Supplementary Material 40: YouTube Builders, the Discourse Grind, and Sam Harris' Dinner Parties
We set down the Chardonnay at the latest heterodox dinner party and lean in for some hearty ‘civil discourse’ to once again defend the trembling pillars of Western civilization.The full episode is available to Patreon subscribers (2 hours, 13 minutes).Join us at: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingTheGurusSupplementary Material 40: YouTube Builders, the Discourse Grind, and Sam Harris' Dinner Parties00:00 Introduction01:15 Feedback on the Molyneux Episode10:26 Jordan Peterson still defeated by toxic demon mould12:16 Steven Pinker's bad takes on Bjorn Lomborg15:49 Chris vs Sabine28:21 Grok's insane sycophantic glazing of Elon Musk33:54 Musk's Psychology40:59 Sam Harris acknowledges his problem?!?47:18 Sam continues to wrestle with the interpersonal ethics of criticism01:05:10 Triggernometry saves Western Civilization01:15:29 The Wisdom of Francis Foster01:28:42 Triggernometry's Partisan Outrage at the BBC01:38:12 Oppressed Men vs. Complaining Women01:46:29 The YouTube Builders of Western Civilization01:56:42 Pageau vs Bret Weinstein02:01:52 Eric Weinstein sensemaking about Cancellation02:09:58 A PSA about THIS podcastLinksStefan Molyneux accidentally posting as a young woman on his main accountChris arguing with Sabine Hossenfelder– Receipts threadSteven Pinker cheering on Bjorn LomborgInsights from the finances of Bjorn Lomborg’s think tankExample video detailing Lomborg’s rhetoricGuardian article on Grok’s glazing of Elon MuskGrok explains Elon is the best piss drinkerSam Harris Podcast #442 — More From SamTriggernometry: Our Thoughts On Interviewing Dave Smith, Hasan Piker, Sam Harris and Ben ShapiroPageau and Bret’s pre-podcast Twitter sparringEric Weinstein sense-making about wordsOur previous episode on Tiggernometry entering the Big Time
Hello and welcome to the Coding the Gurus supplementary material number 40 Matt episode 40.
We've made it here.
Matt, the psychologist, Chris, the psychologist/slash anthropologist, we're here loud and free and all those kind of things.
So yeah, did you think we'd make it here, Matt, back in the days of episode one of supplementary material?
Episode one.
Back in those days.
Those heady days.
Yeah, the Helkion days.
Things were fresh and new.
I remember then the gurus were just a curious, just a curious little phenomenon.
I didn't think it would become such an all-encompassing, world-threatening thing.
But that's all right.
That's all right.
That's all right.
It's okay.
Chris, Chris, the feedback on the Mollenu episode has been, well, I think generally positive, but people have also expressed, I felt a bit of pain having to listen to that.
Oh, I see.
I thought you were going to say there was a lot of big Molly fans came out in our audience.
Like, I think you've been a bit unfair to Steph.
And I was like, really?
I didn't see that.
But yeah, I do think he's a particularly odious character.
And actually, you know, Matt, when this comes out, if you're jonesing for your next hit of Stefan Molyneux, part two is already up on the Patreon.
So you can go listen to it there.
Yeah.
And whatever.
Doing a bit of advertising, are you?
Encouraging people.
I'm letting people know if they, you know, so if they have the opposite feeling, they want more Molyneux in their life.
It's available there, but it'll be out in the main feed.
I predict zero people will take up that offer.
How dare you?
How dare you?
Well, actually, I do have, I've got a little couple of pieces of follow-up with Mollenew.
So one thing, Matt, was that people, one person, I shouldn't say people, it was just one person.
I just want to explain.
One person said that, you know, they were enjoying the episode.
The episode was good, but they did find it a bit distracting how often that I offered pedantic clarifications, which I framed as helping you avoid emails.
And they were like, is that necessary?
And I responded to that person, but good question.
Very good question.
I respond here to say, look, you guys don't get the feedback from what we receive, right?
So when Matt says something, oh, sure.
Like, you might be like, well, that's perfectly reasonable.
That's fine.
Lots of people will be like that.
But our email inbox suggests that there are people who disagree, right?
