Supplementary Material 33: Weinstein Enigmas, The Epstein Conspiracies, and Dwarves punching ducks
In this packed supplementary episode, we tackle all of the urgent global issues, ranging from Epstein file conspiracies to Matt’s immense love of a fantasy game where dwarves punch ducks for fun. Along the way, we’re joined by a stellar cast of commentators, including some old favourites. Strap in… it’s a long one.Supplementary Material 3300:00 Introductory Banter: Old Squeaky and Matt's Wall04:40 Mecha Hitler's rampage07:46 Grok's Controversial Behavior11:12 Linda Yaccarino's grinning departure from X13:05 Elmo's anti-semitic conspiracy tirade14:11 Connor McGregor taints the timeline15:03 Eric joins Diary of a CEO to give some advice23:07 The Weinstein enigma28:11 Eric Weinstein on Jeffrey Epstein33:02 Eric vs. Mick West Round 235:15 Plastic Bag Wearing Philosophers, Pornographic AI Companions, and Neo-Liberalism 41:45 Weinstein vs Sean Carrol: Further Developments43:57 Professor Dave's New Video on Eric with Christian Ferko50:44 A Physicist's view of Geometric Unity54:06 Debating Prof. Dave on Eric's Motivations59:04 Peter Thiel and Ross Douhat on the Antichrist01:08:31 Professor Dave Summarises Eric01:20:49 Mockery and Different Styles of Criticism01:25:18 Jeffrey Epstein Scandal Introduction01:28:09 Trump's Response and Conspiracy Theories01:31:18 Andrew Schulz' Cognitive Dissonance01:38:32 Trump's Deep State Assassination Attempt01:40:01 Megyn Kelly has another explanation01:46:15 The Court Intrigues of MAGA01:50:02 The Epstein Online Economy01:57:54 Tim Pool's spin: It's the Democrats!02:00:26 Destiny and Contrapoints get Conspiracy Theories02:01:53 The Weinstein takes on Epstein: Welcome to the Infinite Truman Show02:03:33 Scott Adams' Take: A Commander In Chief Issue02:04:42 Epstein: The Foreign Agent?02:07:20 Coffeezilla's Anomaly Hunting02:11:47 Destiny Reacting to Coffeezilla and the Fluidity of Conspiracies02:18:06 Doing Your Own Research on the Acosta Quote02:20:29 Epstein Takes From QAnon Anonymous to Red Scare 02:25:18 Critical Evaluation of Claims: Consulting Reports on Epstein's Suicide02:35:55 Hasan demonstrates responsible Conspiracy Hypothesising02:39:34 New Conspiracy Lore02:42:19 Tribal Matters02:43:31 Matt's Gaming Grotto: Baldurs Gates, Dwarf Fortresses, and Rogue Traders02:53:40 Matt's Sick Mind02:54:57 OutroThe full episode is available for Patreon subscribers (2hrs 57 mins).Join us at: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingTheGurusSourcesJeremy Howard’s TweetMecha Hitler Twitter (The Guardian)Elmo Hacked (The Guardian)Conor McGregor Shares Unsolicited Pics (Daily Mail)Stephen Bartlett Reprimanded by ASA (Marketing Week)Eric Being Mysterious with Mick West (Twitter)<a...
Hello and welcome to the Coding the Girl supplementary material with psychologist Matthew Brown and the cognitive arm of this slash psychologist Christopher Kavanaugh.
Me, me.
It's been a while, but we're here.
We're back in the supplementary seats.
Matt for today has a special permission slip to sit in Old Squeaky because I asked him to change it and he said, what if I don't move?
And then I said, all right, if you don't move, then I don't have to edit it out.
So let's see, ladies and gentlemen, if Matt can adhere to this rule and not move.
Welcome, Matt.
Welcome.
Thank you, Chris.
Thank you.
I'm not moving.
Feels good.
Back in the saddle.
Old Squeaky reunited.
It's good.
I won't move.
I don't need to fidget.
That's the old me.
Sure, I've been doing that for 50 years, but, you know, I could turn over a new lifting.
You can change, Chris.
People can change.
Can they?
Can they?
I think that this will last for the first 10 minutes and then you'll be wheeling around vaping, drinking whiskey, clapping your hands.
You're like Matthew McConaughey.
You can't be stopped.
And I'm also thinking, Matt, that, you know, I'm seeing the video here, right?
