Special Supplementary Material: Two Psychologists, One Anthropologist, Three Beers
In this special quasi-crossover episode, we stare deeply into the abyss while enjoying a beverage with renowned psychologist and occasional podcast co-host, Mickey Inzlicht.P.S. The Decoding of Naomi Klein is coming next week!Two Psychologists, One Anthropologist, Three Beers00:27 Introduction05:57 Mickey's Sabbatical in Japan12:13 Sensemaking 3.025:25 Francis Foster's Bizarre Podcast Roast34:38 Sabine Hossenfelder thinks Academia is Communism36:11 The Irony of YouTube Incentives39:34 Proper Criticisms of Academia43:28 Is Academia Centrally Planned?46:24 Culture War Pandering53:53 Entering the Matt-rix55:00 In Bed with the Russians notices the Red Scare Wounded Bird Pose01:00:03 On the etiquette of Replications01:06:17 Academic Debates on the Effect of Culture on Visual Illusions: Joe Henrich vs. Amir & Firestone01:11:18 The Legend of Captain Cook: Sahlins vs Obeyesekere01:12:58 Ideas vs People: Sarah Haider, Colin Wright and an epidemic of hypocrisy 01:17:19 Admitting Mistakes and Research Integrity01:24:38 Interpersonal Relationships vs. Adversarial Systems01:33:24 Wastage in Academia01:39:49 Elon Musk, Pregnancy, and Modern Cults01:49:01 Signing OffThe full episode is available for Patreon subscribers (1hr 51 mins).Join us at: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingTheGurusSourcesMickey's Substack: Speak Now, Regret LaterInzlicht, M., Cameron, C. D., D’Cruz, J., & Bloom, P. (2024). In praise of empathic AI. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 28(2), 89-91.Chicago. And a summary article by Mickey!Bad Boys Done Good vs Triggernometry host Francis FosterSabine Hossenfelder - Should we defund academia?Alexander Beiner - From Rebel Wisdom to KainosJoe Henrich's thread responding to the Dorsa and Chaz paperChris' old blog on Captain Cook and the second partAmir, D., & Firestone, C. (2025, January 25). Is visual perception WEIRD? The Müller-Lyer illusion and the Cultural Byproduct Hypothesis. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/y7mtfIn Bed with the Russians - Red Scared
We are three psychologists, two beers, crossover extravaganza, podcast psychology crossover.
Me, Chris Kavner, him, Matthew Brown, and me, Mickey Inselix.
Oh, that's weird.
That's unusual.
That's different.
Hey, I don't have a beer.
You both have a beer.
No beer for me.
No beer for you.
You were sleeping.
You are.
Matt was asleep.
We had a designated time.
We had an agreed upon time.
And he wasn't there.
And we had to wake him up, send him messages.
But here he is.
And he's looking quite bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at the winner.
Matt, you don't have to take this guy's abuse.
I've met him in real life.
I'm not nearly as fearsome as he sounds on the air.
And he's much shorter in real life than you might imagine as well.
I'm rather short.
I'm taller than you.
That's it.
Like, Matt's not a giant, but he is bigger than he appears here.
So that's true.
I am a giant.
Don't listen to him, Mickey.
I am a giant.
No, I'm being bullied.
And Chris just played back to Mickey the supercut of my squeaky chair.
It's like...
It's really silent, Matt.
There's something missing that's just like, you sound so clear today.
I'm sitting on the new chair that costs hundreds of dollars and I don't care for it.
I do not prefer it.
Ryan, what happens if you lean back and forward?
Just give it a whirl.
Nothing.
Silence.
That's incredible.
You know, I told my daughter, Emma, about this and she gaffed and went, oh my dad, you're being cyberbullied.
Yeah, Victor, they know about cyberbullying because they teach you about it at school.
It's not allowed, you know.
Beware, cyberbullying.
I'll be cyberbullied on my own show.
That's it.
Well, the listeners appreciate it, Matt, and cheers.
Cheers, Matt.
Matt, you can grab a beer anytime you like.
I can.
I'm going to go get a beer.
I have beer.
I can have beer.
You guys talk amongst yourselves.
You talk amongst yourselves.
I'll be back.
You have agency.
You can do it.
That chair looks nice.
It's like a brown leather kind of chair.
But this is an older chair, right?
No, he bought this.
Oh, that's the newer one.
That's the newer one.
If it was the other one, you would hear it squeak now.
While the other one is there, it would still be squeaky.
Yeah, so since Matt's away, I'll say, for those who don't know, we are a spinoff podcast of three psychologists.
For beers.
There is a follow-up podcast that was around before us that was hosted by Mickey and Joel Embar.
UL.
UL, yes.
Sorry, UL.
And Mickey is still involved with that?
You're like an emeritus.
Yeah, I'm an emeritus podcast host, although I just recorded one a few days ago.
We talked a whole grab bag of issues.
We talked about cannabis.
