*Patreon Preview* Lex and Haidt: Gurometer Ratings
What's this? Another episode?Well, sort of...Providing both a tantalising peak behind the Patreon curtain and an apology for the delayed release, we decided to release this week's Gurometer episode to everyone.Witness the science (/art) of Gurometry in action, as we fire up the Gurometer(TM) to calculate the precise Guru-nature of a techno monk and a perturbed social scientist.If you want to play along you can add your own scores for Lex, Haidt, or any of our previous gurus here:Rate the Gurus websiteAnd if you want to check the collected results:Gurometer Results
And we are here for Decoding the Guru's Gurometer episode.
And for people who don't normally join us for this, this is usually a patron bonus, but we're going to release it on the main feed as a little apology for the delay in releasing the main episode.
And what we do here...
Is we use the highly developed rigorous science of gurometry created and perfected really by Matt and I to quantify scientifically to very fine points of discernment the exact guru properties of the gurus that we've looked at on the episodes.
And we do this by scoring them on 10 characteristics which we think are quite common amongst gurus.
What do you think about that, Matt?
Was that an accurate description of what the garometer is for and does?
Yeah, very good description.
I mean, people can be misled by the name.
It sounds kind of steampunkish.
It gives the impression that there's some sort of rotary mechanisms at play, but actually it's a very precise instrument and where we can put very exact numerical scores on each of these domains that we think are associated with.
This phenomena, this complex that we call guruness.
Yeah, yeah.
And like, I hope not.
You know, people know, right, that the tongue is in the cheek.
Just in case, you know, sometimes you need to signal to people online.
The tongue is in the cheek.
It's not a precise science.
We know, we know.
Yeah, especially Americans.
They sometimes miss this.
Yeah, that's it.
Throwing shade.
Throw shade at American.
So, Matt, before we look, and we're going to put Lex and Jonathan into the grometer simultaneously because we did cover them both.
But I just wanted to mention, I don't think you noticed.
Lex just announced today he's off.
Have you seen where he is?
What's he up to?
I believe he's gone to Ukraine, isn't he?
Yeah, he's there now, I think, already.
and the angling for an interview with Zelensky.
Would you read the chances of that?
How do you feel about that?
There's chances of getting an interview?
Yeah.
Yeah, he might.
I mean, he gets big names.
His podcast has got, you know, he gets really big names on his podcast.
So it's not beyond the realm of possibility that he could get Zelensky.
I mean, Zelensky will talk to Boris Johnson.
So, I mean, on the other hand, Lex Friedman doesn't have a whole bunch of military...
Hardware, I assume, to donate.
So that counts against him, I think.
Well, but he does have the power of love, Matt.
He does have the power of love.
But yeah, I think there's a chance he could because, you know, I was thinking about it and I have to give him kudos because he has gone over to what is an active war zone and seems to be looking to interview people.
I presume he's going to go to Russia.
I fear that this will end up like a bad both-siding exercise in the long term.
But we'll see how it goes.
Not prejudged.
But I think like for Zelensky, I mean, Lex has a significant audience.
The interview isn't going to be a hardball interview.
So it really just depends on whether he judges it worthwhile or not.
But yeah, so I think it could happen.
I think the bigger concern is when if...
And when Lex goes to Russia and what he chooses to do there, because I think it's pretty easy for Lex to be used as a mouthpiece for the regime over there.
Like, he's not the kind of person that can ask critical questions of somebody skilled at media manipulation.
I don't think he's going to get Putin to sit down.
I can't imagine that, but yeah.
Yeah, he may well sit down with somebody from the administration, which, yeah, it's hard to imagine that being.
Like, what would it accomplish?
What could it possibly accomplish?
It's hard to imagine it accomplishing something good, to be honest.
If you want the Steelman, the positive version, right, it would be that Lex can help people empathize with the different perspectives on the war and how these two leaders are actual men dealing with, you know, complex.
They're not beasts or monsters.
They're people that have their own point of view of the conflict, and that's the way it is.
