Decoding the Gurus - Lex Fridman & Jonathan Haidt: The Techno Monk & The Social Scientist

Episode Date: July 8, 2022

First, we apologise sincerely for the delayed-release. Matt and Chris have been busy beavers splicing together this decoding which proved particular gruelling for all sorts of uninteresting (but on-theme) technical reasons. But finally, the wait is over and the long-anticipated episode on AI-aficionado and popular podcast host, Lex Fridman, is here. Although as the title indicates this accidentally turned into a joint decoding episode of his guest, the 'heterodox' social psychologist, Jonathan Haidt. Lex is an interesting character and as such, for the decoding, two rather different pieces of content were selected: 1) a day-in-the-life video dairy and 2) one of his characteristic long-form interviews (with Haidt discussing social media). The format of a day-in-the-life video is perhaps inescapably cringey but it did give some unique insight into Lex's techno-monk lifestyle and his ongoing fascination/discovery of just how bad the Nazis & Hitler were. His interview with Haidt on the other hand was more substantial and covers a lot of tech-related issues that are genuinely complex and subject to an ongoing debate.Jonathan Haidt is a famous and well-regarded academic but also something of a controversial figure online in part because of his involvement in the dreaded 'culture wars'. In particular, Haidt co-wrote the influential book 'The Codding of the American Mind', founded 'Heterodox Academy', and is a vocal critic of 'wokism' and certain aspects of social media. We take a look at his arguments and try to discern whether he is a nuanced social scientist offering prescient warnings or a boomer shaking his fist at the kids these days? Join us and find out!LinksA Day in My Life - Lex FridmanJonathan Haidt: The Case Against Social Media | Lex Fridman Podcast #291Two Psychologists, Four Beers: Episode 89: What's Wrong with Social Media?Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid - The AtlanticOrben & Przybylski (2019): The association between adolescent well-being and digital technology useResponse from Twenge, Haidt, Joiner, & Campbell (2020)Response to the Response by Orben & Przybylski (2020)Haidt, J., & Bentov, Y. (ongoing). Free play and mental health: A collaborative review. Google Doc.Chris' Tweet review of The Coddling of the American Mind

Hello and welcome to Decoding the Guru, the podcast where anthropologists and psychologists listen to the greatest minds the world has to offer and we try to understand what they're talking about. I'm Professor Matt Brown and with me is my trusty sidekick, Chris Kavanagh. He's an associate professor, some would say an integral part of the show. Thanks for being here, Chris. Good to see you.

Top of the morning to you, Matt. I've done that before and I'll do it again. It never gets old. It never gets old. The greeting of my people. Sometimes you introduce us as making comparisons to fictional characters. I know you're finding that hard. Your brain is running on empty. But I was thinking recently, Matt, after an off-air discussion with you, that I see you much like that little grasshopper from Pinocchio, Jiminy Cricket. You're Jiminy Cricket and I'm Pinocchio. I don't know that the Pinocchio analogy works well, but basically you're like my external conscience. You tell me, don't do that chris don't fight with the people on twitter leave it leave it that's right i tell you to turn the other cheek

and sometimes you even listen to me god knows what you'd be doing if i wasn't advising you imagine that so i feel like we need that energy today but Matt. But we'll get into why later. I'm just mentioning now, you know, that you are my external conscience. So there we go. Yeah. I actually don't get that reference. Like I never saw Pinocchio. I know the names.

I know there's a grasshopper. Do you know Geppetto? Yes. So I know the names. I may have accidentally seen part of a Disney movie, those old-timey ones, but I just despise them. No, you'd love it. You'd love Pinocchio.

There's like an alcohol-fueled scene where he turns into a donkey, goes inside a wheel. There's tons of stuff. There's like a child trafficking ring in it. It's serious. There's the old Disney was dark well yeah i guess it was brothers grim story tales right so they were meant to be dark yeah look matt you know it's our tech season it's probably gonna last for a year season for a year given that we release fortnightly but

one thing matt that we should probably do just to get us in the mood is you know tax season tax season how do we know it's a tax season because we hear this season oh yeah it's such a shame this isn't video. Yeah. Man. Yeah. Chris was doing the robot.

I was creating ships. I was creating abstract ships and my mind manipulating them. I was extremely graceful. But Chris, so what's been going on in the big bad world? We'd like to say something topical make some brief comments on the state of the world yeah so america the time of recording the roe v wade thing has just been rolled back in the states and that shit i don't think we have any amazing take on that except to say that it seems like America is just a strange place in general. But this

seems to have been a long-term strategy, selecting particular Supreme Court justices and so on who pledged in their confirmation hearings or whatever that they adhere to president and so on, but seemingly not. Yeah, not much to say about it i came across a statement from our prime minister australian prime minister on the topic and he copped a bit of flack for it because it wasn't from certain quarters because it wasn't perceived as strong enough but i thought it was pretty good i kind of like our prime minister anthony albanese old elbow as we like to call him what did he say he said well ro Roe versus Wade was something that was in place for many decades. And the concern that is there from women, I think globally, is that this is a setback

for women's health and for the issue of women's safety as well. And this is a decision which goes to the heart of a woman's right to control her own body. And these are issues which aren't the subject of partisan political debate in Australia. And that's a good thing. It's good here that we don't deal with it in the same way that has seen the division in the United States. Thank you very much. What do you think, Chris?

That's a politician weighing his words carefully, I think. Speaking about a domestic culture war issue on Australia's largest, most powerful ally. Yeah, but he manages, I think, with what he says to make the implied condemnation quite clear. And I think he's highlighting that America is out of step with the rest of the world in the direction that it is heading on that. So, yeah, in Australia, you don't do that. Petty partisan politics over such important issues.

That's good. We have stupid shit of a different stripe going on here. But I'm with him in not wanting to import that kind of stuff over in Australia. I mean, it's interesting because there are obviously segments of the political discourse that would like to import and get some of that wild energy that's floating around the United States. Anti-gun control, populists would like to get some of Trump's shtick going. You see them stealing the memes and the caps and so on.

By and large, I think people here don't really buy it, which is good. Yeah, and I will will say just to highlight in the south of ireland was only in 2018 that they had an abortion act right they were very very late to that and there are still a bunch of restrictions so i'm not claiming that the rest of the world is enlightened compared to America. But the point is that Ireland was moving, like giving people control direction. It's the papistry. You're a priest-ridden Ireland, Chris.

That's the problem. That's actually true, yes. That's accurate. That was the reason. So Northern Ireland was different, but even still. There you go. Yeah, that's right. It's not just an American thing.

That's that. Anything else on the agenda? That's the world taken care of. We've resolved that issue. Now, the guru sphere, it totters along. It does its business. But there was a talking point that came up on two separate contexts and i thought it's worth having a little look at before we get into our main guru of the week the first clip i'm going to play matt for you is majid nawaz somebody who's covered himself with glory since covid really a bastion of intellectual stability yes in the guru firmament he is a star that burns brightly

as we discussed with good friend sam harris so let's play a clip of majid talking about covid vaccines and whatnot and response to covid he's so confident as he is to say to you that almost everything we were told about COVID was wrong. And then that leaves us with one big fat question as to why. Why and how is it that almost every single Western liberal democracy made the same mistake at the same time on the same issue around the world? Either they're all incompetent in the same way, on precisely the same mistake, looking at precisely the same data, all coincidentally at the same time. In other words, their incompetence managed to somehow manifest itself at the same moment, or somebody

was giving them, deliberately feeding them with incorrect information and somehow managing to get their compliance in selling us this incomplete information and subjugating us to comply or follow their orders based upon this incomplete information. I know what sounds more plausible to me, but one thing is for sure, now that much of the data is out, almost every single thing we were told was incorrect. So all the other countries, they all had this coordinated response and there's only two options that they were either all incompetent in the same way, or there's some coordination they've been given their marching orders. That's the only possible explanation. It sounds logic.

Sounds sound to me. Yeah. And that was him summarizing the conversation that he had with somebody who had a previous job with Pfizer and was involved in overseeing the drug manufacture or whatnot. But let's hear a little bit more of how he frames things. These countries are all incompetent. Now, actually, for me, the former sounds more believable than the latter. To think that every one of them in every country, by coincidence, was incompetent,

doesn't really make sense to me. What does make sense is that there were political pressure, because we know multiple times in history, not least the invasion of Iraq and weapons of mass destruction, non-existing weapons of mass destruction. We know where political pressure has led to experts in their field presenting misleading or false evidence that has later been discovered to have been a lie. Scientists have turned up dead like Dr. Kelly, and yet we've invaded an entire country. This is an incredibly serious thing to do, but we did it on a false premise.

For me, what I have experience in, what I have evidence for, is that these sorts of lies can affect entire countries and the decisions entire countries make. entire countries make. And it's more likely that that kind of political pressure was deployed than to say every single scientist in every one of these countries made the very same mistake based on the very same incompetence and the same knowledge gap. That's a bit weird. Yeah, that's some masterclass conspiratorial reasoning there, isn't it, Chris? The first thing I'll say is that the conspiracists love to give examples of other incidents where powerful groups have been less than good with the truth, but the comparisons are usually extremely weak. I mean, the comparison to the Gulf War, yes, it was a very bad thing.

The evidence for weapons of mass destruction was not there, but that became quite clear quite quickly. In the lead up to the war, certainly various factors were leading to CIA and intelligence and stuff like that, telling Bush what he wanted to hear. But weapons inspectors went in and they reported back. The truth became quite clear in a reasonable period of time. So that's quite a different scenario to what we're talking about with COVID, where every scientist, every medical researcher across the entire world,

all working independently in their own research labs, etc., are all either lying, or he thinks it's more probable that they've all been gotten to. And I think to the conspiratorial mindset, that seems plausible, and it's not. So you spoke about the conspiratorial mindset. So let's see if there's another set of figures who we might be familiar with who express a similar sentiment. Brett Weinstein and Heller Hain, what have they got to say? so in any case what you've got is actually effective

pharmaceuticals that we are told are snake oil and we have something that isn't a vaccine which we are told is a vaccine that doesn't do the two most important things that it would need to do in order to control the pandemic and to explain why they would be mandated which is to prevent you from contracting the disease and prevent you from passing it on. In other words, what you've got is the exact inverse of a recipe for protecting yourself, right? You could have done the right thing for your family if only you had known that you should tune out the New York Times, the Washington Post, the CDC, the FDA, the WHO, all the major universities, right? And so this is a problem because for most of us, we are not equipped to look at the entire range of institutions and say they've all got it wrong.

I mean, even my voicing that sounds perfectly insane. What are the chances that all the institutions got it wrong? And if they did all get it wrong, my point is we have to now go backwards and say, well, what could possibly explain that? I love that. Same as Majid. All the institutions, all the medical bodies, all the governments like Majid pointed out, they've all got it wrong. There's no other explanation why they wouldn't agree with Brett and Majid. There's no possible, it's either incompetence or it's some coordinated lie. There is no other possibility to explain why they might not agree with Brett and Majid

and their cadre of alternative experts, right? Yeah, it's such a wonderful textbook example of motivated reasoning, isn't it? You start off with the ironclad belief that whatever, the Twin Towers were brought down by space-borne lasers or they faked the moon landing, right? Because you've figured it out. Then you try to contort your understanding of the rest of the world to fit that premise. And with Brett and Margie, it's a good illustration of why the

narcissism and the conspiracy theorizing seem to go together so often. that insane level of confidence in your own belief, I think is what the narcissism plays into. And then the conspiratorial reasoning allows you to just float off completely untethered by reality testing. Well, it's also that point that you have to discredit all other sources of epistemic authority, right? So all of these scientific bodies, all of these experts are saying you're an idiot or you're completely misreading the evidence. And we've got billions of people vaccinated now, and we've got reductions in every country where vaccines have been taken. And you need to explain why the people should ignore that. And if you start with the premise that all of those sources have been compromised, that's

a good way to basically say, if you hear attacks, it doesn't discredit me. It means I'm getting closer to the truth. Alex Jones does the exact same thing. He says, people attack me because I'm right. does the exact same thing. He says, people attack me because I'm right. People are attacking you because you're a conspiracy theorist arguing something which is not supported by the evidence. And that's the case for both Majid and Brett. Yeah. And the need to defend his standing and their brand, basically, as a far-seeing source of truth. It's directly threatened. Every RCT that comes along showing that ivermectin doesn't work is another threat to his credibility. And they

quickly reach that tipping point where there's no way to back down. You just have to triple down again and again and again and keep explaining, build a bigger and bigger conspiracy theory to explain why everyone else in the entire world is wrong and you're right. Yeah. And there's this thing which also Brett and Heller discuss were, and I've seen it quite recently in various conspiracy communities, particularly lablet community and so on. communities, particularly lab-like community and so on, they try to present that there's no incentive for them to argue with the consensus. There's no benefit to them to take that stance. So let's just hear them explain that. Right. And, you know, it should also be obvious to people as they look at the supposed consensus in front of them, that those who have departed from the