Did a dissecting of a paper, a terrible paper, written by Nor Volko, who's the head of the National Institute of Drug Abuse in the U.S. And it's a quite poor paper.
Pre-registered.
Pre-registered.
Horrendous.
The actual title of the paper should be Years of Smoking Weed Does Nothing in terms of brain effects, which is, for me, an endorsement.
That's it.
Yeah, talked about that.
Then we also talked about Empathic AI.
There's a paper written in The Guardian, which I strongly disagreed with.
Yeah, but I'm on occasionally whenever Yoel will have me back.
And Mickey has a Substack.
He's a resident of Substackistan, as Sam Harris would say.
Ah, yes, yes.
So that is bringing me lots of joy, lots of pleasure.
It's called, what is it called?
Speak Now, Regret Later, which is a name I regret.
In the summer, it felt right.
And now that I'm well in the winter, I'm not so sure.
But it's my brand now, so I'm just going with it.
That's it.
And Mickey's podcast is still going.
Yoel is the main host now, but rotating co-host.
But it was a victim of the woke mind, Paris.
There actually is a kind of interesting tale.
Actually, you're not wrong about that.
It took a long hiatus because...
I left voluntarily, not because I was...
He wasn't cancelled, all right?
He left voluntarily.
Yeah, I left because I got bored.
And it was a lot of work.
I think Matt knows that you do all the work, right, Chris?
Is that correct, Matt?
Yeah, that's right.
Well, it's a lot of work.
I am.
I take care of the big picture.
He takes care of the details.
Yes.
So, yes, you can say that he does a lot of the work.
Yes.
We split the work with Two Psychologists, Four Bears, and man, it's a lot of work to put an episode together.
It is.
Tell them more, Mickey.
The editing in particular, that's the general thing.
But look, I'm not going to say anything because 90% of my editing was removing squeaky chair noises, and I'm not going to have to do that.
So I feel this is a victory.
A great burden has been lifted from your shoulders.
But how are you liking Japan?
How long have you been there?
I've only just arrived.
I arrived a couple of days ago, and I must admit I'm still rather jet-lagged, although I'm starting to perk up right now, so that's good.
You know, I'm here with my family, my wife and two teenage children, which...
Sounds like it would be a horror, because it did be in a small room with two teens.
But, you know, my kids have really brought it in, and they're having a great time.
They're doing a lot of shopping, mostly.
They're sitting over there so quietly.
Mickey brought them along, just in the room, completely silent.
No, they're enjoying.
Yeah, they are, and we're leaving them alone.
They're exploring as part of Tokyo on their own.
Mostly eating.
Eating, shopping, that's basically it.
That's all you need.
Yeah, yeah.
So far, so good.
And I'm on sabbatical, so typically I like to travel.
So my first sabbatical, I was in your neck of the woods, Matt.
I was in Queensland, actually.
Oh, yeah.
God, you went there.
I spent five months, I get this, Matt, in Noosa.
That's where his roller lives.
There's bull sharks in the water.
Yes, that's right.
There's bull sharks in the river.
In the Noosa River.
So I spent five months there, and people who know of Noosa are like, "How do you swing a sabbatical there?"
And I'm like, "All you need is an internet connection, a quiet place to work.
That's all you really need."
And there's a beautiful library right near a cultural community center.
I loved it.
I loved it at Noosa.
Oh, is it the library next to the river?
No, no, no.
That's a different building.
Sorry.
I'm not sure.
It's been a while.
It's been like 13 years ago now.
But my children now did not want...
Did you even bring them here?
They're like, no, we don't want to go.
I'm like, why not?
To Japan?
Yes.
And they're like, because we have to be in school.
We have to be with our friends.
We have a life.
What?
What the hell?
Yeah, pretty odd.
But they're very happy to be here now and they're not thinking about their friends.
Although they do speak to them every single day while they're here.
But so far, they're good.
I'm quite enjoying it.
Noticing some of the typical things.
Cueing in the escalator is very cute.
And that's not just because I'm there.
I mean, I increased the cute factor by about 10%, but 90% is Japanese people.
Yes.
And yeah, so far so good.
But we really just arrived, so I can't...
I don't have, you know, the rich cultural commentary like you did, for example, in the US.
Oh, yeah.
That's right.
Yeah.
I know.
I was there too long.
I went too deep.
I went native.
You saw the underbelly.
You went native.
He's my guy.
Yeah, I know.
You had a particular fondness for the Midwest, if I recall.
You even had kind things to say about St. Louis, which is a place that I've had the pleasure of visiting once and didn't know nothing about it.
I was not unhappy to leave.
I'm sorry, people.
This is why his podcast was cancelled.
Insulting every city.
And I also have to give Mickey credit because we're recording this from my office, which I won't dox myself, but just to say it's not exactly the central hub in Tokyo.
It might in fact be in a different prefecture.