Like, I imagine that is...
Part of how Lex would see it and he would see it as basically increasing people's empathy for everyone involved on both sides.
That would be the pitch, I would imagine.
Yeah, that's the pitch.
Trying to imagine someone going off and doing that with Mussolini in the 1930s.
Exactly.
Or a little man, you know, old Adolf.
Like, I think, like, I have no difficulty understanding that Putin is a man with his own perspective and his own slights and his own interests and that he regards what he's doing as justified.
You know, I don't, like, Robert Wright's cognitive empathy thing, I don't really get it hard.
That's the wrong way to express that.
I don't really find it hard to understand the perspective of dictators.
But in this case, having that empathy does not then really make me inclined to agree at all with Putin.
And I think people that have known him, you recommended the podcast recently, Matt, where people talked about their...
Long-term experiences with dealing with him, diplomats, leaders of other countries, and people from his own administration.
And they're all, all of their assessments are very similar.
And they're very much of the view that the conflict is his fault.
And it's, you know, his doing.
And yeah, that like it...
That the notion that some people like to paint it as an avoidable reaction to Western aggression just doesn't countenance the actual facts of what states in that region face from Russia as a geopolitical reality.
Yeah, yeah.
Agreed.
So it'll be interesting to see what comes out of that hill.
We'll no doubt end up interviewing somebody from those places and just to see how he handles it.
I mean, we can imagine how he would handle it.
Yeah, but we might be wrong.
We might be wrong.
And we've talked about that we might do a coda on Lex because he did a recent interview with Joe Rogan that was quite interesting.
And if we do it, we're not going to do the whole episode.
We'll just do like a short segment on it, a kind of coda, a bit more culture war episode.
But in any case, let's get to the...
The reason we're here, Matt.
The garometer.
That's what we're here for.
Yep.
Okay, so let's do this garometer.
In the case of Lex Ribbon in particular, like I said in the episode, I feel like to some degree the jury is out with me with Lex because in the material that we covered, I'm not sure we had a huge amount to go on.
So my suggestion, Chris, is that we can rate Lex in a preliminary kind of way.
And if we cover him again, we could maybe adjust our...
Initial impressions.
Does that sound okay?
Well, yeah, I believe that's in subsection six of the Gurometer Constitution.
That's allowed.
So I'll allow it.
Yes, so this is the provisional score of Lex Freeman based on the content that we looked at.
That is always our provision.
Our scores are like an amber fossil from Jurassic Park of when we scored the gurus.
So don't take it as a living document.
But still, it's very accurate.
Very accurate.
Okay, so our first component on the Grometer is galaxy brainless.
And this refers to the tendency of the potential guru to offer their hot takes widely across a constellation of topics.
How willing are they to do so?
And Lex and Haidt, I think, first of all, Haidt, no.
I think he's relatively...
He does talk about social issues and stuff, but he's very clear about where he's drawing his point of view from, the data, and he has nuanced perspectives.
Sometimes he goes a bit far, but I don't think he's widely ranging across topics he doesn't know.
And what about, so I'm going to give Hyatt one, but what about Lex?
Well, first of all, with Hyatt, yeah, I think he's...
He's a pretty typical academic in the sense that he does drift around over his career and have those areas of focus.
And that's totally normal.
And like you said, it's based on his academic research and reading of the literature and perhaps his own empirical work.
So there's nothing Galaxy Brained about that.
Yeah, like you said, but he does...
He does gesticulate a little bit broadly, doesn't he, when it comes to the implications of the moral foundations, for instance.
It's kind of broad.
I mean, it's broad, but it's not across.
You don't hear him offering thoughts about the tax code or about how to solve the conflict in Ukraine.
He's not that kind of person.
That's true.
Look, with Lex, yeah, I think Lex is prepared to dip his toe into pretty much anything.
Yeah, he's pretty...
I mean, but how much sort of expert authority does he...
Matt, come on now.
Or does he purport...
No, how much expert does he purport to have?