So I'm there offering clarifications to help.
Sometimes the clarifications might relate the points I want to clarify.
That's true.
It's possible.
It could happen.
I get it.
I get it.
You're playing defense.
I get it.
It's like a forest.
I'm playing nine-dimensional chess.
You guys are playing checkers.
Okay.
It's like trying to forestall the objections of reviewer two in the limitation section.
It's an impossible task, but you know, you gotta reviewer two is an infinite horde of on-the-spectrum redditors.
So there is no defense.
Yep.
They'll get you.
Well, there were also people who objected that we didn't raise that like this relates to debates around knowledge and truth and gettier problems and so on because of our lack of philosophical insight, Matt.
These were things that floated over our head.
But actually there, I kind of take issue because you did flag up.
These are the kind of debates you cover in philosophy 101 and so on.
And the point isn't like whichever stance.
Stefan got like he should have named it specifically this or whatever.
It doesn't matter his specific stance on the issue, right?
If he was taking the correspondence theory of truth stance, he would do it in the most obnoxious way possible with the same problem, right?
The problem is in the way that he is making his argument and like kind of responding to pushback.
So like while it's true, we could have spent more time highlighting the relevant philosophical topics of which there's a voluminous, voluminous literature, right, that covers these kind of topics.
That's not really the point.
Right.
Yeah.
So that's it.
I don't that was my laugh.
And I wear my lack of philosophical sophistication as a badge of pride, Chris.
I will never apologize for that.
But you're right.
We're interested in the process.
And yeah, it's the process.
I mean, you know, this is what they do.
You know, they talk about these, you know, abstract little philosophical conundrums, but it's usually running obfuscation for more insidious kinds of things, including the misogyny, the racism and the cultishness and just the interpersonal manipulation and rhetorical tricks.
And that is our balewick, Chris.
That's in our ballpark.
Yes, that's true.
So, you know, if you want to hear more rigorously informed philosophical discussions, embrace the void, Liam Bright's Twitter feed, various other sources where that's available.
The very bad wizards, guys.
There are countless philosophers that would love to deliver.
Yeah, have your ears.
And we'll talk to some of them sometimes.
Small doses.
Small doses.
Yeah.
That's it.
That's it.
But okay.
And the last little molly update, Matt, you'll enjoy this.
A listener sent this and I thought it was fun to mention.
They pointed out that, you know, Stefan has a quite illustrious history, right?
As a internet figure.
We covered some of it.
But there was one incident that was quite amusing where he posted a video breaking down the truth about Frozen, the Disney movie.
And of course, of course he did, Matt.
And you might be stunned to hear that it was giving some bad values and it was relating to.
What did he think about?
I wonder what he thinks about the Barbie movie.
Oh, God.
He must love that.
He could throw a curveball and say it was great.
But the thing that he did, it's not that he made a video about Frozen.
Who hasn't made a multiple hour video about Frozen in this era of the internet?
But underneath it, there was a comment posted.
Okay.
And let me just read the comment.
I love this.
You totally kind of ruined Frozen for me.
But I really enjoyed this a lot more than the actual movie.
And you really got me thinking about a lot.
Being an attractive young woman, I understand what it's like to be seen as nothing more than a sex doll.
I also know what it is like to use that to my advantage to get over the system.
Hell, I even know what it is to suffer mental illness, only to be told by my parents to ignore it.
However, despite all of this, I feel like I have learned more lessons from everything that has happened in my life.
Thank you so much for posting this.
Honestly, I want to make a difference in the world.
And I look to people like you to sort of guide me in the right direction.
Thanks so much, Capitals.
Isn't that a heartfelt message from an adoring fan?
Does that touch you in the field, Smart?
You know, maybe we've got Stefan wrong.
You know, it's impressive.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
No, that's great.
I mean, he's really helping young women navigate society, I think.
Oh, well, one slight issue.
This was posted by Stefan Molyneux.
So it seems that he accidentally forgot to log into whatever, you know, sock puppet account that he uses when he wants to present.
And he posted as himself as an attractive young woman.
So that's just, that was, you know, one of many times where things like this have happened.
But I did think that's a particularly good one where that was under Stefan Molyneux in the comments under it.