So Vicky has been dragged far out of the center like Dorothy to arrive at this high-quality microphone.
I don't know.
I have no idea what Dorothy has to do with any of this.
You're not in Kansas anymore.
I got the reference, but that was a very oblique reference.
That's how we remove it.
It quite makes sense.
You don't call them.
It's Yes Andy.
You've been out of the podcast game too much.
See, I feel that Matt is way too easy on you.
I feel that he is the target of your abuse.
I want to give a little.
No, no.
I'm on team Matt.
You just happened to edit the chair.
Orally?
No, I have to be careful.
What's the one?
Oral.
Oral.
Oral appears.
Yes.
That's it.
Oral.
Yeah, let's make that clear.
That's what I'm clearing the mask on.
So, Mickey is here.
And, you know, we had you and we interviewed you about replication crisis.
We really probably should use your expertise.
We thought, you know, that puts pressure on you.
You have to have insightful things to say.
You have to think about stuff.
And it would be kind of nicer if you had a more relaxing supplementary material experience.
Who doesn't like supplementary?
You put everything in there, right?
I love it.
It's my favorite part of your show.
Yeah.
So, normally...
I'm not going to assume, Mickey, that you know the format because I know that you're probably an Uber fan, but just in case, just in the off chance, we normally play a couple of clips and go through general topics normally related to the gurus that we've covered on stuff that we don't want to do a full episode or things that we,
you know, just like want to be able to talk freely without the confines of having to play.
But in some bizarre twist, it's ended up that I...
Still have to prepare.
So I do have a variety of clips on topics.
So it's not just like a magic of podcast.
It's actually true that you prepare everything.
Matt wakes up and you just play stuff for him.
This is true.
He dances to the clips.
That's not true.
He's been listening to Naomi Klein's lectures like me for the past week.
He's been sending me notes about them, suggestions.
So Matt does listen for the million episodes.
I feel it's better when he's organically surprised by the content.
You know, it's more authentic.
It's a natural reaction for the supplementary materials, and that's okay.
Excellent.
Yeah.
So, the first one, Matt, the first topic.
So, do you know what sense makers are?
I've learned about them.
From you, and I know you, both of you have a soft spot for them, but every time you talk about them, they sound like literally the most annoying humans on this planet.
Aren't you at university with John Verveke?
I am.
That's a separate question.
We'll go further on that point.
So, there was a website that was called Rebel Wisdom.
It used to be...
Run in part by a guy called David Fuller.
They had some run-ins with Brett Weinstein, you may or may not remember.
And they were like a hub for sense-making.
They would often, you know, kind of arrange events and talk about sense-making stuff.
I had a pretty good relationship with the guy, David Fuller.
He's now incognito.
He's removed himself.
He's basically just not online at all.
But his partner at Rebel Wisdom, the other person, Has posted a blog post that they're rebranding, so they're no longer Rebel Wisdom.
The era of Rebel Wisdom is done.
That was Culture War 2.0.
We're into, you know, the next evolution now.
So his co-founder, Alexander Berner, made a kind of Substack post.
He sits on Substack.
And he talked about how they're swapping from Rebel Wisdom to Kainos.
Kainos, okay?
And I feel I have to read a little bit about what Kainos is bringing to sensemaking and see what you think about this, okay?
So, this is dramatic reading.
Kainos was born from a longing I have to combine sensemaking with artistry and a frustration with the notion that we can think our way out of the crisis we're in.
We'll also have to dance our way out, to sing our way through.
And release the wild potential we all hold in our bodies.
We won't find lasting solutions to environmental collapse, the meaning crisis, institutional decay, and other wicked problems we're facing by relying on old perspectives.
We need new ways of seeing and being that help us to move with a world that is rhythmic and unpredictable, intense and gentle, dark and alive.
Kainos is a gallering point for different perspectives.
Heterodox sensemaking and systems theory.
Academics and occultists.
Artists and intellectuals.
Bringing these perspectives together is fun, but it's also vital.
If we try to detach from popular culture and the gritty reality of human expression, we come up with ideas that don't survive in the real world.
And if we can't see beyond culture or escape the confines of our own minds, our ideas become limited and parochial.
So, as an opener...
What do you think about the next stage of the evolution of sensemaking?
Does this excite you?
I actually think dancing our way out of a climate crisis actually makes a lot of sense.
And maybe we'll dance right now?
I mean, we can try.
There's nothing else.
Matt, are you excited for this injection into sensemaking?
What it was lacking was kind of...
Rhythmic.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, see, the problem with sensemaking is it was too restrained, too restrictive.
You know, they're too buttoned down, too constrained by old ways of thinking.
This is a much needed refresh, I think, Chris.
And, you know, it's good, I think, and fortunate that, like, the kind of rhythmic, expressive, you know, dancer-sizing way of thinking they're proposing.
It's not only just the thing that is needed right now to solve the climate crisis, the meeting crisis, the decay of our institutions, but it's also fun.
