Supplementary Material 1: Cringe Immunity & Supplemental Ethics
An adventure in formatting, welcome to the inaugural Supplementary Material episode. Here we are trying to save you all from the ever-expanding intro segments.On this episode:Announcement of the New FormatWho Decodes the Decoders?A Mystery Sense-Making clipLex Fridman on NavalanyJordan Peterson's fury at the Associated PressBre Weinstein's superpower: Cringe ImmunityAnti-Capitalists for AG1 and the ethics of sponsorshipThe full episode is available for Patreon subscribers (54 mins).Join us at: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingTheGurusLinksPost-Apocalyptic Theology Decodes UsJohn Vervaeke & Jordan Hall discuss Christian Virtues in a Diverse World2lazy2try: Bret Weinstein Has Completely Lost ItSome More News 'promoting' AG1Jordan Peterson's unhinged tweet attacking the Associated Press
Hello and welcome to Decoding the Gurus, the podcast where an anthropologist and a psychologist listen to the greatest minds the world has to offer and we try to understand what they're talking about.
I'm Matthew Brown and with me is Chris Kavanagh, the piglet to my Winnie the Pooh and staunch, steadfast co-host.
G'day Chris.
Oh, good day Matt.
I think you have used the Winnie the Pooh one before because I remember Saying that I thought you would describe me as Eeyore.
So, that might have been a dream.
I might have just said that in some dream at night as opposed to in the real world.
It does sound appropriate.
If there was a...
Yeah, I'd pick you as an Eeyore.
But I also think of you as my smaller sidekick.
So, you know.
Yeah, both is okay.
I identify with both characters.
We're not here today for a decoding, Matt.
You know, the podcast, it's been around since September 2020.
That's a long time in the past, Matt.
Things were different then.
We were younger men.
We were just innocent professors dipping our toes in the guru waters before we got sucked down into the twisting.
Abbas, where we now find ourselves.
We didn't know how long podcasts are meant to last for.
Nobody told us that.
There's no induction kit for when you start doing podcasts.
We made three-hour podcasts.
We thought that's fine.
That's what people want.
But maybe it's better for us to break things up a little bit.
The introductions and the main episodes.
Yeah, so we've, you know, in good academic style, it's taken us...
It's taken us three years to make even a slight change to formatting.
And we already have decoding episodes, mini decoding, and interviews, right?
This is what we have.
And we have bonus material, which is Decoding Academia, where on the Patreon we go through more academic-y paper stuff thing, right?
And we have some other bonus material we've talked about.
It's always sunny in Philadelphia.
Dave Pizarro, for example.
Uncategorizable, that particular episode.
Miscellaneous, miscellaneous.
But what we were thinking, and we've received some feedback about this, but to be honest, Matt, you might forget, but once upon a time, you actually suggested...
Breaking up the episodes into two parts, right?
To give people a little break, mental break.
And you shut me down.
Because I don't like that when podcasts have an episode on something and then they split it in half because I want to just have the one reference thing.
But it is true that often with our decoding episodes, the people...
Or they're mainly, you know, they want to hear the decoding and yes, we put in bookmarks so they can skip the intro segments or whatever we're talking about.
But some wise people suggested, and we have discussed it, what if we were to shake things up?
What if we kept the decoding episodes as they are, but we take out the introduction, we just make it like more quickly into the decoding without a preamble or a very targeted preamble.
And the other section, we separated off into a supplementary material, if you will, which would then mean that we could release slightly more frequently and that the Decodian episode would be more targeted.
What about that, Matt?
What do you think about that?
I think it's good, and you know that, because we already agreed.
You're spoiling the illusion.
This could all be decided on the fly for a while, people.
No, but yes, this is right.
We did discuss this, and we did both agree it makes sense.
It just makes sense.
It does.
That's what we're doing.
What's going to be different is that...
There will be the standalone decoding episodes, which are now more focused still with intro segments, but more focused about the specific guru in the material.
And maybe this is better because if people want to share an episode about some specific guru figure and they don't want to have to tell people to skip the first 30 minutes, they will now have probably a slightly more tightly focused piece of content to share.
So that's the decodings.
But this, what we're in now, we're basically going to take the intro segments where we talk about things happening in the guru sphere, techniques we've noticed, annoying stuff that we've come across in discourse land or,
you know, just the general kind of things that you've been hearing in the intro segment.