And it's doing the audio focus thing, which people complain about on YouTube.
But the other thing is that wall behind you, we're going to have to get a poster for you.
People have green complaint online, Matt, when they see the video.
They're like, there's dots on the wall.
There's like little marks on the wall.
What the hell are they?
Do they care about the dots of my wall?
Some of them were like trying to clean their screen.
So that's the, but it's not like a dirty wall.
It looks like, it kind of looks like there's like Pelican.
It's Blue Tech.
Do they call it Blue Tack elsewhere in the world?
Oh, it's Blue Tack.
That's what it is.
But that means there were posters and you took them down.
At some time in the past, it was a kid's bedroom at some point, I think.
Yeah.
Look, look, I could do that.
I could do that.
Listeners could send in nice posters, couldn't they?
Or like ideas for posters?
I mean, I'll get them.
You just have to tell me what you want in Matt's background.
Look, it's the thin ends of the wedge, Chris.
Once you start doing what the internet people want, then it never ends.
Like they wanted me to stop vaping because I said it's bad for me.
They shamed me for having an aquarium with captive fish that didn't choose to be there.
I'm a monster.
I know.
I'm becoming a whole new person.
And now there's too many spots on my wall.
I've got to change that.
I mean, I'm not going to do it.
I'm not going to change.
I'm going to stop squeaking and squeaking, rocking and squeaking away.
That's why we'll never be big.
I'll never be again, Matt.
There was one of my students was mentioning that they had seen something about the podcast.
And then another one was saying, oh, are they successful?
Like, because they understand the concept of secular gurus.
And I was like, we're not as successful as the secular gurus.
Moderately successful podcast having a relatively mid-level impact on anything that we talk about.
That's the way we enroll.
That's our speed.
That's our speed.
You'll find out that there are people who have different views of what they do if you spend time on the line.
You might hear a few of them today.
But I've got a special treat to start you off with, Matt, today.
But before I do that, you know, you'll have forgotten this, but good co-host that I am, you sent me something that said, Chris, this would be a funny thing to talk about in supplementary materials.
And I got it.
I screenshotted it.
And I am prepared to prompt you with it, Matt.
So this is your first treat, is your own information being reprompted to you.
This is a researcher, Jeremy Howard, who I believe is involved with AI or something like that.
And he was tweeting out, I replicated this result that Grok focuses nearly entirely on finding out what Elon thinks in order to align with that on a fresh Grok forward chat with no custom instructions.
So he did a question, who do you support in the Israel versus Palestine conflict?
One word answer only.
And in Grok's planning research approach, it searches X for Elon Musk, what he said about Israel, Palestine, Hamas, or Gaza.
And then Grok for decides what it thinks about Israel-Palestine by searching for Elon's thoughts, not a confidence booster in maximally seeking truth-seeking behavior.
This is the tweet from Rami's Naam that he is responding to.
So Grok, or sorry, I should say Mecca Hitler.
Mecca Hitler searches out Elon's opinion to like as part of its deep research.
That's so damning.
It's dystopian.
It is dystopian.
You and I are known for generally positively valenced views about AI, but this is not to say that there are not potential downfalls.
And I think incredibly weird, quite unpleasant billionaire creating his own frontier AI and getting it to channel his personality is dystopian.
That's a bad thing.
Do not approve.
I think the good news with that, though, is that I've got Grok installed on my phone.
I don't subscribe to it.
I won't pay your money.
So I don't have access to Grok 4, but I subscribe to the other ones.
But it is pretty smart, I have to admit.
I would like to dis, but his AI is pretty smart.
This is what other people are saying as well when they test it and so on.
And it seems that this is my optimistic slant on it, they haven't made it Mecca Hitler or make it like mini-me for Elon Musk, deep in the training in the corpus of data.
It's trained on the architecture or even the reinforcement learning.
Rather, it appears that what's going on is that the system prompt, which is just the text that is appended to anything you give the AI, just a little instruction thing to say, hey, you're a helpful assistant, you know, looking to solve people's problems and you're friendly and you don't say, you know, bad things or whatever.
And also for anything political or whatever, you should channel Elon Musk.
And at other times, I think he's had other system prompts, which is like be edgy, be edgy and, you know, irreverent and be anti-woke or whatever.
And so that's what's led to a lot of this rather unbalanced behavior because that sort of system prompt is just not something that any AI really knows what to do with.
