Decoding the Gurus is now a venerable institution and as such we have built up quite a menagerie of would-be gurus and even a handful of not-really gurus.So like all the hip kids today, we decided to look back at our previous gurus and arrange them on a tier list of Secular Guruosity.If you would like to play along we’ve made a version accessible online so you can provide your rankings (available here) or you can see ours.Also, due to an image-importing hiccup, we missed Sam Harris (B), Robert Wright (D) and Richard Dawkins (D). All are now added to the template!Hope you enjoy and we will be back soon with a full-length decoding of Gabor Maté before the concluding chapter of the Dr. K trilogy.If you want to support the show, join us at: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingTheGurus
Hello and welcome to Decoding the Gurus with the psychologist Matthew Brown and the cognitive anthropologist Christopher Kavanagh.
We're here for a special episode, Matt.
a little bit of a relaxed vibe-based assessment, rather than our usual scientific dissection.
You know, we have the grometer.
It is a precise tool where we feed in the--
Various candidate gurus and quantify them on 11 factors went up by a factor of 1 out of 10. I don't know how to describe that in factorial terms.
10%, yeah, whatever, any case.
But there's also just this general thing, Matt.
You know, statistics are all very well and good.
Quantification, yes, science, yes, we are pro-empiricism.
But sometimes you just got to go by a...
Vibe, you know?
We've discourse served.
We know what it's like.
So what I thought we could do today is go back in time from the beginning of this podcast, cast our minds back to the gurus that we've covered and see how they fare on a tier list from S To D,
with one that is actually good or not a guru, like, doesn't even register.
I probably will need that.
Excuse me, Associate Professor Kavanagh.
I've got a question and also something that's more of a comment than a question.
Yeah.
So, my question is, who invented these tiers?
When did tiers become a thing?
Like, I became aware of them at some point, but I think they were around a long time before then.
I associate them with computer games or something.
And for me, when I was a kid, we didn't have tiers.
Like S, what does S stand for?
I don't know what any of this means.
Super.
Special.
Special.
It's like the best tier.
Actually, in my university, you can also greet a student an S now.
A special.
Yeah.
If you call someone a special in Australia, it's not a good thing.
My brother teaches special students.
Look, the colors are there to help you, Matt.
That's there to help you, right?
But no, something for people to remember is that...
In our rubric, being a very good modern guru, or secular guru in the way that we describe it, is not a good thing, right?
Because the characteristics on the grometer are not positive.
So actually, you would prefer to be lower on a scale, right?
This is something to keep in mind, right?
Whoever your favorite figures are, you probably would root for them to be lower.
Or in this little category I've added, which is actually good, or could be called non-guru.
They're so low, they don't register.
Now, I've spent more time than I care to think hunting out square images of the gurus that we've covered.
So, if anybody is curious about these people, you can find the previous podcast episode on any good...
Podcast player.
And you'll hear more details.
But some of them we've covered multiple times.
Let's get started.
We've got a lot of them.
And we have to agree, Matt.
We have to come to compromises here because there's only one tier list available.
The technology doesn't exist for us today.
So there'll be some negotiations, some back and forth.
There will.
Or we'll see.
We're very simpatico, more than you imagine.
Until I eventually agree with you.
Neither negotiation works with you, Chris.
Okay, look, mainly this is going to be an exercise in you jogging my memory and reminding me of the bad shit these people have done.
You've got visual cues.
The first one, this is kind of one to ease you in.
Carl Sagan.
We did a series on, like, historical gurus or also personal gurus of ours, and Carl Sagan was there.
So where would you put him on the, you know...
I think, despite any quibbles one might have with Carl Sagan, maybe a shady personal life, I don't know, if you could say.
I think we'd have to put him in the actually good category, wouldn't we?
He's an actually good science populariser.
And also there, he...
Crucially, constantly acknowledged his limitations when he was speaking about topics outside of his particular area of expertise and this kind of thing.
So, yeah, I don't think he would...
Well, maybe if he was alive now, he could be a better guru doing the rumble and tumble of the guru sphere.
But in his time, he basically doesn't compare to the modern gurus that we look at in terms of being like...
Bad gurus.
You know, modern, secular gurus.
He wouldn't be a good one.
Well, he...
Anyway, he'd be a good one in terms of...
People get it, Chris.
Just leave it alone.
You go, okay, I'll leave it alone.
Now, ganz sad, Matt.
Ganz sad.
Ganz sad.
Well, I wouldn't put him as an S. He's not an S anything.
No, he's not an S. On the other hand, he tries very hard.
It's a B1.
He does try.
He probably gets an A for effort, but even with that, I don't think...
Yeah, in terms of his concrete guru accomplishments and his skill at doing it, he's not fooling anyone.
So, I think I'd write him a B. What do you think?
Yeah, B or C. I'm going B or C. Come on.
He hides under a desk, Chris.
He's hiding from the work people under a desk.
I know that's all he does, though.
Like, is he B tier?
He would like to be S tier.
Like, in his mind, he's in S tier.
But, like, who's even feuding with Gadsad?
As far as I know, no one's paying attention.
Okay, well, B or C, all right.
See, we can always move him.
Why don't we put him in C and then we'll see if he...
All right.
If we see some categories get too full, we might...
Shift people around.
Spread them out a bit.
Russell Brand.
Russell Brand.
I think he has got to be...
I want to put him as S. My heart says S. I put him S tier.
I'm absolutely S tier.
Like, no, modern 2024 Russell Brand.
He does everything.
He's basically Alex Jones level conspiracy first with the whole Christian turn and that kind of thing.
And he's pseudo-profile.
He's profiteering.
He's conspiratorial.
Yeah.
Yeah.
STR Russell, congratulations.
Well done Russell, you're the first one, you've broken the ice.
This is Robin D 'Angelo, Matt, next.
Oh, okay.
Now this was from a while back.
This was from years ago.
It was, yeah.
You're gonna have to jog my memory here.
I can't remember.
Well, just...
You know, it's vibe-based.
