Join us for a mini decoding to get us back into the swing of things as we examine a viral clip that had religious reactionaries, sensemakers, and academic philosophers in a bit of a tizzy. Specifically, we are covering reactions to a clip from a 2014 TEDx talk by Yuval Noah Harari, the well-known author and academic, in which he discussed how human rights (and really all of human culture) are a kind of 'fiction'.

Get ready for a thrilling ride as your intrepid duo plunges into a beguiling world of symbolism, cultural evolution, and outraged philosophers. By the end of the episode, we have resolved many intractable philosophical problems including whether monkeys are bastards, if first-class seating is immoral, and where exactly human rights come from. Philosophers might get mad but that will just prove how right we are.

Links

• The original tweet that set everyone off
• Bananas in heaven | Yuval Noah Harari | TEDxJaffa
• Paul Vander Klay's tweet on the kerfuffle
• An example of a rather mad philosopher
• Speak Life: Can We Have Human Rights Without God? With Paul Blackham (The longer video that PVK clipped from)
• Standard InfoWars article on Harari

In this episode, our intrepid hosts embrace a rare opportunity for sincere self-reflection, spurred by a face-to-face meeting in an inspiring ryokan in a Japanese mountain setting. The discussion delves into the nature of the podcast, audience capture, underlying motivations, and their thoughts on the journey so far and the path ahead.

In an act of pure parasocial manipulation, listeners are invited to imagine the snowy ryokan landscape and 'taste' the amber liquid savoured during the conversation. And should you desire to TRULY see the location (with your eyes) photos and additional videos are up on Patreon.

In any case, we genuinely do want to send a New Year note of thanks to all the listeners for their support, especially the smart ones who agree with us and recognise that Matt is the bad one.

Normal decoding services to resume shortly...

Andrew Huberman, Stanford academic and host of a science-themed podcast, recently released an episode on Autism with guest Dr. Karen Parker. Considering the prevalence of misinformation about vaccines and autism and this episode being promoted as providing an overview of the topic, we were interested to see how the topic would be covered. In part, this interest was because of Huberman's strategic choice to avoid any discussion, let alone any recommendation, of COVID vaccines during the pandemic. The topic came up 2 hours and 43 minutes into the episode and lasted for around 10 minutes.

What we found was interesting and we think deserving of a mini-decoding. What you will not find here is any endorsement of lurid anti-vax claims or cheers for Andrew Wakefield. Indeed, Huberman notes that Wakefield's research was debunked, while his guest Dr. Parker explains the consensus view amongst researchers that there is no evidence of a link. What you will find: Huberman readily engaging in ‘both sides’ hedging: maybe Wakefield’s research helped locate real issues with preservatives, maybe there are too many childhood vaccines (some clinicians 'in private' recommend none), maybe new data will come out later that reveals a link between autism and vaccines. There certainly are a lot of questions and could it be that 'cancel culture' is the real problem here rather than the existence of a very influential anti-vaccine movement?

Let's just say, when you pair this with Huberman's comments on the potential dangers of Bluetooth headphones/sunscreen, the potential benefits for negative ion bathing and grounding, the lab leak origins of COVID, endorsement of AG1 and a host of other supplements, and fawning over figures like RFK Jnr and Joe Rogan... we have some questions of our own.

Links

• Huberman Lab 154: Dr. Karen Parker- The Causes & Treatments for Autism
• Vaccine Schedules from the 1940s to 2019
• BMJ: How the case against the MMR vaccine was fixed
• Jonathan Jarry: Andrew Huberman Has Supplements on the Brain
• Huberman's comments on Instagram about RFK Jnr

Sam Harris is the subject today and a man who needs no introduction. Although he's come up and he's come on, we've never actually (technically) decoded him. There is no Gurometer score! A glaring omission and one that needs correcting. It would have been easy for us to cherry-pick Sam being extremely good on conspiracy theories, or extremely controversial on politics, but we felt that neither would be fair. So we opted for a general and broad-ranging recent interview he did with Chris Williamson. Love him or loathe him, it's a representative piece of Sam Harris content, and therefore good material for us.

Sam talks about leaving Twitter, and how transformative that was for his life, then gets into his favourite topic: Buddhism, consciousness, and living in the moment. That's the kind of spiritual kumbaya topics that Sam reports causing him little pain online but Chris and Matt- the soulless physicalists and p-zombies that they are- seek to destroy even that refuge. On the other hand, they find themselves determined by the very forces of the universe to nod their meat puppet heads in furious agreement as Sam discusses the problems with free speech absolutism and reactionary conspiracism.

