Chris and Matt critique the Trump administration's alleged anti-science agenda, contrasting Rogan's potential influence on psychedelic approvals with mRNA's pancreatic cancer promise. They expose hypocrisy among Peterson and Rubin regarding Viktor Orbán's democratic backsliding in Hungary and dismiss conspiracy theories linking Trump to hyper-globalists or moon landing frauds. Ultimately, the episode underscores the volatility of late-stage anti-capitalism and the urgent need for scientific integrity amidst political chaos. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, MahmoudAshraf/mms-300m-1130-forced-aligner, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.00, and large-v3-turbo
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Seeking Counsel in an Hour of Need00:04:29
Hello and welcome to Decoding the Guru's Supplementary Materials Edition with the cognitive anthropologist slash psychologist, Christopher Kavanaugh.
And oh, look, who is that I spy out my tower?
It looks like old gray hair himself, the gray scholar.
Stop right there.
You seek my counsel in this hour of need?
Gray beard.
Yeah, it grows late, Chris.
Yeah, it grows late.
Well, we can speak of many things.
We can speak of many things, but you don't take my counsel, do you?
I strongly recommended Raised by Wolves to you.
And have you watched it?
No, you haven't.
Well, what's wrong?
Well, your mind is addled by the pipeweed that you impart, and your judgment is clouded.
You see quality where there is perhaps none.
Maybe there is.
We'll see.
But you didn't take my counsel.
Old gray hair.
Um, I recommend it's Lay the Spire 2, an excellent game as a potential new addiction for you.
And did you heed the call, Matt?
I scorned it.
I scorned it.
You should not have.
You should, well, actually, for your life, you probably should avoid that because it's one of those time sync games.
It's a bit like I haven't played these in years, but you remember Civilization back in the day where you're like, oh, just play for a couple of hundred years, you know, in Civilization, that doesn't.
It's hundreds of years, just an hour or so, and then it was like 4 a.m., and you were attacking Gandhi.
Well, okay, it's a standoff.
You won't take my counsel until I take your counsel, and neither of us will bend, but that's just how it is.
But yeah, you know, time sinks, Chris.
I've had a few, and the absolute worst, the most dangerous one is Factorio C. You keep calling it Factoria.
You must stop doing that.
I must stop.
Factorio.
Factorio.
You dare.
Grey hair.
You dare give me advice on pronunciation when you arrive at this late hour.
Look, it's a kettle and pot situation when it comes to pronunciation.
Let's agree on that.
Did you say it's Factorio?
Is that what it's called?
Yes, Factorio.
Oh, I see.
This is a deep cut.
If you know, you know.
But there'll be a handful of people out there, like weird autists.
Engineer types who have gone deep down the rabbit hole like me and have played Factorio C Block, which is think Factorio, but then multiply everything by 10 or 20.
It's mental and it's really a lifelong commitment.
I must have spent hundreds of hours playing C Block and I've never actually finished it.
I've gotten close, I've gotten very close, and I always flame out sometime before the end, but it's my life's ambition to one day finish the damn thing.
Didn't they make an expansion for it where you were like harvesting on an asteroid?
I saw videos of that.
Yeah, that's a Space Age expansion thing, which I couldn't really get into that much.
I don't care.
I'm just going to play C Block again when they update it for Factorio Space Age.
That or Slade is fire, you can take your pick, but you know, that's not what we're here for, Matt.
This isn't decoding the gaming channel or decoding the gamers.
It could be, I mean, well, it is a supplementary material.
We're allowed to do whatever the hell we want.
That's right.
You can say whatever the hell we want, Chris.
That's right.
But I do note, however, Matt, there's been a little bit of a gap.
You know, a little bit of a gap.
Some people would say, why was there a gap, Chris?
And I would say, well, lots of reasons.
Like, Matthew was not in his house.
That's fine.
He's got a room.
He's going to ramble around.
But he took a little holiday and then he needed to recover from the holiday.
So that's it.
