Decoding the Gurus - Gurometer: Curtis Yarvin

Episode Date: January 2, 2025

Back once again with the dark art of Gurometry, we turn our sights to the bad boy of Silicon Valley—the mulleted maestro, the edgy eejit, Curtis Yarvin. A legend in his own mind, but how does he rank on the Gurosity scale? Join us as we dissect his essence across 11 factors, from his revolutionarily mundane and incoherent ideas to his dazzling absence of charisma. Tune in as we feed this 'dark enlightenment' thinker into the Gurometer and reveal his true colours.The full episode is available for Patreon subscribers (34 mins).Join us at: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingTheGurusCurtis Yarvin: Gurometer00:00 Introduction to Gurometry02:27 Curtis Yarvin: The Man, The Myth, The Eejit04:43 Galaxy Brainlessness05:48 Cultishness08:32 Anti-Establishmentarianism09:55 Grievance Mongering12:43 Self-Aggrandizement and Narcissism13:30 Cassandra Complex16:21 Revolutionary Theories17:59 Pseudo-Profound Bullshit19:43 Conspiracy Theories Galore23:55 Moral Grandstanding25:50 Gurometer Scores and Analysis27:56 Bonus Point Attribution34:03 Final Thoughts on Curtis Yarvin

Music Welcome to Decoding the Guru's Gourometer Edition, where we apply the science, the art of gourometry to a figure that we have recently covered in depth on the podcast, done a deep decoding off, but here we're trying to quantify our observations. And we do that by assigning them values of one to five on 11 different criteria. But before we do that, I must introduce that I am Chris Kavanaugh. I'm an anthropologist of sorts in Japan. None of that matters. What matters is the man across from me who is a senior psychologist,

highly respected in his field. He's an Australian. He's in America. He's Matthew Brown. There he is. Welcome, Matthew. I'm in the nation's capital, Chris, Washington, D.C. You were invited up. You have your jacket. You're ready to advise. I'm in the nation's capital, Chris, Washington, D.C.

You were invited up, you have your jacket, you're ready to advise. There was some confusion at the security gates to the White House. They didn't seem to have my name on the list. It was uncomfortable, a bit embarrassing. There was some kind of episode. I had a nice day anyway, wondering about. I went to some excellent exhibitions in Smithsonian's and things like that.

Yeah, nice town. The people are friendlier, gotta say, down south, a bit more laid back, a little bit more relaxed in a Waffle House. I've been to Washington, DC. I know, I know how that goes. But Matt, we're not here for your cultural observations. This is a precise ship. Right.

We do science or art. Yeah. You can't waffle about America here. We are here for a very specific purpose. We've got to take a guru that we've recently covered and we've got to quantify the generosity according to the ancient art of gromitry Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we will and that man is Curtis Yavin, you know Chris

I did some more subsequent looking into Curtis Yavin after our episode I mean ideally I do my research before the episode I guess but I okay I did a fair bit afterwards and I'll just just say, and I learned a fair bit more about his ideas and views on various things. Nothing of what I heard caused me to want to change my relatively searing evaluation of the guy. My god, what a load of nonsense. And while I was watching this crap, Chris,

the most perfect metaphor occurred to me. I wish I'd used it on the show, which was that we talked about how, he's got this melange of ideas, very Jordan Peterson style. He doesn't really answer questions. He just gives you these, a story, and then there's an anecdote, and then there's a little, and then there's a hypothetical,

and none of this is hanging together. It's like somebody has thrown a bunch of jigsaw pieces onto the table. None of them are fitting together. That was my initial metaphor. I think the best metaphor is if on closer inspection you realize that those puzzle pieces are actually the kinds of prizes you get in breakfast cereal boxes

or the gacha that are sitting behind you. That would make it even a better metaphor. None of it hangs together. It's not logically coherent. And then when you actually look at the little facts and things that are presented, you realize that they're laughable. Anyway, let's move on.

Yeah, yeah. Well, I think that's right. I was wondering where you were going to go with that analogy. He's like, when you look closer, the little pieces of crap. So little tiny little turds sitting there on the table. Yeah, that would be that that is also possible. But yes, he's also known as Menchus Moldbug. So he used to go by that nombe there before he de-anonymized.