consensus have had terrible things happen to them, right? All of us who have departed from the consensus who are professionally trained in any regard have been dismissed as cranks and kooks and worse. We've been called grifters and all sorts of things. And so the point is, look, you know there is an incentive to stick with the of things. And so the point is, look, you know, there is an incentive to stick with the conventional narrative. And then the consensus is trotted out as evidence that the pattern is very clear. And anybody who knows how to do the analysis will reach the same conclusion that the CDC and the FDA and the WHO and the New York Times and everybody else has reached, right? But the point is, when you see an intense campaign that punishes people for stepping out of line, then you have to

ask the question, what, you know, how, how durable, how meaningful? Is that a Potemkin consensus? Right? Is that a paper thin consensus born of the fact that all of those who are capable of seeing the problem with it are afraid to say what they can see. So there's no incentive, there's no patron money that has been funneled to Brett. There's no anti-vax conferences he's headlined. He didn't appear on Bill Maher and get invited to talk about vaccines despite having no relevant expertise or knowledge he didn't go on joe rogan multiple times i mean this is someone who had no academic career no research career no public profile of any kind before beginning to take these contrarian stances no academic career of public

note he was a professor teaching in a relatively small university. So he did have an academic career, but just not technically. Yeah. You mean like not an influential one. And yeah, that's what I mean. And he did not. So he's done well out of the evergreen crisis. He got a public profile and he's done well in a certain segment out of COVID. Right. But he's increasingly associated with the anti-vaccine movement. And that's because he is increasingly hanging around. I mean, we just headlined an anti-vaccine conference with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Dale Bigtree and various other anti-vaccine superstars alongside Majid. That's where they are now. No. Yeah, Knight. I definitely agree that the incentives, in fact, are in the opposite direction.

If you take any controversial hot-button topic, it is always the contrarians, the ones that go against the mainstream, that get a disproportionate level of attention. But basically people taking a controversial establishment, sort of pro-Putin, pro-Russia, anti-NATO, anti-Ukraine stance. There are respectable foreign affairs analysts who take that position, and they get a lot more attention than their colleagues that are taking the more boring stance. But what about Majid? I mean, Majid has suffered. He's a bona fide conspiracy theorist. And it seems, as far as I understand, Chris, he's suffered professionally by being too extreme. I think his contract wasn't renewed at the radio call and show that he hosted, which was his main gig. So there's been professional consequences for him,

but it took some time and also means to be seen what happens as his profile grows as an alternative commentator promoting conspiracy theories in the UK or far lower field. He may very well end up a David Icke style figure, or he may feed into the background. It's hard to tell, but David Fuller is right that the contrarian IDW space, it basically never acknowledges the huge incentive structures that exist to take contrarian stances, not least of which revolve around Joe Rogan appearances. Staking out a position that is, I'm going to tell you something that nobody else will tell you, is obviously more lucrative.

Yeah. I mean, a great couple of clips there, Chris. For me, though, the takeaway is, once again, just wonderful validation of our Gurometer framework because really taking together those clips illustrated so nicely how the narcissism and the conspiratorial ideation and the undermining of other epistemic sources to enhance your own credibility is an interlinked complex, isn't it? These things go together. It's not by happenstance.

They go together for a reason yeah those characters i think are definitely towards the more nefarious end of the guru pool that we look at in part because of the level of narcissism that's on display but also because of the consequences of what they are promoting right anti-vaccine views during a pandemic that's pretty the gurus, Matt, that we're going to turn to look to this week, who are they? Who are they? Lex Friedman is number one and Jonathan Haidt. I assume he's a professor.

How did he sneak? I wasn't triggering your past experience living in Japan. I was just shocked to hear Haidt. He snuck in there. We didn't announce that we were going to cover jonathan height what's he doing there yeah well lex ridman he has his podcast or video tube whatever it's called and has a lot of guests on has a lot of high profile guests doesn't he and so we decided to look at two pieces of content one of them was a day in the life, just a solo thing with

Lex Friedman talking about his regime and his tips for productivity, kind of self-helpy, slightly guru-esque, I suppose, because it is about optimizing yourself and providing that kind of personal advice. But we wanted to pick something else, which was more representative of the content he produces, which is fundamentally as an interviewer, right? So we have him interviewing Jonathan Haidt and we covered Jonathan Haidt in our Decoding Academia episode. I think it was the last one, wasn't it? And yeah, we enjoyed that one. As I said in that episode, I didn't know much about Haidt. I seem to be the only one on Twitter who's not sort of all over Haidt, but I came away from that paper moderately impressed. He's a good writer,

so it was good to hear him again. Yeah. So I think the point to make here is, and to remind people a little bit, because they do need reminding on occasion, that our format is we take a piece or one or two pieces of content and we analyze them. We try to find pieces which are relatively representative of a person's output. But obviously, when people put out tons of output, there's always going to be a certain degree of selection bias or other stuff that they do that we can't cover.

And with Lex, we could have chosen an episode where he's verbally masturbating over Elon Musk or giving a metaphorical handjob to Joe Rogan. Whatever the case may be. But that felt a little bit mean, especially when we are looking at this day in the life content, which Lex put out, and that's not as normal content. And anybody doing a day in the life video, it feels a little bit cringy. And I feel like Lex knows that because of some of the things that he says in the video. So it felt a little bit like a slight low blow to Lex to look at that content.

So we should take the high ground when we're looking at his interview. But the problem was with height, that a lot of the interview is height as the case should be maybe with a good interview so it ended up when we were clipping that a lot of the clips were height themed and it seemed like okay so we're going to be discussing heights phases heights approach and a bunch of the content so we're going to treat them together yeah that's okay that falls within our remit we've done this before it's a double feature and height he's an intellectual figure he's a commentator he's quite well known he falls within the bounds of being fair game for decoding the gurus we've had various requests to do an episode on height i think in part because of his role in the heterodox

fear and setting up heterodox academy writing the coddling of the american mind and so on and i don't think we will do a dedicated separate height episode at least not for some time so this is what you get we'll have a look at whether people's critiques of height are fair based on this content it wasn't supposed to be a height episode that's the point it ended up a height episode yeah well it's half a height episode half lex half height yeah good so we're gonna start with a day in the life and just to remind you about just gotta call back as i say you are the voice of my conscience right so this is gonna be hard for me because Lex, as you'll see, is something of a sincerity monster. Maybe we should get this out of the way off the bat. Lex Rubin's personality, it's fair to say, is different from yours and mine.

His cultural sensibilities are different from ours. Not bad or worse necessarily, just different. It's probably because his ancestors were from the Russian tongue. As he says in this episode. And he may well be the first one to admit he is perhaps somewhat neurologically atypical. How would you describe his personality, Chris? Naive. He's sincere to a fault might be one of the ways to put it. And I think a good example of it is the tweet he made at the outbreak of the conflict between

Ukraine and Russia. And he has various family connections and background there. So let me just read that tweet. What Lex said was, I stayed up all night talking to people in Ukraine and Russia. I'll publish Mark Zuckerberg podcast another day. I will travel to Russia and Ukraine. I will speak to citizens and leaders, including Putin. War is pain.

My words are useless. I send my love. It's all I have. So very sincere, very sincere and well-intentioned. And I think your original impression of those kinds of statements, thinking that you personally are going to go over there, have a chat with Putin and sort this whole mess out, might well be an indication of someone with delusional and grandiose narcissism that would be conforming to that kind of attitude but i think after listening to this content we've maybe changed our mind about that and it's rather almost childlike sincerity naivety naive sincerity perhaps but yeah so i will say that i read lex to have something of a

narcissistic personality which we observe in a lot of our gurus and this was not to say that it comes across the same as like brett or so on like it's different this sense that, for example, that you need to go over and talk to Putin and if you just bring your love that you might be able to do something and that it would be the time to sit down and do a long podcast with Putin and Zelensky. That's not the problem. It doesn't strike as somebody scrambling to process the situation. It's rather centering yourself in a global conflict and having this very insane view about the power of podcasting. But in hindsight, after listening to these conversations that we're going to talk about, I think that Lex was sincere in that he is thinking the only thing he can do is podcast and talk to people

and remind them of love and that if he did that putin and zelensky are both men both powerful men and it might work it might not but by god damn it he's gonna try and that's that's something that is something so very different from the cynical hard-nosed exactly approach of us but we're going to try to take that into account and we're going to try to restrict we're not restrict but we're going to try to focus i think on the content on the arguments he's putting forward but the personality and the way his brain processes things obviously comes into play throughout right there's like a cultural difference it's like brené brown it's similar in certain respects to that where there's just a vast

gap between the way lex approaches things and the way that matt and i'm anyway we've made that clear enough so let's go and look at his content so we'll take it chronologically. Brett's a day in the life of Lex. What does he start with? Let's see. First thing, there's a mantra, a list that I have on a sheet of paper that I go through. So I start by reminding myself of the current set of rules and constraints on the various addictions, things that drain on my time. So that includes social media. The current rule is I only check social media when I post, which is one, two or three times a day for no more than 10 minutes. So that's it. It's very strict.

Okay. So this is Lex wakes up in the morning. He's got a set of rules and restrictions he lives by. And first is don't overindulge in social media. So far, so good. So let's continue with the mantra. So the first part of the mantra is I remind myself of those rules. It kind of sets the constraints within which the game is to be played. The second part of the mantra is gratitude. I visualize and meditate on the idea that I might die today, at any moment today. So I kind of try to accept the notion that today is my last day on this earth.

And it's mostly just a breathe in and out and a pause and a meditation on the fact that it's freaking amazing that I'm alive, that life is amazing. As I say that, there's a cultural difference here. Wake up in the morning, see an early sunrise and think, for fuck's sake. Here we go again. and think for fuck's sake. Here we go again.

Meditating on death thing, it's kind of the samurai ethos, right? At least the popular image of this. Or it's also popular in certain streams of Buddhism to focus that death is ever-present, lurking at every corner. I think the Stoics might have also recommended that. And that, you know, live every day like it's your last. Carpe diem, Matt.

Carpe diem. I'm definitely not doing that. Wake up in the morning and try to remember how much it was I drunk last night. That's generally how my day starts. So there's, again, look, nothing wrong. Just he meditates on death to start his day. Fine. That's all right.

Okay, good job. What's the second part of the mantra? Third is I list out loud, by the way, unless I'm with somebody, then it's in my head. But I list a set of goals for the next five years, a set of goals that I have. And these are ambitious, big goals that I would like to achieve in the next five years. Fourth is I list more near-term goals. For me that's by the end of 2020 I want to do

these kinds of things. They're just out of reach but achievable. So if I really work my ass off and with a bit of luck I can get it done. I mean that really starts to get me amped up. Like, let's get to work. Fifth part of the mantra, zooming in even further, I actually focus in on the day. I visualize going through the rest of the day, all the things I think I need to get done. This is really quick, but I literally visualize myself like in a game of Sims, like on fast forward,

running around, getting all this stuff done successfully. Like, I visualize both the struggle of it. I visualize the hardest part of the day that I have on my to-do list and getting them done, crushing it. But yeah. So I'm just having this thought now. I didn't think this before when I heard it for the first time. But this is kind of an American thing too, isn't it?

I mean, it's partly Alex's thing. He's built differently. But it's partly an american thing too isn't it i mean it's partly a lex thing he's built differently but it's partly an american vision boards you know manifesting your destiny yeah i mean it takes different forms there's this west coast sort of technology optimizing productivity tim ferris style thing i mean that's what this is of, is a kind of life hack on crack. Because we're not through the mantra yet to start the day, and we're on step five of the mantra. Yeah, this is pretty heavy going, just after visualizing your death and thinking deeply on it. But then you think about the Sims,

like you're a little tilt-shifted man running around the world, driving your car and fast forward. But let's look, we're not here to make fun of Lex. There's nothing terrible in this. It is really strong stuff. It's a hell of a way to start the day. It's very optimized, but there's nothing toxic there, is there? There's nothing bad. No, I think that's just an illustration of that West Coast optimizer productivity culture.

And that's what this is. I think that Lex is a techno monk. I think that's what he is. And monks start their day of thinking about the sufferings of Christ or whatever. Lex thinks about this might be his last day. Let's be a tilt shifted sim and get things done. That's it. But look, there's a lot of this like self-talk hype yourself

up be the man that you want to be and finally i go through a set of principles that i strive to live up to as a man now there's a particular set of phrases that are a little bit cliche but i think fundamental to who i am but they center around compassion, empathy, love, and on the other side of it is character, integrity, and strength, both physical and mental. So today's a little bit different because I'm also making this video. I don't like it. It's uncomfortable. It's a distraction. It takes away from my focus, but I'm going to get the job done. I said I'm going to do it. I'll do it.