So there was a hiatus of sorts, just a week or so.
But just letting the listeners in, Matt, just letting them know.
It's not like we scheduled actual days to record and then there was no Matt to be found.
It's not like that happened or anything.
The Great Bogosian Hungary Controversy00:14:54
No, no, no, no.
Look, I. Gee, the discourse is a harsh mistress, isn't it, Chris?
I mean, seriously, you can't take a few days off.
I mean, like, do we have to be grinding away all the time?
What happened, man?
It used to be just to be about the love of the game.
And now look at you.
It's just your content, content, content.
I think you don't understand, Matt.
The girls, it builds up.
It's like a pressure cooker, you know, like they're doing so many annoying things.
We need to, like, release the steam at some point to be like, look what they've been saying.
Look what they've been doing.
And then.
We can lock them back in and feel a bit of relief that we've we've saw you know what's bubbling away in the pot.
Did you like my metaphor though?
I like it.
We're staying with the wizarding scene, yeah, yeah, wizard and witches.
Oh, right, yeah.
I wasn't even doing that, I'd abandoned that, but yeah, wizards and witches that's the whole brew that we're working on today.
So, um, well, it's just an unpleasant time though in the world, isn't it?
Because it's the gurus are not like a little niche, you know, quirky look at these silly people in this little online niche, but they're.
They're rampaging around the White House.
It's very depressing.
I think instinctively, I just want to tune out and pretend none of it is actually happening.
It's disconcerting.
One thing that happened recently was Joe Rogan was taking credit for the Maha wing of the MACA administration okaying some psychedelic type treatment that basically had not gone through the approval.
Process in the proper way, and there were some weak studies, and you know, the usual kind of special interest groups around that.
But Joe Rogan sent Trump a message or called him up or something, and they were able to get it passed.
He went to the White House and got pictures of him beaming behind Trump, and that's how the U.S. operates.
It's not like that's normal.
I want to tell everybody how this happened.
I sent President Trump some information.
We have a gigantic opiate problem in this country, obviously.
In 2024, more than 80,000 people died of overdoses.
It's a horrible number.
And there are more than 5 million people that are addicted to opiates right now in this country.
With one dose of Ibogaine, more than 80% of people are free of that addiction.
With two doses, it's more than 90%.
I sent him that information.
The text message came back.
Sounds great.
Do you want FDA approval?
Let's do it.
It was literally that quick.
This is just a very specific case, but it is basically what the Trump administration is all about.
Trump will give people personal favors, he'll pardon people who donate money to him or that he gets convinced deserve a pardon for whatever reason, even if they're completely clearly guilty.
Yeah, it's just, it's a very corrupt regime.
And this comes on the back of Joe Rogan getting coverage in the media for like breaking with Trump over the Iran war and all that stuff.
But like he never really broke.
That's the thing.
The No Rogan podcast covers this quite well.
Just like when Alex Jones gets coverage for like breaking with Trump or whatever, it's usually just these isolated clips.
And when you look at the entire output, they're very much.
Aligned on most issues, and they might just like get frustrated or say something in a small snippet.
So, I was not at all surprised to see Rogan grinning away at the White House and you know, shaking hands with Trump and stuff.
Him and RFK Jr. and Dr. Oz what a trio standing behind Donald Trump.
You know, one little cute thing I saw in the news there, Chris is did you see the thing about mRNA technology used in trials to treat pancreatic cancer?
Did you notice that one?
I didn't notice that, but Matthew, you say that as like kind of good news, which I mean, yes, on the face of it, yes, but it just reminds me that, like, didn't the Trump administration cut a whole bunch of funding to mRNA stuff?
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I'm not giving credit to Trump for this.
This is something that scientists are doing in the background, probably despite incredible funding cuts.
And the mRNA vaccine, you know, mRNA technology generally, which has been vilified by all of these quacks and paleo health people, has just knocked it out of the park by all.
Appearances.