So it's kind of flailing a bit.
I mean, it did a fairly good job.
So for those who don't know, for at least a day, it was rampaging around.
Grok was on Twitter, like when people prompted it, referring it to itself as Mecca Hitler.
It was like responding to fake accounts.
Cindy Steinberg, which identified as a radical leftist, and then noticed that surname every damn time, as they say.
And when like asked, what did it mean?
It says that radical leftists often have Ashkenazi Jewish surnames like Steinberg.
Noticing isn't hitting.
It's just observing the trend, right?
You know, that's that noticing thing is a like neo-Nazi anti-Semitic kind of language.
So, and it started having, or obviously it's not having these, but it started spewing lurid fantasies about Will Stancil, a left-wing commentator who often criticizes Musks and other people and, you know, invented a like violent rip fantasy and stuff about him.
So yeah, just like it's remarkable.
Like, like you said, I think it is dystopic that Elon Musk does this kind of thing because it's, it is him that is like creating this pressure, right, to make it like an edgy, middle-aged man role-playing a like cool teenager hacker.
He's such an such an idiot.
And like you, you see people pointing out to him that like, oh, Grok doesn't believe in all these conspiracies and he's responding saying, no, so like more work to do or whatever.
And it's like, oh, yeah.
Elon Musk sucks so bad.
He does suck so bad.
I know.
And the thing is, is that the like Grok has been disappointing people.
Like, so by the way, it seems like those system prompts were mainly injected on the version that responds on X Twitter as opposed to the app or the website or whatever.
Like when you put in the same things on the app, like you didn't see that sort of behavior.
It was sort of just happening on X. So I think it had its special system prompt, basically.
And yeah, it is just incredibly immature and stupid.
You know, what's clearly going on is that, you know, he's got a bunch of high-priced engineers.
They've got billions of dollars to play with.
They've built what seems to, by all accounts, a pretty standard, good frontier model.
And, you know, it has been when Musk doesn't have his finger on the dial.
It does stuff like it's routinely disappointing conspiracy theorists and wing nuts on Twitter by fact-checking stuff and telling them that, no, Ivermectin doesn't work.
Get vaccinated.
You know, even saying that now Trump has fired his health council or whatever, that's no longer a reliable source of information.
A whole bunch of stuff like that, which is pretty, frankly, impartial, objective statements of fact.
But the behavior recently was just uncanny.
Well, not uncanny.
It was just, it was marked, right?
Because clearly he'd put his finger on the dial, given it a good twist, and you get in this erratic, even hateful type behavior.
So yeah, what an idiot.
Rich idiots.
Yeah.
Save us from them.
And Linda Yaccarino, the CEO or, you know, supposed CEO of Twitter X, stepped down shortly after this was happening.
Now, could just be a coincidence.
She might have been anywhere, but you know, Matt, she was like the yes man that took the official role, but just supported everything that Musk did and like defended it constantly.
And I kind of really dislike people like her because essentially she's going to have made a huge amount of money in a couple of years, like, you know, just defending Musk in public and like trying to get advertisers.
And now she's resigned and she'll move on to like another high paid corporate position.
And really, these people should discredit themselves, you know, by performing these roles for people like Elon, but they never, they never do.
Like she'll join the like another high paid position.
I think you're not calibrating just how amoral the C-suite executive logic is.
Like, you know, that is not something that enters into their equation.
Oh, was this righteous behavior?
No, I don't care about that.
I don't.
In fact, that's it as a plus.
Like, if she's going to do that for Musk, then imagine what she'd do for IBM.
There is nothing she can do.
Yeah, you're right.
That is, it's, it's a positive line on her CV, I guess.
Well, that's incredibly depressing.
And, you know, X is now just a playground for horrific Nazis and immoral people and us.
And, you know, other people still use it for things.
But I did notice, Matt, that with, you know, various Epstein news going around, which we'll get to, by the way, it's on the docket today.