Oh, yeah.
Well...
This might be a rare occasion where you're going to give him a higher mark than I am because I think he's willing to venture opinions and to use his professed expertise in AI and programming to talk to a wide array of cultural topics.
But I think he does it with a little bit more...
Reservation than is typical of like the worst offending gurus.
So I'm gonna, like, he's not a James Lindsay.
He's not a Jordan Peterson, right?
He's nothing like that.
So I put him down mid-range, free, free for me.
Yeah, that's, that's where I was going with that too.
Oh, you're four to each tier three.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, I talked myself out.
I talked myself out of it.
Okay, did you?
Yeah.
So second component, Matt, do you want to take the summary of this one?
Okay, so starting with Jonathan Haidt.
Oh, sorry.
No, I've got to summarize.
So cultishness.
So this pertains to the way in which the person interacts with their audience, interacts with their followers, whether or not there are any of those slightly problematic...
Parasocial or otherwise facets to their sort of building up an in-group and an out-group, making out that the people on the in-group are very special and better somehow.
And there's a bunch of little toxic levers that the gurus can pull.
Now, Jonathan Haidt, I would say, is not like that at all.
Very conventional and public intellectual academic type.
I mean, he's admired to some extent within the head of a dark sphere and in academia because he's an influential academic.
He does also attract criticism from the more progressive strand for various takes that he's had.
But I think that he doesn't strike me as somebody cultivating like a cult of personality or trying to do that.
And if anything, he does try to draw a bipartisan Points of view about, like, that we should all be, you know, we shouldn't look badly at people from either side.
So he's a little bit more not inclined towards the, like, the social justice left in that regard.
But, yeah, I don't think he engages that.
So, like, it's an easy one for me.
And Lex, we talked a little bit about the end, about, you know, tongue in cheek, man.
Tongue in cheek about the harem.
But I think Lex does a little bit cultivate a cult of personality, which was on show in the content that we looked at, you know, and having a uniform that you were and that kind of persona.
It might not be his fault entirely.
It might just be the nature of the beast.
You know, from the kind of content he produces and his personality, but I think there's a bit of it.
So I'm going to put him at two.
Yeah, like we said in the episode, he comes across more as a monk in the sphere than a cult leader.
So I'm going to give him a two as well.
Yeah.
Anti-establishmentarianism.
So as the name suggests, kind of straightforward.
The degree to which people disparage mainstream or institutional sources of information and importantly, set themselves up as alternative epistemic authorities.
This is like a component of it.
And there, I think Lex has a tendency towards this.
He does lean towards that.
Presenting this kind of enlightened both-siderism, right?
And that is also why he basically has a Joe Rogan school of thought about controversial issues, you know, that there's both sides.
And I seen him on Rogan talking about how can scientists be so arrogant to automatically dismiss flat earthers, right?
Or not even, just like other people.
So this both-siderism comes into play in the same way that he profiled.
Brett Weinstein and he admires Joe Rogan.
So I think he does do that.
But on the other hand, he does have a track record of inviting on more mainstream or scientific authorities to respond to issues.
So I think he does a bit better than, say, Rogan on the Weinstein in actually presenting mainstream sources as well.
I guess I'm going to put him in the middle of the road again.
Three?
And I'd like to say...
I guess the Heterodox Academy thing counts a little bit for promoting anti-establishment takes and makes him a little bit lean towards...
He wrote the foreword for Bret Weinstein's new book and praised it, for example.
So he's inclined that way, but not...
Maybe two.
Two.
Yeah, they're kind of similar in this sense, aren't they?
So, I don't think either of them, I didn't, I'm not aware of them coming out with sort of explicitly anti-establishment takes, you know, the kind of thing that a Brett Weinstein would do.
On the other hand, there is that strong skepticism of orthodoxies, and they both contribute to the kind of a flattening.
You know, the great flattening that people have talked about in terms of the media and stuff like that where, you know, somebody that they like or some personality that is well known or whatever gets equal status, gets automatic, you know,
and that emphasis on personal relationships.