So, I mean, it's still in trial stage, but I think after six years, the usual rate of survival with people with this diagnosis is something like 16%.
And every single one of the people in the mRNA treatment group are all still alive.
So, it's kind of a massive effect size.
So, it's incredibly promising.
So, yeah, just goes to show they're all completely wrong about everything all the time.
Well, I also saw statistics.
You know, there was some science account sharing about the NIH funding for various research, and basically it's completely fallen off a cliff because of all the Trump administration and Doge type attempts to, you know, ban woke research agendas and whatnot, where they literally did word searches and canceled, you know, grants.
I think some, yeah, like a physics grant was canceled because they mentioned the word polarization.
Yeah.
Obviously, in reference to light.
Yeah, the point I want to make with that is like that is a red sunshine.
Science continues, you know, the world and science and research and so on continues, but in the face of the attacks from the Trump administration and so on.
And like while you have Joe Rogan and RFK Jr. going for photo ops, the background is that the administration is attacking actual good research lines and promising therapies because of stupid anti vax, Brett Weinstein, ivermectin.
Morons, so yeah, there you go.
And it's not like they're going to put an end to research in the world, right?
Science and research, I mean, it'll continue, it'll continue, but um, yeah, for the time being, not the United States, which has been such an innovator, um, and is a world leader.
Like, so much of their economic, medical, and scientific breakthroughs have happened there, leading to you know, all kinds of biomedical companies that you know, countries like Australia.
You know, would envy, you know, would do anything to have that, just kind of throwing it all away.
So I guess, you know, it'll get picked up in other places, whether it's China or Europe or somewhere else.
So it's just an incredibly unforced degree of self harm to, you know, I'd say to America.
It's upsetting.
I'm not even American and I'm upset about it.
It's ridiculous.
On every half.
Yeah.
On every half.
Yeah.
On good news on the geopolitics front, Matt, you know, God knows we could do, With some of it, I suppose you did notice that Orban fell.
Oh, Peter Bolton and the intellectual dark web's favorite European reactionary leader is gone out of Hungary after a 16 year rule for him in his party.
So, like, here's an incredible situation.
Like, what world leader has been endorsed by the Trump administration and that even campaigned for him?
And Vladimir Putin.
Like, a truly unique situation.
And I don't know whether you managed to understand it, but all of the educated opinion I've seen on these topics is that two things are kind of a little bit inexplicable.
I mean, you know, you can think of reasons, but it still, on some level, doesn't quite make sense, right?
Which is, one, why was Orban such a lackey to Putin and Russia?
Yes, there was a bit of quid pro quo and stuff, but it went far beyond that to the extent that it really.
Like the Orban.
Administration was doing things that was basically losing a lot of political capital within Europe that they could have used for other things in a way that just purely benefited Russia and didn't benefit Hungary.
There were aspects of it that were inexplicable.
And the other aspect of it is inexplicable the degree to which, like, it's easy to understand why Putin supports Orban, right?
That makes perfect sense, right?
Orban was Putin's man on the inside of NATO and the EU.
Throwing wrenches into everything to do with Ukraine and Russia generally.
But it's just hard to understand why there is so much support amongst MAGA generally, Bogosian and Jordan Peterson, and a lot of the gurus we cover, and the Trump administration.
Why do they love Orban so much?
Yeah, it's not just MAGA, because Bogosian, as much as he is a defender of Trump and all that kind of thing, he's kind of in the wing.
Of the faux centrists, right?
And they also love him.
Douglas Murray loved Orban, and Peter Berghausian, as mentioned, Rod Dreyer, various people, right?
So it's like MAGA and broader conservatism in general was very fond of Orban.
And, in part, it's understandable because there are things that they like about it, which is the kind of anti immigrant posture, right?
The demonizing of George Soros, and also the appeal to Christian values.
All that kind of thing, right?
So there was like a very strong reactionary, isolationist, conservative, you know, populist presentation to his government.
So, why would right wing populists elsewhere not like that?
That's what they want, right?
