream.
Narratives.
And also within this would fall the tendency to establish a personal rapport with followers, present them as friends or collaborators and colleagues.
And again, I don't want to do this for all of them, but we've often said that there are ways that you can do this that are not sinister.
And some of the features extend out of the guru sphere, like personal interaction with followers.
It's a very common thing in the Web 2.0 era.
Or doing shoutouts to followers, Chris.
Nothing wrong with that.
Yeah, for example, or reading reviews.
The thing that marks it out as slightly more sinister with the kind of people that we cover is that there's often a strong kind of parental component or authority figure where the followers are chastised when they behave in a way that the guru doesn't like or they threaten to withhold their content or these kind of things.
So we saw some of that when we discussed Eric Weinstein's.
But another separate component of the cultishness feature is that the in-group versus out-group dynamics means that they are extremely charitable when it comes to friends and allies, not willing to disparage them publicly and willing to look for the best interpretation of even their most ridiculous pronouncements.
And that does not extend to the art group, right?
The art group in general is a homogenous morass of bad takes, low-quality criticism, and enemies.
I guess that in-group, out-group distinction can take different forms.
With the IDW people that we've tended to cover so far, they tend to define the in-group not just as their audience and their listeners, their select group, but also...
They define it as people like us, who in their minds are the people who are heterodox thinkers, who are non-ideological, but above it all and committed to reason, etc.
And the out-group for them would be people who are purportedly more ideological, partisan, or convinced or enthralled to these institutional narratives.
So they position themselves as...
Our in-group is above it all.
So it's a little bit like your classic cults, like the First Baptist, I forget what they're called, the extremist Baptist group in the United States, who would think of themselves as the elect and everyone outside as flawed and sinners in some way.
But that's for IDW types.
So it's worth mentioning that that will change, that definition of the in-group and the out-group will change depending on...
How the group or the guru positions themselves.
So if you're an anti-vaxxer, say, or into health and wellness, it could well be quite different.
Yeah.
So I just wanted to mention a nice example of this that's my current favourite is what we call the Emperor's New Clothes Maneuver.
And the classic case is Eric Weinstein.
Actually, I think I remember Scott Adams doing this too, saying something like...
What I'm going to say next is very sophisticated.
So I don't expect all of you to be able to understand it, but the more perceptive of you will.
And then that will be followed by their hot take.
So obviously the manipulation going on here is that nobody wants to be the dullard that can't comprehend these smart ideas.
They want to be one of the smart people, one of the in-group, so it makes them more amenable to the message.
So, yeah, I'd follow under cultishness too.
Sure.
And I think the corally of that specific point is that it's often presented that anybody who would disagree is fundamentally limited.
So it isn't just that you're super perceptive if you get it.
If you don't get it, you're a moron.
And Scott Adams is very explicit about that, isn't he?
Yeah, so it's low-quality criticism thing.
It's just classifying any disagreement as essentially invalid in advance.
And in all those cases, there's always this supposed pristine realm of criticism or alternative views where people would be willing to engage and hear them out, but you just don't really ever see that.
Or if you do see it, it's very minor differences from the take offered by the guru.
So yeah, defining any negative assessment of their view as essentially being a limitation of the person offering that is a cultish characteristic.
Well done.
So that's cultishness done.
We're only up to number two, but our listeners are in for the long haul, Chris.
As I said, this is a halfway between a normal, ridiculously long episode and a short...
No, they're not short.
They're like the special episodes, which are just a normal length podcast.
So this will be almost ridiculously long.
All right.
Well, back to the grindstone.
We're up to number three.
I'll introduce this one.
And we've called this anti-establishment.
Anti-establishmentarianism.
Yeah.
Why use a shorter word when you could...
Look, and it's a little bit related to the previous one, because especially for the IDW-type people or heterodox, free-thinker, or conspiracy theorist people, they see themselves, and this is true of anti-vaxxers as well, and even when I think about it, you know, holistic health and spiritual health and wellness people,
they see themselves as anti-the establishment, and the establishment could be, you know, climate scientists, epidemiologists.
The pharmaceutical industry, the government and the government public health messaging, or the universities and these other sources of knowledge.
So I think a really good guru, good in inverted commas, is always undermining trust in the establishment.