We don't need to think about our 11 factors and how she scores, but she would certainly score high on moral posturing and outrage-mongering.
Big on the moral grandstanding.
We definitely had a few bones to pick with.
Not so high conspiracy theorizing or anti-establishment rhetoric.
Well, but still, she is positing that there's a fundamental reality.
Underpinning all existences like her.
Yeah.
She's more an annoying academic than anything else.
I'm going to put her as a D. That's where I would vote for.
No.
No, you're vetoing.
You're vetoing my D. Okay.
Well, I...
I would put her like, she's kind of the inverse Gassad in a way.
You remember the level of rhetorical tool being applied was very high.
Remember the stories?
I'm beginning to remember the self-aggrandizing stories.
Everyone stood up and clap type thing.
And also the slippery logic where unless you basically agreed with her and went to her session, you were one of the baddies.
Okay, I'd be bumper up to see.
Yeah.
Okay.
I'll put her there.
They look like they're looking at each other.
Scott Adams.
Scott Adams.
The simultaneous sip.
The simultaneous sip.
This is Dilbert creator, comic book...
Dilbert, the comic creator, but more recently...
Much darker.
Unhinged conspiratorialist.
Yeah, right-wing polemicist.
Big Dilbert, but just...
Master hypnotist.
So much darker.
I feel like he's an S as well.
He's S tier.
He is S tier.
Yeah, there's not really anything to be.
He's a terrible, terrible person as well.
Amazing.
Oh, we've got an interesting one now, Matt.
Constantine Kissin.
I feel like God's sad.
He would love...
To be S-tier.
You know, he's doing those YouTube shorts with the kind of impassioned, rhetoric-filled speeches.
But essentially, he's, you know, an earlier career, Dave Rubin.
He is.
He is.
Faux-centrism.
It's hot right now.
It's very hot right now.
I feel like he's a more effective Gadsad.
Yeah, yeah.
Which inclines me to put him at a B. B?
Yeah, I'd go there too.
Like, I would have had him down D or C, but he's managed to effectively crawl his way up the totem pole.
He's grinding hard.
He's grinding hard and he's paying off.
So, you know, hats off to him.
He deserves some credit for that.
Next, we have Dasher from Red Scare.
Okay.
This is Dasher.
Not going to put her in actually good.
No, no, I will not.
On the other hand...
No, no, no.
On the other hand, she was simply annoying and not really guru-esque, I think.
Yeah, she's just a partisan.
She is who she is.
So, D, I would say.
Yep, yep, yeah.
That's where I think she goes.
She doesn't really have, like, any deep philosophy, just reactionary conservatism dressed up as ironic hipster ruling A. Yeah.
Yeah, that's a philosophy, Pat.
It's a philosophy.
So, there you go.
Anna, you're D. We don't like you, but you're not a very good modern guru, I'm afraid.
On the other hand, Yuval Noah Harari.
Um, refresh my memory.
I'm kind of forgetting.
You don't need to say it, Matt.
Just that's going to be the constant reference.
So, the author of Sapiens, the person that...
Just to be upset, as well as fundamentalist Christians, they both got simultaneously.
Conniption?
Isn't that the word?
Have a conniption?
Yeah, that's right.
He was talking about ideas.
We thought he was basically a TED Talk type guy, you know?
He is a TED Talk type guru.
But he's pro-UN and he's pro-internationalism and he's a kind of rare fish in that regard because he's like a neoliberal.
Popular figure, right?
Like an actual moderate type person.
So he's kind of like Destiny, but not obscene.
Edgy.
And deranged.
Yeah.
But he's also written children's books, promoting his point of view and stuff.
Is he a net force for good or bad in the world, do you think?
I think he's relatively harmless and, you know, just a big TED Talk.
He's a villain in Alex Jones' pantheon because he's pro-internationalism.
So he's essentially Soros' handmaiden in their pantheon.
And he does have a lot of big ideas.
He does have a tendency to present ideas which are not that mind-blowing as, imagine that everything is a fiction.
That's right.
Yeah.
Okay.
But he doesn't do the in-group, out-group, cultish stuff and all of that.
So...
He's on the spectrum.
He's on the spectrum.
So you're not going to put him as actually good because these are people that are...
Because, you know, Noah Harrow is fine.
You know, he's alright.
He's not a big problem.
But...
Yeah.
So he's not bad.
So I feel bad putting him next to Gad Saad or something like that.
Remember, it's vibe-based, so the thing is, like, I think he scores a bit higher in some of the areas, but he's definitely got much more depth to him than somebody like Dasha.
Right?
Like, he actually has ideas.
But this tier list is just the guru spectrum.
So we have to...
It's not about...
Yeah, yeah.
It's not about quality.
It's not about anything else.
Yeah.
It's not about whether we like him or not.
But gurus need big ideas and they need revolutionary theories and he kind of has those.
Okay.
Well, I guess he does go maybe a C tier.
Yeah, I'd put him there.
Brené Brown.
Self-help.
A bit Oprah-ish, but also...
Yeah.
Talking about being brave enough to admit having trauma and that kind of thing.
Yeah, she's...
Ted talking.
Yeah, somebody was telling me recently that she's, you know, still incredibly popular in academic circles.
Really?
Yeah, like education department, stuff like that.
Not the top tier of academia.
Anyway, I feel like she must lose points because she's not really active.
You know, like you're not going to see her weigh in on the politics of the R or like getting the Shady Max with Jordan Peterson or something like that.
And she's got the self-help niche, but not really the modern.
Yeah, I might put her on D or C, even D. Yeah.
I'm having the same problem you have of putting her beside Dashi.
You've got to remember.
We're not commenting on their substance.
She's not a very modern guru type.
But she is like a self-help guru.
Just not our definition of secular, modern guru.
Old Douglas Murray.
I feel like he belongs naturally next to Constantine.
Yeah, the thing is, he's essentially like a polemical right-leaning pundit.
Yeah, so is Konstantin.
So is Konstantin.
I think when we covered him, we were saying, well, he's not going to really score that highly because he's more just doing open polemical punditry.