And we're going to put them into a separate episode.
And typically the intro segments are around about...
30 minutes, 20 to 30 minutes.
So we're going to keep things around that and put that out on the main feed.
But if we go longer, which we likely will, then we'll put that for people on the Patreon who want to hear us waffle for longer about those kinds of topics, right?
Yeah.
A whole bunch of random topics.
Yep.
Okay.
That's the plan.
We got focused.
Decoding episodes with good focused introduction, context, and we'll shift the intros that we would do.
We would normally talk about a whole bunch of random things.
We'll probably expand on that, talk about more random things, and we'll put it up on the main feed, but then extra bonus.
Yeah, the spicy ticks.
The hot ticks that are too hot for the public feed.
We'll put them behind the safety of the Shamrock Curtain Patreon.
Paywall.
So, yeah.
None of our enemies will ever have the idea of paying $2.
They hear our terrible things.
No, so, you know, if you're listening to this, you can hear the first 20-30 minutes.
And if you want to hear the rest...
Then you can go join the Patreon.
But the point is, you're not losing anything, alright?
Some people are just gaining a bit more.
That's what we're doing.
Today is Supplementary Materials.
It's an inaugural episode of Supplementary Materials.
So we'll put these out.
Appendix A, Appendix B, some very long tables.
Yeah, other things.
We don't know how long it'll go for.
It could be 10 hours.
It should be shorter.
But we'll see how it goes.
We just like to experiment.
So we're going to put this out separately.
And then there will be a decoding.
And the next decoding episode is on Hassan Piker.
So that is coming relatively soon.
But yeah, we're going to call these...
Supplementary materials, episodes, unless people have a better suggestion, send us in alternative names for these kind of standalone episodes that we'll release and we'll consider it.
We tried to get ChatGPT to help us, but it was useless.
It's not very good with stuff like that.
It doesn't really get sarcasm or that kind of thing.
Not very well.
So, humans!
Prove your worth.
If you've got a better title on supplemental materials, please let us know.
Very good.
Okay.
All right.
Well, let's get into it.
That's all preamble, Matt.
That's just to let people know.
Now they've calmed down.
They've stopped panicking.
Stopped running around.
They're just like, oh, they're not quitting.
It's not finished.
I've got to clip the ease you into this new format, Matt.
And maybe I should play it just and see if you can work out what it's about, who it might be talking.
Let's just see Matt's decoding brain in action, live.
You'll get to hear it here.
Here's a clip.
Matt hasn't heard this.
Here you go, Matt.
Unnamed clip.
What's my task?
What's my objective here?
Decode it, Matt.
Decode it.
Okay.
And so, imaginal within, imaginal without.
And then, of course, and this is part of Corbin's point, these two can resonate with each other.
And this is the platonic idea.
I can see more deeply into reality and see more deeply into myself.
And when I'm talking about that anagogic in and out of the imaginal augmentation of our...
Sorry for this, ontological depth perception, our ability to come into deeper contact.
That anagogic imaginal play, that's what I mean by imaginal faithfulness.
And it connects the deep within me to the deep without in this fashion.
It's not literal, but it's not fictional.
And why does that matter to me?
Because I think that literal, not fictional, maps pretty carefully onto relevance realization that sits between the algorithmic, which would correspond to the literal, and the arbitrary, which would correspond to the purely fictional.
RR is in between, and the imaginal is in between.
So I think the imaginal is the best way of trying to enhance a relevance realization.
I have more significant arguments about that, and I'm not going to go into it.
Thank God.
I've missed the Sandsmeakers.
I'm giving you a little bit of a hint, but did you?
Oh, wow.
I had to Google on the fly what anagogic means.
Oh, it's a new word.
That's pretty impressive.
Who was that, Matt?
Did you recognize that voice?
Oh, yes.
That was the philosopher that we spoke to, I think.
We kind of had a debate with, kind of.
Correct, correct.
John Favacki.
John Favacki.
Yes, yes, yes.
Yes.
What was he talking about?
What was he talking about?
The anagogic and the literal and the...
What was the other thing that wasn't...
The metaphorical?
Of course.
Imaginal.
Fictional.
Fiction and reality came up.
Again, the Yuval Noah Harari special.
And we exist in between.
Yeah.
But look, I...
I couldn't follow it at all.
I couldn't.