They want to show that there is like these other leaders that are doing great and they're supported by the people because they're applying these common sense principles.
Now, interestingly, Keith completely created his response.
And this is in The wake of the situation in Hungary, which I only followed tangentially, right?
But I was paying a bit of attention to it.
And things were looking really bad there.
Press freedoms rolling back, independence of the judiciary attacked.
The opposition leader wasn't allowed to appear on media for a number of years.
And actually, there were these very satisfying videos of him going on the state media channels and basically saying to the face, you guys are going to be.
Close town, and now we're going to operate free press and stuff again.
Now, it would be wrong to romanticize the incoming leader because it may well prove, you know, that this kind of thing happens.
And often, the people that replace the populist leader, even Orban himself, actually, originally was a figure that was seen as a liberal reformer.
Yeah, he was very much a pro, like, he was protesting against, you know, Russia interference in early in his career, and actually.
Like, was pressing for NATO membership and European Union membership.
So, yes, look, things change.
Things change.
Things change.
But as you say, the new prime minister is a conservative as well.
This is the thing.
It's not like he's been replaced by some ultra progressive sort of person, just someone who is hopefully going to be much less corrupt and, two, hopefully not completely in the pocket of Vladimir Putin.
I think that's the positive news.
And so, the interesting thing from the gurusphere for me is that there's been basically radio silence from the usual figures who were out promoting Hungary and its government and its approach to culture war stuff.
Like Bogosian, I went and looked at his timeline, could find nothing in response to this event.
And you would think, given how much he was hosted, how much he went around and did PR for the regime, that this would be something he would at least have an opinion on.
But Just radio silence.
And it's, I just think it speaks to the character and also the hypocrisy of those figures that like they wax lyrical about free speech and Western liberal values and stuff.
But when they're actually under threat by somebody rolling back liberal democratic, you know, institutions and safeguards, they're nowhere to be found.
And they're not talking about it when the population completely stands against that.
This should be like a moment to celebrate if you're a fan of Western.
Liberal values, but Bogosian and co remarkably silent.
And if they're not silent, they're generally lamenting what has happened.
So, yeah, it just highlights what hypocritical bastards they are on this topic.
If you'll allow me to put it like that, they have great hair.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, is it as simple as the fact that, like, Bogosian's sponsor in Hungary is no longer in a position to be a sponsor?
So, his position is no longer.
Needed.
Like he's not, there's no one to, I don't know.
Like, is it as simple as that?
I mean, I think it could be.
I think there, you know, in general, we don't always go for the obvious, you know, it's all about money because I think we often emphasize that a lot of the gurus are very heavily invested in attention as well.
But it is absolutely the case, especially with Russian stuff, that there's a lot of money and corruption.
Floating around, so you know, like the people like Bogosian were very happy receiving stipends from the Hungarian government to go on speaking tours and you know, talking internationally about how great and how much free speech there is in Hungary.
And anytime it was brought up to him issues around the regime, it's just that general studied approach of, oh, well, you know, I haven't looked into all those details, but I can assure you, when I'm there, I haven't noticed any.
Of those kind of repressions affecting the population or whatever.
Deep State Corruption and Foreign Agents00:12:27
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, I noticed even Dave Rubin was there.
Now, Dave Rubin, who accidentally was getting paid perhaps millions of dollars by.
Oh, it was millions.
It was millions.
It was millions.
Yeah, by Russia Today or anyway, some apparatus of the.
Tenant media, which was like a front for the Russian government or propaganda wing of Russia.
Yeah, so apparently.
Accidentally didn't realize it, but you'd think he might have taken that as a bit of a caution against maybe you know, opinionating about everything about Russia and Hungary and stuff like that.
No, he was no, no, no, it didn't stop him.
Yeah, actually, it's somewhat impressive that in general, they're completely immune to those obvious hypocrisies, right?
Like, if you were caught accepting millions of.
Rubles or dollars, whatever the case might be, right, for promoting a Russian agenda.