So that kind of implicitly contributes to that anti-expert, anti-institutional, anti-establishment kind of thing just by sort of leveling everything and going, well, I trust everyone the same, and this person I've actually met, and I really like them,
and they seem really nice.
I do get that, but I think that Haidt, like on the episode with Lex, for example, when they talked about disinformation, he referenced Rene de Resta and the reports about Russian disinformation, and I think Haidt has a tendency to, like, he's unlikely,
I think, to...
Slip into anti-vaccine apologetics or anything like that because of this tendency.
It's more that he will be kind of partial towards people who are claiming that they were victimized by a woke mob, right?
That's his kind of Achilles heel.
I think he's a bit too credulous when it comes to that kind of person.
But other than that, I think he's pretty good.
Yeah, that's what I think too.
Yep, I see we can have the same scores there.
Three and two for Lex and Johnny.
Grievance mongering?
Okay, my turn.
So, grievance mongering.
What is grievance mongering?
Well, a lot of these gurus do have this tale of grievance, like a personal backstory in which their ideas have been suppressed, they haven't been recognized, and the powers that be are afraid of them.
And this kind of helps explain, I guess, their personal situation as a...
Someone who's talking directly to the people and speaking truth against power.
Okay.
So as well as that personal grievance, this also encompasses that kind of generalized societal grievance.
The kind of thing that Trump famously tapped into.
That sense that you're being hard done by the people who are running the show don't have your best interests at heart and are basically screwing you over and tapping into that latent emotional So,
let's see.
I didn't...
How about, you go first.
I didn't really pick...
Did you get any sense of grievance, Chris, from Lex and Jonathan?
I didn't, at least not in this content very much.
I mean, yeah, I didn't.
I didn't get that sense from Lex.
No, and in fact, Chris, sorry to interrupt, but Lex kind of emanates the opposite of that.
He's all about the kind of being grateful.
Live and let live.
What an amazing...
Yeah, yeah.
He did block us.
We can't fight that.
We can't fight that.
I'm just saying, I'm just saying, you know, work for a judgment.
But yeah, so, yeah, I'm willing to revise this if it turns out I'm wrong, but I don't see a tale of grievance as a core part of what Lex is doing, nor do I see it on the part of height.
Like, not directed at him personally.
You know, we talked, he's a little bit annoyed at students being too sensitive and potentially making him afraid of them.
But it's...
It doesn't rise to the level of grievance.
Grievance mongering.
No, no.
Yeah, they're both warm.
That's what I would say.
I will say, I did hear an interview with Haidt about two years ago or three years ago by Ezra Klein.
And in that episode...
There was a lot of grievance wangering, at least in my ear, but I didn't hear it in this content.
So that's the one.
Okay.
Self-aggrandizement.
This is an interesting one.
So a game of height, I'm going to put that low.
Hank Height doesn't do...
You know, he's confident in his own abilities.
He believes in what he's saying, but he's not doing...
This kind of narcissistic presentation of himself.
Like he's very much about, it's about the data and the interpretation of strength of the data.
And that's what carries his argument, not like him and his, uh, you know.
Special, special abilities and special insights and whatever.
Anybody could look at the data and see the same thing, right?
Yup.
Yup.
He's a typical, yeah, collegial academic in that sense.
So, Lex Friedman and self-aggrandizement.
And look, this is something that's sort of linked to the narcissism we see in the more toxic gurus where they do make out that they're special in various ways.
Now, look, with Lex, let's talk this through, Chris.
I mean, because in some ways he's very, very humble, very self-interfacing and so on.
Yes.
But in other ways, he does take...
His lifestyle and his work and his way of doing things very seriously in that hyper-optimized, hyper-productivity, maximizing sense.
And there's a way in which you can present yourself, you know, the holier-than-vi kind of thing, right?
Where you are like, you're demonstrating your superiority by saying how incredibly humble.
You are and how much status doesn't matter to you and how unremarkable, like there's a way that that can be done.