I'm sorry.
I have to admit defeat.
That's all right.
That's all right.
This is just a segment from a discussion he had with Jordan Hall of Sensemaking Cubed theme where it's about Jordan Hall becoming Christian.
Like, why he has become a Christian.
But it's kind of a dialogue, you know, a Sensemaking style dialogue.
And this is just...
Vravaki talking about his understanding of sensory perception and how our sense is not giving us complete access to the actual external world, but there's a kind of internal representation and then we interact with that and it's all very,
and it's going to connect to how people interact with concepts of religiosity and logos and, you know, it's just...
It's the sense-making sphere.
I just thought that was a little beautiful snippet of what sense-making is all about.
Yeah.
I miss them, Matt.
I generally do miss them.
We have to go back to some sense-making content.
Perhaps not that, because people's religious conversion, whatever.
People can work as they see fit about that kind of thing.
Yeah, maybe a friendly, lighthearted return, because, you know, for the most part, they're not hurting anybody.
They're, you know, they're playing jazz with words.
And, you know, maybe we just don't get it, too.
It could just be that you and me, we're not wired like that.
Oh, yes.
Well, there was, I did see this very recently, that on YouTube, there was somebody who did a decoding, decoding the gurus kind of thing.
It doesn't have that many views.
It's very small.
But it's coming at it from a sense-speaking perspective.
It's called Decoding the Guru's Strengths and Weaknesses and it's from the channel Post-Apocalyptic Theology.
It's only got 200 views.
That shows the level of interest.
All the people saying, who will decode Decoding the Guru's?
Somebody does it and nobody cares.
This is sad.
Nobody cares.
Yes, but that's talking about...
My engagement with Paul van der Klee.
So anyway, that's there.
What's his take?
What is the deal with you?
It's the deal with you as well.
These three strengths, we're good at being critical, skeptical, at making people...
Oh, and expressing moral indignation.
We're good at that.
I guess we are.
In some respects.
And then we're bad at understanding the lived reality of religiosity and, you know, just kind of, we were too trapped by our secular materialist paradigm and we don't understand what religious people are talking about and all that.
I think this applies more to you, Matt.
I've spent years...
It's not a unique religion and what people think about it and all that kind of stuff.
But anyway, that's our limitation.
I'll take that.
I'll take that on the chin.
Because I think that's true.
And I think, yeah.
I just personally, philosophically believe that if someone's talking about their personal, revelatory, spiritual journey in their experiences, then there's nothing really you can say.
You can either just take it and go, okay, good.
But, you know, Can you agree or disagree?
It's whatever they say was real for them is it.
So if you can't analyze something, then it's not worth talking about.
That's my attitude to these things, Chris.
Well, that's a pretty good attitude.
I have another little goings-on in the Guru's Fear clip to play for you from old favourite Lex Friedman.
You know, he interviewed Tucker Carlson.
Recently, and as part of his agenda to spread love across the universe and increase understanding.
Lex is just about having open forum discussions with people from all sides.
He'll be attacked, Matt.
Yes, he'll be attacked, but he doesn't have a position in any of this.
He's just there to spread love, as illustrated by him talking to Tucker and raising the pertinent issue about the...
Death of Navalny and how Tucker would respond to that.
And let's just see what Lex and Tucker have to say about that.
Those are dumb.
I didn't get that vibe at all.
You know, I just don't see it.
But maybe, you know, maybe they killed him.
I mean, they certainly put him in prison, which I'm against.
But here's what I do know is that we don't know.
And so when Chuck Schumer stands up and...
Joe Biden reads some card in front of him with lines about Navalny.
It's like, I'm allowed to laugh at that because it's absurd.
You don't know.
There's a lot of interesting ideas about if he was killed, who killed him.
Because it could be Putin.
It could be somebody in Russia who is not Putin.
It could be Ukrainians because it would benefit the war.
They killed Dugan's daughter in Moscow.
So, yeah, it's possible.
And it could be, I mean, the United States could also be involved.
I don't think we kill people in other countries to affect election outcomes.
Oh, wait.
No, we do it a lot and have for 80 years, and it's shameful.
I can say that as an American because it's my money in my name.
Just asking questions, Matt.
Lex has heard a lot of interesting ideas about if Navalny was killed.
Maybe he didn't.
Maybe he wasn't killed.
Maybe he just died of natural causes.