If you put him in the category, you would more put him in the polemical.
Journalist than Jordan Peterson-style guru, right?
But he does opinionate on a lot of stuff.
And he is the figure that Eric Weinstein presented as the archetype for the intellectual dark web.
Yeah.
And like Constantine, he does present his punditry in pretty broad sweeping terms.
Grandiose.
Grandiose terms.
And I think that's the kind of thing that elevates him on Ergoromedus.
Yeah, I think everything you said makes me want to put him on B. I kind of want to...
Yeah, I feel like he might be C. I know, I know.
He could be.
We don't want too many people in C, though.
We'll go with you for now.
We can shift them around later.
We can shift them around later.
Yeah, yeah, that's right.
So, D of Ruben.
Now, I think he's straight in as D. Because he is just a pundit and he wants to have high-level ideas and all that, but he's just a right-wing polemicist.
That's all he can do, really.
Yeah, yeah.
No, no, I think so.
Yeah, I'll put him at D. Yeah.
Oh, no, this one's good.
See, no, this is a dark horse, Matt, that people don't know.
This is Michael O 'Fallon of Southern Nations.
We tried to warn people about what was coming.
How is happening?
He's not very well known.
Not very well known.
No.
But he has pretensions to be the top-tier guru.
And he's got all of the spiel down, right?
He has the in-group, out-group thing.
He's got the philosophical claims, revolutionary theories, conspiracy mongering.
Cassandra Complex.
Don't forget Cassandra Complex.
Particularly popular.
That's right.
He hasn't really found his niche yet.
But yeah, I do love the weighty tones.
In which he evokes these things.
So, well, but is he A tier?
Is he A tier?
I think he's A tier.
Yeah.
He's not S tier because he's not actually particularly good at it.
But in almost all of the features, he dings up the grometer.
He does.
Yep.
I'm happy with that for him in A. Boom.
A is populated.
I got someone in A. It's good.
Yeah.
Peter Adia.
The longevity, health man, Huberman friend?
No, he's not very guru-esque, is he?
I mean, he's, you know.
He's a health guru.
He's a health guru, but he lacks the broad scope required of our top-tier gurus.
Yeah, he's an optimizer, health type person.
But for our purposes...
D?
Yeah.
D. Yeah.
Oprah?
Ooh, that's a tricky one.
I feel that Oprah's an obvious guru candidate in so many ways, but she doesn't fit into the modern guru template particularly well, but she's still on the scoreboard.
If you remember when we covered her, she had these stories about being a gifted child and all that kind of thing, so I would put a B or C tier.
In terms of success, she's S tier.
But in terms of modern guru qualities, B or C?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, I might go for C. I'll vote for C. All right.
All right.
There she is.
Peter McCulloch.
Okay.
One of the COVID conspiracists that we covered when he reappeared on Joe Rogan.
Shameless.
Kind of.
Anti-vax grifter.
Correct.
Yes.
Has his own podcast and has continued down that path.
It's probably been a while, but if people go back and listen to those episodes, it's not just that they're anti-vax contrarians.
It's that they have all these litany of stories where they are at the center of tons of discoveries and important things.
And the conspiracy theories.
And it's all wrapped up together.
So, yeah.
Well, I'd put him at A or B. What would you vote for?
Yeah, I think.
I think A as well.
Some of the details have escaped me, but my vibe-based assessment is he was very high for good reasons.
Now, this one.
What to do?
70 paradigms, Matt.
70 paradigms.
Spinning all at once.
This is Jordan Hall of Sensemaking.
Not so super popular in terms of amount of followers, but I feel...
A kind of guru's guru.
Like, you know, he's in that tier.
Yeah.
Like, he's a little bit different.
The sense makers are a little bit different from, you know, the conspiracy theorists and the anti-vaxxers and so on.
But, like, he falls into the category of, I'm not even mad, I'm just impressed.
Yeah, yeah.
And for that reason alone, my heart wants to put him at S tier.
Because, man, that man can bullshit amazingly well.
Amazingly well.
His metaphors are incredible.
Like, in terms of success, he's not asked here.
In terms of, you know, the level of fame and influence he has, but he is pretty good.
Like, he doesn't upset me like some of the other ones do.
Like, I just despise Russell Brand at the moment for various reasons.
But he's just amazing.
Like, he's just amazing.
So, it's not that I dislike him a lot.
It's just that I'm in awe at his metaphorical word spinning.
I think you probably haven't seen that many of his ticks might help.
If I saw more of them, I'd probably dislike him more.
A or S, Chris?
I'll let you decide on which bin there.
I think we've got to reserve the S tier for the Absolutes.
Jordan Hall, he's really good, but he's not up the top tier level.
You're right.
McKellar Peterson?
I'm putting McKellar a D. I say D. D?
Yeah, she's got the meat thing.
She's got the conspiracies.
Like, she covers all the same ground as, say, her father.
But, you know, she's pretty basic the way she approaches it all.
There's not many guru-esque qualities there.
Yeah, that's true.
Jonathan Haidt.
No.
You might be tempted to put him in the actually good category because I like some of his work on moral foundations theory and the social intuitionist model as well or whatever the case.
And in terms of his academic work, I find him interesting.
But in terms of his public output, the strength to which he advances the anti-social media And I feel that's a bit alarmist, but is that just skewing my opinion?
Because I think he's a bit alarmist and kind of misrepresents criticism and stuff.
Yeah, I mean, if he's a bit annoying online, then he's not the only one, right?
I mean, most of us are.
We're on the internet.
Yeah, you're right.
When I think in terms of secular guru stuff, he isn't.
The problem is putting him in the actually good category.
I feel like I'm endorsing his views, but I think that's...
That is where he belongs.
Let's define our actually good category as just like on the net.
It's not that we think they're wonderful.
It's just like if there's a net kind of badness, goodness thing, they fall just on the plus zero side rather than the negative coin.
Yeah, it's my fault for the labeling here.
It should probably say...
It should probably say...
Like, fine.