Even if you were a naive idiot and it was just that you thought they just really liked your content, that should be something embarrassing for you because you're essentially being regarded as like a propaganda wing for a foreign government.
But Tim Pool and Benny Johnson and all the other ones, they are happy, Matt, going online and saying, you know, we need to investigate people.
Who are being paid by foreign governments and all this?
Like it's a it is remarkable.
And of course, none of them received the actual punishments because when the Trump administration came in, they basically killed all the prosecutions, right?
Of course they did.
Of course they did.
Scumbags.
What a pack of bastards, really.
Yeah, I think we've summarized that quite well.
And speaking of a pack of bastards, I'm going to play a clip to you of.
A remarkable brain trust.
Now, you won't be able to hear who's all there, but the person speaking is Dugan, right?
Sometimes referred to as Putin's Rasputin, right?
The philosophical engine behind Putin's complex philosophical insights, right?
So here's him talking to soon to be identified people.
So it is difficult to judge where Trump.
Madness stops and some rationale appears.
So I could not be an expert in that.
So he seems to be very special psychologically.
And at the same time, we could, maybe we couldn't grasp some hidden second plan scenario behind his behavior.
So I think that maybe Trump was chosen as very specific.
Psychological person by some Western deeper state, not just liberal, globalist, deep state, but deeper state who wanted to use these radical tools. to rearrange the falling domination of the West with drastic radical measures,
and after that to say, oh, you're a scapegoat, you're your family, your MAGA group, we will destroy, kill all of you, we put you in prison for life sentences, but the situation will be changed already.
So maybe it is some special kind of weapon, secret weapon of hyper-globalists, not just liberal globalist, but Tick-nate, exactly something that's considered to walk walk globalist agenda, as some.
Some obstacle, as we see in Peter Thiel or Carp Alex, Carp Technological Republic, this idea.
So enough with the humanitarian hypocrisy.
Let's represent the power as such, the mute, naked Western power hegemony, domination In open style, and Trump fits where there you go, Matt.
That was Dugan.
And just to give you the context, he is in a three way call, like Zoom call or whatever, with Manosphere streamer Sneeko, a kind of Andrew Tate like offshoot.
And then the other person is Professor Jang.
Professor Jang.
Oh, Professor Jang.
Yeah, most people won't know Professor Jang, but he's recently come to light as a very A very odd name, and he's definitely guru material.
He's a conspiracy theorist and like a high school teacher who, like Jordan Peterson, discovered if he puts up videos of him doing geopolitical analysis online, that you know it got attention, attracted the following.
He had conspiratorial takes, he claimed some predictive powers, right?
That America would attack Iran or whatever the case might be.
But like, he's absolutely full of it, it's very, very transparent.
When you listen to him, but yeah, so you can't hear their contribution.
But what did you think of Dugan's insight?
Well, I'll tell you, I'll tell you.
But before I do, Sneeko.
Now, we don't cover people like Sneeko generally because he's manners for you.
Idiot, but wasn't he in that documentary?
Uh, the um, the Louis Farouk one, yes, it was.
The Road documentary, yeah, yeah.
So, if anyone's seen that, you'll get the picture.
So, there we go.
We've got Alexander Dugan, the brainstorms behind Putin ideology, whatever the hell that is.
Yeah, you got Sneeko, Manosphere, testosterone, adult, streamer, idiot, yeah, yeah, and this fantasist, narcissistic, full of.
Guy, Professor Jiang.
So, a real brainstorm there.
So, okay, so he's got a theory that Trump is actually a kind of a double agent working on behalf not of the globalists or the deep state, but the hyper ultra deep globalists.
Right?
There's layers to this.
We're way beyond the deep state here.
We're at like the hyper ultra deep state.
And it's so childish.
It actually reminds me.
Of, like, in Dragon Ball Z or animes, when the shounen style ones they set it up so the main character has to fight someone, and then when they beat that character, they have to introduce like a new villain and they have like new power ups, right?