Neglect.
Neglect.
In the Russian prisons.
Could be a heart attack.
Could just be he had something bad.
Unfortunate.
And as Tucker and Lex reflect on there, I mean, maybe it was the US.
Wouldn't they be benefiting from the removal?
Of a political rival to Putin?
That makes perfect sense.
Why wouldn't the US want that?
You're right.
It's wrong to jump to conclusions about Putin.
I mean, just because he's been responsible for killing so many journalists who have opposed him, so many opposition political leaders, they keep disappearing, found dead in different places.
Why would we think that the guy that he locked up on...
The opposition leader that he looked up on political grounds, that he had anything to do with that.
You know, it's possible, I guess.
It's possible.
I mean, the fact that that particular political leader also survived previous assassination attempts, which were very credibly linked back to the Kremlin.
They even called up the people that...
Because the Kremlin could have changed their mind.
They wanted to kill him then.
But why would...
I mean, you shouldn't assume they necessarily still might want to kill him now.
I think there's a great example of how Lex asks questions as well.
If Lex is asking Destiny or some liberal historian that he has on, you'll find that he pushes back rather harshly, quite directly.
In this case, he's raising the issue of Navalny, so people that like Lex will be like, look, he's bringing this issue up with Tucker.
Do you not detect that maybe he's actually bringing it up in an extremely soft and pandering way and he's yes-ending Tucker's deflection of responsibility from Putin?
So, like, maybe, maybe it could be, but could be the US, could be Ukrainians.
Again, Matt.
You know, Navalny said bad things about Ukraine in the past, so that's the reason that they would now seek to assassinate him in a Russian prison.
That would be top of their list of things to do.
And the reach of the CIA is long.
They can get to anywhere.
They're kind of like, a bit like Jesus, you know, they move in mysterious ways because removing the opponent of Putin, as we've said, It doesn't seem on the face of it to make any coherent strategy for the CIA to do that.
But it's possible.
It cannot be ruled out.
It cannot be ruled out.
Yeah, the whole interview.
I mean, people ask us why we have it in Felix and it's this kind of thing.
It's like this all the time.
These excruciatingly softball interviews where it just...
It's okay to interview Tucker Carlson.
I know a lot of people, journalists and stuff like that, would like to do it.
It's even okay to interview Putin, but the same pandering, obsequious interview that Tucker did with Putin, now Lex Carlson is doing the same style of interview with Tucker to just basically provide him a venue to justify and explain the previous one.
Yeah.
You call them Lex Carson now, creating an unholy automation.
But he may as well be.
He may as well be.
So, yeah, yeah, it's one, you know, the obsequious pandering nature, but it's also that Lex's political skew is very clear.
He is able...
Well, the political skew is like this, right?
Like that love and understanding and empathy, it all goes one way.
Yeah, there's just so much of it sprayed, lashings of it.
Hot love sprayed towards Tucker Carlson, Vladimir Putin, anyone in that direction.
And yeah, you know, he did not quite so much of it in other directions.
So I don't believe it for a second.
And it's not that...
Yeah, it's not that it's...
It's not just that he's politically valence, right?
That he's got a...
It's just that he pretends he's not.
Yeah, yeah.
It's just this wonderful defense, which is I'm just showing Tucker love and understanding.
It's like, no.
And you don't have to be a Kremlin stooge because the thing is, like, if you look at Lex's output, he's essentially a fanboy for strongmen.
So, of course, he likes Putin.
Of course, he likes Elon Musk.
He also likes Zelensky.
But he likes him in a way that, you know, like he's a hero.
So that's what Lex focuses on.
He didn't leave, you know, he didn't leave the Capitol when it was attacked.
So his admiration is proportional to his teenage fanboy approach to them.
I think that's an accurate diagnosis.
I don't think he's like a secret, you know, Republican fascist operative.
I think he's got just extremely juvenile
to things.
And that kind of personality just, I think, naturally is drawn to these kinds of figures.
Yeah, Joe Rogan, Tucker Carlson, he went and hung out for Thanksgiving with the Trumps, right?
So that's old Lex.
I don't think you're going to be seeing him spending his social time with equivalent figures on the left.
He's probably not going to go to AOC's Christmas dinner or whatever the case might be.
But anyway, Anyway, that's all, Lex.
So, Matt, there's been other things.
There's been other things happening.