They'll generally be saying things like that they're corrupted by the incentive structures or they've got groupthink.
Or some other kinds of reasons why they can't be trusted.
Well, in the interest of keeping people's daily schedules not filled up by us, I'll move on to grievance-mongering, because I think you did a good job with the anti-Islam humanitarianism.
Oh, my God.
No comment.
That's amazing, Chris.
Yes.
In part, it's because I'm so eager to get to the next one.
A personal favorite of mine and one which I think the importance of cannot be overstated in most of the gurus that we've looked at and that I think that we will look in the future is the grievance mongering.
So this is the tendency for gurus to have their personal victimhood narratives that they carry around where they feel that their ideas are being suppressed by institutions, the media.
What are you saying, Matt?
That's a bad cough.
Yes.
And in general, there is a tendency to have lists of enemies that people succeed on.
So it's this sense that somebody has been hard done by not giving their fair shake.
And often it's accompanied by, though we'll get to this, the...
The view that this is why their ideas have not been given due attention by the world or why people are failing to understand what's going on in the world.
They're not able to hear the insights from the guru because the guru is being suppressed and has the goods and history to explain that to anyone that will listen.
So, yeah, it's just a frequent retelling of victim narratives and fixation on the people that are holding them back.
It's also very convenient because it explains why when they claim, for instance, to have discovered a revolutionary new theory of, oh, I don't know, say, physics, quantum mechanics,
economics.
Evolution.
Evolution are just random examples.
It's very convenient because it kills two birds with one stone.
On one hand, it plays into this narcissistic self-aggrandizing mode and provides a convenient explanation for why there is very little evidence or very little support for their claims.
So, yeah, the next one is narcissism.
And this is a particularly important one because when we look at these gurus, it does seem to be a common feature.
And I think the best analogy is someone that we're all familiar with is Donald Trump.
And he's someone who's been called a fascist and authoritarian and racist and all of these things.
And he may well be or he may well enact many things that fit with those descriptors.
But in my humble opinion, what he's really all about is about Donald Trump, right?
He's a rampant narcissist and everything he's doing is purely to, perhaps not purely, but primarily to fuel that psychosis.
Now, I guess people will call this an ad hominem, but we do propose that many of the gurus are motivated by Narcissism, perhaps?
I don't.
Look, I don't think it's an adhanom to know when people are presenting themselves as people with world-shaking insights that see things that almost no one else is talking about or willing to recognize and that emphasize their own brilliance is unusual.
It's a really weird feature.
Like, when we play the clips...
About people talking about how insightful and the level of knowledge that they have, it makes me physically cringe at times.
And I'm not the one making the claim, right?
It defends my Northern Irish self-deprecation sense that anybody could make those levels of hyperbolic self-aggrandizing statements.
I don't think it's ad hominem.
I think it's simply acknowledging the reality that self-promotion, self-aggrandizing, and the narcissistic streak is a really common and really important characteristic, maybe one of the most defining aspects about what makes someone a guru.
And I think that's part of the reason that people reacted negatively to us.
Including someone like ContraPoints, who is clearly openly self-deprecating, right?
So for that reason, they don't seem to fit the guru template well.
And I agree with that.
So this is a feature that if we cover other people like ContraPoints, that's part of the reason that maybe they aren't so widely recognized as gurus.
Yeah, yeah.
The good thing about this scoring system is that it helps illustrate why we think someone that we cover actually isn't.
A guru, at least in the negative sense.
I guess the one thing we have to mention is that obviously we're not using the word narcissism in a clinical sense.
You know, we're making no clinical diagnoses here.
It's simply used in the...
Is this Matthew Brown attempting to avoid legal threats with your identification of yourself as a psychologist?
That's good, Matt.
Good.
Yes, we are not offering any...
Clinical diagnosis here.
Actually, you know what, Chris?
Let's just be doubly cautious and relabel this narcissism-ish.
Yeah, that's fantastic.
That won't be hard for me to pronounce at all.
So narcissism-ish.
That's right.
I just wanted to hear you try to pronounce it.
And the other thing to be said about this self-aggrandizing, attention-seeking, narcissism thing is that it does seem to be a feature of this new infosphere that we all inhabit.
Which many people have recognised is a kind of attention economy where everybody is competing for people's limited attention and operating in pursuit of clicks and likes.