So there we have him. He is the dark enlightenment, a neo-reactionary master. He is Kurdish Arven. If you want to hear our detailed thoughts on him, please view the full decoding episode, which is audio only. So you have to look up a podcast to hear that. But today, Matt, let's put him into the grometer. And we, by tradition, start with galaxy brainness,

tendency to voice confident opinions about a constellation of ideas. There is no topic that is out of their Ballywick, as we like to say. Where would you put Carter's on galaxy brainness? One to five. I'd give me the four or five. Maybe I could give him a little bit less of the maximum. Well, what do you think? I mean, he's, I mean, he roams around.

It's like, it's history and political stuff and art and philosophy and science. It's everything, isn't it? He roams around. I'm going to give him a five. I'm going to give him a five. Is there any topic that you can imagine him being asked about and saying, I don't know much about that?

Like, no. There's nothing that he cannot put his intellect to. So what do we have next, Matt? What is the next factor? We've got cultishness, yeah, the sort of grooming your audience and sort of the subtle ways of enacting control in various ways. It could be through flattery even, doesn't have to be sort of negatively balanced, but it's a thing, cultishness, other people have talked about it. What do you think, Chris, would you say that he's a cultish figure? Does he do the things a cult leader does to any extent? Yeah, I think he does, and he strongly encourages in-group and out-group dynamics, but also the major way that I see

him do it is by these kind of compliments that he delivers about how the people that are following along are, you know, they're, they're higher-argue people, Matt. They're the kind of people that don't, you know, look for simple solutions. The people willing to think about things, be a bit more edgy than others. So like a lot of his stuff has this like flattering undertone to the audience that like if you're keeping up, if you're appreciating how radical his ideas are, that you're like one of the high intellect people. If you see him as, you know, a of Borg standard reactionary figure, that's the kind of tick that somebody that doesn't really appreciate the profundity of his ideas have. Now, maybe because of his character, he's not as good at cultivating the parasocial attachments as some of the other people in this space. That's the part that I think is true that like he is a little bit

introverted and geeky, right? Too much to get the same level of obsessive fan as some of the other figures that we've covered. He's not a Jordan Peterson person, right? He's not very charismatic and in person. But yeah, so I would say he's high on this, but he's not particularly like gifted in some aspects of it. So I give him four. Yeah, I agree with that. He definitely is the flattery thing. I think it's probably just because he is like his audience.

They're like teenage boys with a chip on their shoulder. But I can't think of many other ways in which he's obviously manipulative. It could just be that I didn't see his tricks, didn't see enough of his spiel to notice the tricks. So I think I'll give him a three. Okay. Okay. Yeah. I'm, I'm in for the doubt, even though he definitely doesn't deserve it. Right. Chris. The next factor is anti-establishment terrorism. This is not just being critical of the establishment. It is in fact taking a contrarian anti-establishment stance on every issue. The institutions, the establishment are all lying all of the time. None of them can be trusted.

What they told you at school, it's just a thin veneer over the deep nature of reality. Yeah, he does this in spades. He does this incredibly. He's just a five on this without a doubt. This is his whole shtick and why he's appealing to those immature men mainly who think there's a lot smarter than they are. Anyway, do we need to talk about that more Chris? Are we happy with our fives? No, I mean, the only other thing I would say is that he likes to present fairly bog standard contrarianism and conspiratorial

reasoning as if it's deliciously devious and a little bit out there for people to consider. But it's very conventional within those spaces, the kind of things that he believes. He just likes to add flavor to it. But yeah, so there's that. But that's just me commenting on him being a dickhead. Not not nearly as, as dark and dangerous as he would like to think he is. Okay, so the next one, Chris, is grievance mongering, litigating tales of war. I remember we ended up arguing about this, we ended up with identifying three sub facets of this. There was the grievance.