So I'm going to do the mantra now. And next thing, hit hard the deepest work of the day for four hours, a four-hour session that I'll probably film behind the desk. So just two things there struck me, Matt. One, finish the mantra, then think about your principles as a man there's a lot to get done that's a lot to deal with before breakfast i think i could say that i've never once in my entire life thought about my principles as a man it shows it shows i know that that's why lex is the brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt and and i'm not that's true i only got up to the sort of tangerine

flavored belts and you're actually talking about like flavors this is the kids belt that they had the little cinnamon flavor added to them and you said before breakfast bear in mind lex doesn't eat breakfast there is no that's already fast for 14 14 hours yeah like i just gotta point out i felt this with jocko willick a little bit as well and the games different life the people at different stages of life and whatnot but like i get up most ones at five and then my primary occupation is like putting the washing on, tidying up crap, trying to get a little bit more sleep before and to get the kids' books ready.

And it's just like this complete different thing about self-improvement focus and mantras and all that. But maybe I'd be a better person if I did it. Maybe I'd be a different person. So maybe that's it. Maybe I resent them because i have to think about breakfast for several people yeah different strokes for different folks but i think the techno monk analogy is pretty much spot on like in a different century a person with lexus

sensibilities would go to a monastery and would live a rigorous life as a monk, might well be wearing a hair shirt and dedicate themselves to four hours of deep work. I mean, their deep work would be on calligraphy rather than coding, but these are just details. So I did the mantra, then I drank about a liter of water, went to the bathroom, made a coffee, and now ready to hit the day hard with a four-hour session of deep work focused on a single thing no interruptions if interesting ideas come into my head to try to trick me into pulling on the thread of that idea i gently set it aside write it down in google doc to address later so i bring my mind gently back to the focus of the task because

ideas keep coming but you really want to focus on the task so the only interruptions that are allowed is water coffee bathroom and i try to minimize those usually try to be just once in that four hour session yeah true and so there's another you know we talked about lex's sincerity and he does this thing sometimes i'll just start there's three clips and they're thematically linked let's see if you can pick up the theme i'm currently listening to the rise and fall of the third reich recommended highly great book rough but important for our times if you don't study history you're doomed to repeat it. The Nazis, Matt. What shits.

Now, Chris, I've read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. I think Beaver. I read it twice. And do you know what age I first read it at? Ten. And it was there on my parents' bookshelf right next to The Joy of Sex. And also a good book. Also a good book.

Also a good book. Exactly. Are you book shaming Lexx are you book shaming lex because he's reading about the nazis as a late 30s adult he should have got that out of the way at 10 years old no i'm just pointing out these were two formative influences on me for good or bad who could say yeah that's so it's there's just something you know you could regard it as performative when somebody is telling you like, those Nazis, my God, and history, doomed to repeat it if we don't learn about it.

Right. But the thing is, again, I think it's earnest. I think it's Lex genuinely thinks about the Nazis, he's reading about them, and he wants to say, weren't they terrible? Weren't they really bad? Just isn't that amazing how terrible people can be? I love it. It's really quick.

20 minutes, maybe 30 minutes, depending on the day, and the one hour of the running. I feel pretty good. Not so good about 1936, 1937 Nazi Germany, as the audiobook is covering. But yeah, it really makes me think about the nature of evil it puts everything into puts everything else into context somehow you know studying history sometimes is a really good way to force me to stop and to acknowledge how weak my mind is and

how much stronger it needs to be if i want to have a role in this world of making positive change, I think about Nazi Germany and what it means to be a hero in those times, what it means to be a person that can reverse the decline into evil. I think it's much more difficult than people realize. I think it means standing against the masses. It requires the kind of mental toughness, mental fortitude that I don't think I'm ready for and I need to be. Most likely, hopefully, I will never have to play a role of any importance. But if I do have that opportunity, I need to be able to step up.

Thinking about Nazi Germany. Yes, I agree, Lex. A terrible time. Thinking about the hero you had to be to stand and how to develop that mental toughness. Because in the future, toughness because in the future you might need to be that hero that disclaimer at the end it felt like half-hearted that you know probably i won't be needed to do that in lex's defense i think these are thoughts that many 14 year old boys have and if your brain works in a certain way he's very open and honest in letting people know what he's thinking. I mean, let's face it, listening to Rise and Fall of the Third Reich while you're jogging, it would be heavy going.

But not if you're like Lex, because your brain would be like, these Nazis are doing such terrible things. I gotta be stronger in case I need to fight future Nazis. Like, I don't want to be physically weak oh you're being overly mean i know no i'm not he sure did it not me he said you know running is fun running's all right but it's hard you know what else is hard he did it not me i'm not being mean I'm saying I think that's what Lex thinks. don't go along with all of the badness and reflect it on whether or not they would be the kind of person who went along with it or not i think that's what's going on in lex's mind that's what's

studying the 30s the great depression on the united states side and a decline into a state of terror on the european side really makes me think i know this is a day in the life video, but that's also my days. I, as often as possible, try to think deeply about history, about the state of the world today, about my own mind, about the science that I'm fascinated with, which is the science of intelligence and the science of engineering intelligence. That's just a sincerity overload for me, Matt. There's a lot of sincerity there. Okay, Matt. Jiminy Cricket, listen to me.

You listen to what's his fears? Who was that guy, the person who survived the Holocaust, the concentration camp? The positive psychologist. Frankl. Frankl, yeah. frankl right i've read his book and it's very powerful it does make you self-reflective but i don't know you of course compare your situation to it but i'm not so sure i would adopt le's pose about seeing myself as the potential heroic figure in the future fighting the Nazis. Here's the thing, Chris.

You're a cynical sophisticate. And I don't think from the little I've heard of Lex's things. I think what he emotes about these things comes across as rather cringe and platitudinous and naive but he's sharing the thoughts that many young people but he's 35 well look it's fine it's fine whatever age you come across material that's all right but it does feel with like joe rogan and lex redmond and a bunch of the other people that there's a little bit of an indulgence towards people who are not grad school stoners. They're like people in their 30s and Joe Rogan's case in their 50s.

And it's a little bit like they've just started to reflect on the nature of suffering and considering world history. I knew the Nazis were bad as soon as I heard about them. As soon as I heard what they got up to. In secondary school, we were learning about the Nazis. Like that comedian said, the more I hear about this Hitler guy, the less I like him. Yeah. I don't know. We are being mean. But look, so Matt, let's turn to something else that goes on in that day. So you know, we talked about him being a techno monk. I find it's a really great, intense way to get the exercise in without taking too much away from your day. Hard on the mind, hard on the body, but good for the soul. By the way, all of this is fasted. So it's been about

14, 16 hours since I've eaten last. I feel great. No food, water, and I've just taken a salt pill in case I do run for a long time. It's important to have electrolytes in the body. I love exercising fasted and an empty stomach focuses the mind. I can actually perform extremely well. So he fasted, takes a salt pill if he needs it. Some people do this. This is what people do, right? And Lex has a theory for why that might be. I just personally enjoy working out fasted. So I guess based on my diet, but also my psychology, I perform best when I'm fat adapted,

which means I'm a low carb diet. It's probably deep somewhere in my Eastern European genetics that my ancestors will go without food for long periods of time and then have to wrestle a bear to the death intensely. So it seems like this is the kind of thing I enjoy doing, not eating and then doing intense, focused, hard workouts. Makes me feel great. I enjoy it both physically and mentally. Oh, that's lucky. And I've heard him mention that thing about Eastern European genetics on multiple interviews in other contexts. And so I don't think it is just the throwaway line that's suggested there. It would be like me inheriting the blood of the Celtic warriors of the past. That's why I'm so fiery online, Matt. Actually, that explains a lot.

Yeah, it's why the chips, it's potatoes. My people, Matt. We hunt potatoes for sport. So, yeah, just there's a little bit of genetic essentialism in there. Yeah, I think it speaks to, again, a sort of a naive understanding of how that stuff works but yeah anyway takes a shower cold shower of course after the exercise when i jump into the shower which contains the moment of the day that i dread the most which is the first minute that i take a cold shower i have a bunch of songs that I know the one-minute mark of

that I usually put on. It could be as cliche and cheesy as the Rocky soundtrack, We're Gonna Fly Now. I think it's the first solo is the one-minute mark. He's really doing a lot to counteract this techno-monk image. So we've got cold showers, fasting, mantras about death, we've got cold showers, fasting, mantras about death, reflecting on the nature of Hitler and the Third Reich as you run.

And, yeah. It's a punishing regime. And if you calculate it all out, he sort of works for 12 hours a day. Is that right? And spends really most of the rest of the time doing either exercise or part of his regime contemplating death or whatever. I don't want to cast aspersions, but I do wonder if Lex does this five days a week or six days a week or week in, week out.

You have to wonder a little bit. There's no masturbation time for this. Where does he do his drinking, Chris? Oh, well, he does cover that. So listen to this. Where does he do his drinking, Chris? Oh, well, he does cover that. So listen to this. Also, this time is for when I don't feel great, I can just lay down and watch some Netflix,

watch some documentaries on YouTube, hang out with friends. If I had a girlfriend, this would be girlfriend time. Netflix and chill. For now, I'm doing just the Netflix part of that. Anyway, today is deep work, but starting now on any particular day,

this is where the possibilities of chaos are wide open. So I can just do whatever the hell I want. I got some Jack Daniels. I got some Stoli, some Maranatha vodka. I got some peanut butter flavored whiskey. So I don't drink very often pretty rarely actually but the possibility is always there the night is always full of possibilities i'm a big fan of a random adventure and just being lost in it this is the time for that to happen yeah i think the chances of that happening in your apartment with netflix

it's like i have a bottle of whiskey in the room now i've been there for like a year but every day the possibility that i just consume it and go on a wild bender across tokyo for go all my family responsibilities it's there right it's it's possible i need to visit you i'll make that happen for you chris so he does know how to kick it back that's that's what he's saying there matt and if any of this is coming across as unnatural just to show you though like when lex is cooking his food for example he kind of kicks back he relaxes a bit in case it's interesting what i usually eat is some kind of meat and some kind of vegetable. So if I eat once a day that's gonna be

about two pounds of meat. A total of 1800 calories, 2000 calories for the total meal. If I'm not being very fancy, it's gonna be ground beef. Like this is grass fed, organic, 85%. So 15% fat ground beef. In terms of keto, it results in a good macro breakdown. In terms of taste, I just like it. In terms of cooking, it's also easier because it's just the right amount of fat when it's mixed with the vegetables.

It like, it creates a non-sticky pan situation where I don't have to add any oil. It just mixes nicely and results in flavorful veggies. So veggies, my favorite go-to is probably cauliflower. Yeah. So it's a pretty aesthetic life he leads. What? He has a vegetable and a meat matt he does with that combination you

can pretty much take the world is your oyster look it reminds me of my student days and i stir-fried a hell of a lot still like stir-fry but this is kind of an anathema to somebody living in japan for example this approach to food as a chemical potion that you calculate the precise nutrients and only that and that you functionally combine the ingredients to give you the precise micronutrients that you need yeah again this is the cultural difference i think as you say there's there's a breed of young guy usually that just eats for fuel and is busy doing other things and i actually knew a guy an older guy but he had no interest in food like he ate simply to sustain himself he would like fry four eggs and tofu or something and that would be his thing and it was just he'd put it in his mouth. There was no salt or pepper or any other kind of preparation.

So there are people that exist that have no interest in food, but Lex isn't that person because he talks about how much he relishes the amazing flavor and texture of mixing a meat and a vegetable. And he talks a little bit about the importance of this, like a ritualistic thing that humans do. I'll often eat it behind the desk sort of uh thinking deeply about something oftentimes about the thing i'm going to do in the next four hour session just kind of relaxing enjoying the food but also just thinking of course if there's somebody else here with me i'll be enjoying uh the meal with them there's

nothing more beautiful than connecting with other human beings over some delicious food course if there's somebody else here with me i'll be enjoying uh the meal with them there's nothing more beautiful than connecting with other human beings over some delicious food delicious delicious grilled stir-fried beef and single vegetables with all the humans there's a little bit and that feels like there is nothing more I enjoy with my fellow humans than consuming nutrients together in the enjoyable act of mealtime, as we all know, as normal humans. I know, I know. But look, we are being mean. Lex is built differently.