There's been things that you've noticed, things that I've noticed.
Would you like to talk about sponsorships or Weinsteinian cringe?
Which would you like to reference?
Yeah, I want to do a compare and contrast with Weinsteinian cringe and Jordan Peterson's deranged anger.
Oh, take it away.
So what's been going on with those two chuckleheads?
Okay, okay, okay.
Okay, well, let's do Dr. Peterson first because he's always fun on Twitter and his silliest tweets are when he is just railing angrily at some completely innocuous thing.
It takes very little to drive him seemingly to the absolute...
Brink of breaking things.
So, in response to a news story that was tweeted by AP, the Associated Press, as you told me, Chris, they actually don't have much of a or any editorial line.
They just report the news, right?
And they reported some news, some pretty boring news.
The news was a New Jersey city that limited street parking hasn't had a traffic death in seven years.
And there's a link to an article.
And the article is about them making some amendments to pedestrian...
Crossings and walkways and things like that.
And there's been limited street parking on this street for ages and apparently with good effects for the local businesses and stuff, right?
And Jordan's response is, you have become pathetic beyond comprehension, AP, and the woke death will soon visit you.
It's just so totally out of...
I don't know.
So that's Jordan, a very angry...
Man, it seems.
Yeah, I think that is linked to his general distaste for any notion about 15-minute cities, walkable cities, encouraging pedestrian behavior or cycling or whatever.
He also reels against anything to do with climate change remittance or that kind of thing.
In this case, I think it's just folded into his headspace as Pedestrianization, street parking.
This is all part of the WEF's agenda to steal our cars, make us unable to leave the local area.
Yeah, that's what he's done.
That's why he's reacted.
Well, I enjoyed it because it just reminded me so much of Alan Partridge.
The one political issue that Alan Partridge, the fictional character, created by Steve Coogan.
The one political issue he feels strongly about is pedestrianisation of the Norfolk city centre.
It's just, he likes his cars.
Yeah, so Jordan, that's him.
Yeah, like, I mean, but that's how a lot of the anti-woke go, isn't it?
Like, they start off with actual woke things, but then suddenly everything gets folded into anything which seems even faintly progressive.
Is, like, doing something about climate change, like solar panels or something, is folded into it.
So, yeah, it is a kind of derangement syndrome.
It's also, the AP has nothing to do with this, right?
They're just reporting on, like, a street, a New Jersey city that limited street parking hasn't had a traffic death.
That's it.
It's nothing to do with the Associated Press, right?
They're only reporting on, like, a random...
They're not cheering on Chris, they're not saying this is great, 15 minute cities.
Yeah, I guess, you know, broadly they're saying good news, right?
But like they didn't create the thing or anything like that, but Jordan is like, yeah.
The woke death will visit you?
Like, why?
Why wouldn't it visit the council that voted for this measure or that kind of thing?
But apparently the Associated Press started to blame.
So Jordan is unhinged.
One positive sign I will say is that I did notice on the Jordan Peterson Reddit, which is...
Favourably disposed to old Jordan, generally.
A lot of the people, there's some critical stuff, but mostly it's positive.
In the thread discussing this particular tweet, almost all the responses are, what the hell is he talking about?
Like, he needs to get off Twitter.
This is ridiculous.
I saw almost no one saying, oh, this was a good take and what a reasonable point he's making.
So, yeah, he's lost.
R slash Jordan Peterson, yeah, he's not doing great.
Well, there is some hope then because that ties nicely to Brett Weinstein's behavior recently and the response of the people in the replies, many of whom I think are kind of fans, saying this is kind of a bit cringe.
I think you've missed it here.
So, Chris, do you want to lead us into that one?
Well, yeah.
So, Brett Weinstein, on the other hand, I've remarked that his superpower is that he's essentially immune to feelings of cringe or self-awareness or shame.
Like, he doesn't seem to get embarrassed.
And it used to be whenever he would post something stupid on Twitter or whatever, you would just have, like, hundreds of replies telling him, How stupid this is and what a joke he is.
And he deflected it as him.
Okay, so that's where we're going to cut it for those of you on the main feed.
If you want to hear more...
In-depth discussion of Weinsteinian cringe or the ethics of shilling for AG1 when you're a anti-capitalist show, for example, you can find that over at the Patreon.
So, normal Decoding episodes, nothing will change.