That's just a taste of what's to come in this extra-ordinarily long episode to finish off the year. What's the DTG take? You'll have to listen to find out all the details, but we do think there is some selective interpretation of religions at hand and some gut reactions to wokeness that leads to some significant blindspots.

So is Sam Harris an enlightened genius, a neo-conservative warmonger, a manipulative secular guru? Or is he, in the immortal words of Gag Halfrunt, Zaphod Beeblebrox's head specialist, "just zis guy, you know?".

Sam was DTG's white whale of 2023, but we'll let you be the judge as to whether or not we harpooned him, or whether he's swimming off contentedly, unscathed, into the open ocean.

Links

• Sam Harris - Take Back Control Of Your Mind (4K) | Modern Wisdom 661
• DTG Special Episode: Sam Harris & Meditation is all you need
• DTG Special: Interview with Sam Harris on Gurus, Tribalism & the Culture War
• DTG Special Episode: Interview with Evan Thompson on Buddhist Exceptionalism
• DTG Interview with Worobey, Andersen & Holmes: The Lab Leak
• Making Sense 311: Did SARS-CoV-2 Escape from a Lab? A Conversation with Matt Ridley and Alina Chan

Seasons greetings from Decoding the Gurus!

Time to grab a hot chocolate, cosy up to the fire, and wrack your brain to see how much attention you've been paying to all those gurus... that's right it is time for the annual Guru quiz!

Luckily for us, the esteemed journalist and author, Helen Lewis, is back as a combined special guest and quiz master. Prepare for stunning revelations, scintillating dystopic erotic fiction, and more nootropic stimulation than you can shake a stick at.

So who will triumph this year Chris or Matt? And how will Helen fare when the tables are turned? Join us, find out, and have a happy Christmas/non-denominational Winter holiday season!

And don't worry, there might be just a little bit more DTG goodness to come before the end of 2023...

In today's joyous episode, we saunter into the loft apartment, take a draw on our gauloise, and glance icily into a world of bohemian hipsters living their best postmodern tradcath lives. Welcome to the irony-drenched world of 'Red Scare', a popular podcast hosted (sardonically) by Anna Khachiyan and Dasha Nekrasova. Also joining them in the episode we cover is hip writer and artist, Tao Lin, a pioneer in the alt-lit world.

Get ready for hours of 'transgressive' insights, independent research, dorm-room philosophies and monotone delivery. Thrill at their 'edgy' humour, bespoke theories of autism, standard anti-vax bullshit, and all of the usual positions you find with postmodern conservatism. You will learn things like how Tao Lin diagnosed his cat with autism, how long each host was breastfed, why half of Americans will be non-verbal in 2050, how Trump's anti-vaccine conspiracies make him trustworthy, the best way to chug your bootleg raw milk, and that thick books are always full of reliable facts.

When it is all brought together, although we might not have an episode that is lighting up the gurometer, we do have a rather contemporary melange of postmodern-conservatism, trad-cath lifehacks, new-age spirituality, anti-vax conspiracy theories, and irony-laced, not even bothered, posturing.

So like... enjoy... or whatever...

Also features a discussion of Elon Musk's latest grandiosity, some unexpected guru clashing, and confirmation that Chris and Matt are not cool enough to be invited to your next Bohemian soiree.

Links

• Red Scare: Crazy Autistic Asians w/ Tao Lin
• Elon Musk Interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin
• James Lindsay & Jonathan Pageau Tussle on Twitter and as usual Demons are involved
• Tao Lin's Essay The Story of Autism: How We Got Here, How We Heal
• Catala-Lopez, F., Hutton, B., Page, M. J., Driver, J. A., Ridao, M., Alonso-Arroyo, A., ... & Tabarés-Seisdedos, R. (2022). Mortality in persons with autism spectrum disorder or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: a systematic review and meta-analysis. JAMA pediatrics, e216401-e216401.
• Modabbernia, A., Velthorst, E., & Reichenberg, A. (2017). Environmental risk factors for autism: an evidence-based review of systematic reviews and meta-analyses. Molecular autism, 8(1), 1-16.