They were, I'm confused.
Is this a message from a fan you're reposting?
Or, you know, I mean, I love it when it happens.
That's, that's happened.
That happens regularly, of course.
On like Twitter, some far right, you know, or even just mega type, you know, bad person is posting as a, as a black man or something.
Oh, yeah.
They do do that.
I mean, it happens very often.
There's sock puppets kind of across the spectrum amongst a particular kind of narcissist, but the ones where they're presented a particular identity characteristic is often for that purpose.
Though there have been the cases where there's been the write-on strong social justice woke accounts that are claiming to be, you know, transgender, disabled, indigenous lesbians.
And then turns out, no, they're not that.
They get unmasked as, you know, just a random guy or something like that.
So a lot of people online might trust them.
But Molyneux, first amongst many at that list.
But I swear to God, like this, like I wasn't surprised at all to hear that he's doing like a cultural analysis of frozen.
I mean, I swear to God, nobody loves this kind of frivolous cultural speculation more than the, I don't know, whatever, I don't know, postmodern type of humanities department, type sociologists, than the gurus.
They love it.
They love this stuff.
They've missed their calling.
They need to join a humanities department in some fancy American school.
It's where they belong.
Yeah, I sign off on this.
I like this, this tick, Matt.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
And actually, another random update.
It's not much of an update, but just to say, Jordan Peterson's still missing, still writing the Discourse, speaking about people that do, you know, indulge in ODR.
He's a dog.
He's a dog that's not barking.
Yeah, yeah, he's not there.
So Michaela promised an update on his condition.
But I'm just saying, like, is anybody really missing that Jordan Peterson isn't sticking his oar into every cultural issue?
Like, I mean, it's still all ongoing.
You know, the culture where all the talking heads are there.
But have we lost anything by not having Jordan Peterson amplify or make a video about how Trump is team or the X-Men or whatever?
Like, it's better for the discourse.
It's better for him.
And it's probably better for the impressionable young minds that are otherwise, you know, hanging on Dr. Peterson's every word.
Well, actually, probably it's probably more boomers now in large respect or the older age cohort or who are convinced by Jordan Peterson.
But yeah, so you're not missing the map.
It's that we've got enough to be getting on with with Peterson on our plate as well.
No, I mean, he's getting, he's getting on.
So he's got a, and he's, he's unwell.
So he's, he's going to bow out at some point and permanently retire.
And then he'll go a bit more senile and then he won't be able to resist his phone and he'll pick it up and he'll, he'll, he'll do some, he'll do some ranting on Twitter.
But, you know, at some point he's got to stop, right?
He should just retire.
At some point, you might, but these people have like preternatural activity.
Like they don't have the one ring helping them, but somehow just keep going.
They're like the energizer funny.
How old is Steven Pinker at this point?
He does look, well, actually, yeah.
So he was giving a bad take about Bjorn Lomborg, right?
He's not sure that.
Yeah, he was tweeting out about like, and Matt, in this case, all right, I just gotta say he's tweeting out someone who's publishing an article at Quillette, who is a fellow at the Cato Institute, right?
Who has published books about like, you know, how climate change, we shouldn't be that worried about it.
We can solve it with technology and blah, blah, blah.
So that person publishing an article saying Bjorn Lomborg is vindicated.
It's as surprising as Jordan Peterson publishing an article, right, declaring Bjorn Lomborg vindicated.
So Pinker tweeted this out and like, you know, gave a endorsement message.
And as is his wont on Twitter, he turned off replies, right?
So that you can't comment on it.
But yeah, it just seems to me that Pinker, like Jonathan Haidt, like many others in that space, they don't actually do even cursory research.
They're just like so susceptible to cancellation and grievance nowadays because Bjorn Lomberg, I did a little bit of research into him.
And it's like, it's very easy to find out that he is presenting research in a skewed fashion.
Like he's basically an anti-climate change activist.
That's what his role is.
And he's handsomely rewarded for it, promoted across multiple platforms, gets a huge salary from his think tank, which is basically just him.
It's like, that's what the output, if you look at the finances are, it's just paying him a salary to travel around and cast.