And I feel pretty confident in saying that many of our gurus do pay close attention to the kinds of statements and signalling that they make on social media and they respond to those.
Incentives, basically signals of more attention.
And to some degree, they and all of us are somewhat being trained by these platforms and just the medium in which we inhabit to be more.
So this is something we had a very interesting conversation today with a philosophy professor, Tai Nguyen, which I actually hope we'll be able to interview on the podcast soon.
And he talks about some of these issues.
So number six is what we have titled the Cassandra Complex.
The tendency for gurus to present themselves as warning of a danger that allows...
Cannot recognise.
And often that they are uniquely qualified to identify.
So in terms of the gurus that we've covered, we've probably seen this most clearly in the James Lindsay example, where he explicitly compared himself to the scientists in 90s movies who were warning of impending disasters.
I think this is a common feature also of claiming to be able to explain The present social moment or elements of social fractioning or the stuff that we see around us today with the culture war and with the collapse of trust in institutions and so on.
So basically diagnosing the social ills of the day and identifying where the threat is coming from.
What's the cause?
What's the core issue of this threat?
Another component of that, or something that's highly related to it, is the tendency to present themselves as having correctly diagnosed the situation, not only now, but in the past.
And so examples would be that you were aware of the financial collapse, right?
You saw it coming before anyone else, but were ignored.
What do you think, Matt?
Given my deep familiarity with...
The character of Cassandra, I'm worried that I might have mixed some nuances, but how did I do?
Yeah, you had a dead right, so yeah, definitely.
They do style themselves as somebody who is warning people usually of a dire threat.
They may be positioning themselves in a situation where they are the ones who can see clearly what's coming, and the...
The rest of the sheep or the institutions or whatever can't see it.
Left the sheep on that.
That's the sheep.
And it's something that you talk about a lot, which is this tendency of gurus to essentially make a lot of predictions, a lot of hot takes.
It's going to happen.
That's going to happen.
And they fire off a lot of them.
And most of them just quietly vanish into the ether.
But if they make a hit...
If they get one of those predictions right, then obviously you can bet that they'll be returning to that and crowing about how they called it.
Yeah, and it's also, as is always the case with those predictions, the definition of what is a hit and the definition of a precise prediction is extremely flexible.
So the ability to claim hits is pretty much...
Always there, right?
Like as long as you word things carefully enough.
So getting hits and even actually retrospectively going back to things and reinterpreting them seems to be a common feature.
It's quite similar to the tricks that psychics and tarot card readers use.
No, it is.
Yeah, it is.
So like I say, the Cassandra Complex, that famous figure from Russian literature.
No.
I'm just demonstrating my galaxy brain nature, Matt.
I know all the greats and that's why I understand completely that reference.
We are cementing our reputation as anti-gurus in every sense of the word.
So we've called the next one Revolutionary Theories.
And these are these claims to have revolutionary theories and super deep accomplishments in one or more fields of endeavor.
The guru might hypothetically claim that they're worthy of a Nobel Prize, for instance.
They were that good.
They might claim to have insights into, say, psychology, putting together theories and Material from other sources to essentially provide a completely unique point of view.
And the other aspect of it is this thing that you've coined, Chris, scientific hipsterism, which is this idea that the guru isn't content with the most straightforward answer, the kind of answer that most people might believe.
They really want to mark themselves out as being special and different.
So they are drawn to an alternative take which distinguishes themselves as having that unique insight.
Or it may be that their take is the same as everyone else's but for different reasons.
So, for instance, they might, well, yes, I don't think that COVID was released from a Chinese laboratory.
A part of a secret weapons program.
But it's not for the reasons you think.
It's actually for this reason.
There's a beautiful illustration of that, that Brett Weinstein offers, where he casts doubt and skepticism in the manner of climate change skeptic about the accuracy of climate models and the reliability of the...
Measurements that we have and projections and so on.
So all of the familiar things.
But yet he doesn't arrive at the usual skeptic outcome.
And that's because of the YAML creators.
Haven't heard of the YAML creators, Matt?
You wouldn't have heard of them.
No, because I'm not very cool.
I'm not tuned into what's cool at the moment.
What are they?