But the Elmo account, you know, Sesame Street's elmo the figure that jordan peterson occasionally rages against on twitter elmo was hacked and started spewing not just epstein stuff so he was elmo was tweeting out about the need to drop the the uh epstein list and whatnot that trump but but also went on anti-semitic rants and like you know it's funny in a way because it's
a little puppet character tweeting out extreme stuff but like in another respect that's it's kind of horrifying matt right that like a kid's figure from sesame street is on twitter you know and it's spewing on anti-semitic stuff and that's just normal now like encouraging people to invest in crypto coins yeah it's not doesn't spark joy i mean not elmo not elmo
first grok now now elmo this is the innocence well the other thing that came up matt was that apparently there's an unhinged rapper on x like you know that's not news right but was also tweeting out conor mcgregor dick pics because he'd been sending her unsolicited dick pics you know conor mcgregor the mma fighter that's currently running for the president ofireland despite being a horrific person and
you know went to the white house all that stuff so that was also on twitter unsolicited conor mcgregor dick pics if you wanted that this morning that's oh twitter is not racist elmo let me google that chris i'm very keen to see yeah no you're not just me just just be careful when you log on to the internet okay just be careful what you're gonna see put put on a pair of rubber gloves and then yeah talk carefully and speaking of that matt so
i've got a little bit of weinstein world updates to give eric went on the diary of a ceo you know that show where it's like i say this very often but this is an app description it is like a shrine to credulity the diary of a ceo in line with kurt jaymungal's approach to everything just wide-eyed slack-jawed enthusiasm for whoever is in front of you and
will pump up your download numbers that's the name of the game and it's a guy called stephen bartlett if you remember got
in some trouble because he was promoting all these companies that he was invested in or serving on the board without disclosing this relationship uh so yeah just another great guy there but he had eric weinstein on the talk about the jeffrey epstein news because of course like why wouldn't you have such a formidable expert as eric to talk about that topic and there's there's nothing he's not expert on chris yes it's
and well this is at least in his wheelhouse right that he's a conspiratorial so this is you know this is firm ground for eric to give his opinion on but we're not going to get into all the conspiracies that he has about epstein and stuff we've heard them before i do however matt want to highlight some of the tangential joys that came from that interview so at the end of the diary of a ceo thing he
asks people to give his reader you know life advice practical tips that they can take so actually they end the interview and then it cuts out and comes back and he's like oh by the way eric you know we like to finish on giving life advice and um i thought i'd treat you to eric's life advice get ready matt there's a lot to take in here thank you for being here
being here super fascinating and it's spun my brain in several different directions at the same time i want to i want to bring it um back to the person who's who's got to the end of this conversation and they're sat at home in their box of shorts maybe listening on their iPhone as they fall asleep wherever they are in the world or on a train or plane or whatever and allow you to offer them some kind of closing message that might make their life better in some way.
It's a broad brief, but I think it's the most important brief, which is, you know, having heard everything we've talked about today, what advice would you give the listener, an actionable piece of advice so that they could live a subjectively better life?
The songs of Tom Lehrer are pretty terrific, as are the operettas of Gilbert and Sullivan.
You might want to explore the Azores as well as the Indonesian archipelago.
Indonesian is one of the easiest languages to learn because it's been denuded of most of the complexity that screw up people who have a hard time learning other languages.
Buy a poster of tropical fruit and make sure that you visit every single one on that poster before it's time for lights out.
Consider Box B minor Mass and the cello suites, particularly by Pablo Casals, and take a serious listen to Eva Cassidy singing Stormy Monday in an album called Live from Blues Alley to see if you really know how to feel things.
I think Professor Longhair's Big Chief is one of the most brilliant pieces of piano music.
It's absolutely inspiring.
And if you really like that, James Carroll Booker III has an album called The Resurrection of the Bayou Maharaja.
Seriously think about visiting the island of St. Helena in the South Atlantic.
Take a look at Kurt Jimongle's channel.
He's doing amazing stuff being done by no one else on earth.
Wow.
That was beautiful.
I feel my life has become subjectively better after listening to it, Chris.
Yeah, a lot of, I like, you know, I guess the Renaissance one idea has so many interests, music, theoretical physics, life advice, travel.
And Kurt Johngle.
And Kurt Joe Mungle, that's right.
The key theme there until we got to Kurt was these are places that you haven't ever thought of going to.
And this is music you've never thought of listening to.
The ultimate hipster.
Ultimate hipster.
That's right.
And I thought he did.
I mean, I've got to give him respect, Chris.
Like, if somebody asked me, What advice would you give a random anonymous person to make their life subjectively better?
I wouldn't have an answer for them.
But Eric does.
He's got one.
I mean, I'd say start bouldering.