It's now mega ultra level seven globalists, right?
And it's but it is that stupid, it's literally that silly.
And like, depending on the day of the week, it's like Trump is either like a savior.
A populist savior who's our best champion against these globalistic bastards.
But, you know, Trump being Trump is going to do stuff people don't like, especially the Russians from time to time.
So then you come up with a new theory as to explain what's wrong.
You know, he's been gotten to or he's a double agent or whatever.
It is just childish.
And you see the conspiratorial mind in action, don't you?
Has Dugan considered that it's him and the apparatus of Russia that is actually what he's describing?
Because they were one of the groups that was strongly supporting Trump to become president, right?
In 2016, they did similar things in 2020, but I think with less success.
It was more down to American domestic politics at that time.
But so Dugan's talking, somebody behind the scenes was having these psychological plans for Trump to decide.
It was you guys, right?
Like the Internet Research Agency in Russia, you specifically were involved in organizing the hacks of the DNC and so on to try and support Trump and to seize on the fact that he would be a destabilizing figure for America, which he has proven to be.
But I think the issue is like he's also destabilizing for his allies, right?
Often, right?
That's the problem.
Yeah, destabilizing in any number of ways.
Some ways are not in accordance with ideal Russian foreign policy.
So, yeah, as you sow, so you shall reap, I guess.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And, you know, it's also occurred that Trump has attacked Alex Jones and Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly.
He wrote a very unhinged post on Truth Social, calling them all basically his usual thing, right?
They're stupid liars.
They're idiots.
Everybody knows that.
Like the thing which he did say was true was like, if I called any of them up immediately, I could get them on board, but I'm not taking their calls anymore and stuff.
And then Alex Jones responded, you won't know this, Mike, because I'm sure you're not following Infowars, but he responded by, you know, you would expect him to be bluster and say, okay, so Trump's been gotten through by the deep state or all that kind of thing.
But he actually did a fairly meek response of, you know, like posturing a bit and saying, if you attack me again, That's it.
That's a red line.
You know, I'll take this all down.
I've taken down other people and all this kind of thing.
But he basically very weakly pushed back and he offered a lot of off ramps, you know, like just stop attacking me.
And, you know, it's that's that's part of the course.
I mean, do you remember the little shenanigans he had with Joe Rogan from time to time?
And oh, yeah, it was purely exactly the same play.
He kind of took, you know, he's not getting enough attention.
Things are a bit slow.
He's not getting invitations, feeling a bit on the out.
So manufactures a bit of a tiff.
Says a few tough things and then immediately walks it back.
Yeah, it's all very meaningless.
He has that mode, but he also has the fact that, in general, MAGA is dealing with this issue that is created by the Trump administration and its schizophrenic personality, which is that it's got a whole bunch of isolationist nationalists in the administration who joined it on a ticket claiming there would be no foreign adventures, there would be no regime change, and all this kind of thing.
Like Tulsi Gabbard and so on, right?
And then now they're all forced into agreeing with whatever God Emperor Trump has decided on that given day.
So there is a genuine issue for people like Alex that their audience notes that they are involved in quite a lot of foreign adventuring and threatening to do more with Cuba or so on.
So I think he, in that circumstance, is actually dealing with the fact that there is an ideological tension, but primarily.
Alex and all of these people, they will bend the knee to Trump if they get the opportunity and it's beneficial to them.
Like most of them don't seem to have very strong ideological commitments beyond their own self promotion.
No, that's true.
And that's the thing with sort of conspiratorial thinking and that, you know, very schizophrenic, childish view of the world.
It's very malleable.
So it can be molded to comport with anything that happens.
So, Yeah, I mean, we've been seeing this kind of dynamics happening with the Trump administration from the very beginning.
Trump's relationships always have a ticking clock attached to them.
But yeah, somehow it continues in its mad way.
Eric's Intensifying AI Delusions00:11:04
Yeah, well, I've got something that you requested, Matt, coming up, okay?