And particularly the kind of health and wellness gurus occasionally use this to, you know, like be manipulative.
And so I think there's an aspect of that in Lex, but I will say that I probably...
I would have rated this much higher before I listened to the content because I would instead put the naivety meter much higher than, like, you know, you could be reading Lex as being, like, very strategic and manipulative or extremely sincere.
And I think a lot of the time that Nob has turned to, he really is that sincere.
Yeah.
It's a tricky one though, isn't it?
That sincerity thing, Chris.
Because, you know, Eric Weinstein is quite sincere in his belief that he's a freaking genius.
And Lex Friedman has said that he's available.
He might be called upon one day to sort things out.
Yeah, you're right.
I mean, but he does do it in a humble way.
But look at Russell Brandt.
Look at the highest scoring people in this category, right?
Russell Brandt, Eric Weinstein.
Then he's nothing like that, right?
No.
And he's not as low as, like, somebody, like, counterpoints, I think, or Carl Sagan.
I don't think he falls that low.
But he's kind of mid, like, two, two and a half.
Yeah, I was edging towards three.
I was looking at the other people I gave three to, and it's people like Rutger Bregman and Ibrahimovic.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And, yeah, so I'm going for three.
I'm going 2.5 because I'm more precise.
Okay, Cassandra Complex.
So this warning about impending doom that other people cannot see, right?
That's the key thing is that whether or not the danger is real, just that people will not heed you and you're warning them.
Now, Lex!
Lex uses other people to do that.
He just platforms people and lets Brett Weinstein or Eric Weinstein waffle off and talks a little bit.
But I think he is, in contrast to a lot of the people in the guru sphere, he is fundamentally an optimist about the future, which is a little bit rare.
So I kind of feel like...
He does issue warnings, but he doesn't have a Cassandra complex.
Like, I wouldn't put him high on that.
I'd put him one or two.
Yeah, I cannot recall any evidence of that either.
And as a result, I'm going to give him a one because I've got nothing.
Nothing's come into mind.
Just like he's talking about these...
I'm going to give him two just because I have a jazz feeling.
Okay.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, you know, part of his job is interviewing people and it's, you know, making it more interesting and talking about pressing issues and so on.
So just like any journalist who'd be writing for a paper or whatever, there's a natural tendency to make things out to be a bit more pressing, a bit more, you know, of a drama or a big deal than they are.
But that's not Cassandra complex level stuff.
Hey, there's the one thing hate does.
To me, he's up at the top because he's just...
That is what he's saying.
He's saying, I have been warning everybody.
I've seen this coming.
People are denying it's happening.
And like, you know, I feel a little bit bad putting him up there, you know, with the...
Because I think his concerns are more legitimate and like based on more sound evidence.
But in terms of like, you know, the guru characteristics, I...
I think Haidt is up at five for this, for me.
But yeah, overall, he doesn't have all the negative characteristics associated with it, but he's up at the top.
I'm just saying that I only gave Jérôme Lanier 2.5 on Cassandra Complex, even though, you know, he's warning of very bad things.
I give him three as well.
We must have been, like, on...
That's a good word with him or whatever.
But yeah, height probably, if Joan Lani is a 3, height is a 4. But I feel height is actually a 5. So I'm going to go 4.5.
4.5, Matt.
All right.
Yeah, well, I'm going 4. Yeah, I think.
Next is Revolutionary Theory.
What's that?
Okay, so in contrast to the Galaxy Brainness, which is like...
Feeling that you're equipped to have these deep insights across all these different fields and drawing these connections between disparate things.
Revolutionary theories is more about laying claim to having revolutionized a particular area, usually without sufficient justification.
Like if Albert Einstein said that he'd revolutionized physics, then we would definitely give him a pass.
But when Eric Weinstein does it, we don't.
And in the same respect, it doesn't...
I think the one thing about the gurometer is it's just noting are the characteristics there, right?