These are like large gaping holes in the Siberian Peninsula, which have emerged possibly because of, I think, pockets of methane.
I can't remember.
I looked into it at the time.
But they're very visually striking, and they're a lesser known thing, and they are potentially connected to climate change.
But essentially...
They are not the key piece of evidence in that edifice.
But for Brett, those are one of the key pieces of evidence to convince him.
And it is not things like the IPCC report or the general consensus of the relevant scientific experts.
It's these visually striking, lesser known...
Geological features.
And I think that's a nice illustration of the tendency.
I can almost imagine someone at a dinner party saying, you know, the YAML creators?
Oh, yeah, you wouldn't have heard about them.
Yeah, I know.
So it's all about that very strong drive to have the special insights that nobody else has.
So when they are not happy with...
Taking the contrarian point of view, in this case saying that climate change isn't happening, the next best thing is to go, well, yes, I do agree with the thing that...
The everyday people, all the rest of you think, but not for the same reasons, for much more interesting reasons.
Yeah, I'm just a better person.
Before you segue...
I wasn't going to segue.
I wanted to say one more.
Okay, I'll say one more thing.
Oh, no, you weren't going to segue.
My segue detector malfunctioned, so I'll just reset it.
So please continue.
Okay, final word on this topic is I just want to distinguish this, number seven, revolutionary theories, from number one, the galaxy brainness.
Because if you remember, Galaxy Brainness is about being a polymath and being like an expert at sort of everything.
Whereas this, so that's more about breadth.
This one, in terms of having those deep takes, is more about, well, depth.
I have my own deep insight to offer, which is that...
So the clearest example of this is when you actually claim to have a theory that will revolutionize a discipline or that can resolve some social problem.
That's clear, right?
You either have those or you don't.
But I think there's degrees of it in that there are gurus that we've looked at who are not really offering their own individual revolutionary theory.
They're more offering ways of thinking.
And emphasizing the mainstream views.
But that's different from that you have some new science that you want to introduce the world to if they will only listen.
And it might fit in line with, you know, if you think about Scientology, the system of analysis that it offers, right?
Dianetics, this new science for understanding the self and working out all your personal problems.
That to me would be the prototypical example of somebody having a revolutionary theory, whereas there are gurus who don't claim to have such a specific thing.
Like Scott Adams might have insights into persuasion and techniques of manipulation, but he's not so clearly outlining the Adams field of manipulation or something like that.
Maybe this is me not knowing his consequences.
Yeah.
No, I think you're right about that.
I think he would fall short of claiming to have revolutionized the whole field or having had discovered something that fundamentally would change the world.
And that is something that's claimed by, say, Scientologists or...
Certain other gurus.
Okay, just a question on this.
Sorry, Matt.
I'll never let you escape number seven, but Jordan Peterson on this.
Where would you put him?
Because I don't think he has something that he would regard as completely revolutionizing psychology or physics or so on, but he definitely does have a kind of view of the world.
And the system for interpreting what's going on in the world, which is very particular to him, and which has specific concepts like postmodern Marxism and whatnot.
So for me, I'd put him maybe somewhere in the middle, but what about you?
Actually, I was going to say exactly the same.
I would have put him somewhere in the middle.
That's because we're great people who think alike.
So, yeah.
You must be right.
This is just showing the gurometer is a very precise instrument.
Yes.
This is interradar reliability.
Are we ready to go on to number eight?
Well, I was going to segue.
Look, I had a good one.
Go ahead and segue.
All right.
Here's a beautiful segue.
In contrast to the...
The clarity that we just offered with our gurometer, the next category is titled pseudo-profound bullshit.
That was a great segue, Chris.
I'm proud of you.
That was good.
Yeah, it would have worked if it wasn't for you pesky Australians.
I would have got away with it.
In any case, this is a category which we took the title from a psychology paper, which is quite well known.
Looking at the tendency for people to interpret meaning into things which look profound and complex.
Well, Chris, I should just say that that paper has got a marvellous title.
It's called On the Uses and Abuses of Pseudo-Profound Bullshit.
But it's also worth saying that this is something that's studied by psychologists, but also is studied in the philosophy literature as well.
Oh, is it?
Yeah, so it might surprise some people, but bullshit is a technical...
Psychological and philosophical term.