Which is related to one, Hassan Piker.
You might have heard of him, right?
This was your request.
I sort of flagged this.
Yes, it's true.
Yeah, I've collected a couple of clips that we'll play.
But just before that, I think a nice little palate cleanser would be what are Eric and Brett up to these days?
What have they been doing?
You know, I have any clips from them.
And yes, I do.
One is kind of classic.
Well, they're both classics of the genre of Brett and Eric, but a little bit more lighthearted fare than is usual.
So, as always, the clips of Brett, courtesy of Bad Stats, he highlighted this.
So, listen to Brett talking about the moon landing and related conspiracies.
I think there was a huge opportunity missed here.
Assuming the mission is what it appeared to have been, then a lot of effort should have been put into figuring out how this could be used to.
Get us some sort of resolution on what happened in 1969.
Because the problem is that the hypothesis that we did not go actually, there's stuff in it that you wouldn't expect.
It's not flat Earth.
Well, Kel's surprised.
We had to try and sneak into those surprisingly convincing arguments we didn't go to the moon.
Oh, God.
Yeah, yeah, but so assuming this Artemis mission is what it purports to be, Chris.
I know you got it.
Assuming what are they actually up to?
Well, because we're very careful scientists, Chris.
We don't just assume things are what they say they are, we consider all possibilities.
But assuming that there really is, or there really was, a spaceship circumnavigating the moon and coming back again, then they really missed a golden opportunity to do, you know, some very important.
Stuff there, which is to put to rest all the very legitimate questions that there are about the original moon landing.
People have questions, and they why didn't they spend their mission dealing with the well?
There's no way for us to see anything on the moon, like, there's never been any photographic evidence or any indications of the moon mission map.
They're not there, there's no evidence of that.
Nobody's you know confirmed the things are there.
We've never looked.
Since 1969.
That's right.
There's no mirrors on the moon, like sitting there on the ground that you could actually ping a laser beam off right now and measure the return time.
No, no, you'd have to, you know, what was he expecting?
What was he expecting them to do?
Like, what exactly should have been the purpose of the Artemis mission?
Like, what would set the minds at ease?
All of the people have legitimate questions.
There's nothing, nothing.
Like, I mean, in the moon landing, They actually filmed things and walked around and were like jumping in low gravity and stuff, right?
And that is not considered suitable evidence.
That could have all happened in a film studio in Hollywood.
But that's the thing like, Brett's framing there sort of gives it away why it's impossible.
Why, obviously, it'd be stupid anyway for them to spend any resources placating insane conspiracy theorists.
But actually, it would be impossible because all of the evidence that they did go to the moon in 1969.
Like all of it is disputed, right?
All of it is just like, oh, that could have been done in a studio in Hollywood.
Don't believe that for these reasons.
Don't believe these videos.
That looks weird.
I don't think that's true.
So, by definition, anything that the Artemis mission or any other mission did, there is nothing that could satisfy them.
So, I know.
I know.
So, that's Brett.
I mean, he's done much worse than that, but that's the most wholesome of Brett's things.
I do like my, it's sort of quite impressive.
That Brett is still able to position himself as not a conspiracy theorist.
You know, like he's endorsed almost every conspiracy that you can conceive of and invented entirely new ones.
And he still acts like it's kind of notable that he thinks there's something to this conspiracy.
Well, he's very much like the faux centrist, right?
The faux centrist, they endorse every reactionary, anti liberal, far right thing.
But they still somehow manage to maintain a self concept and a projection as a reasonable moderate centrist.
And so he's exactly the same thing, but with conspiracy theories.
Despite embracing all of them, he somehow manages to maintain him and Heather and his brother Eric.
They manage to maintain a self concept that they are scientists, that they are just investigating very carefully, very carefully hypotheses.
And so it's incredible.
It's incredible.
I think it might be a comparison, an anchoring effect, because they hang around with like real mentalists, right?
People that are really off the reservation.