Like it doesn't mean that people who get the exact same score are the exact same kind of person or doing it for the same reasons.
Like that's not what the instrument...
Claims, right?
That's not what it's about.
Of course, that's not what it's about.
You've got to have some art to your science.
There's an art of interpretation.
In this respect, I'll start with Haidt because I think he's a little bit easier to do.
Haidt is actually someone, I think, that has a legitimate claim to having made very influential revolutionary theories in some respects for various topics within psychology, moral foundations theory.
What's that called?
Social intuitionist model, and so on and so forth.
Like, I think Haidt is generally a very influential social psychologist, but he doesn't play that up, actually.
And he very much emphasizes, again, the data, the evidence for his positions, and how, you know, like, he is drawing his position for the evidence.
I think you can disagree with him, but, you know, there's no problem with people having...
Their own theories and their own models where they're based on evidence.
So, I mean, I might put him slightly above one just because he does offer a lot of them.
But yeah, he's not high.
Two would be the highest I'd go for him.
Yeah, I'm with you there.
That's a good clarification that just somebody who is influential, who does have theories that have had some traction, And represents them and, you know, defends them and so on.
That's not what we're getting at with revolutionary theories.
It's really unfounded claims.
And as you said, it's about playing yourself up, puffing yourself up in a way that's unwarranted.
And if anything, Jonathan, compared to most academics I know that are kind of a big deal in their area, he's probably more on the...
He's like a Paul Bloom type.
Paul Bloom type, I think.
I'm going to take it down to one.
I had 1.5, but I've talked myself down to one.
You've talked me down to 1.5.
And like, you know, Luke Montagnu and various other Nobel Prize winners, for example, they won the Nobel Prize for doing, you know, groundbreaking work or being on groundbreaking teams.
But they often then go on to have what they would claim are revolutionary theories about, you know, homeopathy or various things.
And that is a good illustration that like the two things are separate, right?
Not, you could have actual revolutionary theories and it wouldn't make your score high on the revolutionary theory component of the grometer.
Yeah.
Now, I think a good illustration of that is Roger Penrose.
Yeah.
So, so Roger Penrose is like a brilliant mathematician, physicist, all the rest.
Um, and then he subsequently, you know.
Consciousness is quantum.
Consciousness is quantum.
Yeah.
Now, actually, I'm not quite sure whether to put that in galaxy brainness or revolutionary theories, but there's some pretty hot takes there that are well outside of his thing, where he gets ahead of his skis a bit, in my opinion.
That's why he gets on well with Eric, maybe.
Yeah, yeah.
It should be related to that.
He does, does he?
He gets on well with Eric.
Yeah, they'd been interviewed by Eric, and they had a nice chat.
Yeah, but Penrose, I think, is also...
Like semi-infamous for having interviews with people that are on the fringes and not really, you know, pushing back much.
So yeah, but a genuine, like a genuine, very smart guy with very influential theories and stuff.
So no denying that.
It just doesn't mean that you therefore have to assume that they're right about everything.
No.
Especially, especially, and we're getting off topic here, but especially kind of in this latter part of their career, like a lot of the time with these hard sciences, yeah, they make, they do do genuinely amazing and important stuff, maybe aged up to 40 or something, right?
And then they sometimes can spend the next 20 or 30 years doing the circuits and writing increasingly hand-wavy books.
Anyway, sorry.
Yeah.
So what about legs?
I would say...
Lex, he didn't go into it in this content, but I think he does actually claim to have various, you know, like even that thing about the deep work, what he's up to, he's very much presenting it like he's,
you know, he's working on revolutionizing various things.
He's doing something amazing with that deep work.
We don't know exactly what, but it's going to be big.
Yeah, like I think it might be building a love AI.
I love Bart.
I think that's what he's up to.
Someone to love him?
Just, well, not Matt.
No, more like, you know, like in the Age of Ultron and Avengers where they wanted to build a robot shield around the Earth.
Lex wants to build a robot to hug us all, just to, like, wrap us all up in a warm blanket and tell us that we're, you know, we're all right.