That's good luck, isn't it?
It'd be boring if the thing that was most needed right now was just, I don't know, accounting or something.
No.
It's this.
I did feel like that wasn't something.
When I was listening to the Sensepeak or Sensepeak, and they would often reference the need to engage in...
The kind of things our species have done throughout evolutionary history, get together beside the campfire, dance, bang on the drums, and so on.
I do feel that they did have this element already, but I guess, you know, it's going to be more emphasized.
There's going to be more interpretive dance, more bongo performances, and yeah, I, for one, welcome our new Sensory Achieve Masters.
Sam Harris should be a part of it.
So, is there any content yet?
Or this is just the promissory note?
There's never any content with sense making.
That's system A thinking.
That really betrays...
Well, you are trapped in game A. That's right.
That kind of binary yes, no.
We like the existing injunctive in between.
But they did announce the inaugural event.
And it did feature talks from...
Jimmy Wheel, Jordan Hall.
Who's the other one?
The bearded man.
Daniel Schmeidenberger.
Yes.
So they're bringing a fresh perspective of all the same people that were there before.
But maybe a little bit more artistic stuff coming.
And they mentioned that the original, like the first weave, they said that they...
Explored the phenomenon of Jordan Peterson and the intellectual dark web.
They drew on integral theory, the therapeutic work we were training in, wisdom traditions, psychedelic science, academic theory, and embodied experiences.
But it was a bit too intellectual.
They took a yes on the approach, which we noticed.
They did take that approach, that's true.
But they say, you know, things have changed.
And now we're in this post-truth authoritarian potential era supported by big tech.
That's an interesting thing to call out.
But what is needed is more sense-making.
That's what we need.
The last crisis was getting solved by sense-making, but not enough.
Not the right flavor.
I mean, okay.
So, Nicky, what do you think of this?
What are the tenets of sense-making in that whole genre?
Is that they don't believe in there to be these silos and specialties, right?
You know, it's wrong to have this atomic thing where you zero in on a particular puzzle, but rather that you step back, right?
You go big and you encompass everything and everything comes in there.
So they really love the idea of blending together disparate disciplines, right?
So, you know, you can't have philosophy just by itself, right?
You have to have philosophy and spirituality and also...
Science and politics and everything goes in.
And to me, this is the exact opposite of what I think is good.
When I look at other things, like not sense-making, but other areas of academia, for instance, which I don't like very much.
So that kind of critical theory, the sort of sub-discipline of academia, which actually takes...
Methodologies from the humanities and literary criticism and things like that.
Art theory, for instance, which I think is kind of fine and good when applied to art theory or criticizing literature, taking that and applying it to...
Like, understanding society and people in psychology as well, right?
So that, to me, is an example of just, you know, you blend together two pretty colors and you get a brown.
And I think that the sense-making people have just exemplified taking this to the nth degree, where you blend everything together and you end up with nothing.
But this I know speaks to my own prejudices, so I just thought I'd check.
What do you think?
I feel I'm not nearly smart enough to be a sense maker.
I feel like I don't have the requisite knowledge in anything, actually.
I'm not even trying to have the requisite knowledge in psychology to contribute a meaningful dialogue, but maybe...
Is expertise required or a requirement of being a sensemaker?
You said dialogue.
It's dialocus.
Okay.
Dialocus.
That's what you need to enter.
And never use a normal word if a pretentious word can be substituted for it.
This is sensemaking 101.
You'd have fallen at the first hurdle.
Unfortunately, the Omega rule requires that we find the 1% of truth in your statement and run with it.
I feel the very fact that you're asking about expertise is an error.
That shows you're like, you know, but am I qualified to do that?
And a true sense maker doesn't ask that.
They just run through it.
They just run through it.
And they are qualified in everything.
It doesn't matter.
And I feel to counter Matt's pessimistic kind of presentation there, I should finish with Alexander Boehner's how he ends, you know.
His final call for what's next with sense-making.
So he says, count it to Matt.
What I feel most in the zeitgeist is a deep yearning for transformative beauty.
I see beauty as the way the secret expresses itself in daily life.
It can take us beyond ourselves like nothing else.
And right now, we're trapped in our own minds.
A question in my mind at the moment is how we might use the essence of beauty to create a new kind of activism.
One that is rooted in the world, connected to the body, and fearless in its expression.
Take that, Matt.
Fine words.
Have you guys seen these, you know, these word salad, you know, apps?
Or, you know, like Jordan Peterson, word salad.
This is what all this, all this making stuff sounds like to me.
And, again, I feel inadequate.
I'm like...
I'm not smart enough to understand what's going on.
Or they are full of shit.
It's one of the two.
It's one of the two.
It's definitely one of the two.
But in any case, we welcome any sense-making 3.0 and adding in art.
Why not?
Why not?
We already have spirituality, reactionary politics.
Let's add in art.