Let me see.
I'll just do it now.
Not a modern guru.
Yeah, there we go.
Great.
Now we don't have to hear about people on Reddit saying that we endorse such and such.
That's right.
JP Sears.
Oh god, JP Sears.
What a blast from the past.
What's he doing now?
Is he still poodling about?
I have seen him.
Yeah, he was doing something very terrible recently.
I can't remember what it is.
He started a platform.
It's kind of with someone that you wouldn't expect him to have a crossover with.
It was terrible.
I can't remember the details of it, Matt, but he's continuing on as terrible as he always is.
He's deep in, you know, Trump world and all that crap.
Yeah, that's right.
I've seen him do the really crazy MAGA stuff.
Yeah, he falls into that category.
He's that guy out there in S. What's his name again?
The English guy.
Russell Brand.
I mean, I think it's one of the characteristics of the gurus, even though it's probably not on our gurometer, is that they're so...
They're so malleable.
They're so mercurial.
They'll drift and switch from thing to thing as opportunities arise.
And I think it really reflects the sort of grifting, attention-seeking nature of it, which is they'll change their tune.
They'll turn on a dime when they see opportunities.
And that's kind of how they'd be successful.
And so he's a good example of that.
You can just see him following the money around, you know?
Yeah.
He's also, he is a conspiracy theorist.
Of the House Order.
Yes.
Like, I feel he's really fairly limited in his own capacities to develop theories or whatever, and he's bad at being a philosophical guru type.
No.
Yeah, he's like a bottom feeder.
He can do the sort of mag out look.
Gatsad!
Yeah, he's very solid at Gatsad, but he's aggressively grifting.
I kind of want to put him at B. That's what my heart's telling me.
My heart's saying C because of his limitations.
But he goes hard.
But anyway.
All right.
We'll let you have him.
We'll put him up there.
B. Hassan.
Hassan.
He doesn't really...
Oh, well, no, that's not true.
I was going to say he doesn't promote the philosophy and, you know, all like...
But he kind of does.
It's just a very politically violent one.
And there is the personality cult and there is the conspiracy mongering and all that kind of stuff.
But he, again, falls more into the polemical political commentary space as opposed to the modern guru.
Yeah.
Yeah, no, my gut doesn't want to put him high.
C?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think C. C feels right.
I think you don't know.
See, no, look, this should highlight to you.
It's not about politics, right?
Because you've got Yuval Noah.
And you've got, what's the name on the left?
D 'Angelo.
D 'Angelo.
It's not about politics, guys.
Lex Friedman.
Lex Friedman.
He is really something.
I do not like that guy.
Not that that's going to affect my judgment.
But he's not, you know, like the thing is, he's a false centrist, tech utopian, Elon Musk.
Platitude, saccharine, yeah, platitude spearing.
He has the depth of a puddle.
Yeah.
He has the depth of a puddle.
That's right.
He's got the emotional complexity of a 13-year-old boy.
And he would like to.
He has...
Pretentious of grandeur.
And he is doing all the things about weaponizing his audience.
He controls his Reddit and his social media presence with an iron fist with a team of moderators that are very leg-shaped, shall we say.
But in other ways, not that good.
He's more of a facilitator than he is a...
I think you've got to award more marks for effort.
Like, he's someone who's trying really, really hard to be...
The thing.
He's not convincing to you or me, but a lot of people think he's one of the smartest people in the world, right?
So I vote for B. I vote for B. I'll put him there with Konstantin Kirsten.
Those two belong together.
Yeah, agreed.
They're there.
Now we've got Anthony DiMello, an odd figure.
Nobody has heard of, including me.
But what we covered him by, there he is, there he is.
He's a Jesuit that was like kind of promoting a type of Christian mysticism that was close to Buddhist spirituality, popular in the 80s and 90s, I think.
The sheer fact that we've covered him is just proof that we're not trying that hard to be successful because...
If we were, we'd never cover people like that, Chris.
This was purely to make Chris happy, to cover this guy.
No, no.
We covered him because we were saying people that might fit our gurus, like gurus in our past, people that we find attractive when we were younger, their philosophy or whatever.
And yeah, I don't think he's a modern guru, though.
He's like, he's more self-help spiritual.
Motivational speaker guy from the 90s.
If you want to see some of the bad things he did, go and listen to the episode, but he wouldn't really fit into the category.
No, he's totally fine.
Look, I'm impartial.
I have no feelings about the man one way or another.
You don't even know him.
I don't even know him.
I don't care about him.
He's dead, isn't he?
So, he doesn't mind one way or the other.
I listened to his content.
I thought he was fine, even though he's into that spiritual stuff, which I am not.
Anyway, Uh, Bill Maher.
Bill Maher.
Bill Maher.
Well, apart from being an anti-vaxxer, what's wrong with him, Chris?
Oh, he's just a smug, like, dickhead.
That's his problem.
He is someone that likes to think that he's...
Got it all worked out and he's the only rational person looking at things.
He's commenting on both sides.
But that's just because he's genuinely deluded, I think, rather than attempting to run a game on people.
I think I'd actually put him in not a modern guru.
I just don't think he is.
Oh, no.
Well, I mean, yeah, I kind of see.
Maybe a little bit, but I mean.
No.
Like, if Dave Rubin and Konstantin are on the spectrum, he's on the spectrum.
He's not someone that qualifies his views, and he's promoted a whole bunch.
I mean...
He had Brett Weinstein and stuff on to talk about the alternative theories.
He often has on, you know, like people offering outdoor opinions and he's just going to challenge them or this kind of thing.
Yeah, okay.
No, I hear you.
I hear you.
You remember him talking to Dawkins?
Don't you remember that?
Yeah, like the delivery is very different, but he kind of does fulfill the same role as someone like Joe Rogan, right?
In that he interviews...
Yeah, I would say he's a classic, he's a celebrity pundit.
Like, that's what he is.
He's got a talk show and opinions and he's an annoying prick.
But I think his club random and his various anti-vax stuff puts him a little bit somewhere there.