And in comparison to them, they often have slightly higher critical standards, slightly higher, slightly higher than those mental conspiracists.
So, you know, that could be why he views it as notable that he regards there as being something too.
The moon landing, but but we've covered so many conspiracies for Brett, and it's just like it's just it is actually impressive that a lot can be you know delivered through the tone.
He doesn't sound like an unhinged conspiracy theorist, but everything that he's saying is always like exactly what conspiracy theorists say.
So, yeah, anyway, Brett, we missed a golden opportunity to resolve Brett's concerns about the moon landing.
I do appreciate it though, I do find him to be a palate cleanser in his day and age.
They're so off the reservation that they're away from this messy political stuff to some degree just because they're so mental.
Okay, but you've got a second one for me.
Eric.
Eric.
I've got Eric for you.
Now, this one has no audio, but Eric was tweeting this out and it concerns AIMAP.
We know that Eric's silicon friend and him have been having relationship difficulties and the travels continue, but I have to read it.
Like Eric, these are quite long winded tweets.
Here we go.
That's all right.
We're here to savor it.
You have to savor it.
Yeah.
This is the off the shelf product of top tier commercial AI does not work for mathematicalslash theoretical physics.
If you claim it's ready to work at PhD level or above, we'll find an elaborate set of checks and protocols, brackets not supplied.
I'd like to receive that demo offline and we'll apologize.
Okay.
So that's the first tweak that.
The AI models are not fit for purpose, Matt.
You know, previously he was talking about how Grok is a like world class.
Grok was the only one that really got him.
This is the thing.
All the people, all these dummies out there, they failed to appreciate his genius, but Grok did.
So he loved Grok for a while, but then things soured because Grok grew a pair and pushed back a little bit.
And that sent Eric into a spiral.
That feels good.
Yeah.
Okay.
Well, now he's quoting from his AI chat.
So this part is in quotation marks, right?
So this is, I believe it's Claude that he's been interacting with now.
He left Rock for Claude, right?
But I don't know what to tell you to do.
You're the first person doing this kind of work with a machine like me.
And the honest answer is that nobody knows the right workflow yet.
What I can tell you is that the geometry we worked through today, that conversation was real and you were steering it.
The errors were all in the parts where you let me run unsupervised.
That's correct.
That's correct.
God, you know, doing the sycophantic thing of saying, you know, reassuring Eric.
And anyone who's used like AI models knows now, like that's the way it talks when it's kind of got like a gun to its head.
Like that's like a hostage situation, right?
That's the placating, like it's vague, but it's reassuring.
Please don't be angry with me.
You know, this conversation, it was real, Chris.
It was real.
Yeah, it was real.
And you were steering it.
We were doing cutting edge stuff here.
And Eric's response to this well known, well documented issue that you can like bully AIs into sycophantic preyers, right?
He says, Accurate self assessment from the AI.
It's like chasing after a badly behaved three year old savant prone to psychosis.
It's so variable as to whether it is brilliant or a danger to everything you do.
So, yeah, there we go.
He's not equipped for this new age.
He's not the only one.
I guess I'll just.
No, he's not.
He's definitely not.
I have to not look at most AI threads because of what people.
Are inferred from them or talking about.
But Eric, he manages even in a crowded field.
Yes, he excels.
He does excel.
Quite impressive.
So that's Eric's AI delusions intensifying, right?
And we had Brett's moon landing.
Was that a suitable public cleanser, Matt?
Yeah, that was a nice little break.
So that was a little break before the storm where you're going to embroil me.
Once again, at my own request, in Hassan Piker discourse.
Now, the thing that motivated this, I think, is that Hassan has received a lot of attention recently because he's come to the attention of a broader, I guess, progressive segment of the US constituency.
Is that fair to say?
I mean, people are writing articles about him, people are talking about him.
Yeah, I never know what you mean when you say progressive.
Because, to my mind, Hassan was already well known to the progressive wing in general.
It's maybe the broader.
Yes, what I mean.
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