So, yeah, so I'm putting him at three.
Is that I didn't see a huge amount of it in this content, but I kind of sensed it.
Like an X-Man.
Well, I didn't see him claiming anything great in what we saw.
He's obviously beavering away at something very important.
Can you remember, Chris?
What is it, if anything, that he's actually claimed to have revolutionized?
No, he hasn't claimed to revolutionize.
Consistent kind of hint that it's very important work that's going to make a big impact.
Like I remember when he was talking about the study that he was going to do about masks at the start of the pandemic, like the way for him that the Rogan was, you know, it's going to resolve everything and it's presenting rather than making an incremental contribution to knowledge that you are going to,
you know, define the area.
And like, that's just unrealistic.
I might be being a little bit harsh.
All right.
I'll put them down to 2.5.
All right.
I'm going to give them a 2 just from what you said.
But just because it's hearsay, I'm only going up 1. Pseudo-profound bullshit.
Now, this is the thing where it's all about how they talk.
It's all about how they structure things.
They might be using extremely scientific technical jargon.
They might be using a lot of acronyms.
Hello, Eric.
They might be...
You know, speaking in this extremely performative way, so as to convey the strong impression that they are a very, very special and insightful person indeed.
Or they could be talking like Deepak Chopra and, you know, talking what they call bullshit, which is stuff that sounds truthy without actually meaning anything.
So, hype one for me.
What do you think?
Hyte doesn't do it.
Like he uses metaphors that I find a bit too flowery, but like, so what?
You know, that's just a personal taste.
So he's one.
He's quite clear and he uses, he does use technical terms and stuff, but he uses them appropriately.
So Hyte is one for me on this.
Old Lexi, I think he speaks relatively plainly, but he's a bit prone towards poetic.
You know, descriptions of things and, like, these kind of extremely sincere sounding asides about the nature of the universe or mankind and stuff.
And, like, it's not using the big words, but it's using this, like, you know, like, it's profundity.
It's, like, profundity tone.
So...
Yeah, that kind of...
That quick segue to something extremely deep and meaningful that's pondering.
Yeah, like his ad read for the boat ride or whatever.
So I'm not going to put him high, but I'm going to put him at like two for this rather than one because I think he does do, but generally he's not using...
I didn't witness him just like babble on in like pseudo-jargon inappropriately.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's kind of surprising to me that people...
I think the impression that I get from reading the comments to his videos is that people do see him as extremely profound.
And I'm a little bit mystified as to why.
That's not the impression either.
Yeah, I mean, and also to his credit, he doesn't seem to pretend to be that profound.
No, no, I meant the comments.
I see a lot of comments like saying...
Sort of the opposite.
In any case, yeah, so that's a good thing, right, in this context.
He's not trying to bamboozle with big words, so, yeah.
Yeah, like 1.5.
Conspiracy mongering?
Okay, I think it speaks for itself, like, you know, the proneness towards promoting grand conspiracies to explain things and invoke sinister forces holding you down.
I think...
Lex is susceptible to conspiracy narratives promoted by his guests, but he himself...
I think he's just susceptible to...
I don't think he's a Rogan type, where he has all these narratives in his own mind that he's just waiting for the opportunity to extol.
I think he's more reactive.
And so he strikes me as like...
Somebody who's vulnerable to a conspiracy yarn, but not that fantastic at generating them himself.
So I'd put him at like 2, 2.5.
Yeah, I can't rate someone that high just for being...
Gullible?
...open to it, if you like, or not pushing back on it.
So, yeah, gullible.
What about height?
Yeah, I'd give him a 2. One, I can't think of anything.
No, he's just critical of social.
What did I give Jerome Larnier?
A two?
He's probably, well, he's not, yeah, I think he's slightly less conspiratorial than Jerome Larnier.
So, yeah, height's one.
But I know, I'm thinking of a different piece of content where he was more conspiratorial.
Okay, I'm going to push him up.
1.5.