But no, he's not good.
He's like D-tier.
Yeah, yeah.
But what would you say to the argument that he's a bit like a Joe Rogan and that he's like a credulous conduit for a whole bunch of nonsense?
Yeah, well, because Joe Rogan has all these conspiratorial Tendencies which are really central to it as well.
And it's not central to Bilmar?
Well, it is.
It is.
So maybe he should go higher.
I think we're now switching positions.
I'm thinking he needs to go a bit higher.
Maybe C. Maybe C. C tier?
I also like that it's approaching a normal distribution.
This pleases me.
I know, that's what did it.
I'd put him D tier, but I'll accept that.
It's hard to classify.
Right of respondent.
Jimmy Wheel, SenseMaker.
Seems like a pleasant guy.
Seems like a pleasant guy.
Aims to please.
Aims to please.
He was in that SenseMakingCubed video.
Which was amazing.
It brought hours of enjoyment to thousands.
Yeah, and he's kind of techno-shearman territory in terms of the general things he promotes.
I mean, I basically realized he's basically a management consultant, but consulting to the kinds of Silicon Valley companies and stuff which really go in for...
Jack Dorsey.
Jack Dorsey type guy.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I mean, that's a job.
Like, it's a literal job description.
That's what people do for a living.
It's a sad comment on the society we live in, but, you know, where to put him?
See?
I possess it, yeah.
He's big on the big ideas.
He likes the big ideas.
He is.
He is.
I think I'm leaning towards...
B?
B. Okay, there we go.
Jimmy is up there, B tier.
No, no, no, no.
Mr. Huberman.
Interesting.
Same lean, optimizer, self-help bro type, but I...
I think, in some respects, more effective at utilizing the cult of personality.
Yeah.
And actually a bit more leaning into pseudoscience.
The more that you look at Huberman, the more you see him taking various pro-pseudoscience stances.
So, like, Adi, as far as I know, during the pandemic, was not promoting COVID conspiracies.
Now, Huberman...
Wasn't dealer, but for somebody communicating about public health and talking about evidence-based treatments, essentially never recommended vaccines.
I wonder why.
Yeah.
Well, I'd put him at B or C, I think.
Okay.
Well, I would put him at A because of the parasocial stuff, which is a bit unfair, so I'll put him at B. Okay.
Compromise, compromise.
Ah, Christopher Hitchens.
Hitchens, yeah.
So there's the possibility of him going here, right?
Because he isn't a modern guru in many ways.
Again, like a kind of pundit, public intellectual.
But...
But he definitely, I think, straight into secular guru territory.
I mean, remember, being somewhat of a secular guru doesn't mean you don't like them.
I quite like Hitchens.
He's a good writer.
At the same time, he is...
A master rhetorician, and it is very slippery with his logic sometimes.
Yeah, I remember.
He can be very convincing if you don't think about things too much.
And he compels a huge amount of affection and loyalty, even now, years after his death.
Yeah, he does.
So he's a bit more than just a pundit.
He inspires people.
You know, including me at various times.
Yeah, in a way like Steven Pinker doesn't.
Yeah, exactly.
In a way that Steven Pinker doesn't.
There's no Pinker slap, right?
There's a hitch slap.
So I'll put him on the spectrum, despite the fact that I don't mind him on balance.
C. C?
Oh, I would have linked D, because I feel like he...
Sort of qualified positions, but maybe not.
Maybe I've just got like a rosy image of that.
Yeah, no, maybe D. No, actually, I think C might be a bit harsh.
He's there beside Dave Rubin.
Sorry.
That's his natural home.
Sorry, mate.
You're much, much smarter than Dave Rubin.
Much, much smarter.
Oh, this guy.
This guy, Mike.
Yudkowski.
Yudkowski.
Eliezer, AI Doomer, Federer, Waring.
Incredible analogy spearing individual.
Do you remember the story of the aliens and the people in the box and the time?
Yeah.
What a journey that was.
Yeah.
Okay.
I think he's A tier.
Really?
Well, because the whole Cassandra complex and...
I mean, one thing we didn't touch on so that's when we covered him, he has also written...
Harry Potter fan fiction.
And I think it's like Harry Potter and the rationalist approach or something.
And you remember Helen Lewis was reading some extracts from his erotic fiction.
He's a man of many talents.
The thing about him that I kind of admire, that he's incredibly cringe, but he sort of absorbed it and made it part of his personality in a way that's almost endearing.
But don't you remember, I think this is the thing that cinches it for him to be eight here, is do you remember he said, In the space of learning about AI, I've essentially mastered like 12 disciplines.
And there were like, you know, computational neuroscience and blah, blah, blah.
So again, with Yudkowsky, I don't think he's particularly pernicious.
I think he's quite benign.
Just an AI doomer.
Yeah.
But he does score highly on an agorometer.
So yeah, up he goes.
Goddamn.
James Lindsay.
I think James.
Lindsey is scoring highly in all of the elements of the Garometer.
All of them.
I think so.
He's a terrible person.
Terrible person.
Yeah, but he wants to be so more significant than he is that I want to put him in a tier rather than this.
I know.
I was going to say that.
I was going to say that I know the way you think, and I know that you'd be thinking he would like to be.
He would like to be in the STA and you're not going to want to put him there because that would somehow make him happy on some level if you ever became aware of this.
And that's why you don't want to.
Do we have to put him there?
I actually don't want to put him in the STA on purely logical reasons, Chris.
Because even though he does score highly across all of those things, he's not the alpha and the omega of it.
He's quite clumsy and bullheaded the way he goes about it.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
He's got monomania and is staying a kind of polemicist pundit now, so, yeah.
Like, in some ways, he's like that orange-haired guy.
He's quite simplistic.
Like, he doesn't really have much going on.
Like, remember how he memorized, like, he's memorized, like, half a dozen words from the critical theory, and he just keeps rattling them off again and again because he doesn't really think that much.
Oh, the god, um...
Feminist klesiology paper.
That's right.
Yeah.