Are you saying philosophers actually did research on something and produced insight?
When I say research, I'm putting my fingers in the air and waving them around.
Yes, they do research in the sense that they think about it and they write about it.
I'll just delete those emails I was sending to Liam and Aaron.
Sadly, this won't be an example to tell them.
So Matt, being an expert in this that you are, what is pseudoprofone bullshit?
Okay, so we already talked about the revolutionary theories and that's more about the content.
They're claiming that they have content.
A revolution theory of some kind.
This bullshit is really about the form, about the manner in which nothing is essentially presented as something.
So the master of bullshit who is often cited is Deepak Chopra.
And I don't have any Deepak Chopra-isms to hand, but I might just quickly Google that while we talk.
But if people are familiar with him, that's the perfect example.
So it sounds very meaningful.
It sounds like something quite important and deep is being said.
But if you actually stop and think about it, you realize that very little is being said.
Yeah, maybe it's a bit like Technobabble in Star Trek, where it sounds like they're actually making science-y discussions, but it's just jibber-jabber using scientific terms to advance a plot point.
And similarly, we've seen with gurus like Jordan Peterson and Russell Brand have this remarkable ability, which Dan Gilbert noted with Eric Weinstein, that they're able to link To geller complex metaphors in a very poetic way and often to create impressive edifices of layered metaphors to make rather banal points.
So this ties in a little bit with, you know, references to literature and theories, unnecessary references, because that always helps.
Metaphor is from some obscure discipline or unknown scientific theory to help bolster the credibility of it.
Yeah, yeah.
So there's a wide variety of techniques and flourishes that one can use to give that sensation of something very important is being said while actually saying very little.
I think it's broader than the Deepak Choprisms, but I'll just read out a couple just because they're fun.
Okay, see if you can spot the problems with these quotes, Chris.
It is the nature of babies to be in bliss.
Yeah, I like that.
Okay, let's not overanalyze this.
No, given that I currently have a one-year-old baby, I would say it's not the only aspect of his nature.
That is true.
As a parent, I agree with you there.
Here's another one.
There are no extra pieces in the universe.
Everyone is here because he or she has a place to fill, and every piece must fit itself into the big jigsaw puzzle.
I'm conjuring up images of Nazi Germany and the people fitting into the cogs of the machine.
You will contribute to the state apparatus, but I don't think that's what he has in mind there.
But yeah, it's beautiful in a way.
Last one, to think is to practice brain chemistry.
That's true.
That's true.
When you're thinking there's chemical things happening in your brain.
Yeah, so that gives you a sense, but it's much more than that.
So that's kind of saying nothing while appearing to say something.
So it could be the kind of thing that you see on those inspirational memes, but it could also be just a kind of double talk where you say A, but it's kind of also not A. It's maybe A and B, but also neither.
It depends on your point of view, that kind of thing.
Yeah, I think this actually is a skill because we often highlight how authoritative and clear-speaking many of the people that we cover are.
And this might be partly a process of editing.
Not that we would know anything about that.
But I think it is still true to say that most of the gurus have a high level of verbal agility.
They're able to express themselves in a way that sounds afforded to them, which is often evocative.
So yeah, I think it's a genuine skill and can bleed into charisma, but doesn't necessarily have to, like Scott Adams.
Like Scott Adams, yes.
Who's got the charisma of a rattlesnake.
I'm sorry, let's just test out this particular one.
If you had to rate Jordan Peterson on this, What score would you give him out of five?
Five.
Not much hesitation there, Chris.
Well, I still have the alchemical lemon and the great crystalline structure lodged firmly in my databank, so I'll never get that time back, Matt.
Very good.
All right.
We could say more about that, but we'll press on.
No, but no.
Yeah, a personal fever.
Another personal fever.
It's almost like we planned this out.
It's almost like we wrote these based on what we thought.
Yeah, I was meaning the order that we're doing them in, although we didn't plan that out.
So I don't know why I was hinting at big conspiracies, but that is relevant because this category is conspiracy mongering.
Oh yeah, great segue.
Anyway, yeah, so conspiracy mongering.
It's something I talk about all the time, and I think it's a really common characteristic of gurus.
And it is what it says on the tin, this tendency to present the underlying circumstances and events.