All right, you know about that content, I don't.
All right, so last one, profiteering.
This is a pretty straightforward one.
It's just, are they going, oh, what?
No, no, carry on.
Can I actually continue?
Just thinking, yeah, just thinking.
And I got excited.
Okay, not much to say here anyway, because it's just about, do they go a bit too far in monetizing?
Like, are they clearly in this biz?
Of being an influencer, being an online commentator.
And are they quickly, but too exuberantly, transmuting that into money?
Or it could be going for attention, going for a bigger platform so you can ultimately get more money.
Yeah.
Haidt for me is one, just a standard academic.
He could do much more.
If he wanted to like profit from the things that he's doing.
So, and it doesn't strike me as somebody profiteering.
I don't get the vibe from him.
Lex, on the other hand, he seems to be something of a maximizer, right?
Like the advertisements, I was talking to someone about this and kind of working out, you know, X amount of ads per episode with X reach, right?
Plus the ad revenue, plus the...
I mean, he's very good at making money at the very least is what we could say.
And I think there's a Rogan, like he's kind of copying Rogan and Rogan is like another like profiteer, right?
Shilling supplements and that kind of thing.
And Lex is promoting supplements and doing that kind of thing.
And I think he could do more if he wanted.
He could be selling more stuff and trading on this brand a bit more, but I still think he's doing enough, so I'm going to put him at 2.5.
Yeah, I get that feeling too.
Lex presents himself as someone who is fundamentally an AI researcher and a deep thinker, but he does a lot of these figures.
He does seem to behave more like an influencer, someone who is maximizing, as you said, lots of stuff, whether it's advertising and that kind of reach and so on.
And that's not such a terrible thing, but it is treating the business as a business.
So there's a little bit of a mismatch there in terms of how you're presenting yourself and how you're behaving.
So that inclines me to go a little bit higher to three.
Yeah, yeah.
So interesting thing, Matt, I put in the scores, right, overall.
And both of them don't score.
Like, height is very low.
One of the lowest that we've had so far.
For me, it's 20. Which one is it?
I've got the two ones.
13.75, I think, is his overall score.
Like percentage-wise, if the score, but 15 on the, like, the sum of all the scores, and that's low.
For you, a little bit higher, surprisingly.
Yeah, I've stuffed this up a bit.
Hang on.
Oh, no, you haven't.
That's, all right, that's Lex.
I was looking at Lex.
That's Lex.
Oh, height is lower.
Yeah.
Yeah, I'm 14. So you got 10% for me, height.
14% for me.
One of the lowest.
Yeah, that's low.
Whereas Lex is still low.
31% for me, for you, 29% basically.
That puts him relatively low, like around the range of candy.
And who else is kind of around that level?
Maybe a bit higher than Brene Brown, but not that high, so that's interesting.
I thought Lex would have scored a bit higher, but he should be happy with that.
Yeah, he should be happy with that.
I think the fundamental reason why he doesn't score that high is that he does come across as we talked about, like a techno-monk.
That techno-monk aesthetic and manner of presentation, you know, it might be in our view kind of naive and a bit facile and not very interesting, but that's kind of the opposite of what the self-aggrandizing,
you know, bombastic guru thing is all about.
Yeah.
And I did hear in background, Matt, the traditional klaxon of the dog toy that heralds the end of all.
The Coding the Guru episodes.
But I did want to mention just before we go that if you want to play along, a listener whose name just currently escapes me but was set up the Discord has created a document where people can supply their own readings and these will be contributed to a little spreadsheet that you can look at.
In the description for this episode, if you want to submit your own readings, please do, and we would be very happy to see them.
Yeah, so those will be in, and yeah, if you can contribute your own readings, you want to tell us how much we've got wrong, we'll be glad to look at them, and play along at home.
Absolutely, yeah.
Please do.
Yeah, we want to crowdsource this.
We want to see whether other people agree with us.
It'll be interesting whether if we come across a guru where the other people's opinions are completely out of step with ours.