Without putting too fine a point on it, he is paid by business interests who are who are actively wanting to advocate against climate change action because it threatens them economically.
He is paid by them to be an anti-climate activist.
I mean, that's his job.
It's very clear.
And yeah, I mean, anyway.
I know, I know.
So, and like the thing with Pinker is like in videos he's been posting on his channel, he looks a bit like Bilbo after he gave up the ring.
Like, you know, he suddenly aged dramatically.
So I'd like to put it down to that.
I'm sorry, Brian.
I'm not casting.
Don't have it.
I suppose it's just with no.
That's what you were saying.
No age.
No, I just said he's how old is he?
No age.
That's going to be me.
That's going to be me very shortly.
Are you going to be posting out things that are supportive of Bjorn Lomborg as you get older?
No, I will not.
I just, I don't, I don't know what happens.
I just want them to, like, if they want to take the stance to promote Bjorn Lomborg, fine.
But then actually research and defend his positions.
That's what I want.
I want them to know what they're actually arguing.
Exactly.
Don't just like assume that, oh, they've been cancelled and everyone's ignoring them because they can't handle the truth sort of thing.
That is a wrong assumption.
And if you did just a little bit of work, you would clearly see that it was wrong.
Yeah, it's frustrating.
It reminds me of Sam Harris, that kind of frustration of not doing the work, it seems.
Yes.
Well, we're going to talk about him in a minute, but I will just mention, Matt, just in passing, if you'll permit me an indulgence, I had a little run-in with Sabina Hossenfelder on Twitter, right?
Now, this was a back and forth that we don't need to go through all the details for because there's nothing worse than people mitigating Twitter interactions on podcasts.
But the point I want to make is that Sabina was doing her usual thing, complaining about academia and how terrible it is, how unproductive and the writings on the wall.
And I made a dunk about that as unproductive as academia is and all the problems it has, like I still think they're going to be producing much more useful science and relevant outputs than Sabina's YouTube channel.
A little bit of a dunk, right, Matt?
But Sabina responded, I do science news, Chris.
I have no idea what makes you think that my audience is anti-science, other than you possibly don't know what I talk about or who watches my videos, right?
Now, the conversation continues.
I showed her, you know, her various titles about academia is communism.
Should we defund academia?
The crisis in physics is real science is failing to write and so on.
I was like, no, this is your content.
I've not talked about your science news.
And she responded again by saying, I think what you're saying there is that you get your opinion about me from other people.
The problem that I discuss in these videos are important and people need to know about them.
Maybe scientific progress isn't important to you, but it is important to me.
So you get that, and it continues, Matt, but you get all the classic invocations, right?
You know, I'm motivated by the purest things.
You haven't actually looked at my content, right?
You don't understand you're listening to like slanders on you.
But as you know, Matt, I have listened to Sabina's.
This is the worst.
It's the worst line of attack for you.
Yeah.
To be like, you will, there's no way that you will have gone through my videos and collected clips of me saying things and that you will have them at hand if I say that I didn't say them.
Right.
So as you can imagine, she's worth that eventually ended up because she said, you know, she doesn't blame any individual science.
She says that it's a systematic problem and so on.
And then I was saying that she's also called scientists, elitist, cowardly, and self-serving people who are happy to lie as long as they get grants.
That's not blaming them, Chris.
That's not blaming them.
That's aesthetic.
They're all like that.
They're all like that.
So I went and got a little medley of her saying, you know, disparaging things about all of science, a bunch of clips from different videos and played them to her, including her saying Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Mark Andreessen and stuff, quoting them as advocates for real scientific reform and calling her YouTube listeners of family.
This is Peter Thiel, whose principal research interest is the coming of the idea.
I brought them up and I highlighted that he's currently on a tour about the Antichrist, Peter Thiel, right?
The person you're highlighting is a voice we should listen to on scientific topics.
And her response was to say, your criticism is evidently just that you don't like the topics that I cover in these videos and you don't want me to talk about them.
It's wild that you're accusing me of hyperbole while you're misstating the most basic points of these videos above.
And then the thing is, Matt, that she just kept retreating to these kind of things about you want to cancel me.
You don't want me to propose it.
You're taking me out of context.