And let's see what the next generation of sense-speakers can bring to this world.
I, for one, So that's your update for Sanskrit for this month.
Just a thing to keep an eye on, Matt.
Integral theory, that's Sanskrit 1.0.
This is multiple paradigms spinning, you know?
Yeah, they are in love with the spoken word.
This is the thing.
This is the Jordan Peterson-esque pseudoprofane bullshit, poetic language.
And there are people, many people for whom it resonates with.
I'm just fascinated by it because it's a cognitive style where words and the semantic connections between them is like this magical wonderland which you can explore and connections and so on.
And none of it needs to make sense.
It doesn't need to be coherent.
It's all intuition.
It's poetry.
It's all sense-making.
So it doesn't need to make sense, but...
By not making sense, you're...
You're such a DMA.
You're such a reductionist.
Okay, hold on.
I know you guys are taking a piss here, but Matt, be honest.
You secretly love this stuff?
Yes.
I do, actually.
I do.
I do, because it's a thing of beauty.
You know what I mean?
It's like with Seinfeld.
Remember, the Seinfeld is a show about nothing.
It's about nothing.
You know what I mean?
That's what I love about it, that they've managed to build...
Something.
This enormous thing out of nothing.
And the minute anyone tries to define what that thing is, they immediately deconstruct it and it vanishes in a wisp of semantics.
So it is a kind of art.
So it is a nice holiday, honestly, just speaking genuinely.
It's a nice holiday from some of the more.
They occasionally spoil it by hosting neo-Nazis.
Occasionally.
Or they produce a blueprint for a new society which seems to be reinventing fascism.
Only the elites to achieve citizenship will be allowed to vote.
The underclass will need to earn credits to reproduce and stuff.
But if you set that aside...
They're just thinking outside the box, Chris.
They're just thinking big.
Let them drain.
Let them cook.
Anyway, that's them.
That's them.
They're fired away.
Now, Mickey, we're easing you in here.
I know.
These are the kind of fun aspects of the guru sphere.
Have you come across a podcast called Trigonometry?
Again, only through you.
Although I do...
Both of you are my source of all the flotsam and garbage of the internet.
Otherwise, my social media feed is clean and pure and normal.
I love this.
This is us.
We're like beachcombers.
We're there, wandering along the sandy shore of the internet, seeing what kind of flotsam and jets and what kind of detritus watches up.
And we pick it up and we carry it home.
Chris shows it to me.
Look what I found.
A cat bringing you a dead animal.
That's what our show's all about.
I cannot refute this with what I'm about to do because I find a video with the help of our subreddit, our very large subreddit.
Most of them don't know where it's this, but they came across a gem, which is Trigonometry has two hosts, Constantine Kissin and Francis Foster.
Constantine Gibson, you might know.
Yes.
Francis Foster, you probably don't know.
But he's the kind of lesser host, right?
I'd be like Chris.
I'd be like Chris in this podcast.
Similar to me in this podcast.
He plays a similar role.
So Francis Foster, not Constantine Gibson, guest appeared on a podcast called Bad Boys Done Good.
Now, it might be a successful audio podcast.
But on YouTube, it has 600 subscribers, okay?
So we're not talking, you know, Joe Rogan, here we come.
And Francis went on there, and it's a comedy podcast, okay?
It's like 35 minutes.
It seems to be British comedians, like, kind of roasting the guest, okay?
But I don't know if it's the gimmick of this episode or this is the general gimmick, but they're doing impressions of...
The Sopranos guy, Tony Soprano, and Ray Winston, the London gangster actor.
So it's two comedians doing impersonations, interviewing Francis Foster, and kind of roasting him about his role in Trigolarity.
So I've got two clips, only two.
And a warning for those who may be traveling with children, the language in this clip.
It's quite spicy.
More spicy than we usually have, okay?
So I'll just play the first clip now and then get Mickey and Matt's reactions.
But it's something about the image of you sitting there with Constantine and Joe Rogan all smoking a fucking cigar, talking about the trans thing, all agreeing with each other, patting each other on the fucking backs and all logical and clear-headed.
It was so smarmy.
Like, I actually felt myself gravitating to the other side just because it was so fucking annoying.
Is that potentially the root of identity war's problem?
Is that you don't want to be associated with those cunts, so you go over there with those cunts?
And I found myself thinking, is that my tribe?
I'm watching you three all smile on me with a cigar.
By the way, cigar don't suit you, mate.
I don't know what you were trying to get there.
But is that the problem we've got, is that...
People are so worried about who they're not that they align themselves with someone else.
I think the problem is that a lot of people are scared.
Of what?
A lot of people are scared of being cancelled, of being denied opportunities, of having friendships ended.
So they don't actually say what they really think or believe on a variety of hot-button topics.
You've got a big platform.
You can say whatever you want.
I mean, you interviewed Weinstein.
Yeah, we interviewed Brett.
There you go.
That's the first.