We established that at the beginning. And Lex, if you're listening, none of this is bad it's just different it's just different that is the case but there's a i feel this detachment comes into a lot of his other takes on culture war stuff super sincere but a little bit weirdly detached approach like colors a lot of the things that he does. There is an element of it, Matt, which feels a little bit performative. Like, listen to this. Right now, I'm working through the major novels of Dostoevsky, because I'm going to be talking to Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, translators. I don't know when exactly, but in a few months, maybe in a month, I'll be going to Paris to talk to them. So I'm rereading Dostoevsky, Chekhov, translators. I don't know when exactly, but in a few months,

maybe in a month, I'll be going to Paris to talk to them. So I'm rereading Dostoevsky. I finished The Idiot. I'm now working through Crime and Punishment. Reading it in English, but I'm also going to try to get to listening to it in Russian. Like taking it in both languages and trying to understand the music

of the different languages and how they interact, how they connect, what is the gap, what are the things that are lost in translation, that kind of thing. So there's this kind of caricature of somebody being pretentious. And one of the things that's top of the list is references reading Dostoevsky. I've read a lot of Dostoevsky. I know. So has Kammler andler and peas but that's the thing their philosophy there there's a certain thing about it's different than saying you watch paw patrol for fun right it is different or sonic the hedgehog was the movie that like he really

enjoyed over the weekend and and it's not just this is his kickback time what do you do for fun i read dostoevsky and i compare the different versions to try and look at the nuance and languages it's a worthy thing but everything is worthy everything that he describes is worthy yeah but i'm just not so sure that it's performative because I think he might really be doing that and taking it extremely seriously. I read it casually. You enjoyed it. I sometimes enjoyed it and sometimes didn't.

It wasn't part of some greater mission. But I guess Lex takes everything seriously and tries extremely hard at everything. So I'm not sure it is performative. I think he might just be telling us what he's focused on at the moment. So would you say, for example, this? Sometimes I stand, not wearing a suit. I sometimes wear a suit, especially when I'm going to film.

I wear a suit when I go outside. I just enjoy the way I feel when I wear a suit. But at home, I'm wearing a T-shirt and jeans. Right now, I'm not wearing any pants. Just kidding. I'm wearing a t-shirt and jeans right now i'm not wearing any pants just kidding i'm wearing jeans but uh you wouldn't know it if i didn't which is the magic of the internet so i like that joke he did have these quips where he delivers that pun and he does it a couple times sometimes they're not good but when they're good they're nice little asides i feel like i get some insight into le Lex's personality.

And most of this is about his personality rather than about whatever he's arguing for or his takes on things, which we're going to get to. But yeah, with those little jokes and this little quiet smile he's got, I've met people like that. And yes, the jokes aren't super funny, but I think they indicate something nice.

There's a poking fun. Yeah, I get a good vibe from Lex. The poor fierceness, I think, could do better with being, you know, a bit more punctured. And he does do that. He does sometimes like kind of poke fun at himself it's nice to see but like there he described wearing a suit right at all times when he's outside because he likes the way it makes him feel and now if you've seen lex he's always dressed in this kind of same suit right like a a black suit with a black thin black tie yeah like superman yeah

or like men in black right that kind of look if you imagine it and so for you and maybe for me as well i'm just thinking this through is you think that lex is just telling it like it is he likes the feeling of a suit so he just wears a suit at all times outside in the summer yeah my son who's 12 went for many years when he was younger just wanting to wear the same color shirt the same color pair of pants and identical copies of those and i think there's a certain kind of male instinct which which is comfortable with having like a uniform. I mentioned Superman because I'm imagining like 10 Superman outfits racked up next to each other. I could see a certain kind of satisfaction and comfort in that for a certain kind of person.

Yeah, yeah. I guess if you put it like that, like viewing it as a kind of a costume or a uniform that you wear, it does make sense. Because that's a serious attire when he's out in the world living up to his principles as a man well i've become a bit like that myself not in terms of wearing the suits but just in terms of wearing like the same thing each day like i just buy like 10 t-shirts from the same brand i vary the color they're not all black i was waxing about the unico and it's the same now the brief ball somewhere where it's fantastic so i do get that and i i guess if i wanted to steal mana it's

a bit like in the pandemic when everybody was working from home that putting on a suit or whatever you were to your office could put you in a different mindset, right? And that seems to be what Lex is angling for here. Yeah. Like I was trying to say with the references to the Nazis and stuff like that, I think Lex is emoting things that most people think, but he's saying it in a very simple and upfront way, a little bit like the idiot in Dostoevsky, ironically enough, but in a way that most people don't do.

Most people are kind of more cynical and sophisticated than that. And actually that might speak to his appeal and why he is such a popular YouTuber slash podcaster, why he does get such a wide variety of high profile guests at some level people americans particularly probably respond to that kind of innocence so the last thing then at the end of his day let's see what he does before he heads off the bed he buys actually after the hour of literature reading i always take a pause and do the part of the mantra that i do in the morning that's gratitude again it's being thankful that i'm alive that i survived another day looking forward to the next day and just be grateful for all of the

moments that are full of joy in the day. I mean, just even filming this silly thing, it's like fun. There's a piece of technology that somehow is capturing this that other people might watch. And then there's like a microphone. I mean, just the entirety of the technology, everything is magical. Everything is magical. Rem reminding myself of that doesn't take much effort but just taking a break taking a pause just breathing and just saying damn it's good to be because I won't always be alive. The right ends too quickly. So it's an opportunity, a moment to appreciate the entirety of it. I know this grates at your very essence, Chris.

He's like an anti-Chris Kavanagh. He's like a pure beam of love. But the thing is, it's not that I don't like being alive. I love it. I love it too. And there are moments when you're lying beside your kid, you have those moments where you feel that gratitude of existence. You don't want this right there. I get it, Lex.

I get it. I'm happy here too but this notion that recording a youtube video looking at a microphone me and lex start to appreciate the absolute beauty of the world the interconnectedness of it all like it's not that it's just every day he does that he has that moment of and it's after an hour of deep reading the deepest literature mankind has produced after 16 hours of physical work and productive time management done while fasted. I know what you're saying. I hear you. I reckon part of it is it's the American cultural disconnect.

I'm not saying all Americans are like this. No, they're not. We've interviewed many of them and some of them listen to this show and it would rub them the wrong way just as much as us. But there is a segment, there is a segment for which this kind of emanating, this childlike love and purity and naivety and these platitudes, there is an element in American culture for whom this is real and true. And there's just a difference there there was an element there

amongst the puritans in europe or amongst the spiritual mystics in russia at various points in history i think there's a mindset which is just full ball just dancing like nobody's watching and it's just different you said platitudes and that is part of what i feel it's not that i think people shouldn't be grateful or reflect on how lucky they are how marvelous it is that we live in this era of modern interconnectedness and all that have you ever gazed at me over your microphone and just felt grateful just for being here i mean in the nice version of it he's simply being grateful for all of the wonders that he gets to enjoy and for being alive what's wrong with that but it's that kind of platitudinous it's combined with the all the nazis what bad guys and life. It's a hell of a ride while you're on it. And you got to love

people out there. It's just like, it's all together. It feels like a saccharine overload of sincerity. It's hard for me, Matt. Where is the cynicism? And where is the grappling with the world as it is, where it is not this beacon of love and wonder like every day is optimized to the core where people sleep in and they have depression and they're not optimized in everything they do and sometimes they fuck around and so on and it's constraining the human spirit in a way well but i think what you're saying is it doesn't feel real you should read i'm sorry but seriously the guy the main character is called the idiot and he is kind of an idiot but the main thing is that he's simple and pure in the sort of christian sense and dostoevsky was

super into this kind of thing and there's a cultural thing where they see it as an ennobling being hyper aware being encultured and being contaminated by society is like a cultural thing where they see it as an ennobling being hyper aware being encultured and being contaminated by society is like a bad thing and going back to a kind of simplicity and a purity is a beautiful and good thing and in a way lex's shtick is kind of embodies that so there's clips where he talked about receiving a watch from joe Rogan and how this was one of the most meaningful moments of his life. And my initial interpretation of that was like him being very sycophantic to Rogan. But after listening to this, I'm not sure that that might be true. And like he also had Eric Weinstein on like three or four times in the show

and he regarded Eric as this follower figure, kind of giving advice. And I think that Lex literally, to his credit, he gave more pushback to Eric during his last appearance. But I think his admiration for people like Brett Weinstein and Joe Rogan and all of the culture war figures it's not lies i read it as lies because i was like nobody is that touched by joe rogan giving them a watch but like lex lex was touched by that and it is possibly one of the most important moments of his life yeah i think there's a connection here to the civility porn yeah characters you see on the internet yeah who really fetishize this idea of always assuming good faith and just treating

people engaging with them as real people and there's a naivety to that as well and they seem to be so easily manipulated and so easily led astray but i think it might partly reflect just they're built differently they are like yeah well that's so much we've talked a little bit sorry lex sorry if you're listening to this but that was the sort of self-help day in the life that's right that was obviously going to rub us the wrong way do that it was inescapable we were forced our hand was forced to cast aspersions. But now we're going to move into the interview. Yeah, and I actually feel better now that we're doing the height content.

Because before I was thinking we're going to be quite soft by covering a relatively uncontroversial interview. Yeah, but maybe it's good. Maybe it's good balance. So up front, as we said, there is a more height contact than there is Lex, but Lex's introduction of the conversation has a IDW style trope to it, to kick things off, which is speaking about how important the conversation is. I disagree with John on some of the details of his analysis and ideas, but both his criticism and our disagreement is essential if we are to build better

and better technologies that connect us. Social media has both the power to destroy our society and to help it flourish. It's up to us to figure out how we take the letter path. Fine words. Important conversation, Matt. If they get this wrong, we're really fucked. I think we're in safe hands, though,

with Friedman and Haidt. It'll be interesting to pay attention to what the disagreements are. So yeah, we'll get to those. Yeah, there is that tendency to kind of add a certain degree of gravitas to what is in many respects, just that, you know, a chat with someone, but I guess you can free him any interview like that.

Yeah. That is an IDW thing. No, but we are going to get into the substance and we have spent a while talking about various superficial accoutrements and so on. We've been playing the man and not the ball. We have, but we can't stop just yet. Because there's one thing our podcast can do that others can't, Matt, right? And other podcasts will not consider the ad reads.

They won't think about it as indicative of anything. Whereas I do. I listen to those ad rates, right? And I thought this illustrates something important. I think it adds a bridge to the previous content. So I've got a couple of cups from Alexis ad rates. We'll, we'll get into it, man. And if you think that Lex cannot make ad reads substantial, oh my. You can go hiking, kayaking, whale watching, and seeing the northern lights.

There's something not just humbling, but somehow revealing about who we are, what we're doing here when you look at nature. what we're doing here when you look at nature. There's something about the calmness, the quiet, of water stretching out to the horizon. There's something about trees, as far as I can see, that reminds you what this is all about, and somehow it's impossible to put into words. That's why it's great to take little journeys like this.

You can save $500 on Alaskan adventures. I was wondering what the end was for. It's for this trip thing, but there's a reason we don't get those ad reads. There's a reason they want Lex to do it. I couldn't say that. Even if I felt it, i couldn't say that even if i felt it i couldn't say it like with that we would struggle with that ad read yeah lex nailed it though man that's a spiritual journey that connects his kind of awe at the world around him his appreciation of beauty another topic that comes up in his ad read condenses them down to just 15 minutes.

You can read or listen to. Yeah, actually, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, unfortunately, is not on there. There's not many books about Hitler or Stalin on there, perhaps for a good reason. But the best, I would say, nonfiction books are all on there. So you're talking about Sapiens Meditations by Marcus Aurelius it goes on and on. So Blinkist you know they're good they've got one area that they're missing

he's got a one track mind Hitler and Barney Stalin Stalin is the other one he puts his heart and soul into every single thing including an ad raid. Yeah just I was talking about Lex being slightly too fixated on the beauty of the world and whatnot. But the last of the clips from the ad raids, it does go the other way. I actually really did enjoy this little aside that he added.

They have a 100% happiness guarantee. So if you don't like it they refund it nothing else in life i would say has a 100 happiness guarantee so maybe you should look to magic spoon to get such guarantees about happiness because the rest of life is full of suffering friends i just like that he's talking about cereal he's advertising cereal. You can't help but enjoy. I legitimately enjoyed when I heard those clips after seeing the thing, because it was just as great as hits are. You've got the encapsulation there of the themes that he likes. The Hitler and Stalin doesn't like those.

Nature and feeling wonder likes those, but life is suffering. Even when you have cereal, but life is suffering. Even when you have cereal, life is ultimately suffering. That's what it's like. Even when you've optimized your productivity up the wing, you're still suffering while it's happening. I don't think we've made this clear enough actually, which is that despite everything, Lex is likeable.