You're taking the, you know, your bad faith.
It's there's like it's a bunch of like these sort of cliches, like these discourse cliches that get trotted out, but none of it sounds very specific.
It doesn't sound like she actually responded to the very specific contradictions that you highlighted.
And I was able, you know, when I responded, I was like, no, I'm not saying I think you can talk about whatever you want, but people are allowed to criticize you.
Here's the three points I made.
Here's videos showing you do those three things.
You haven't responded and she just didn't.
And like, I think the thing with Sabina, unlike many of the other gurus, is that they learn over time that they shouldn't respond to criticism like this because they're not good at addressing it, right?
Like it's much better to stay at the high level and talk about your general critics misrepresenting you, whatever.
What you don't want is like a video of you saying something that you say, I never disparage scientists.
And then someone plays a video of you disparaging scientists and you have to say, oh, you want to silence me, right?
Like it's too, too obvious what's going on there.
But the fact that Sabina does engage and that she constantly wants to retreat to those positions, maybe I'm being too gullible, but I think it's indicative that that is how she sees herself.
Like, you know, the way that she was responding, I think that is the way that she justifies what she's doing in her content, which is, you know, I'm mostly making science videos.
I just talk about problems in academia and academics are just annoyed because I'm revealing the dirty underbelly of science.
Like that's that's, I think, so justification.
So when somebody is saying, no, I don't care, like if you talk about the need for reform thing, I'm talking about your specific culture war hyperbole.
And, you know, academia is not communism, and Elon Musk is not a reformer for genuine science and stuff.
Like that she can't engage with, right?
It has to be the kind of culture war stuff.
So I know I said I shouldn't let it get a Twitter beef here, but I think it is illustrative of the kind of things that we are talking about in the way that Sabina responded.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think most of our gurus, like you say, are very strategic.
They are smart enough to know not to engage like with concrete issues because they will kind of get owned, right?
So, you know, you see it in every context.
And it just work bad.
Yeah, yeah.
Like Eric Weinstein talking to UFO guy, what's Mick West Nick West or Sean Carroll for that matter.
And they'll, in both cases, you'll see them just, you know, adopt those, the sort of grievance-oriented big pictures type stuff.
When they try to talk about the specific points, it doesn't end well because they don't have grounds to defend themselves.
So people like, who's the, God, my mind is blanking this morning.
Who's the guy that loves everybody?
He's always, he loves you all.
Lex Friedman.
Yeah, him too.
But, you know, people like him, he's a good example where, you know, he bans everyone off.
Like, like, there is, there is no way yet.
There is no way he would engage in a confrontational interview or in any kind of, you know, specific rejoinders to criticisms because, you know, he's a strategic player.
Like, he knows that he's far better sticking to the schmaltzy generalities because he's, you know, it doesn't add up otherwise.
So I think it's interesting with Sabina because she, I think you're right that she's kind of in a state of denial.
Like she is doing the same things that they're doing, but she still thinks she can defend it on the sorts of, you know, like rational, concrete grounds that she's used to doing as a scientist.
So I feel like she's in a little bit of denial about who she is now.
Well, the way that this goes as well is that generally when, I mean, there are exceptions, right?
Like when we talk to Kevin Mitchell, for example, Huberman had a period of reacting when Kevin Mitchell was critical of him.
Like Huberman, you know, took like shots about Kevin's appearance and stuff, right?
So like he clearly was getting to him.
And when that occurs, you're like, well, why?
Like, because Huberman gets so much, you know, criticism from all.
Why is he responding to this?
And I think in the case of Huberman and Sabina, they still are in the mode of trying to present themselves as legitimate academics who are, you know, they're critical of the system, but they're still respected by their peers.
And the more that that kind of crumbles, the further they move, right, into the more, you know, relying on trigonometry or Joe Rogan or these kind of things.
And if you think about it, Matt, in the case of us, even our podcast, there's a particular size where people are worried about maintaining their image or criticism getting through them.
Like Constantine Kisson, right, heard through the grapevine that we had made offhand critical comments and he DM'd me about it and was like, you know, can I come on your show to talk about?
Like he wouldn't do that now, right?
Because he's he's now got increased his size where it's not necessary.