He's like a little duckling that's imprinted on one research paper and then follows it around forever.
Okay, so ATR.
Okay, okay.
We've decided.
ATR or B?
Or do you want to put him down B?
No, no.
He does hit it across the board.
Does hit it across the board.
Okay.
Daniel Dennett.
Yeah, he's fine.
And I like him for it.
Academic with a public profile.
Yeah, that's so no.
Ibram X. Kendi.
Now, yeah, Ibram X. Kendi, this caused us never-ending hassles initially because we essentially were saying we didn't agree with his binary, anti-racist or racist point of view or find him a particularly fascinating person.
But when we looked at his content, it was just Fairly bog standard, a particular academic perspective.
And for that reason, he wasn't engaged in most of the things that we see amongst the secular gurus.
But people did point out at the time, if you look at his Twitter behavior, and if you look at the implosion of his center, there's a lot of claims about him being unfairly persecuted.
If you take his stuff in full context, he probably would have scored higher than we gave him in that episode.
Although he scored like middling.
So, yeah, I think he's like C tier.
Oh, really?
C?
That high?
I thought you'd put him as either D or not a guru.
No, I think he is up there when you take the social media stuff in the account properly.
But it's...
It's just he's...
I'm not saying he's doing all of the things, but he's doing some of them quite a lot.
All right.
All right.
I haven't really paid attention, so I'll let you like the call on that one.
I mean, I haven't heard anything about him in recent times earlier, but that was just a lie.
And when I saw those explanations about how any criticism of him was essentially a targeted campaign, I was like, ah, okay.
It's like Roman D 'Angelo, right?
It's an interesting kind of...
Yeah, similar dynamics.
Anyway, I like the way it looks like a triangle.
I'm liking the distribution.
Yeah, man, you see where I'm hovering?
This is Francis Fox.
I'm going to put him in the green.
I think he's in the green.
He's not.
He's not cut out.
He's not cut out.
He's not cut out for this.
He's not cut out for it, you know.
He's been dragged along by Constantine, and it's to his credit that he is not the same kind of animal.
I mean, I think he tries.
I think he tries sometimes.
He's an anti-woke, comic, you know, full centrist person, but...
Yeah, nobody is ascribing to Francis's philosophy.
He's not slippery enough.
He's just too straightforward, I'm afraid.
Okay.
Heather Haying.
My heart says S without thinking about it, without rationalizing it.
Just gut feeling.
I think S. I think yes as well.
I think she's the dark horse.
She is the dark horse because people think she's not as bad as Brett.
And maybe once upon a time she wasn't.
But if you just let her go.
Yeah, she's something.
Her and Brett are...
Simpatico.
They are 50-50 at the Dark Horse podcast.
I think more and more that they are actually like a hive mind.
Like they've spent too much time in that oak panel room together or pine panel room out there outside of Portland or wherever it is they live and too much time in each other's company and they've basically done a mind meld.
Okay, what about a counterpoint though, Matt?
Like when you compare her level of self-aggrandizement and like...
Cultish dynamics, cultivation and stuff.
She's not at the same tier as Brett, is she?
That's kind of true, actually, now I think about it.
Like, in terms of the conspiratorial thinking, certainly the anti-vax stuff, she's up there 100%.
And the dodgy, logical non-secretaires, she's there.
But we won't talk about Brett now.
We'll wait until he comes up, the ace of spades.
Yeah.
You know what we should have done instead of this tear-making thing?
You know how the Americans had like a deck of cards for all the people they were trying to get you?
No, no man, no.
You're going to get a sec.
That's true.
Making a headless.
That's true.
That's not the implication.
We're not advocating that.
Take none of these people out.
Just to be clear.
So I moved her down to A. Yeah, yeah.
No, I agree with that.
I'd like to see her in A. Gwyneth Paltrow.
She, I mean, it's such a shame, you know what I mean?
Because I enjoyed watching her acting in movies and listening to her opinions is just disappointing.
I'm sorry, she's a foolish woman.
But is she a guru?
To what degree?
So, I mean, she has a whole self-help line and she's got a whole...
You know, spiritual outlook and all that kind of thing.
But I would say she's, like, much more in the realm of a, you know, marketing specialist with an interest in pseudoscience and that kind of thing.
But the one counterpoint is, you remember, Matt, we listened to her podcast, and she was like, she's kind of a conduit, in a way, Rogan is, for an absolute gallery of pseudoscientists and pseudoprofound people.
So I think she is on the spectrum of modern gurus, but she's not really in line with the kind of gurucity that we are talking about.
So I wouldn't say not a modern guru, but I would say D-tier in terms of like ours.
Not in terms of success, but in terms of fitting the template for what we are talking about.
If we were doing complementary and alternative medicine scoring.
Should blow the lid off, but we're not.
So, yeah.
Secular guru Dishi is...
Who's that?
Rutger Bregman.
Rutger Bregman.
You remember that annoyed Tucker Carlson and that had various...
A TED Talkie guy.
A TED Talkie guy.
He's not the guy that's like...
He's that guy who's like the climate change skeptic.
Oh, Bjorn Lomborg.
Yeah, he does look a bit like him.
I thought that's who it was for a second.
I was going to...
I was going to have a go.
But no, I think I kind of liked him, didn't I?
I can't remember.
I liked him too, but I still think he's a little bit, you know, a big guy.
Like, I feel like TED Talk people almost automatically are somewhere on the spectrum.
You know, I didn't find him objectionable, even when I don't strongly endorse his point of view and stuff.
Yeah, but then again, height is there, so...
I guess he probably is not in the same way that Hype is not.
Okay.
Well, unless you demand that he goes D tier.
No, no, I'm fine with that.
Leave him there.
Destiny.
Destiny, destiny, destiny.
He's a streamer.
I mean, that's the thing.
In streamer, he's S-tier.
He's the alpha and omega of the political streamer pundit class.
And he does, like, one of the things that people argue about in terms of him being a guru is he has a huge devoted parasocial following, right?
And he likes drama.
He is the main character very often on social media, especially...