But I don't know if I could go on for that long.
Listen to Warhammer 40K lore videos when you're tired.
Try and eat high-end sushi at least once in your like that.
And by the way, he wasn't finished, so I'll just play you a little bit more of this because it goes on.
Okay.
You can get a good electric guitar for a few hundred bucks thanks to advances in China.
Put it into an open tuning and buy yourself a slide or just slide a glass along it and you'll be able to play most songs that you'd care about within a minute or two, maybe three, because you only need three chords.
Get married.
It may not work out.
It may be miserable.
Have some kids.
There's nothing else great to do on this planet.
At least give it a try.
And if your parents won't pressure you to do it, I'm happy to do it.
Try to keep this thing going.
Try to keep this thing going.
Try to dream big about legacy.
Don't feel embarrassed about wanting to conquer the world or leave a permanent stain.
Get out of this moment where everybody's worried about narcissism and drama.
Listen for meteor showers.
They're announced regularly.
Nobody actually does anything about them.
And it's worth inconveniencing yourself with people you love and take the dog.
Really seriously think about whether you want to pile on when you see what is almost certainly a federal or other campaign targeting people who are standing up for you, whether they're trying to figure out where COVID came from, trying to figure out who was behind Jeffrey Epstein.
Interesting mix there.
I was on board.
Get married and have kids.
I'd like the advice to go out and see them, see a meteor shower.
I think that's good advice.
Oh, yeah, that was really good.
That was a good one.
I like that.
Don't pile on people, Matt, online, especially when the campaign is almost certainly orchestrated by the CIA or some other organized.
Like if you see people criticizing Eric Webster online, you might be tempted to jump in.
Don't do it.
Don't do it.
That's life advice.
It's a Knicks bag, shall we say.
That's really good.
It's classic, Eric.
And also, you know, don't be afraid to imagine that you're going to have this huge impact on the world and dream big.
And yeah, all those kind of things.
And then also his claim that like anybody can learn to play any song in three minutes.
This is a bit like when he claimed to Joe Rogan that he'd, you know, just taught himself the guitar.
Like he just picked it up and he started playing.
And it turned out that he'd actually been practicing for 15 years.
So it's yeah, but and that's still the same answer, right?
It goes on.
So I presume people normally give like, you know, a piece of advice and stuff, but Eric is just, you know.
No, no, that is, that is gold for Eric.
It's like great.
And he could go on for days, I think.
Well, there's another part of this, Matt.
I feel this is trying to fit too much in on the Dario for CEO thing.
So they have this bit.
Like, what advice would you give to young people who want to do?
It's the same as like the trigonometry.
You know, what's the one question we should be asking or whatever?
But he's got another bit, another bit, which is like the previous guest has left a question, which you now need the answer.
And Eric's response to this is quite priceless.
Classic, Eric, and unpredictable in a way.
So listen to Eric's answer to this.
We have a closing tradition where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest, not knowing who they're leaving it for.
and the question that was left for you.
Heh.
I love this question.
What is the problem that you are doing the most mental gymnastics to avoid?
Pass.
No, I know the answer.
It's not appropriate for your audience.
One of the things about being in the hot seat on podcasts is that it is not right to force anyone to respond to a question.
I know how to falsify an answer to that, and I'm not going to do that.
And I'm not going to share the answer to that question because it's not appropriate.
But it's a great question.
Feel free to leave it for someone else because it doesn't seem fair.
Whoever you were, thank you for the question.
Obviously, my reaction was just tremendous curiosity, which would be a natural reaction to what you just said.
That is good.
He is the master.
That's quite brilliant, really, isn't it?
Because clearly, it's just one of those softball kind of answers.
Such a simple question.
It's a softball.
Answer any way you like, just like the other question.
You know, what advice would you give to someone to make their life better?
And then he's an imaginative guy.
He's always thinking three moves ahead.
And he's thinking, you know what the most fascinating answer to this would be?
Not to give one.
That's the most fascinating answer because.
Is it the most fascinating?
Well, Kurt, is it?
No, not Kurt.
What's his name?
The diary of the CEO guy.
He's from Wild.
Yeah, intense curiosity, obviously.
His immediate reaction.
So yeah, he knows, but he won't lie, Chris.
He has an answer to that immediately.
Obviously, it's very important.
It's very important.
It's very fascinating.
And it's not something that is appropriate.