We are back with more geeky academic discussion than you can shake a stick at. This week we are doing our bit to save civilization by discussing issues in contemporary science, the replication crisis, and open science reforms with fellow psychologists/meta-scientists/podcasters, Daniël Lakens and Smriti Mehta. Both Daniël and Smriti are well known for their advocacy for methodological reform and have been hosting a (relatively) new podcast, Nullius in Verba, all about 'science—what it is and what it could be'.

We discuss a range of topics including questionable research practices, the implications of the replication crisis, responsible heterodoxy, and the role of different communication modes in shaping discourses.

Also featuring: exciting AI chat, Lex and Elon being teenage edge lords, feedback on the Huberman episode, and as always updates on Matt's succulents.

Back soon with a Decoding episode!

Links

• Nullius in Verba Podcast
• Lee Jussim's Timeline on the Klaus Fiedler Controversy and a list of articles/sources covering the topic
• Elon Musk: War, AI, Aliens, Politics, Physics, Video Games, and Humanity | Lex Fridman Podcast #400
• Daniel's MOOC on Improving Your Statistical Inference
• Critical commentary on Fiedler controversy at Replicability-Index

In a kind of meta cross-over with our Decoding Academia series, we're going to decode a journal club discussion between two well-known health optimisers: Dr. Peter Attia and Dr. Andrew Huberman. So you get to listen to two academics talk about two other academics talk about academic papers... we know...

We've already been introduced to the bulging biceps and morning sun-drenched routines of Huberman elsewhere but this is our first introduction to Peter Attia, MD. Attia is a former ultra-endurance athlete and a physician in the field of longevity and performance, a podcaster (who isn't amirite?!?) and author of "Outlive: The Science And Art Of Longevity".

Attia introduces us to a paper that casts doubt on the supposed general life-extending properties of a diabetes drug called Metformin. This is a drug that is apparently very well known in the biohacker/life extension communities and one that Attia administered to himself for a number of years despite the rather preliminary evidence. This is the first of many indicators that both gentlemen are certainly on the bleeding edge of self-medicating experimentation, doggedly pursuing the elusive goals of huge pectoral muscles, minds that laugh at the concept of cognitive decline, and bodies that will live... well for a lot longer than Matt and Chris!

We get to hear about week-long starvation regimes, medications that take the edge of pizza and doughnut binges, dealing with month-long nausea from self-dosing experimental treatments, and frequent prick-blood tests all for the sake of optimising, optimising, optimising...

Huberman's paper (a preprint, actually) falls more into the "big, if true" category - although he seems fairly confident himself. Does *believing* you are getting a treatment generate the relevant physiological and neurological effects in the body that could mean we can bypass the need for certain pharmacological substances entirely, including some vaccines?!? Based on the results of a small-N, fMRI study that reports mixed results, Huberman muses... maybe! Or how about those other small-N studies, with p-values hovering suspiciously close to 0.05 that report other counterintuitive findings? We will leave it to Huberman to explain.

But the bad stuff aside, Huberman and Attia (especially Attia) actually do a pretty decent job talking about how to approach research papers and some of the pros and cons of different approaches. Chris and Matt thus have ample opportunities to give credit where credit's due and demonstrate that they are the fair-minded souls everyone knows them to be!

In any case, it's an interesting peak into an alternative health optimiser world. It seems to be a rather "serious" hobby a bit like body modification or tattoos. But who are we to judge? Matt likes cultivating succulent plants and Chris is into eating sushi in lush forests. So biohacking, self-experimentation for longevity? Well, at least it's an ethos.

Also featuring, an introduction that covers Irish history, the most humble guru in the gurusphere, and our very own theory of guru cringeosity!

Links

• Journal Club with Dr. Peter Attia | Metformin for Longevity & The Power of Belief Effects
• The Most Arrogant thing Bret Weinstein has ever said? Bad Stats Thread
• Keys et al. (2022) Reassessing the evidence of a survival advantage in Type 2 diabetes treated with metformin compared with controls without diabetes: a retrospective cohort study.
• Bannister et al. (2014) Can people with type 2 diabetes live longer than those without? A comparison of mortality in people initiated with metformin or sulphonylurea monotherapy and matched, non-diabetic controls
• Perl et al. (2022) A thalamic circuit represents dose-like responses induced by nicotine-related beliefs in human smokers

On this week's episode, we have an extended interview with author and researcher, Julia Ebner. Julia is a Senior Resident Research Fellow at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue and has written a series of books exploring the social dynamics of extremist networks, including The Rage: the Vicious Circle of Islamist and Far-Right Extremism, Going Dark: the Secret Social Lives of Extremists, and most recently Going Mainstream: How Extremists Are Taking Over.