So, how does that make you feel?
I've dropped the dead bird in front of you.
What do you think of that?
I like the accents.
The accents are good.
They're pretty good.
But the one thing that you will have heard there is like, Francis is responding quite straight, right?
Like, he's kind of playing the straight man.
But they're just like, you know, you and Rogan, you look like a dick.
You're annoyed and stuff like that.
He's like, ah, yeah.
At least 35 minutes of this.
So when he's saying, you guys look like a fucking pair of cunts.
I might even want to go down the slide.
Yeah, he doesn't have a snappy comeback for that.
So, Vicky, is this something you might listen to?
I did not listen to it even now.
It is hard to hear.
The thing that surprised me about this is, yes, they talk about Francis is being naked when he smokes a cigar, but they also hit quite a lot on his feelings of inadequacy next to Constantine, that he is not allowed to talk.
And they prepared props.
Like a fake poem that he's written about Constantine.
So this is the next clip, Matt.
You get to hear this, okay?
And I think you hear a little bit more of the Sopranos guy impersonation here.
So here you go.
Is that poem not yours?
No, I don't write poetry, right?
Well, what is that?
It looks like something you both made up.
Constantine, Constantine, let me get a word in.
Let me get a fucking word in.
Let me get a word in.
Constantin, Constantin.
Kiss and tell.
Kiss and tell.
Tell your mum.
I fucked her.
The expression is there.
You're hurting.
You're hurting.
It's okay, Francis.
You can talk.
Tell us.
Tell us what happened.
It's more like a free verse, you know?
Tell us what happened.
What was the incident that made you think, somebody's got to change.
My boundaries are being crossed.
I'm a cuck.
It's actually not very...
This is a men's mental health podcast and I'm feeling shamed for...
Don't be shamed.
It's fine.
I'm queer.
You know, for being labelled a cuck.
I don't think it's very progressive.
It's okay to be a cuck.
Don't worry about it.
And we can all change my mind and say, actually, no, you're not a pro-Hitler.
Simpering little cuck.
Stop, no.
This is the last couple of times.
I mean, I actually think those guys are pretty hilarious.
And what's his name again?
Francis Foster.
Francis is, I think, just dumbstruck about being completely roasted.
Why would he go on this show?
I don't know.
Maybe he's friends with them, but it's like, it is, it's pretty.
Like, strong.
It's also surreal because it's Tony Soprano.
Yeah, right.
It is surreal.
So Tony will piss on him and he's not actually picking up on it.
He can tell.
He's trying to make a feeble comeback there, which is, oh, I'm feeling shamed right now.
You know, you're just...
He's not up for it.
He's not up to it.
These guys are going very, very hard.
He's a comedian, by the way.
You might not be able to tell from that.
That is surreal.
It is surreal.
35 minutes of that.
That's what it's like.
So, you know, there's only been 970 people that have viewed it at the time I've recorded.
So you could be...
971.
So I see what you're trying to do here.
You're trying to bring more attention to this.
I'm trying to boost the numbers for this channel.
I genuinely don't...
I don't know.
So that's trigonometry.
Can you imagine the experience of...
Going on a show where you're in good faith, you're thinking, okay, you know, this will be fun.
And then the entire time they're taking a piss on you?
I can see the enjoyment of that, but I feel like you have to, you know, kind of play along, like, you know, or punch back a little bit, right?
But I don't know what the dynamic is.
Maybe this is what the show is.
Because Chris Williamson went on the show.
There's a guy called Finn Taylor who does roasts now.
But it's very...
Like, it's kind of punchline after punchline and your role is to play the straight man.
Of course, in this case, he kind of feels a bit bad and he should.
You know, maybe Francis just, like, you know, agreed to it and then they didn't check everything they were going to do before.
But, you know, to his credit, he went on and, you know...
Some deep cuts there.
I thought she was a bit mean.
Yeah.
Well, Matt, the next thing is more substantial, okay?
Good, good.
Those were two small sparrows.
This is a crow that I came across.
And actually, you alerted me to it.
You said, "Chris, look over there."
Off I hop, you know, to listen to it and retrieve clips from it.
So, are you aware of making of Sabine Hossenfelder?
Again, through your show.
Again, you introduced me to all of it.
Okay, well, this is good.
So, she's a physicist who has some issues.
With academia.
And we've kind of pointed out along with other people, a YouTuber Professor Dave and others have noted that she's leaning into the kind of culture war clickbait framing on YouTube.
And yeah, so one of her most recent videos was the kind of thumbnail was "Academia is communism".
Question mark.
And I believe the title was something like, Should academia be defunded?
Yeah.
And so, Niki, of course, you remember her big thing is that academia is corrupted by these bad incentives, such that many of us, if not all of us, are just spinning our wheels,
pretending to do research, just...
Painting by numbers so that we can just keep getting money, right?
So there's bad incentives that are causing us to depart from the truth.