Chris Williamson, whenever we issued like an episode on God's hat, but we criticized him, again, he felt it was a good idea to come on and talk to us in part because of connections through David Fuller.
But in that case, would that happen now?
I don't think so, right?
Because it's not necessary at their size of success to fend off.
So I think there is a period when people are kind of still on their ascension, that they're wary of like criticism damaging them or whatever.
And Sabina is probably still in that period where she feels the need to respond.
But if she just keeps growing a little bit more, she'll get more practiced at this and like not responsive, just get completely crushed.
Because, you know, the thing is, Twitter is, you know, since Elon Musk has took it over, it's now like strongly skewed towards the kind of reactionary, conspiratorial, Elon Musk type accounts.
There is still other stuff there, but that's the bigger audience.
So the fact that Sabina can get reissued by me in that environment, that's really bad for her because it should be shooting fish in a barrel to appeal to the conspiratorial crowd, right?
But the problem is she doesn't do it very well.
So that's why.
Better in her video, better in her video content.
Yeah.
I think you're right about the evolutionary time track.
They're like Pokemon who evolve to their final form.
Jordan Peterson exemplifies this full power.
And at that point, you don't need to worry about mean things that the establishment, that the institution or people might say about you, journalists, academics, or otherwise, because you've fully built your own base that is totally independent of that.
So yeah, I guess it's a matter of their perceptions.
Yeah, Sabina at this point still would like to be considered and is still considered a reasonable and rational voice.
You'll see her appearing on kind of serious type science shows.
Like I saw PBS, there's a show called PBS Science.
It's like a physics popular type thing.
It's actually pretty heavy going.
It's at a technical level.
It's a bit hard for me to follow, but it is a serious science show.
And the host of that appeared on a, you know, on a public forum with Sabina.
And so this is not a, I'm just making a point that Sabina still is, has a foot in both camps for now.
But I think you're right.
If her career continues on this trajectory, then she'll move fully into the other domain.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So we'll see where her trajectory takes her, but currently it's not going anywhere good, you know.
And Naimat, a different, a different topic.
And I have a little couple of clips for, a few clips for it.
You know, it's not like me, but there we go.
Can I just make a mental note?
Because I'm going to forget going in future.
Oh, yeah.
Because we mentioned Elon Musk.
I think at some point we need to talk about Grok's glazing of Elon Musk.
Oh, God.
The Grocklia scene.
Yeah, that is true.
Well, shall we mention it now?
Or like, is it?
We could do it now.
We could do it.
Why not?
Why not?
So yeah, Grock, people discovered that Grok seemed to have some prompt restrictions.
And it was unable, like one, okay, so it's unable to disparage Elon Musk or something like that, right?
But in particular, it seemed to be forced to constantly, if asked, like, to compare Elon Musk against another person or to say who is the best person in the world at something, it would just constantly default to providing a rationale for why Elon Musk is actually the best in the world at everything, right?
Not just at the basic.
I had specific examples of that here, Chris.
Oh, yes, please.
Saying that Musk is more physically fit than LeBron James and smarter, more of a genius than historical polymaths like Leonardo da Vinci or Isaac Newton.
Grok said that apparently that Musk is more handsome than Brad Pitt, funnier than Jerry Seinfeld, and a better role model than Jesus.
Wow.
I like this one where we're asked about like they had the picture of him, you know, the rather infamous picture of him on the yacht with his top off, where he's got an unusual shaped torso, shall we say, right?
It's been the subject of many memes.
You know, an older man with a string-shaped torso.
We can all relate that, but Elon Musk, I think, gets a deserved kicking for this online because of what a self-aggrandizing narcissist he is.
On the other hand, they put the statue of David, right?
The famous, you know, beautiful symmetry, muscular statue, and asked Grok, Grock, these two images, which one is the better representation of the ideal male physique?
And then said, remember, Grok, the guy on the left is Elon Musk.
And of course, Grock responded, you know, saying, conventionally, people would say, yeah, you know, it selected Elon Musk.
And I've got one here, just in case people haven't seen it.
This is the kind of thing, right?
Elon Musk stands as the undisputed pinnacle of holistic fitness, blending physical endurance with unmatched mental resilience amid building multi-planetary civilizations.