Recently, he's definitely in the guru's sphere in terms of he's bouncing about and, you know, interacting with people.
Maybe less now that he went on his post-assassination rants.
But yeah, so where to put him?
Where to put them?
Hmm. Hmm.
Hmm.
It kind of feels like he's naturally should be here beside Hasan.
Yeah, actually, that is where he naturally belongs.
Like, I, you know, not that it matters.
I think he's a lot smarter than Hasan, and I think he is correct about things more often than Hasan, but that's just my opinion.
I think in terms of the guru features, him and Hasan are brothers.
Yeah, I think there's different areas that they're kind of, like, I think that Hassan's approach to research is different than Destiny's, for example.
That's a separate thing, right?
Yeah.
But in terms of the kind of parasocial devotion and whatnot that is cultivated, it is similar.
And he's not D tier.
So, yeah, C. I'd say C. Jordan Peterson, not a modern guru, just a very smart academic.
He's fine.
He's a professional.
Okay, so next is Chomsky.
No, he's Estia.
The man is a marvel.
He broke the mold.
He forged a path for most of these other people to follow along.
I take my cap off to him.
Wow.
Yeah, yeah.
Now, this is a little bit of a...
Well, look, so Chomsky, I would put him, if it was just down to his output, I think I would say not a modern guru, more like a political commentator and academic, right?
Because that's what he is.
But in the same grounds that we just justified destiny, being there, I feel that he does attract a large...
Motivated following.
And he has been someone, you know, that just has opinions across a broad sphere and stuff.
But in other ways, he is, you know, very academic about it.
So, yeah, I think because of his role, he's somewhere on that spectrum.
But I would be tempted to put him like not a modern guru, but yeah.
Like maybe Hitchens, right?
He's essentially like a Hitchens character in a way.
Yeah, he's a left-wing Hitchens.
No, no, I think he belongs there at D with Hitchens.
That makes sense.
Yeah.
Sean Carroll.
You know what?
We can even organize them from left to right according to how much, you know, according to flavor or according to how much we like them.
Or despise them.
Don't add a complex to it, but we can always do this later.
Okay.
Sean Carroll.
I executive decisioned him to not...
He issued far too many caveats.
He was self-deprecating and whatnot.
No.
No.
Also Mick West.
Mick West.
I'm a...
Yeah, fear not.
He's here because he was in an episode with Eric, but he scored the lowest.
I never had more than the gravities.
I like that we have these characters, those two characters in particular, on there, but we should get more, which is, like, I like to show that the, you know, the null, like, it's very possible not to be.
A secular guru.
Very possible.
You can have a podcast.
You could be a public opinion editor.
You can create content.
You could be even wanting to get income from YouTube or Patreon or Substack or whatever it is.
And you don't have to do the things that most of them do.
Anyway, let's go on.
Yeah.
Robert Malone.
STR.
STR.
I'm throwing the doors off.
Yeah.
He's worse than McCulloch because he...
He claimed more conspiracies and being more central to completely unrelated things to COVID vaccines.
And I mean, he also claims to be the inventor of the mRNA vaccines, which he's not.
I think the thing which struck me about him is that, do you remember in that initial interview he was on that discussion panel with Brett?
In hindsight or retrospective, he was paying such attention to his presentation.
Wasn't he?
Like, it subsequently came to pass.
It became very clear just how extreme he was, right?
And how fallacious his claims of that himself were.
But during that interview, you could tell that he was playing a role.
Yeah, yeah.
Very, you know, so that, yeah.
Anyway, yeah.
Yeah, so he's asked here.
Up he goes.
Anna from Red Scare, I think just beside Dasha, right?
Like, there.
Sympatico and similar in all aspects.
So, yeah, like I've heard her opinionating recently on the Republican convention, but she's essentially, you know, like a political commentator, but about on the same point of the spectrum as Anna.
It's mainly other people that are kind of elevating her to that position.
Sure.
Contrapoints.
Yeah, I remember we gave her...
A pretty clean bill of health.
I think part of the reason, though, is that, especially in the earlier episodes, we were a little bit more restrictive about this, but we only considered the material that we covered.
And we covered a relatively uncontroversial thing she did about justice.
Because there was supposed to be a Justice Part 2, which we thought would be the more controversial one, but she never released it, I think.
So, I think...
That although she is in many respects a lot more restrained and a lot more focused on a specific topic, you know, philosophical takes around modern culture or philosophical concepts or whatever, and with a leftist twang to it,
she has the same Destiny Hassan thing about the level of parasocial attachment to her.
And does do the rhetorical thing a little bit like a Hitchens in a way.
And you may like it, just like we don't mind Hitchens, but, you know, it is rhetoric, right?
When you're putting together this, making all these connections to sort of craft this great thesis so that everybody agrees.
Yeah, interesting.
An interesting one.
D?
Maybe I wouldn't say she's exactly the same.
I kind of think a little bit below Hassan and Destiny in that respect.
I think so too.
Might be just my...
No, I feel like she should be there with Hitchens and Chomsky.
That makes sense.
All right.
Jerome Larnier.
I want to put him next to the neckbeard guy.
Next to Yudkowski.
It's just because they just seem to belong together.
Yeah, you know, the thing is that I think he...
I feel like he isn't on that...
Level, in some respect, because he's a little bit more restrained.
But then, whenever I think about the interviews of him playing the flute and wandering around barefoot as he talks about the internet or his alternative about how we should run currencies and all these kind of things.
Yeah, he is.
He is pretty, he is pretty guru-esque.
I mean, but he's, I also, like Yudkowsky, I sort of put him in the category of benign, like, benign gurus.
Yeah, yeah, he is.
I mean, like, he's not, he's, in no way is he, like, on Michael O 'Fallon level, but I, I kind of feel...
That's why I feel like I want these sorted.
I want the, I want the ones, the pernicious ones on one side and the benign ones on the other side.
Just live with the chaos, Matt.
So where does he go?
A or B?