And so it is ironic, right, when you're a YouTuber and the YouTube monetization engine means that the more click-baity You know, the more you tap into dark stuff,
you know, everything is a conspiracy.
They're all lying to you.
Here's the real truth.
Academia is communism.
There's a little bit of irony there in terms of talking about bad incentives.
Would you agree?
I definitely would agree.
I mean, I don't disagree with her prognosis about bad incentives.
I mean, I think, at least for scientists, clearly there are bad incentives.
They're not aligned with the truth, but it seems like she's going in a different direction.
Yeah, so she...
One thing to note is about two weeks ago, she had a video where she read out an email that she got seven years ago.
And the email, like, she didn't divulge it from, but it basically said it was an academic saying...
Sabine, I read your critique of physics.
You're absolutely right.
We're all liars and we need the money, though, to let our kids through school.
We're all doing shit and shuffling papers around.
Don't tell anyone about this.
You're completely right.
And please be quiet because you'll jeopardize all our cushy jobs.
And she read this out and it was full of somewhat what physicists pointed out afterwards were elementary mistakes with people like, you know, getting the...
The theories of the people that they're mentioning wrong or whatever.
And yeah, it does look like a quite credulous reading of a suspicious email.
And that got 2.5 million views two weeks ago.
So she has cultivated a kind of anti-science, anti-establishment hungry audience.
And in the turn up for the books, Matt had an interaction with her on Twitter where he pointed out the hyperbolic academia is communism headline.
And she kind of said, well, Mr. Matt, I'm paraphrasing.
You know, I guess if you just want to tell your audience what they hear all the time, then you won't admit the horror that is academia.
I'm just telling it like it is.
Now, that does ignore that on YouTube.
Say no.
All scientists are liars and science is a bitch.
It's actually quite popular.
I don't think our audience is exactly pro-science cheerleaders.
And the thing is, the way they'll represent it if people like us push back on some of the hyperbole or some of the broad brushstrokes.
It is pretty huge.
People like her will extrapolate from one incident.
That they had, you know, they had a bad meeting seven years ago, right?
And then from that, right, they know that it's all corrupt.
When you respond to that, they'll say, oh, well, you're just defending the status quo.
You know, you know what side your bread is buttered on, right?
So you're just trying to stifle dissent.
And, you know, this is so hollow, right?
Because as you know, you know, you guys...
We talked about it publicly all the time.
We do too.
You talk to any scientist, any academic, and we will talk to you for as long as you'll bear to listen to us about all the problems in science, in funding, in academia, in publishing.
You know, the list goes on.
But the thing is, what do you think of this?
Like, you cannot name any field of human endeavor, like any complicated system that involves human beings that isn't just a pile of shit.
In some degree.
Like, look at the criminal justice system, right?
You can make a list a mile long about all the things that are wrong with it.
Yeah, that's right.
Even crypto.
Yeah, crypto, high finance, corporate, you know, corporate behavior and so on.
Like, anything that involves people is going to have a list of grievances a mile long, most of which are perfectly valid.
But I think there's an interesting sort of jump where you go, well, look, here, look.
There are some bad things about this institution, about this thing.
Right.
So we need to burn it all down.
Right.
But if we applied that rule, we'd burn everything down.
Literally everything.
Mickey is a, you know, with UL, whistleblowers of sorts are, you know, open science celebrity.
At the Finder, in some regard, Mickey is the source of the open science.
In my case, you know, I consider myself a cheerleader.
For open science and methodological reform.
Not a particularly good one, but one that typically says, well, that's a good idea.
So the notion that you can't be critical of mainstream science or the way that it works, no, you definitely can't.
And it's even rewarded in certain sectors now to do it.
So Sabine acts as if it's like, you know, nobody would dare say that previous research is invalid.
And you're like, Yes, they do.
I can say it all the time.
But I do have clips to illustrate this.
So maybe you should hear the clip and then you can react.
It's a reaction.
If I can hear it.
Yeah, this is right.
This one might be a bit clearer than the previous comedy one.
Let's see.
Okay, so this is the thesis that academia is communism.
Let's hear why.
I recently angered some people by saying that if I had any choice in the matter, I wouldn't want my taxes to pay for research on the description of smell in the English literature.
Some have taken that to mean that I want to defund all of academia.
So let's talk about it.
Should we defund academia?
Yes!
No!
Hope that clears it up.
Thanks for watching.
Of course I didn't say that we should defund all of academia.
That'd be insane.
And I'm not insane.
Though this is of course exactly what an insane person would say, isn't it?
What I said is I think it's going to happen.
Academia will be defunded.
And that isn't entirely a bad thing, but it isn't entirely a good thing either.
It's going to happen because the current organization of academic research works badly.
It's an inefficient use of money and that's for a simple reason.
It's a planned economy.
Yes, academia is a planned economy.
We're financing it the same way that the communists finance their production chains with centralized decision-making committees and five-year plans.