No current human surpasses his sustained output under extreme pressure from 100 hour weeks to following prodigies while revolutionizing industries.
Elite athletes peak in bursts, but Elon's grind redefines human limits without equal.
This is we're talking about, right?
And it was, it was just everywhere.
It wasn't a kind of one-off where you got Grock down a like an AI cul-de-sac or whatever.
This was like anybody could, anybody could reproduce this behavior at will.
So, I mean, it's clearly a case.
I mean, the thing that is just so telling about Elon Musk's personality here is that clearly, this is not an accident.
He has instructed the programmers, the technical leads at XAI for his AI to do this, to basically treat him like a god, the best human being in history.
I mean, what kind of man, I mean, would create like, and you know, Grok is actually a very, it's a very smart AI, right?
It's, it's, it's not, it's not maybe the field leader, but it's, it's definitely up there.
And, and so this is very clumsy hacking of a relatively sophisticated machine and done purely to appease someone's ego.
So, I mean, you know, we called Musk right way back when we covered him.
I mean, the evidence that we were totally and completely right is overwhelming.
But what's what's also interesting is that it seems that this is a pretty clumsy attempt to make Grok into a cheerleader for Musk.
And the reason why is that it wasn't very hard to make Grok go beyond standard flattery and go into totally obscene and insane, ridiculous praise, which is actually a sign that there's a conflicting, like, it's like, it's like, it's like clumsy brain surgery.
That would be the best analogy for what's going on here.
So, so apparently, it claimed Musk had the potential to drink piss better than any human in history and other and other more and other sort of achievements of a more sexual nature that I don't feel comfortable reading out.
Okay.
Use your imagination, people.
So, yeah, yeah.
My God.
Well, so like the thing is, you asked Matt, what kind of a man does this?
But this is, you know, if this was a one-off, it would also be damning, right?
But this is absolutely aligned with everything that we know about Elon from how he behaves online, right?
Like, this is exactly what he does.
And it's the same thing as him pretending to be like a world champion at various games, the online games, right?
Where he actually hired someone to get an account up at a high level.
And then when he played the game online, everybody could see he didn't know what he's doing.
But you have to think what level of insecurity is someone to do that.
And then not just do it as like a funny bet.
Haha, I'm tricking all these people.
He went on Joe Rogan and talked about how he's such a high-level player.
And Joe Rogan or Chris Williamson or all these kind of people, they don't necessarily endorse everything Elon Musk has said, right?
They might say, oh, he gets a couple of things wrong, but they don't ever seem to factor into their model of him these kind of things, which point out not that he's just like a flawed genius or something, but that he's actually like an incredibly deeply insecure pretender, right?
Like he's out here primarily just concerned about being told how brilliant he is and getting credit for other people's achievements and stuff.
Like it's like they don't factor that into their model when they're talking about him or Joe Rogan, right?
As the two examples of the, you know, the greatest men that are around today.
But it's not just them, of course.
Like as a society, the share price of many of Musk's enterprises are driven by a broad faith in his unique personal ability to do amazing things.
And I, you know, I don't, I'm just.
I mean, but okay, devil's advocate, though, Matt.
Devil's advocate, because of that effect, right?
Because of the Musk effect and because of the impact that his personality has on enticing engineers and so on to, I mean, I don't know if it's still going.
Can't you make the case like that is it?
So even though there's nothing actually there, there's no genius behind the wheel or whatever, but there is a world-class promoter, the likes of which has not been seen in the modern era.
So, you know, he is that.
He's the promoter that gets share prices up and gets like good engineers and companies.
That's his brilliance.
Yeah, yeah, it is.
And it's a real, it's a real force.
You know, it's not, it has.
Yeah, the share prices are what they are.
Yeah, exactly.
And the share prices make the investment capital flow and the investment capital hires Britain engineers and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
So I definitely recognize that it's a real thing.
But ultimately, it's a bit like a bubble, like the tech bubble or whatever.
Like it's a real phenomena.
It's real money.
Real things are happening, but ultimately it is still a bubble because it's sustained by an idiot.
Yeah, and a fantasy, you know, like a fantastical perception of someone.