There are conspiratorial forces, which are often mainstream media, government institutions, scientific bodies that are conspiring together.
For some, nefarious and often to control society or to advance a particular narrative.
Yeah, I guess the key thing about, this is standard stuff, it's a well-researched area, conspiracy theories, they basically involve the secret coordination of powerful and malevolent groups and institutions who are operating in secret and,
yeah, powerful influences in the world.
And they're kind of the go-to factor to explain events.
So even though their theories are kind of simple in a way because it's always aliens or it's always the lizard people or the New World Order or whatever, there's often quite elaborate theories constructed to explain what can be quite mundane events.
And something that you've pointed out a few times, Chris, is the strategic use of disclaimers.
So it goes straight to that.
I'm not saying it was aliens, but it was aliens meme.
You know, people kind of know that conspiracy theorizing isn't great.
So there's quite a clever technique to say, look, I know this sounds like a conspiracy theory, but we're just exploring some hypotheses here.
So that's a bit of a red flag as well.
The other interesting thing about this factor of conspiracy mongering is, That they sometimes make it personal.
So there aren't just broad-scale global conspiracies to cover up or create lies around climate change or something.
There's actually specific conspiracies that are targeting them and their friends.
So Scientologists, for instance, believe that there are powerful groups out to get them.
The Westboro First Baptist Church believes in conspiracies about the powerful institutions are out to get them.
And some of our gurus have these tailor-made conspiracies that the world is targeting them or suppressing them and their friends.
So it does dovetail nicely with that grievance mongering that we discussed earlier.
Yeah.
I think this ties into a lot of things because it's also, you know, the suppression of their revolutionary theories is often tied into these conspiracy edifices.
And like you said, it often involves hinting that they agree, but not for the normal reasons, with well-known conspiracies.
It's a kind of propensity towards conspiracism as an exploratory framework that is valid, right?
And which offers good explanatory power for the world and why it is and why people would oppose their insights.
I think conspiracy theorists are often overlapping with the kind of people that are called gurus.
So there are gurus who are conspiracy theorists and vice versa, and there are some who are not.
But I think a low level of conspiracism It's almost a prerequisite for being a guru.
Maybe there are people who don't do it, but I think they would definitely be more rare.
You know, it's kind of ironic because it sort of fits into what's-his-face Foucauldian worldview, right?
That everything is about force and power, or at least the popular portrayal of him.
And our gurus are often reeling against that kind of model.
But in a very real way, they do see society...
As a competing array of forces.
And the really interesting thing is that even though the gurus like Scott Adams or Eric Weinstein rail against these malevolent forces of exerting power and manipulation and secret networks of influence, they are actually quite proud to report.
On themselves enacting those selfsame manipulative tactics, which is, I think, an interesting giveaway in terms of essentially what you just said, that they really do have a very cynical worldview that is primarily about the exercise of power.
Yeah, so just to make sure I got it right, you mean they're identifying?
Those forces in the world or they are crowing about their ability to manipulate the world using those powers?
I'm saying that they crow about their ability to manipulate the world.
We heard Scott Adams be quite proud of the deceptive techniques that he uses.
He is, but do you think in general that people are?
I'm also thinking of, for instance, the Brett Weinstein story where they were railing against the supposed academic networks of influence that were suppressing them, but also going ahead and using their connections to do quite...
What is in academia quite unusual things.
For instance, getting very important people to write a letter to a journal to say that you really should accept this paper.
Oh yeah, they definitely do it.
But I don't think they are aware of, like in the case of Eric and Brett, I don't think they would acknowledge that they were doing anything manipulative there or attempting to use network.
Are you saying that they lack self-awareness?
Yeah, but look, I actually think that there is another point where they do overlap more directly, which is Eric and various other gurus would regard themselves as being able to understand.
How systems of power work.
And whether or not they make use of those structures, they'll often cast themselves as being aware of it.
And if they wanted to, they would be able to ascend or to influence things, but they aren't going to play the games that people want them to.
And so there's this presentation of seeing through the illusion, peeking behind the curtain.
That they themselves are not subject to the same restrictions or the same dynamics that limit others.
So in that sense, it is kind of having your cake and eating it because they are still often interested and willing to play with those networks, but they're kind of presenting it as they're doing it on their own terms.