It worked badly for the communists and it works badly for research.
We have oversupplies of string theorists, undersupplies of computer scientists, groupthink and corruption all over the place.
It's a disaster.
I don't understand why anyone ever thought this is a good idea.
And once you realise that the key problem with academia is the central planning, it's obvious what's going to happen.
That really clears it up, don't you think?
Like, I think, don't you think we should defund academia?
Yes!
No!
Well, it's totally corrupt.
That would be crazy, but I totally...
It's going to happen.
But it will happen, and it's a good thing.
I'm not going to lie.
Like, again, you know, she has, she identifies some issues, but it's completely wrong.
Academia is centrally planned.
No.
I mean, that's...
Silly.
I mean, look at my career, for example.
I started out studying X. I went to Y, Z, and literally, I'm studying fucking cannabis now.
20 years ago, I did not, and it's all coming for me.
It's not some central planner telling me, do that, because no one would want me to study this.
Are you not a string theorist?
I'm not a string theorist.
But that's so true, isn't it?
It's the complete opposite of what she said.
It is the least centrally planned.
Of any job you could do.
I've worked in other industries and you have a boss who tells you what you're going to be working on that day.
I haven't spoken to my dean for years.
He doesn't know what I do.
I do what I want.
I'm pretty sure my bosses have no idea I'm in Tokyo right now.
I'm outing myself.
And I mean, it's so silly.
It's all right.
It's behind the paywall.
Nobody's here.
I mean, it's such a bad diagnosis of how academia actually works.
And again, there might be some kernels of truth to what she's saying.
Yes, there's bad research.
Yes, there's corruption.
Yes, there's misuse of funds.
Centrally planned?
No, it's communism.
It's communism.
The thumbnail says so.
There's the, like, culture war framing of linking it to communism, right?
But there's also, she is clearly, with the reference to string theorists, and okay, a stretched computer scientist, but, like, she is talking about physics, right?
Like, that is what her complaints are almost always revolving around, but as others have pointed out, she constantly sweeps across to all of academia, which she doesn't seem to actually know.
So she might be saying that the LHC or CERN is causing a particular kind of approach to particle physics or whatever to be elevated.
But that's a very different claim than all of academia is centrally planned, like the communist states, which we all hear.
I'm sure the Manhattan Project, to some degree, was centrally planned, right?
You have big projects, it's going to be different.
It's beyond our pay grade.
We don't know about the Large Hadron Collider.
You know, I'm not equipped to judge whether that's a good idea to be spending your money that way or a different way.
I do know that a lot of physicists think that she's completely wrong, right?
She's welcome to her opinion about the physics stuff by all means.
But, you know, just saying it's not universally shared and other physicists are not all mindless drones just being given their talking points by the central commissar.
Yeah.
So the framing is very culture war-centric, right?
Especially the reference to communism.
But if you didn't pick up on that slight hint, so the last clip from this might give you a stronger indication that she is playing in the culture war tropes.
So here you go.
A last clip from this.
People have complained about useless research in academia for half a century and nothing has happened.
So why should this time be different?
It's because of what Elon Musk and his fans have called the woke mind virus.
Among other things, the diversity, equity and inclusion trend that managed to take hold, especially at American universities.
This might seem like an entirely different problem, but it's a symptom of the same disease.
The reason that people in the tech sector DUI...
It's all about some people's idea of social justice, that candidates should be selected for positions because of who they are, not because of how good they are at their job.
DUI puts social justice first and scientific progress second.
It's a clash of values.
And scientific progress has won.
This is how the two things belong together.
The balance is swinging towards the desire for scientific progress and against inefficient governments.
Just listen to what they're saying.
The Silicon Valley billionaire Mark Andreessen has declared that the ivory tower is an enemy of progress.
Elon Musk has called Academia, a bastion of communism that operates with no feedback loop to reality.
And he said entirely correctly that most scientific papers are useless.
I think success on an academic level would have been quite likely because you can publish some useless paper and most papers are pretty useless.
And Peter Thiel thinks that scientists are basically on governmental welfare and therefore need to be silent about dissenting views.
You know, the scientists can't talk freely about the science.
And if you have dissenting views, you better keep them to yourself or your government funding will get cut off.
And they're all in this sort of government welfare or something like that.
It's very subtle.
You might have missed it.
I think there's like a hint of culture war.
Stuff like it's seeping in there.
I believe, if I heard correctly, she didn't say D-E-I.
She said D-U-I.
Driving under the influence.
That is bad.
That is bad.
We're not...
We all agree.
We don't condone that.
Oh, my God.
You know, it's such garbage because, again, she's picking up on some...
Correct things.
There are some overreach and now it's been corrected, I suppose.
But again, to throw all of academia under the bus for this sin is just silly.
Or to present like the Trump regime as like they're restoring science to its rightful place as they defund the NIH.
To prevent people from publishing papers about climate change...
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