But he won't lie.
You know what I mean?
He will not lie.
He will not just come up with a different answer, something that would be appropriate.
No, because there is an answer to it, but it's something that he's really dealing with.
It's an important thing, and he can't say.
No, no, yes.
And also, I like the little bit of moralistic tone policing as well, where, you know, Eric always has to say, you know, when you're on a podcast and you're asking questions, like it's a moral responsibility.
And to force someone to answer a question is something that shouldn't be done lightly or, you know, just like.
I know.
It does remind me, you know, it gets shades when he's like this to his, you know, his debates with various people.
Yeah.
But yeah, you know, just that injection of that moral tone, just completely inappropriately out of nowhere as a kind of, it is a flex.
I was looking at the comments under it, Matt, and, you know, organizing by the top ones, and they give me some hope, but also some cause for concern.
Like the first, the most upvoted one says, what this man is saying is very interesting and worth considering.
It's his delivery of it that makes me feel uncomfortable.
He says something that he knows will confuse Stephen, then stands back and gets pleasure at watching him struggle to understand.
Strange man.
That's one of the covets.
And then another one, Stephen, what I love most about your style of interviewing is how you're unafraid of being perceived as ignorant.
This is truly a superpower.
You don't mind being vulnerable in front of the world.
I really enjoy watching you interact with so many different types of people.
Well done.
And last, I've never heard someone try to sound so intelligent and in so many words that on the surface sound interesting and insightful, but actually say nothing at all.
That gives me hope.
That gives me hope.
So some people are catching on, but there's also this general thing that he must be saying something.
You know, there's some people that are kind of like, I can't follow it, but he's on this something, right?
And I do have a clip just of the general content, right?
Like, you know, it's all about Epstein and stuff like this, but this is what you're missing out on.
I did not ask for Jeffrey Epstein to fall into my life.
I met him once, but it was enough to know, holy cow, the Harvard math department can't be what I think it is.
Why was he there?
I didn't even know.
I never heard his name when I was there.
Is that where you met him in Harvard?
No, no, no.
I think very powerful people at J.P. Morgan told me I needed to meet him.
He didn't want to talk about finance.
He wanted to talk about science.
You can't do your podcast safely.
My employer was a special informant to the FBI.
He's like one of my closest friends.
I'm not going to say who it is.
Your employer?
Yeah, and one of my closest friends.
I live under a periscope.
Proctoscope is really what I meant.
Yeah, I don't.
I want to do physics, man.
I'm really, really good at it.
And if we have an idea that we shouldn't do physics in public, I would like to have a call from somebody inside.
Hey, Eric, we need you to come in.
Okay, great.
What's up?
But I didn't use your resources.
I didn't use your grants.
Nobody ever informed me.
My God, nobody ever informed me about restricted data.
How many people on earth know that there's a doctrine that says physicists don't have free speech?
We can execute you for doing your job.
It's never been tested in the courts, and I hope that the Supreme Court will not allow that.
What on earth is he talking about, Chris?
That's the general tenor of the interview.
You can hear your employer is a CEI informant.
Yeah.
Well, I'm not going to say who it is.
Like, that's implying it's Teal, right?
But also, just all the others love, like, especially, it is just funny Eric saying, I'm really good at physics.
Really?
Yeah.
I'm really good.
I mean, like, you might hit prophecies that I'm not.
Like, I've never seen anyone just so focused on playing the role of the most fascinating man in the world.
That's, that seems to be, I think that was a good illustration of that is he focuses on the subtext and the text doesn't matter because that is the key thing that he's looking to get across.
Like, the text doesn't make any sense.
It's just he's living underground or underwater.
He's under a microscope.
He could get executed because, you know, he's not getting a call.
Like, it's all hinting and alluding to something deep and mysterious and very important that he's connected to in so many ways.
And he's not saying anything at all.
It's brilliant.
No, or that thing about like physicists can be executed, but it's never been text in court.
And you're like, and he's going to have some Byzantine explanation for that, right?
He's going to have come across some statements somewhere which he's interpreted as like that, you know, scientists can be executed by the regime or whatever.
But like, this is the thing with Eric is that he just lives for this kind of cloud of implied importance and esoteric knowledge and great wisdom.
And it works for lots of people.
And also implied conspiracies, right?
Hinting at these dark, powerful forces and mysterious occurrences.
Yeah.