He's in a disarming kind of way. Like a puppy. Yeah, like a human adult suit-wearing puppy. I think there's a genuine good-heartedness to him. But this is a good-heartedness that means that he's perfectly happy to pal around with Michael Malice, offer apologetics for Putin. offer apologetics for Putin. So it shouldn't take away from the fact that he does that or that he invites Brett Weinstein on to talk about his concerns about vaccines. This is the link to the civility porn crowd, which is that this projection

of good faith and always assuming the best for people that just wanting to connect with people, treat them as real human beings and so on. And that kind of naivety can be harmful. It can just whitewash and just present a blindness to a lot of very bad things. Like Putin is not a good guy. He does not mean well. There is no way you're going to connect with him on an interpersonal level and he's going to see the error of his ways, then it was all a big misunderstanding. And so when you amp up the sweetness and light to the nth degree, it's like being too open minded and just like letting everything in. Yeah, you have to be a bit more on the ball.

Alex is, you know, a huge fan of Joe Rogan, despite what Joe Rogan has done in the pandemic. Just worth bearing that in mind if it feels like being a little harsh on him. And as he says, critics are important. When Teddy Roosevelt said in his famous speech that it is not the critic who counts, he has not yet read the brilliant writing of Jonathan Haidt. Or listened to Decoding the Gurus. The critic counts, Matt, that's all. Good criticism. It might have been referencing Haidt. I think it's getting pretty well known now that if it's criticism you want,

then decoding the gurus is the place for you. Yeah, well, so Haidt, Haidt, Haidt. What is he all about? Let's see. And then everything seems to kind of blow up in 2014, 2015 at universities. And that's when Greg Lukianoff came to me in May of 2014 and said, John, weird stuff is happening. Students are freaking out

about a speaker coming to campus that they don't have to go see. And they're saying it's dangerous, it's violence. Like, what is going on? And so anyway, Greg's ideas about how we were teaching students to think in distorted ways that led us to write The Coddling the American Mind, which wasn't primarily about social media either. It was about this sort of a rise of depression, anxiety. But after that, things got so much worse everywhere. And that's when I began to think like, well, something systemically has changed. Something has changed about the fabric of the social universe. And so ever since then, I've been focused on social media. So this is like the kind of origin story,

right? That Haidt wrote about this coddling aspect to modern culture where children and young people really were not being allowed to experience adversity and it was making them hypersensitive and like unable to tolerate other opinions. It's kind of the standard critique directed that a lot of the campus crazy wokeness stuff, right. And I actually read the coddling of the American mind and did the chapter by chapter review on Twitter in a ridiculously unsuitable format. And I came away with, I would say, a pretty decent opinion or

appreciation for his argument. I thought that he wasn't as hyperbolic as some people have accused him of being. There was nuance in his presentation. And in some respect, a lot of the issues seem tied to a numeric context specifically, which I was a little ill equipped to judge how far he's been hyperbolic or to what extent this is a specific problem to do with American culture that is prevalent and there's a problem. Yeah, I'm not familiar with that work. I mean, I know of it secondhand. I think I read at least part of your extremely long tweet review, but I haven't read the book.

And it's an interesting topic. Cultures do change. If you look at the different generations, you had 50 years ago, people were belting their kids, neglecting them, all that stuff. There was this unconcern. And I think we've probably become a bit more civilized over the years, but there's something to the idea of like sort of first world problems. When you lift the standards of how you treat one another, it's a good thing overall, but it kind of makes different issues apparent. I think so.

That's how, you know, initial premise, right, was coming from there. And then he mentioned in that clip that he sort of was now focused on the role of some catalyst that had made things worse in that period. What is the cause for some of the trends that they were representing? And he came to see certain aspects of social media as being the problem. So there's two problems that he highlights as being his core concern. There are two major areas that I study. One is what is happening with teen mental health?

It fell off a cliff in 2013. It was very sudden. And then the other is what is happening to our democratic and epistemic institutions? That means knowledge generating, like universities, journalism. So my main areas of research where I'm collecting the empirical research and trying to make sense of it is what's happened to teen mental health and what's the evidence that social media is a contributor? And then the other area is what's happening to democracies, not just America, and what's the evidence that social media is a contributor to the dysfunction.... topics to research, right?

Does a pretty good job of summarizing his overall thesis is when it comes to what the main credits are for causing problems in those arena. Just to pause real quick, you implied, but just to make it explicit, that the best explanation we have now as you're proposing is that a very particular aspect of social media is the cause, which is not just social media, but the like button and the retweet, a certain mechanism of virality that was invented, or perhaps... Yeah. So it's on retweet and the ability to easily share material and for it to go viral. These are the innovations that hype pinpoints a decline in mental health, a decline in democratic processes and an increase in polarization too.

Yeah. The concern about the impact of social media on young people, teenagers, especially teenage girls, mental health is a common one. Whether it's totally valid or not, it's a legitimate area of public concern. Most people have read articles in newspapers about online bullying, for instance, being conducted over these online media channels. Instead of it being confined to the schoolyard, it can be ever-present 24 hours a day. The same sort of dynamics that can lead to the swift creation of a mob on a place like Twitter can also contribute to a bullying mob

that can victimize, bastardize young people. So, you know, I think they're concerns that most people can recognize. Yeah. He talks a bit about, I think there is some nuance to his position as this clip kind of indicates. Let's be clear. Connecting people is good. I mean, overall, the more you connect people, the better. Giving people the telephone was an amazing step forward. Giving them free telephone, you know, free long distance is even better. Video was... I mean, so connecting people is good.

I'm not a Luddite. And social media, at least the idea of users posting things, that happens on LinkedIn, and it's great. It can serve all kinds of needs. What I'm talking about here is not the internet. It's not technology. It's not smartphones. And it's not even all social media.

It's a particular business model in which people are incentivized to create content, and that content is what brings other people on. And the people on there are the product which is sold to advertisers. It's that particular business model which Facebook pioneered, which seems to be incredibly harmful for teenagers, especially for young girls, 10 to 14 years old is where they're most vulnerable. And it seems to be particularly harmful for democratic institutions because it leads to all kinds of anger, conflict, and the destruction of any shared narrative. So that's what we're talking about. Sounds familiar.

It does. We had a recent guru who had a similar theme about an internet business model in which people's eyeballs, their attention was the product and engagement was prioritized above everything else. And that was leading to undesirable consequences. Yes. It's an interesting thing, I think, because in Jerome Larnier's model, the core evil is the algorithm, right? That's what's driving things wrong. And he talked about the algorithmic world versus the...

Like a human curated world. That's the one. Yeah. And Haidt is pointing towards something similar, but he's more saying that it's this virality and ease of sharing, right? That is the problem. These like functions of social media. But he does also highlight making the user the product. And to me, that seems a little bit like conflating two things,

because I feel like you could make the user the product without giving them the like and retweet buttons. There is one aspect of this, which I feel is quite common. I didn't feel it actually so much with Jerome Launierlo, like he also doesn't use the social media channels. Right. But when Hyde was talking there about kind of good internet, which I think was good that he highlighted, there are good uses and connections.

He mentioned LinkedIn as a platform where lots of good things happen. And it's like, there's no more toxic hive of scum and villainy than LinkedIn. I think part of that speaks to a lot of the researchers I see talking about this don't actually use a lot of the platforms that they're commenting on and they don't necessarily understand the culture that well, like

I doubt that almost anyone that is commenting on this sphere is very well versed in Twitch streaming. Well, they're not like us, Chris, they weren't born into it. They weren't forged by it. And they probably wouldn't even recognize that meme. That's the problem right there. Yeah. There's just, I had an instinctive spiritual reaction to LinkedIn.

Pimprius doesn't create a social network. The social network of sociopaths is what links it in this. But part of what this is linked to is this notion that people are hyper on the edge because of these features. And this is creating downstream consequences, right? So he talks about the behavioral activation circuit. There's what's called the behavioral activation system, front left cortex. It's all about approach, opportunity, you know, kid in a candy store. And then the front right cortex has circuits specialized for withdrawal, fear, threat. And of course, students, you know, I'm a college professor, and most of us think about our college days like, you know, yeah, we were anxious at times, but it was fun. And it

was like, I can take all these courses, I can do all these clubs, all these people. Now imagine if in 2013, all of a sudden, students are coming in with their front right cortex hyperactivated. Everything's a threat. Everything is dangerous. There's not enough to go around. So the front right cortex puts us into what's called defend mode as opposed to discover mode.

Now, let's move up to adults. Imagine a large, diverse, secular, liberal democracy in which people are most of the time in discover mode. And we have a problem. Let's think how to solve it i'm skeptical about this no yeah i'm skeptical about this too i mean i like neurophysiology as much as an x-man but drawing that bow between okay these are the different parts of the brain and yes there's a behavioral approach system withdrawal system what he's referring to is a real thing. But drawing a direct line between that and college culture on campus, it's just a bit of a long bow for me.

Yeah, because it seems to be, there's a little bit of a simplification, right? explicitly at one point links this to comparing the culture of America to the other European countries, right? And brilliant parts that are activated. Activated, yeah. So Americans have got one part of their brain activated and Russians have got a different. Yeah, it does seem a little bit scientistic, but play that. Whereas in England and France, people would wait for the king to do it.

But here, like, you know, let's roll up our sleeves and do it. That's the can-do mindset. That's front-left cortex discover mode. If you have a national shift of people spending more time in defend mode, now you... So everything that comes up, whatever anyone says,

you're not looking like, oh, is there something good about it? You're thinking, how is this dangerous? How is this a threat? How is this violence? How can I attack this? So if you imagine God up there with a little lever, like, okay, let's push everyone more into discover mode. And it's like joy breaks out, age of Aquarius. All right, let's shift them back into, let's put everyone in defend mode. And I can't think of a better way to put people in defend mode than to have them spend some time on partisan or political Twitter, where it's just a stream of horror stories, including videos about how horrible the other side is. And it's not just that they're bad people. It's that if they win this election, then we lose our country, or then it's catastrophe. So Twitter, and again, we're not saying all of

Twitter, you know, most people aren't on Twitter and people that are are mostly not talking about politics, but the ones that are on talking about politics are flooding us with stuff. All the journalists see it. All the mainstream media is hugely influenced by Twitter. So if we put everyone, if there's more sort of anxiety, sense of threat, this colors everything. I'm going to still man this, Chris. I was recently invited to give a talk to research high degree students at university and the advice they were given by another staff member, which was good advice, which was engage on social media very, very carefully. Yes. Yes. You you have to do it it's a good thing you

got to put yourself out there but the consequences can be severe and permanent i guess for a young person you know what i mean young people do stupid things a podcast host yeah that's right like an innocent well-meaning podcast host could through no fault of their own, say something that could get themselves into trouble. And the nature of electronic media is that there's a permanent record of these things. And there is an electronically interconnected community of people, not all of whom wish the best for you, who will quite happily mob you, essentially. So I think people are cautious. I see caution amongst the people I know who operate on social media. I'm cautious. My advice to my children or any young person would be to be cautious. So I'm trying to put aside the stuff there that sort of was jarring

for me and to sort of read a charitable interpretation of it. And I think at base, he's saying it is an environment where there is at least perceived threat, which might have a kind of chilling effect, I suppose. I get that. Yes. And I think that if you take out left-brain, right-brain, Europe versus America side, which feels, I don't think it was necessary to put that spin on it. But if you take it along the line that you have of saying, you know, the social media environment can

increase the social pressure on people, because for example, there's no escape, right? Before the bullies were at school, now they're in your pocket 24 hours a day. And I definitely think there's validity to that. Although it Although all this becomes very hard to classify because if you lived a hundred years ago, sure, you weren't worried about being canceled on social media, but I think you had other concerns. I don't know how much it was like a life of luxury and relaxing time as a youth in the buildup to World War I or the Great Depression. And I know that's a little bit unfair, but I think there is an element where we can get

into a bit more about where Haidt brings more nuanced disposition. But I think one of his issues is that he's an eloquent speaker. He's good at using metaphor and analogy, which is a thing that we often see with the guru types. Like a lot of those figures, it makes him prone to a certain style of exaggeration. And I think this is especially the case when he makes reference to like biblical stories or this kind of thing. So one of the examples that he likes

to reference is the Tower of Babel, right? And he speaks about it busily. In the story, he doesn't literally knock the tower over, but many of us have seen images or movie dramatizations where a great wind comes and the tower is knocked over and the people are left wandering amid the rubble, unable to talk to each other. So I've been grappling. I've been trying to say, what the hell happened to our society? Beginning in 2014, what the hell is happening to universities? And then it spread out from universities. It hit journalism, the arts, and now it's all over companies.