Yeah.
And look, I definitely agree with your characterization as peeking behind the curtain.
They have a view into the hidden world about how things really work.
And so someone like Scott Adams or Eric Weinstein are strongly implying that they have insight into that.
And, you know, that's part of the wisdom that they share with their followers.
Yeah, and I mean, you already hit on that, but the strategic disclaimers thing is a really key component to this general...
Tendency to conspiracy monger, because if you're going to conspiracy monger, you're going to get called a conspiracy theorist, and you need to have a strategy for how you will deflect those criticisms.
And by and large, it tends to be iller to point out that real conspiracies exist, and therefore, kind of like the Galileo gambit was the people who talked about Nixon and Watergate.
Was that a conspiracy?
So you would have disparaged them.
But also, To include statements that make it so that you have the ability to retreat from any claim, right?
Or to emphasize for different audiences that you're not saying the Twin Towers was brought down by an insider job.
You're just asking questions, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
No, that's really good points.
And yeah, you almost can't overemphasize the degree to which this conspiratorial...
Reasoning is the framework, is the glue that holds pretty much all of the argumentation and content together.
The thing that distinguishes this stuff of poor argumentation generally is making large leaps or positing these systems with many intricate moving parts with very little evidence and cherry-picking evidence and ignoring the other evidence.
So really, if you took away the conspiratorial glue, that logic, that framework, then they really wouldn't be able to say very much because you need to engage in that conspiratorial ideation in order to be expansive in the various theories and ideas and suggestions that are proposed.
Yeah, it's like it's a complete...
partner to the anti-establishmentarianism category the two of them pair up nicely so that i think leads us to our our final beautiful rounded number
10 category it is grifting grifting grifting this is doing terrible stuff like um pressuring people to become patrons on your podcasts so that you can pay for stuff.
Yeah, this is that fourth wall irony thing we talked about with ContraPoints.
Yeah, we're very deft at that.
I think that the level of income, however, makes it a different proposition from us and the people that we're talking about.
But yeah, so grifting essentially is the way that people might This is a common accusation in the current atmosphere.
The implication is often that people are not sincere.
They're just out to make a quick buck.
But I don't actually see the two things in contradiction because I think in many cases the people are sincere insofar as they believe what they're selling, but they are then perfectly willing to use it to make a profit.
And we could call grifting profiteering.
Because I think that's the element of it that makes it into a guru feature.
The willingness not to just have books.
This is what all public intellectuals or all prominent figures will have something because they have an income.
So in many cases they are selling books or they are selling courses or whatever.
But there's degrees and elements of profiteering like willingness to shill.
Supplements or to monetize content in a way that is more like branding, putting your name on things.
I think that's the thing which I'm envisioning.
So it doesn't mean that all the other stuff isn't there.
This isn't like an or.
To me, it's an and.
You can be a grifter and be somebody who genuinely believes in your insights.
Yeah, look, I like this category even though I don't necessarily like the term just because it's, you know, calling someone a grifter has been overused.
We could say profiteering.
Yeah, we can call it profiteering.
And look, I just want to distinguish it from normal monetization or making an income.
You and I don't make it come from doing podcasting or whatever, but, you know, some people do and there's nothing inherently wrong with that.
So if points is getting advertising revenue from YouTube or even people subscribing to a sub stack or a Patreon for a particular guru, giving them a few dollars a month, you know, I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with that.
Or, for instance, being an author and, you know, not giving your books away.
Selling them, you know, and getting royalties like any author would.
So that's all normal stuff.
I guess one can get hints though that grifting is going on.
Like when you say that in Alex Jones type style, they're selling brain enhancement supplements, which clearly even someone as mental as Alex Jones knows is just ripping people off.
Okay, bad example, Chris.
There's a really good example, which is from Alex Jones, which is that he is now, although he wasn't before, in the coronavirus skeptic arena, right?
It's all exaggerated.
It's not that dangerous, blah, blah, blah.
Masks are about social control.
However, he sells masks on his website, and he actually had to address this recently, this contradiction.
But that's the thing, right?
It's completely counter to his...
Ideology, but it's a way to make money.
Yeah, it's clearly profiteering.
I mean, a great example, I forget his name, unfortunately, but there was a famous Australian health and wellness guru who recently got cancelled for being a Nazi.