B. I kind of think B. B, yeah.
I kind of think B. I want to put it next to Yudkowsky, but I can't really justify it.
I like this picture.
I like the good photo.
Now, we like Zizek, right?
For the record.
Yeah, I like Zizek.
Or Zizek, sorry.
I enjoyed, even though I'm not agreeing with him about...
A ton of stuff of his interpretation.
Not agreeing about the shark.
He's just fun.
Not agreeing about the shark.
He's just fun.
That's right.
And he's a force for good, I think.
Yeah.
But he is a guru.
He is a guru.
He is a modern guru.
He is a guru.
He is a philosophy guru.
Yeah.
I think he's...
I feel Bob putting him beside this.
You've got to sort them, Chris.
You've got to put them together.
That's a thing for another...
We'll do another episode.
We'll sort them.
Yeah.
Maybe we'll do an update if you can save this tier ranking.
We'll get a few more gurus.
Oh, I can see that.
Yeah, we'll get a few more gurus in the bag and then we'll sort it then.
I'll mention now as well, Matt, that I made this template public, so, like, other people can go search for it and can, like, sort their own tier list after.
Elon Musk, he's S tier, isn't he?
He's S tier, I think.
Yeah.
Yeah, he is.
For so many reasons.
So many reasons.
Yeah.
Nassim Taleb?
He's pretty guru-esque.
And, again, he's a substantial...
Yeah.
He's a substantial guy, so this is a heavy hitter.
So it's not really a negative comment on him, but man, like the cultish dynamics and just the sweeping, broad kind of, I'm smarter than everyone else, but the statisticians don't know anything.
He's figured it all out.
He's revolutionized so many things.
Yeah, I think even higher.
He's not a bad...
He's not bad.
He's just very secular guru-esque.
Is that B?
He is, but he...
Well, I guess, yeah, I guess, because I was going to say, but he doesn't have the conspiratorial tendencies, and he doesn't have the...
He's got other bits, other things in spades, yeah.
He does, yeah.
I think he's B, even though, like, if you look at our rating, he doesn't score...
Particularly highly, I think.
That's alright.
This is the vibes, right?
We're not constrained by the restrictive shackles.
That's right.
Straightjacket on the garometer.
We get to go with our hearts.
We're talking to four figures, which I think are going to be interesting.
Eric!
Up to the top.
Up you go.
Up you go, Eric.
If Douglas Murray is the archetype of the intellectual dark web, Eric Weinstein is the archetype of the...
Modern secular guru.
He's in there.
I would put him higher.
I would put him higher than Jordan Peterson.
Yeah.
He's...
He is.
And I think we can spoil.
We may as well since they're siblings.
Brett is there as well.
They're up there.
Now we've got Joe.
Joe.
I know you were hinting, Matt, that you want to put him a bit lower because of his lack of depth and that he's mainly a conduit.
But I also think his role as the great can of podcasting and his conspiratorial tendencies...
Like, it's not just about vaccines.
He's an anti-vaccine guy, but he's also a conspiracy guy.
He's also anti-institutions.
No, no, I don't want to put him...
I didn't mean to imply that.
Yeah, I'd put him A-tier.
I'd put him A-tier.
I can't put him S-tier because he doesn't have any of the pseudo-intellectual pretensions.
I mean, he does.
Not convincingly.
I mean, not even to some.
I mean, I know he thinks he's...
Smarter than everyone.
He could work it out, but come on.
He's not a pseudo-intellectual.
And last one, just a topic.
Dr. K. This is Dr. K. Dr. K. Yeah.
Again, he's got us particularly in the self-help, you know, optimizing your mental health, YouTube influencer.
Kind of sphere.
But as we saw, you know, big proponent of Ayurvedic medicine.
I know where I'm putting him.
I've worked it out.
Where?
Well, you tell me where you want to put him first.
Trust me, it's in my head.
B. Yes, I was going to say.
B or C?
B. Okay.
Yeah, he belongs there with Huberman.
Okay.
I'm quite happy with this.
I think it's, you know, this is an interesting little...
Prestige.
Now, the thing is, the people listening, Matt, they can't see it, so they can't see this, this, but it will be somewhere.
It will be available.
It'll be on Twitter.
Go look on Twitter.
We'll post it up there so you can see our tier list if you want to be reminded of where they are.
And if you want to do it yourself, there'll be a little link with a podcast where you can do that.
You can play at home.
That's right.
We can all decode.
Decoding's for everyone.
The other thing I like about this, Chris, is that we've got all of those tiers pretty well populated.
It's become more of a uniform distribution than Gaussian.
But this speaks to the dimensionality of the gurometer.
It speaks to the spectrum.
And this is something we've emphasized right from the very beginning.
It is not a blanket category.
We're not putting people into gurus or not.
We're saying there's a spectrum of gurusity.
And look, now we see it right here.
Clean as day.
That's it.
That's it.
Well, there we did it, Matt.
We've ranked them all.
I'm happy with how that's ended up.
And people can agree or disagree.
The beauty of the internet is you can go, you know, do these things for yourself.
And it's just our opinion, man.
Okay?
That's all.
And no, we're not calling for the people that are in S tier to be censored.
We're not saying remove them from the internet.
We're just saying if you're taking your life advice from them, you know.
God bless you.
Good luck out there.
Wake up to yourself.
I hope you don't bump into too many used car salesmen in your time.
But yeah, that's it.
And good job, Carl Sagan.
And just to make one thing absolutely clear, so in the category that we made that was like not a modern guru, Francis Foster plus Carl Sagan.
We're not saying we love them equally or think they're substantial.
We're just saying they don't really fit.
This is not a ranking of how much we like or dislike people.
If people want, we can make it different to your ranking, purely on how much we like them, if anyone cares.
Constantine would...
Would not farewell.
You would not be in the middle of that distribution.
All right, so there we go.
There we go.
I'm going to stop it here.
I'm going to wish people goodbye.
There's a podcast.
Go listen to it or you're listening to it now and congratulations.
And if not, we'll be back soon enough with decoding, supplementary material, all the usual.