Oh, if you have enemies. Or if you're at the center of conspiracies. Yeah, you've got enemies, personal enemies, the sort of person that's seen lots of enemies over it, having a personal tale of grievance. Yeah, in your life you've been held back or whatever, but also inculcating a sense of grievance as part of your appeal, part of your shtick. So what do you think about this one, Chris? Yeah. I don't know enough about him to know if he has the list of enemies. I suspect that he would from his personality, but I didn't hear that in the content that we covered. And he did give the presentation that like he he saw through whatever

everybody else was taking for standard and that people like him might be dismissed by. No, but that kind of is captured by the anti-establishmentarianism. But he definitely inculcates a feeling of grievance in his audience that they're being lied to and that they're not being given proper options or this kind of thing. So yeah, I suspect he's higher in this than I will give him because I'm going to give him free, but that's partly based on just my like the content that we've looked at and that while I suspect he does that, I don't, I didn't see him do it in the things that I've looked at.

Yeah, like in what I saw of him, he's always had this incredibly smug and kind of relaxed attitude. He's not like Jordan Peterson whipping himself up into a frenzy of anger. I've always seen him pretty laid back. But I think the stuff that is, whatever you want to call it, the narrative that he is pushing is one in which everything is not as it seems, it's all a bit of a trick, all of these structures in that society are sort of run by corrupt people who are wanting to hold you down. So it's the same, he shares a lot in common. Like I think it would be a mistake to think of him as principally a conspiracy theorist, but it's interesting. I think a lot of the appeal to his shtick has a lot of the same elements of why people find conspiracy theories appealing.

I mean, he does he does endorse some conspiracy theories. We'll get to that. We'll get to that. So look, I'll give him a three just because he dinged that one aspect of it, but not so much the other two. So you're in accord. I am in accord. Now, the next one is self aggrandizement and narcissism.

And that's five. So, yeah, there's some people that we cover words just like, what is there to say? Like he that's another of his primary characteristics is how self satisfied and how much he regards himself as like a huge IQ individual. Right. So yeah. Yeah, it's incredibly funny just given how trivial and silly his

ideas are. Anyway, but yeah, let's let's let's not keep it above the belt. I didn't say it. No, I'm talking to myself. It's me. But yes, I think he's just incredibly vain. So five for self-aggrandizement. Chris, the next one is Cassandra Complex, where you're warning of the impending doom. You're the one that can see what's going on, and this is part of your appeal to people. Yeah, there's an emergency.

There's a call to action. Has courtesy haven't got that going on? Whenever this category comes up, I always remember that we had it as a category and then Jordan Peterson was like, I'm like Cassandra. That's making it too easy. And in his case, he was like,

but Cassandra was doomed not to be listened to, but actually people listen to me, but I'm still so he's like Cassandra will avoid any of the issues that she had to deal with. So yeah, like Cassandra, but better. Yeah. Yeah. And I feel Curtis Sharvin is a little bit like that.

So again, he is heated. Kurdish Arvin is a little bit like that. So again, he is heated. He is rated highly by JD Vance, by Peter Thiel, by folks that are influential within the neo-reactionary right wing. So he doesn't suffer from the curse of Cassandra to not be heated, but he definitely views himself as like a visionary ahead of the curves, bothering where things are going and that kind of thing. So I, I still would say he's not at the tippy top.

He's not at the Michael O'Fallon level of that. So I'm going to give him four, but he's, he's definitely up there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. He always seems so complacent. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I don't know, he always seems so complacent. He's describing all his conspiracies and his alternative histories and there's quite ridiculous political views and this

whole different alternative understanding of history and philosophy and politics, but he seems pretty laid back about it, you know? Well, that is true. He isn't like, yeah, again, he's not like panicking about it. He seems to be, he seems to be quite confident that basically his philosophy will win out or, but even then like at times it's like, he seems to not really care if it doesn't win and like society is destroyed. Like he just likes to know that he understands these things better than other people. So yeah, there is that bit. I'm going to knock him down to 3.5 because of that.

Yeah. Cause he's, he's almost like the perfect armchair commentator. You know what I mean? He's got an opinion on everything and he's got, you know, knows exactly what is the right thing to do having it, having a monarchy and things like that, but doesn't isn't really fussed about making it happen. So I'm going to give him, but you know, I mean, I'll give it to just because most of the stuff he's talking about is pretty radical. Change the situation. Next is revolutionary theory. If you'd like to continue listening to this conversation, changed the situation. Barometer 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.

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