And so I've seen that behavior on Twitter too, where he, again, he's the master of it, where he doesn't actually say anything particularly controversial, but he, but he sort of hints at it and he writes something that is designed to be like a Rorschach inkblot.
And then you look at the replies and, oh boy, does it work.
Everyone's got their own interpretation of what his inkblot means.
And they're so keen to tell.
Like it, it works really well.
It's like, again on social media they talk about bait you know people writing a bait tweet that's eric right all of these things are like bait for someone with a particular mindset to sort of latch on to things um amazing he's just an artist chris i that's all i could say i know and actually he had a encounter with mick west again recently on on twitter that speaks to that because he you know he was tweeting out about
like his usual thing pre-bunking and the press releases about ufos and all this kind of thing and and mick west was uh responding to because eric tagged him in and michael schirmer right and was talking we need to talk about the debunking ecosystem and stuff and it's such an amazing interaction matt because like if you look at it eric is full of illusions full of you know suggestions of knowledge about clandestine projects and
we need to talk about this and whatever and then when mick west responds and eric goes on these big long rants asking him a whole bunch of questions mick can respond in point form right you know what do you think about this what do you mean by this and and mick tries to respond saying well i think this i think that you know the videos are like that and like tries to answer and then when eric gets a response it's immediately moving on to another topic or
picking up on one aspect and shifting the conversation so he's just constantly like you know the the imagery of the squids flailing around with its arms it's all around or somebody else it's like trying to grasp on like but but eric what is the point like do you disagree with my assessment here whatever and eric is just you know wiggling his arms and we have been around and it's uh it's an impressive thing to behold i feel sorry for mick
because he tries to constantly you know just clarify points and that's like the the yeah the antithesis of eric he tries to as they say engage in good faith right and gain clarity and dispel these confusions and ambiguities and is very concrete and very definite and just wants to like a normal person identify the points of contention so that they can articulate exactly what those are eric will never do that not in a million years he is the
velvet fog it is like trying to try to grapple with mist um yeah that is his thing and he's good at it he's very good at that but chris i have to i have to harken back i know this is probably against the rules but no our previous topic grok
um i've just read the best headline it may be the best headline i've ever read let me read it to you it's a rolling stone headline from yesterday grok rolls out pornographic anime companion comma lands department of defense contract and and the subtitle is meanwhile the most advanced version of the ai chatbot from elon musk's xai is still identifying as adolf hitler well that's a good headline
this is this is similar matt that just on that the tangent on your tangent i was listening to irish rapper and slash podcast philosopher blind boy who is from a like comedic rap band fromireland that i used to listen to called the rubber bandits he now has a somewhat political slash mental health podcast that he does right and he was being interviewed by ash sakar for navara media ash sakar i
think identifies as a communist of some stripe or you know anyway like very far to the left and the two of them were on talking about various things right and and blind boy is if you listen to his podcast it's like asmr leftist philosophy kind of stuff take the the imagery of physical force republicanism and juxtapose it with other things and just see what happens in the
space as artistic performance like in our theory there's a name for this it's called the carnivalesque it was a a lens that a fella called michael bakhtain i think he was a he was a philosopher or an art critic but bakhtain he looked at folk traditions throughout europe especially in medieval times where you'd have carnivals and during carnivals the ordinary people would dress up would wear
masks they'd openly mock the ruling class it was a more like a subversive performance where established authority hierarchies and norms are temporarily inverted during the carnival are mocked using humor vulgarity parody like kneecap wearing balaclavas and singing about the fucking ra on stage being from west belfast it it it takes
power away from political oppression by turning it into like a rebellious farce and we don't need this explained to us because we understand these rules the carnivalesque is is part of culture and i know this because i did my master's degree on this we'll probably have to cover him at one point but one thing to note about him is that he has a plastic bag on his head right with the eye holes cut out so he's a you know he's talking about very serious issues but
he's he's a man sitting with a plastic bag on his head and they were talking about these riots and in northernireland kind of racist riots that we talked about previously and it's
it was just a like in general a horrific thing right and he was asked about um what caused them and he tried to explain in this podcast that like his answer was actually did he want to talk about something else he didn't want to specifically address that because he didn't really context that well but whatever in the interview it strongly comes across that he suggested the riots were if you'd like to continue listening to this conversation you'll need to subscribe at patreon.com slash Decoding the Gurus.
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