What the hell happened to us? And it wasn't until I reread the Babel story a couple of years ago that I thought, whoa, this is it. This is the metaphor. Because I'd been thinking about tribalism and left-right battles and war, and that's easy to think about. But Babel isn't like, and God said, let half of the people hate the other half. No, it wasn't that. It's God said, let us confuse their language, that they, none of them can understand each other ever again, or at least for a while. So it's a story about fragmentation. And that's what's unique about our time. Okay. Biblical references don't generally work for me either, but you would agree that one of the

good things, and I think Hyde talked about this, that the internet does is it permits lots of little communities to form, lots of special interest groups. They could be furries, they could be people who are interested in gurus, they could be various niches, political or not. But certainly it fosters a lot of diversity, a lot of different groups with their own shared meaning system, their own shared lingo, their own shared jokes, and their own shared sense of what's cringe and what's cool. So I think the internet does create that. And we've thought this ourselves, that there is kind of a fragmentation going on, even amongst our gurus,

for instance, like things getting smashed into a bunch of different little fragments. So, you know, it makes it much easier for conspiracists to link up and join together, for flat earthers to get together and talk about flat earth, for lab leakers to talk about that. So there's a good and a bad to that, I suppose. Are you trying to rhetorically sway me by referencing communities that I may find somewhat toxic and to have been strengthened by the social media technology, Matt. How dare you engage in such blatant rhetorical manipulation? But it worked in the sense that I agree with that point. And I'm kind

of inclined to feel a little bit like T. Nguyen. Point he makes that it isn't that the people don't know the arguments of the other side. That happens, right? There are the echo chambers or so on, but it's more that the filter bubbles apply where people are aware of the opposing arguments, but they're like skewed, right? Through filter. I probably mangled that. And if so, I'm sorry. I mean, look, sorry to speak against what I said. You could argue the thing about the internet is what it does is it connects together a whole bunch of people that wouldn't normally be connected.

So I've seen stuff from these fundamentalist Christians who believe that women should be barefoot in the home and so on. And there's other people that are like Islamic fundamentalists and other people that are crazy communists. So I've been exposed to a whole bunch of niches and a whole bunch of weird spaces that I wouldn't normally have any contact with. And that's created the tension. So it's the opposite of what I said. It's not niches forming, it's too much connectivity. So in the end, I don't really know what I think. Well, you've supported height inadvertently. Because he's saying it's the viral moments, right? And the moral condemnation of our group members that to some extent that drives these processes. I can't help but think, Matt,

like a couple of things. You may or may not know I grew up in Northern Ireland in the eighties and nineties. Yeah. You may have mentioned it. I think you may have mentioned it. It's come up. It's come up. It comes up a lot.

It's relevant to an awful lot of things. But look, it's, it's relevant here, right? Because if you want to talk to surprise that, but if you want to talk about a fragmented society, I think going back to the 70s and 80s, you'll be facing a much more fragmented society in Northern Ireland. And you need to go to Northern Ireland. You can go to plenty of places. America during the Vietnam War and the associated protests, or even like going way back, Protestant and Catholic wars in Europe. I feel that there is this somewhat mythical golden past whereby divisions were, you know, they were there,

but they weren't so important that people reached across the aisles. And there's a book called The Field of Blood by Joanne Freeman. It's talking about, I think, debates in Congress prior to the Civil War. And it's people beating the crap out of each other, dueling, people being drunk and smashing. I think one of them shot another Congress member. That was like a daily occurrence, right? And I enjoyed reading it because it just makes you realize that there's a lot that people forget about the divisions of the past once they're gone. Like people don't talk about the anarchists students of the 70s, the ones that hijacked planes. Yes, they were like militant communists, like the Red Brigade. Yeah.

But people don't talk about them. It's Mao, right? It's back to Mao. That's the reference group. But there have been periods of severe fragmentation or polarization before. And I know you can look at these measures of the American government and the increasing lack of bipartisan engagement between the political parties. And that is definitely speaking

to something, right? And when you look at the political figures over the past 10 or 15 years, it looks like things are getting more extreme. Populists are becoming more influential, hardliners, and so on. But I guess I'm questioning the thesis as it extends beyond, say, the 90s. I think a lot of this references back to people thinking about the 90s when they were younger and seeing it as a more reasonable era where it was like it was like, it was a better time. People were in the grunge and Bill Clinton was playing a saxophone. Yeah. The Seinfeld era.

That's how I think of it. No, look, I hear what you're saying. One has to be cautious about the catastrophizing that we are in a uniquely new period. Now things always change, especially due to technology. So things are always new in a sense, and they're kind of always the same in a sense. People always think the young people don't respect their elders, like some Romans said. So yeah, I mean, I think what you're saying is you just got to take that stuff with a grain of salt and not necessarily assume that things are going to hell in a handbasket because of this brand

new shiny thing that's turned up. I mean, here's a little bit of height, I think, in leaning towards the more catastrophizing side. One of their arguments was, oh, but, you know, polarization goes back way before social media and, you know, it was happening in the 90s. And they're right. It does. And I did say that, but I should have said it more clearly with more examples. But here in the 90s. And they're right, it does. And I did say that,

but I should have said it more clearly with more examples. But here's the new thing. Even though left and right were beginning to hate each other more, we weren't afraid of the person next to us. We weren't afraid of each other. Cable TV, Fox News, whatever you want to point to about increasing polarization, it didn't make me afraid of my students. And that was new in around 2014, 2015. We started hearing, getting articles, you know, I'm a liberal professor and my liberal students frightened me. Matt, again, look, I know you want to hear more about it. I know you just, you always say, Chris, tell me more. Tell me more about Northern Ireland, the deities of the 90s. But just to say, this is a little bit what I mean about the American myopic experience, right?

And I just want to make that point that it isn't this universalizing of like fear of the communities you live in. For some places in the world, I'm not saying they're fantastic now, but the trend has not been a downwards spiral in the polarization. I was much more afraid of my neighbors in the 80s and 90s. Were you afraid that Protestants were going to cancel you? Literally, yes. And vice versa. But like, again, it's an anecdote, but I just want to point out that I think that talks to the thing about college professors in America and liberal

elite institutions. They do feel there's been a significant shift in their students' attitudes. But like, there's a little bit of question in regards to the extent to which that extrapolates to the whole of American society and that extrapolates to the Western world and that extrapolates to the world. Yeah, I mean, exactly. I mean, notice that once again, he mentions the New York Times or a New Yorker article about a professor being afraid of their students, because that's the kind of thing that really the sort of elite kind of Americans are concerned about. And it is partially localized to Ivy League type stuff, and it is partially localized to American stuff and English speaking stuff. Yeah, like you, that doesn't gel with my experience. I'm at a different kind of university in a different

kind of country. We have social media too. We have the like button. But politics doesn't come up in me teaching psychology. It does not come up. The students don't talk about politics with each other. There's no reason to be afraid of anything. The demographics of my students are different from an Ivy League American college. The locality is different and so on. And look, what Haidt is referencing may well be true and real for the people who are describing it, but I agree with you. I think they may forget that it's localized. It doesn't necessarily apply to the rest of us. So I'm not sure that they're completely aware to the degree that the things that bother them are specific to them. Are cultural things.

Yeah, cultural things specific to their particular culture. And to the extent that it is, it's not something you can attribute to technology because we've all got social media. We've all got it at the same time, basically. I think to a point, just to remind people here, this is not saying that, oh, the issues about social justice accesses or debates about wokeism or accountability, whatever way you view it, that it's all restricted to university elites. That's not the argument. The argument is just that what is going on in America for elites, that you can extrapolate that to the rest of the world, right? And not an argument to say that there aren't debates about these topics that stand beyond America.

And it's all restricted to the university. It's just like social media usage. Is it responsible for all the things that we see around us? Yeah, maybe not. You probably remember this did come up in the conversation and Haidt has a kind of response to it, but I didn't find it that convincing. So listening to it actually leads to another issue.

They could find going back to the 1970s for about 20 different countries. And they show plots. You have these nice plots with red lines showing that in some countries it's going up, like the United States especially. In some countries it's going down, and in some countries it's pretty flat. And so Marx says, well, if polarization is going up a lot in the US, but not in most other countries, well, maybe Facebook isn't responsible. But so much depends

on how you operationalize things. Are we interested in the straight line regression line going back to the 70s? And if so, well, then he's right in what he says. But that's not the argument. The argument isn't that it's been rising and falling since the 70s. The argument is it's been rising and falling since 2012 or so. And for that, now I just spoke with, I've been emailing with the authors of the study, and they say there's not really enough data to do it statistically reliably because there's only a few observations after 2012. But if you look at the graphs in their study, and they actually do provide, as they pointed out to me, they do provide a statistical test if you break the data at the year 2000. So actually, polarization is going up pretty widely if you just look after 2000, which is when the internet would be influential.

And if you look just after 2012, you have to just do it by eye. But if you do it on their graphs by eye, you see that actually a number of countries do see a sudden sharp upturn. Not all by any means. Confirmation bias, danger, warning, Will Robinson. And hype might argue that, well, there can be other things which are much more impactful than social media, but social media is always a negative. And I feel there's a little bit of having your cake and eating it that you can always say, well, there's exceptions to every rule, but 2012. And again, that notion, Matt, of it's a specific year, let's look at a subgroup of countries and so on it feels like put it down in writing specifically what you're claiming and then let's look at the data and

statistically test it and you know we'll find out in about 20 years time who's right on these issues but I think there's a little bit of the danger of seeing what you want to see in a lot of messy data yeah that's the feeling i get too like i'm not saying he's definitely wrong this is hard you need longitudinal data you've got to measure polarization you've got to do it across multiple countries over a long period of time i'm sure it's very arguable. This will lead to another point where it comes to debating what the statistics show and the relevant effect sizes for social media, which is a big part of this. But just before we switch to that point, there is a little bit of me to think that Hyde's view is because he may be moving from a rose-tinted view of technology to a legitimately critical

one. And this is when he puts out the techno-optimism case. And it just read to me like, I never had this view of social media or technology. And what I write about in the essay is the period of techno-democratic optimism, which began in the early 90s with the fall of the Iron Curtain and the Soviet Union. And then the internet comes in and people my age remember how extraordinary it was, how much fun it was. I mean, the sense that this was the dawning of a new age and there was so much optimism. And so this optimism runs all the way from the early 90s, all the way through 2011 with the Arab Spring. And of course, that year ends with Occupy Wall Street. And there were also big protest movements in Israel and Spain and in a lot of areas. Martin Goury talks about this.

So there certainly was a case to be made that Facebook in particular, but all these platforms, these were God's gift democracy. What dictator could possibly keep out the internet? What dictator could stand up to people connected on these digital media platforms? So that's the strong case that this is going to be good for democracy. My image of the chat rooms of the early two fives, it did not give me optimism for the future of democracy. It's a bit of a thing, isn't it, with a lot of these commentators, which is that they've clearly read a couple of articles, maybe one in the New Yorker and one in the New York Times, opinion pieces that were a bit overblown. And then they frame that as that's what everybody thought. Yeah.

That's not what I thought. I mean, I was aware of the impact of social media on the Arab Spring, color revolutions and so on. And I can acknowledge, yes yes that kind of direct communication things is more difficult to shut down it would have contributed to it but i didn't have that and i bet most people didn't have that kind of techno optimism yeah i knew what people were sharing on napster and liveware back in the day it was not all original copies of the constitution and it wasn't even just pirated media like music so i guess the cd internet underbelly has always been visible to me and it might be part of being a teenage boy

when the internet came in to be i wasn't a middle-aged man like you ma i thought you were calling heider boom, but of course it's targeting me, naturally. I know, you were there with me. I'm hip with the kids. I know about tickety-tock. We're not digital natives, but we're more digitally native than Hyde, I think. Yeah. No, Chris, when I found out that people were mainly using the internet for porn, I was

shocked. Teenage boys shouldn't have access to chat rooms where they can pretend to be yellow things. I will say that. I remember playing one of the very first generation massive multiplayer games where you could fly around in a little spaceship. It was called Subspace. And you could chat to each other. You know, you could text each other. Right back home.

Oh, my God. Oh, my God, Chris. Like like it was mainly played by but i assume 14 to 17 year old boys and mike just the it developed this whole 4chan-ish type insane culture which was hilarious and fun but but it was not a positive thing for democracy no look we recent two things one is that like this is part of my issue a little bit with heights talking about virality and stuff because we had viral things before we had the like and retweet button we had star wars kids there was tons of internet meme-y culture and yes it's become easier and twitter now has like democratized that the

possibility of being the main character in a way that wasn't before. But it's also give artists platforms that they didn't have. And anybody can become a superstar and all these kinds of things as well. But this thing about, you know, the toxic internet culture, that was there from the first moment I got online. I've seen that. And when we recently were experimenting in VR, doing our old man Beat Saber and stuff, but we went into VR chat

and I accidentally went into a random public room. I was just with a bunch of random people who I couldn't turn off, right? I couldn't work out how to do it. And I will say, very little has changed from my... it was the same thing going into a chat room like what the fuck is going on what are these people saying like make it stop so yeah i think heights experience of optimism i know that he was summarizing all his

view this kind of techno optimism spirit but i think that whole spirit, it lacked the cynical edge. That was always a feature of internet engagement in my world. It's always been like that on forums, forum culture is once good and it wants toxic. And, you know, we discussed it with Frost and we discussed the modern versions of it with Nathan Alibach. And he pointed out that people who were older than him basically have very little hope of understanding the irony poisoned well that is, you know, the modern internet. And I feel that whenever I venture into Twitch and TikTok and stuff, it's like, I can kind of get this if I try. I've been trying to anthropologically examine VTubers and it's freaking weird, man.