Julia also recently completed her DPhil at Oxford's Centre for Studies of Social Cohesion and has been developing novel linguistic analyses to help identify the psychological indicators of violence in extremist material and manifestos. She has also endured publishing some papers with our resident cognitive anthropologist.

In the podcast, we cover a range of topics from the factors impacting radicalisation, Julia's time working for Maajid Nawaz's organisation, the psychology of conspiracy theories, and her experiences as an undercover investigator.

Also on this week's episode, we dive into a recent episode of the DarkHorse to explore the Alex Jones' level conspiracies that Bret and Heather have recently been promoting about the horrific events in Israel. You might imagine it would be difficult to make such a tragic event about COVID dissidents and vaccines but if so you are underestimating the InfoHorse hosts.

For a palette cleanser enjoy an extended review-of-reviews and some marathon shoutouts.

Links

• The Guardian: The Big Idea- is it too late to stop extremism taking over politics?
• Going Dark: The Secret Social Lives of Extremists | Julia Ebner | Talks at Google
• Julia's Recent Book- Going Mainstream: How Extremists Are Taking Over
• Regressive Left Media: Tommy Robinson and Maajid Nawaz: Sleeping with the Enemy
• Bad Stats thread with DarkHorse clips from episode 195
• Andy Last's Beyond Synth Podcast
• DTG Shedding Light on the DarkHorse: A Mini Review
• Ebner, J., Kavanagh, C., & Whitehouse, H. (2023). Measuring socio-psychological drivers of extreme violence in online terrorist manifestos: an alternative linguistic risk assessment model. Journal of Policing, Intelligence and Counter Terrorism, 1-19.
• Ebner, J., Kavanagh, C., & Whitehouse, H. (2022). Is there a language of terrorists? a comparative manifesto analysis. Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 1-27.

In modern online ecosystems, attention and download metrics reign supreme. Sadly, the gurus are not immune to these incentives, with even the most successful, *cough* Jordan Peterson *cough*, regularly referencing how many people watched their latest video or how many subscribers they have on their 'brave freethinker' tier.

Alongside the attention metrics, you also have the interpersonal networks (and dinner opportunities) that matter so much to the guru-sphere. Celebrity interviews, cross-promotional content and collabs, a PragerU video, a shoutout from Joe Rogan, a long-form discussion with RFK Jnr, dinner and a phone call with Eric Weinstein... such are the untold wonders that await anyone who dares to challenge the 'mainstream' orthodoxy by endorsing some element of the contrarian canon (vaccines are dangerous and public health measures were authoritarian, Biden is terrible/Trump isn't that bad, the mainstream media is afraid to discuss paedophiles, etc.).

It's very easy to see the impact of the financial and interpersonal incentives in the guru-sphere but what is not as common is for those involved in the hustle to talk transparently about how it all works. Enter Konstantin Kisin and Francis Foster, the hosts of Triggernometry.

In a recent episode, they lay all of this bare by discussing how Konstantin's viral rhetoric-heavy speech at the Oxford Union (decoded in a previous episode) led to very tangible attention and financial rewards but, perhaps more importantly, the newfound respect of a class of celebrity commentator they had always aspired to belong to. With the encouragement of these intellectual heavyweights they now have BIG plans for a Triggernometry media network!

So join us for this refreshing look at the inner workings of the Gurusphere through the hungry eyes of the Triggernometry boys!

Also on this episode: some updates on previous gurus (Russell Brand & Ibram X. Kendi), discussion of good(!) alternative media content, personal reflections on what Orwellian governments look like, and the psychology of riding roller coasters. Something for everyone!

Links

• What's Next for TRIGGERnometry
• Our previous decoding of the Oxford Union speech
• Chris' Twitter thread on Konstantin's origin story
• Surfing the Discourse: Analysing the Right-Wing Reactions to the Russell Brand Scandal (feat Ben Shapiro, Dave Rubin, and more!)
• NY Times: Ibram X. Kendi and the Problem of Celebrity Fund-Raising
• Russell Brand accused of rape, sexual assault and emotional abuse
• BBC: Pat Finucane: A murder with 'collusion at its heart'
• Why They Hate Jordan Peterson - Konstantin Kisin
• Why Communism is Even Worse Than Fascism - Konstantin Kisin