We talked about him.
But I mentioned then that he, as well as being a COVID skeptic, he was also selling some sort of machine for $10,000, which claimed to cure basically all illnesses, including COVID.
So that's grifting, right?
Yeah, also the infamous vaccines cause autism guy, what's his face?
Wakefield, Andrew Wakefield.
It's worth noting that he was at the time that he was writing his publications, casting doubt on single dose vaccines.
He was also had a patent or was involved with some company that had a patent for multiple dose vaccines, right?
So he was financially incentivized to cast doubt on the...
Single combined dose vaccines.
In any case, I think a good illustration of why this category is not necessarily so completely clear cut is like there are gurus who I don't particularly like in terms of, you know, what they do or what their output is like the Weinsteins.
And there are elements where they are monetizing followers, right?
You know, they have Patreons and they, but I wouldn't actually class them as particularly high on this.
Yeah.
I would JPCers.
Yes.
Alternatively.
So I don't think it's just the case of us saying it's fine for the people we like to make profit or the people that we agree with.
That's not the point.
It's more about the kind of level of crass commercialization that is in your guru's spiel.
So JPCers for me is a four or five.
And someone like...
Eric or Brett are probably a two or something like that.
I'd agree with that.
I'm sure they would quite like to make as much money as they could, but that's true of a lot of people.
I don't see ridiculous amounts of crass commercialisation or exploitation in a financial way, but if you take someone like J.P. Sears and his connections to the organisation, the London Real, which has complete...
Nutcases like, oh, what's the lizard guy?
What's his name?
David Icke.
David Icke, the guy who came up with those crazy theories.
They scammed like $1.6 million from their followers to help them shift all their content from YouTube to a private platform where they would then charge them much larger amounts of money to access.
A blatant case of grifting.
So, long story short, I know you have to go soon, Chris.
I think number 10 is a good category.
And we are done.
We have a bonus points round, though.
You're not out of the woods yet, listeners.
We're not done yet.
Now, we might think of more of these.
In fact, people could write in and suggest any suggestions for bonus points.
But at the moment, we will award bonus points on the Garometer for every invented neologism or acronym.
Yeah, prominent ones, because there are people who invent them every day, so it would take us too long to catalogue.
But ones that have slipped into recognised usage, I think, are good, or that they commonly are known for, right?
I was just going to say, if they invent the acronyms or the neologisms in the content we cover...
Then we, you know, it's only fair to give them some points for it.
Yes, agreed.
Agreed.
So there might be people that do this more frequently, but like, you know, a bespoke terminology and vocabulary is something that you find in cult communities.
And I think a lot of gurus use as branding.
We haven't covered them, but I think Nicholas Taleb is one such person who...
Has a habit of making books to advance a specific concept.
And the issue to which that these are very innovative is one that we might consider.
But it's certainly true that they are good at making themselves associated with specific concepts.
So, yeah, bonus points.
Bonus points.
I mean, look, we could technically fold something like this into number eight, the pseudo-profound bullshit, where...
Neologisms and usually technical sounding or acronyms, people do intuitively associate that with science-y technical type writing.
So if we really tried, we could fold it into that.
But I think it's fine to have a bonus round, so we'll leave it out.
And we are open to more suggestions for bonus points.
Agreed.
Yes.
So any suggestions, email us at...
DecodingTheGurus at gmail.com.
Or you can message us on Twitter at GurusPod.
And we are both individually on Twitter at R4C Dent.
That's yours, right, Matt?
Yeah, that's C Dent.
And mine is C underscore Kavanaugh.
So look at that.
I just did the segue, Matt.
And I also did a smooth, beautiful outline of ways that you can contact us.
Wow.
How was that?
What would you be at that?
A segue and an outro together.
God, I'd give that a 5 out of 5. That's, you know, particularly since you've never done that successfully before.
So, yeah, full points.
Me too.
Me too.
That's what I'd give myself.
Yeah.
Next week, we will have the Douglas Murray episode out, as promised.
But hopefully this is interesting.
And like Matt says, we'll make this available in some document somewhere.
And in the coming weeks, if you want to play along, you can score the gurus as you go.
We should make some sort of document that people can print out, like a little sheet that they can mark it on.