But I feel a little bit like, you know, there's an aspect of get off my lawn-ness, which is infecting the analysis. Yeah, it's always the way, isn't it? With social change and new technologies, which is that it's always baffling and confusing for those of us above a certain age. And there's something in it that's new, but there's also a lot in it which is just the same. It's a constant. You had people writing in letters to the editor in newspapers, you know, the kind of nonsense that was in those magazines that people would buy at the supermarket checkout thing. I mean, that's all just transposed to the internet.

And yes, there's probably more of it. More people get to participate in it. A good example of this is there's a podcast I listen to and it's kind of talking about gaming and that kind of thing. It's like a vicarious experience for me. But they read letters from the old gaming magazines from the 90s, right? Where people wrote letters in and they wrote letters in complaining about things

and nothing has changed. Nothing has changed. Those letters are just there. Twitter's worst comment in print format. And yeah, it's so, look, I guess we should probably talk about some of the aspects that are valid in it but there's two options matt do we go to hype talking about social psychology statistic analysis and like you know appropriate approaches to that or or do we talk a little bit

more about the the bigger picture of polarization and what's happening to the kids today? Let's go to the bigger picture and see if we can hear a little bit from Lex as well. Lex, he's been quite silent, mainly because we haven't been playing clips of him. But he does offer responses. responses. And on quite a few occasions, I think he tries to offer kind of devil's advocate or some pushback on some of the positions that Haidt was suggesting. And I actually think he does a pretty good job at some points of bringing more balance. If you wanted to be unkind, you would say that he's both sides in things. But here's an example of, I think, him being good about that. Or I'll try to mention it because so much of our conversation will be about rigorous criticism. I'll

try to sometimes mention what are the possible positive effects of social media in different ways. So for example, in the way I've been using Twitter, not the promotion or any of that kind of stuff, it makes me feel less lonely to connect with people, to make me smile, a little bit of humor here and there. And that at scale is a very interesting effect, being connected across the globe, especially during times of COVID and so on. It's very difficult to measure that. So we kind of have to consider that and be honest that there is a trade-off.

We have to be honest about the positive and the negative. And sometimes we're not sufficiently positive or in a rigorous scientific way about the... We're not rigorous in a scientific way about the negative. And that's what we're trying to do here. So yeah, as you said, that's pretty good balance. Social media, obviously, lots of good points as well. And to Haidt's credit, he does offer nuance, as we've discussed a little bit before, to his perspective.

It's not all that technology is doom and gloom. For instance, on YouTube, he says... YouTube is really complicated because I can't imagine life without YouTube. It's incredibly useful. It does a lot of good things. It also obviously helps to radicalize terrorist groups and murderers. So I think about YouTube the way I think about the internet in general, and I don't know enough to really comment on YouTube. So on the one hand, useful instructional videos about how to run analyses. On the other hand, does help generate suicidal terrorists.

So there's constant benefits to YouTube and the internet in general. And I think that's right. I think that's generally correct, right? Yeah, it's generally correct. It's all pretty controversial at the moment and it mirrors Jeroen Laniere, of course. These people aren't Luddites, as he says.

They've got concerns about some aspects of the social dynamics of online media. Yeah, so there's two clips where Haidt kind of digs down a bit further about what he is objecting to and what he's not objecting to, right? Maybe this first one talks a little bit about some people might view the social media

and the internet in general as kind of being extremely helpful in the pandemic, right? Without it, we would have had much more negative consequences staying connected with families and so on. So here's him discussing that. A lot of people seem to think like, oh, what would we have done without social media during COVID? Like we would have been sitting there alone in our homes. sitting there alone in our homes. Yeah. If all we had was texting, telephone, Zoom, Skype, multiplayer video games, WhatsApp, all sorts of ways of communicating with each other. Oh, and there's blogs and the rest of the internet. Yeah. We would have been fine. Did we really need the hyperviral platforms of Facebook and Twitter? Now, those did help certain things get out faster,

and that did help science Twitter sometimes, but it also led to huge explosions of misinformation and the polarization of our politics to such an extent that a third of the country didn't believe what the medical establishment was saying. Yeah. And we can get on board with many aspects of this. We're very much aware of how, in fact, the whole podcast is about how these people that distribute themselves via social media platforms as alternative sources of information can have a negative effect on the dynamics of the attention economy. leading that leads to increased polarization or increased conflict or radicalization in various ways brought about by some of elements of these platforms. But I guess the key litmus test is whether or not the evidence supports these concerns. Yeah. I mean, I think there is something with like how does singling out Facebook and social media, right? Twitter, particularly Facebook and Twitter and this virality aspect. I think that hyper focus on those aspects might be unwarranted to a certain extent because

yes, the individual platforms do hold some responsibility for particular things like Facebook and its facilitation of the persecution of the Rohingya in Myanmar, in part because they don't have that many employees that can understand Burmese, right? You definitely can look at individual things that platforms have done and their policies, which have contributed to very bad outcomes. But he seems to be linking in general, if we didn't have Facebook and we didn't have Twitter, there wouldn't have been the same level of problem about anti-vaccine misinformation. And we were just dealing with blogs and stuff.

I don't believe that's true because I remember chat rooms and blogs and forums, and there was a lot of bad stuff going on on there a virality this like hyper virality it did exist beforehand we did have videos and memes that went more viral right the the issue i think partly was a restriction of bandwidth you couldn't have streaming videos and so on but like i i don't think if it wasn't for twitter that you wouldn't have figures like Steve Bannon. I mean, Alex Jones long precedes Facebook and Twitter. But I don't think he'd be saying that, that these things wouldn't happen at all without these platforms. He would say that they exacerbate it. But the other concern I've got is that he switches gears throughout this interview

where on one hand, he's mainly talking about mental illness amongst adolescent girls as a result of things like bullying and stuff via Instagram or whatever among peer groups at schools, and then switches to the sort of political stuff. So let me play the highlights that this thing shows. No, hold on a second. Play with other kids via a platform like Roblox or multiplayer video games. That's great. I have no beef with that. You focus on bullying before. That's one of five or seven different avenues of harm. The main one, I think, which does in the girls is not being bullied. It's living a life where you're thinking all the time about posting. Because once a girl starts posting, so it's bad enough that they're scrolling through,

and this is, everyone comments on this. You're scrolling through and everyone's life looks better than yours because it's fake. And all that you see are the ones the algorithm picked that were the night, anyway. So the scrolling, I think, is bad for the girls. But I'm beginning to see, I can't prove this, but I'm beginning to see from talking to girls, from seeing how it's used, is once you start posting, that takes over your mind. And now you're basically, you're no longer present. Because even if you're only spending five or six hours a day on Instagram, you're always thinking about it. And when you're in class, you're thinking about how are people responding to the post that I made between classes? Yeah. I mean, most people can agree with this stuff. Like I've got teenage girls as daughters

and aware secondhand of the kinds of dynamics that goes on amongst peer groups and so on. Fortunately, they don't seem to have problems with social media at all, but that's probably because they don't really post, which, and I agree with Hyatt, it's probably a healthy thing to avoid it. So there's always some truth in everything, Chris, don't you think? So what Hyatt is suggesting is almost certainly true to some extent, but I think for me, the issue is, is it a big enough factor that it actually explains what he's talked about, which is this sudden increase, perhaps doubling or so, of rates of mental illness amongst young people in the last decade or so. So he's talking about a complete rewiring of childhood. But social media is not

like sugar at all. It's not a dose response thing. It's a complete rewiring of childhood. So we evolved as a species in which kids play in mixed age groups. They learn the skills of adulthood. They're always playing and working and learning and doing errands. That's normal childhood. That's how you develop your brain. That's how you become a mature adult until the 1990s. In the 1990s, we dropped all that. We said, it's too dangerous. If we let you outside, you'll be kidnapped. So we began rewiring childhood in the 90s before we dropped all that. We said, it's too dangerous. If we let you outside, you'll be kidnapped. So we completely, we began rewiring childhood in the 90s before social media. And that's a big part of the story. Yeah. This relates to his advocacy for free range parenting. He's not going to Adrenocon farms. But, you know, basically children are now too coddled.

They don't get adversity and it kind of makes them psychologically stunted such that they engage in outrage when they face the merest hint of adversity. And in some respects, this is hard because I don't live in America. And a lot of this is Americans talking about ways that the students are acting in America. And I can't assess that. I can see videos like everyone else of students overreacting. I can see social media pylons and I can see various media outrages. I'm not saying that doesn't happen, but the extent to which across America or broader field, the Western world, the children are now not playing or interacting in mixed age groups because like part of the issue and i felt this with jordan peterson when he talks about it as well is in one sense they're right that

there's a lot more access to technology the online world is a bigger component than if you look at like exercise rates and stuff these things tend to have been going down and whatnot. But on the other hand, you have this thing where the reality of the world is that digital technology is now more a component of people's social lives. This is how a lot of people meet their partners. It's how people interact with friends. People using technology more is an inevitable component of technology becoming more of our lives. And I'm not sure it's true because of that, that we're kind of losing what it means to be human. It's just human sociality being expressed in another environment. And to people from

Haidt's generation, it might seem like that's a loss of genuine interaction for these superficial technology mediated interactions. But I'm not sure I buy that though. I do buy it's good for people to have experience with adversity and to be a bit more robust and so on. So I'm like, you know, somewhere in the middle of all this. Yeah. I mean, just from personal experience, I've noticed with our kids and their friends that when they spend the day running around the neighborhood and venturing outside on the trampoline, playing soccer, just roaming around.

And there's definitely no helicopter parenting in this area. People are very laissez-faire in country Australia. They seem to have a better day. They're being physically active. They're doing real stuff in the real world. They really, really love sitting on their devices, playing online games as well. But there's virtually no physical activity. And just the sense I get is that it's not, it's not as good for them.

What they need, Matt, is beat zero. VR. Yeah. The best of both worlds, am I right? They can fit their portable headsets at the park. That's probably the future we're heading towards. And I live in Japan, right? I guess part of this relates to that.

Like the kids are still outside here. Japan is quite famous because the Netflix series has become popular with showing Japanese kids doing errands, right? That they aren't allowed to do elsewhere. So maybe there's an issue about the comparison, but that's the thing. Japan is also a highly technological society in some respects, but my kids were, yes, they want to play on iPads and stuff, but they want to go outside and run around and play hide and seek and that. And yes, they much prefer going to like an outdoor pool or something as an activity,

but at night they want to play some game on the Switch or the iPad and it's... Yeah, like a lot of it can be explained, like the same reason why people watch a lot of television or used to watch a lot of television, when they could sort of objectively have a better time by going hiking or something. Like one of those activities is more rewarding, but it also involves a lot more effort and we naturally, we don't want to put in a lot of effort, even if we're going to have a lot of better time as a result of it so i think it's good to encourage people to get off their devices and get out there and do stuff i wouldn't put it all down to coddling i can have

a simpler reason which is that they're really engaging fun low effort technology alternatives so that's one thing chris but the other thing that i'll just mention because i'm just really interested in this thing which is he's starting off with this increased rates of self-harm that's one thing, Chris. But the other thing that I'll just mention, because I'm just really interested in this thing, which is he's starting off with this increased rates of self-harm. That seems to be primarily the metric that he focuses on, on young women. And I've looked at some of the statistics in Australia, and I'm looking at a graph right now from a very large national study, and it's a longitudinal one from 2007 to 2017. National Study, and it's a longitudinal one from 2007 to 2017. And there is indeed a steadily increasing line for females aged 15 to 19 from a rate of hospitalized cases of self-harm from

the high 300s to about 700. Let's hear Haidde talk about the relevant metrics. There's a lot of data tracking adolescents. There's self-reports of how depressed, anxious, lonely. There's data on hospital admissions for self-harm. There's data on suicide. And all of these things, they bounce around somewhat, but they're relatively level in the early 2000s. And then all of a sudden, around 2010 to 2013, depending on which statistic you're looking at, all of a sudden, around 2010 to 2013, depending on which statistic you're looking at, all of a sudden, they begin to shoot upwards, more so for girls in some cases, but on the whole, it's like up for both sexes. It's just that boys have lower levels of anxiety and depression, so the curve is not quite as dramatic. But what we see is not small increases.