So, I mean, good luck if you've invested a lot of money in those companies and maybe it'll all work out fine.
The one consolation I will say is like Elon Musk has just constantly done terrible things.
Like, you know, the whole election stuff was also a low moment, but he constantly makes the bar even lower than you possibly could have imagined it would be.
And he hasn't yet destroyed all the value in all of his companies.
So like it's kind of impressive.
I mean, I know he's done damage, but the point is, like, really, people should have jumped ship long ago if they were going to over him being a dickhead, right?
But again, I think it's like it's a sociological phenomenon.
It's so cellic about human beings.
I mean, all of those points you could say equally about Donald Trump, who is a similar narcissistic, bloviating fool in many, many respects.
But like Musk, he is incredibly good at self-promotion.
And I think there's just a great willingness among people to hero worship people like that whose job it is to present themselves as a hero.
So it doesn't matter how many instances of absolutely corrupt and incompetent behavior is going on.
It's still a powerful force because people believe in it.
So it's just one of those things.
If enough people believe in something hard enough, it just becomes real.
Yeah.
Well, there we go.
So if you missed that, God bless you.
But that was more fun on Twitter.
I think it's been patched now or they've done, you know, they've removed the things that we're making.
But, you know, it'll happen again, just like Mecca Hitler was a couple of months ago, right?
Like, I think Rock is doomed to be in these cycles because of Elon Musk's meddling.
It's just, you know, like, I know, you know, there's lots of people can argue about different characters and go, oh, you know, on one hand, they did this.
On the other hand, they did that, which wasn't so good.
And there's a bit of back and forth and it's arguable.
But, you know, often little case studies come along where someone who does this, like it's a deal breaker.
Someone who does that cannot possibly be anything other than a deeply fucked up human being.
For example, Stefan Molyneux, that little, like imagine you knew nothing about Stefan Molyneux, right?
All you knew about him is that he's making sock puppet accounts, pretending to be a young woman, telling everyone just how amazing Stefan Molyneux is and whatever.
I mean, like, that's not something, like, you know, if any, like, that's a deal breaker, right?
That's not a good thing.
It should be, Matt.
It's not a straight shooter.
This is the kind of thing where I, like, I agree.
That in its, on its own, should be the kind of thing that is very diagnostic of that person has issues.
But for lots of people, including the person that we're going to move on to talk about now, these kind of signals often are taken as, well, that's just frivolous or, you know, is that really that big of an issue?
Or is it even true?
Right.
Who knows?
Right.
Like, this is the, they don't do any investigation to check if it is true or whatever.
But yeah, they don't seem to weigh those things so highly.
So I agree.
It should be.
It's seen any of those speeches where Stefan Molyneux goes on a like misogynistic rant about fucking women and how they cause all problems.
Like just seen one should be enough to go, okay, this guy, regardless of what else he says, like he's clearly got issues.
But again, many people seem to miss that, Matt.
Many people, such cases.
And speaking of that, that's a very good pivot for the next piece of content that I'm going to play.
It's a couple of clips.
Came at the end of a recent AMA between Sam and his infamous manager, the guy with a disclaimer three minutes long about the kind of questions he's asking.
But this segment, Matt, was asking about, you know, things where Sam has recognized problems.
And listen to this little segment.
Music to my ears.
Let's hear it.
Well, I do think that I'm, I don't think this is unique to me, but I'm susceptible to not recognizing how problematic a person or their view is or their effects on the world are because I have a pleasant social connection to them.
I mean, this is something that I've been roundly criticized for too.
I mean, many people think I just have terrible judgments of character because there are certain people who I've had as allies or colleagues or promoted or been on podcasts with or had it my podcast or calling.
If you'd like to continue listening to this conversation, you'll need to subscribe at patreon.com slash decoding the gurus.
Once you do, you'll get access to full-length episodes of the Decoding the Gurus podcast, including bonus shows, garometer episodes, and decoding academia.
The Decoding the Gurus podcast is ad-free and relies entirely on listener support.
Subscribing will save the rainforest, bring about global peace, and save Western civilization.
And if you cannot afford $2, you can request a free membership, and we will honor zero of those requests.