It's not like, oh, 10%, 20%. No, the increases are between 50% and 150%, depending on which group you're looking at. Suicide for preteen girls, thankfully, is not very common. But it's two to three times more common now. Or by 2015, it had doubled. Between 2010 and 2015, it doubled. So something is going radically wrong in the world of American preteens. That's specifically about the American case, but the metrics... Yeah. And I guess I'm just saying that there is corresponding data in Australia where those

trends are reasonably flat for other age groups and for males. But I'm seeing a corresponding trend here. I mean, looking at the other data, it's interesting. The biggest risk factor is actually being in a low socioeconomic area. So these are people who are probably going to be less attuned to coddling and the perils of the political side of things. Yeah. So I basically, I don't know what explains this. I'm just not entirely sure that given the relatively low correlations between social media use and mental health in this age group, I don't know if it can explain something like an almost doubling in adolescent girls. Well, that gets to this debate, which comes up on the episode as well, which is a recurring

debate, is the extent to which the evidence supports the causal relationship between social media usage and negative outcomes, right? The Euler polarization or mental health outcomes. And this is the debate that Haidt has been involved in and is published on

and that all the researchers discuss, right? And I think one thing to note here is like on any of these kinds of social issues, like do violent video games cause aggressive behavior or violence in the real world? There will always be a debate of sorts. There will always be one side which takes a more negative perspective and one which questions the like strength of the evidence. And so you have to accept that that framing is almost always going to exist, but it doesn't

mean the evidence equally supports both sides. And social science, particularly social science concerned with social psychology, is often trying to look at those problems. And people are doing critical literature reviews. They're coming up with examining whether the evidence is strong enough for the claims that people make or the quality of the studies.

And that is what happens in this area, right? And one of the debates is around the relative effect size. I know you know what an effect size is, Mark. To explain to people who listen, you might find that something is connected, like has a predictive relationship with something else, a causal relationship. It's robust and you can find it in study after study.

So you can find this strong correlation that you can replicate over and over. But if the effect size is very, very small, it might be statistically significant, but it might have no major implication on people's daily life. So effect sizes are important because we care about whether it has a big impact, a medium impact, small impact. So this is why people, and often people don't talk about effect sizes when they're discussing relationships. And this is a problem in social science research, right? Yeah. It's a general rule in social psychology that everything affects or is related to everything

else, at least to some degree. And so you need to care about whether or not it's a salient or explains a relatively large amount of the variation. And that's distinct from something being statistically significant. So if I had to guess, I would say that Haydn is probably right, that high amounts of social media use would be statistically significantly related to mental illness. But the big question is, is how much of the variation, in particular, that change over time, how much of that variation could be explained by it? And that seems more questionable to me. It feels intuitively plausible in the same way, as you said, violent computer games leading kids to be violent, porn making people being sexually aggressive, whatever. I mean, these are intuitively appealing suggestions,

but often the evidence is lacking. So one issue here is that Haidt and Gene Twenge and others have essentially argued that there's a relationship that we should be worried about that is robust, which is like of a reasonable size given all the messiness of the world when you're looking at like effects in the real world. all the messiness of the world when you're looking at like effects in the real world. And some other scholars have disagreed. And so let me play height discussing that initially. Greg and I put out the book, The Coddling of the American Mind. Some researchers challenged us and said, oh, you don't know what you're talking about. The correlations between social media use and mental health, they exist, but they're tiny. It's like a correlation coefficient of 0.03 or a beta of 0.05, tiny little things. And one famous article said it's no bigger than the correlation

of bad mental health and eating potatoes, which exists, but it's so tiny, it's zero essentially. And that claim that social media is no more harmful than eating potatoes or wearing eyeglasses, it was a very catchy claim and it's caught on and I keep hearing that. But let me unpack why that's not true. Okay. So he's going to talk, but I just want to mention that the paper he's referencing is one by Orban and Przbylski. I'm sorry for the pronunciation, but it's from 2019. It was discussed on a recent episode of Two Psychologists, Four Beers, which is, there's an excellent discussion of this whole issue and the relative strength of evidence, right? But that paper in particular did this thing, which is called the multiverse analysis, right?

There's a concept called researcher degrees of freedom, which is basically when you're doing research or when you're doing analysis that you have all these different choices you can make. You can select which variables you're doing research or when you're doing analysis that you have all these different choices you can make. You can select which variables you're going to analyze. You select what kind of analytical method you're going to use, which controls you're going to use. And these are all choices that you make

which can affect the outcome, right? And if you wanted to put your finger on the scale, for example, you can make some choices and not others. Or you might, even without intentionally doing it, run an analysis, see the relationship isn't that strong, and then say, well, actually, that's not really what I wanted to look at. Let me just try a game with different measures, right? And in the end, you run the risk that you're biased towards a certain result leads to you

favoring outcomes, right? So this is an issue. Researcher degrees of freedom in social science, known issue. And one of the ways that people try to address it is first by doing pre-registrations, which we've discussed on the podcast before, which is you specify before you run the analysis, before you look at the data, what you're going to use. And this constrains your post hoc degrees of freedom. But another way is that you can use a statistical method

that essentially takes a lot of those choices out of your hands. You specify the parameters and then a algorithmic kind of process runs all different combinations of analysis. It feeds back to you how many of these found a relationship, how many didn't find a relationship, or how many found a negative relationship. And then you can look at overall, if the majority of them lean towards finding a relationship,

that gives you more confidence. Now, it's not foolproof, but it is one way to try and counter selective bias in favor of one or other hypotheses. And these researchers did that with the data sets that Twenge and Haidt are kind of looking at and other researchers in this area. And they found that the relationship was there, but it was generally much less large than is typically claimed.

And as they famously pointed out, perhaps on the same magnitude as the relationship between eating potatoes and negative outcomes. Didn't it do an okay job explaining that as a statistics maestro, Matt? Was it all right? It was great. It was fantastic.

Loved it. Very good. That's good. I thought you were going to say something snarky, but that's all right. I've got your approval. So that paper appeared. Twenge and Haidt responded to it and argued against and said, well, if you look at girls

and if you look at social media in particular, you see these relationships are stronger and more negative. And now the issue there, I think this is an important point to make, is that it is perfectly valid for theoretical reasons to narrow down your hypotheses and to focus on specific subgroups that are more relevant. I'm not talking about the relationships of all adults. I'm talking about a particularly vulnerable population, whatever the case may be. And Haidt and Twenge do have a theoretical justification for why female adolescents may be more susceptible to social influences, right?

And why social media of a particular stripe might be more impactful on them. But you always run the risk that people can make theoretical justifications for digging down into subgroups. And if you run enough subgroup analysis, and if you narrow down your hypotheses enough after you've run many analyses, you will be able to construct a theoretical rationale. This is why I personally think it's very important that people beforehand pre-register what are the metrics they're going to care about?

What are the subgroups? How are they going to run the analysis? And if you do that and you find the relationships robustly and other groups are able to find relationships robustly, then you've got a much stronger case than post hoc presentations of effects. I think people should just trust me that I don't do cherry picking. Just trust me, Chris. I'm a good guy. So this is like part of the debate and I'm inclined towards the people who argue for pre-registration and multiverse analysis. And actually to the credit, Aubrey and stuff, I think, recently had a publication

saying it does look like there's a stronger relationship for adolescent girls and negative outcomes. So they are not denying that is a potential area that needs explored. But in any case, here's Haidt talking about that whole debate. The associations between social media use and well-being therefore range from about R equals 0.15 to R equals 0.10. So that's the range we're talking about. And that's for boys and girls together. And a lot of research, including hers and mine, show that girls, it's higher. So for girls, we're talking about correlations around 0.15 to 0.2. I believe Jean Twenge and I found it's about 0.2 or 0.22.

Now, this might sound like an arcane social science debate, but people have to understand public health correlations are almost never above 0.2. So the correlation of childhood exposure to lead and adult IQ, very serious problem, that's 0.09. The world's messy and our measurements are messy. And so if you find a consistent correlation of 0.15, you would never let your kid do that thing. That actually is dangerous. And it can explain, when you multiply it over tens of millions of kids spending years of their lives, you actually can explain the mental health epidemic just from social media use. Okay, Chris. So this goes to the root of my problem with what Hyde's proposing. He's right when he says that in social sciences, you often find small effect sizes like r equals 0.2, and they still can be

important. They still can be important risk factors. And it's because everything is multi-causal. It's all very messy, and we largely just don't know why stuff happens, right? Just a whole bunch of shit happens for lots of random reasons. That being said, a correlation of 0.2 still corresponds to only 4% of the variability in the thing, in this case, mental health, being explained by the causal factor that you have in mind, 4%. 4%. So we're talking about trying to understand increased rates of mental illness amongst girls age 15 to 19 that has doubled over a decade, which is an absolutely massive effect. So 2%, that's not going to cut it in terms of explaining that trend. So it may well be a contributing factor, but it's not a smoking gun as far as I can tell. Yeah, I think that's a reasonable description of it. So there's kind of this, basically, the debate continues and you can go dealer side.

But I think Jean Twenge, who Hite relies on quite a lot in this stuff, has a reputation for being prone to catastrophizing, right? About the smartphones are destroying children's brains and so on. And she's been talking about this for 20 years and that's fine. That's, you know, a consistent topic of interest, but it also means you're quite wedded to one side of the argument. I doubt she's going to come out in 10 years time and say, well, the evidence just didn't support my fears. It's not going to happen. So I think she's going to come out in 10 years time and say, well, the evidence just didn't support my fears. It's not going to happen. So I think that's something to be aware of.

But maybe we should switch to a more Lex heavy topic. What does Lex think about all this? Let's check in. First, yes, Lex is more optimistic. So here's Lex. Where I disagree a little bit is I agree with you in the short term, but in the long term, I feel it's the responsibility of social media, not in some kind of ethical way, not just in an ethical way, but it'll actually be good for the product or for the company to maximize the long-term happiness and well-being of the person. So not just engagement. But the person is not the customer.

So the thing is not to make them happy, it's to keep them on. That's the way it is currently, with that driven. If we can get a business model, as you're saying, I'd be all for it. And I think that's the way to make much more money. Well, the entire gambling industry would like a word there, Chris. I hate to be mean to Lex, but isn't that silly? I mean, it is clearly not necessarily in the interest if you're selling a product. It could be heroin. It could be junk food. It could be absolutely anything.

It's not necessarily helpful to your bottom line to make your customers happy over the very long term. There's lots of ways to make money from people that isn't good for them. Yeah, I'm actually a little bit more with Lex here on the notion that it isn't YouTube, for example, prioritized engagement at one point. I mean, I think it still does, but at one point it was above all else. And this led to people spending more time on the platform, but also going into rabbit holes and some of the worst content being promoted.

Right. into rabbit holes and some of the worst content being promoted, right? And they took steps to try and avoid that to reduce the promotion of content, which is the worst kind of hyperbolic conspiracy theorizing. And you may not have noticed that, but it's not like they're not going to promote Stephen Crowder and whatnot, but it's not as egregious as it had previously been. So I think he's right in the sense that the companies can still be very profitable. They can still drive stuff, people, eyeballs to their content without having to appeal to the worst aspects of human nature. And that's a choice.

And they could still make a lot of money by not doing that. Yeah, that's fair. So I'll temper my response there a bit, which is that for companies, if they're having a very bad effect on their customers, then that does count against them. It's a reputational hit. And eventually you tend to lose customers. So there is an interest in not being too overtly harmful. And a smart company that's thinking in the long term

will probably eventually do that. But I just wouldn't overstate that. It's really not always in the interest of somebody who's selling you something. I think Hai has an interest in, it's not exactly in response to that point, but he talks a little bit about social media as if it's not sugar, it's heroin.

So how do you feel while you're using the platform? Look, most kids enjoy it. They're having fun. But some kids are feeling inferior, cut off, bullied. So if we're saying what's the average experience on the platform, that might actually be positive. If we just measured the hedonics, like how much fun versus fear is there, it could well be positive. But what I'm trying to... Okay. So is that enough steel manning? Can I...

That's pretty good. You held your breath. Yeah. But what I'm trying to point out is this isn't a dose response sugar thing. How do you feel while you're consuming heroin? While I'm consuming heroin, I feel great. But am I glad that heroin came into my life? Am I glad that everyone in my seventh grade class is on heroin? No, I'm not. I wish that people weren't on heroin and they could play on the playground. But instead, they're just sitting on the bench, shooting up during recess. I basically agree with Haidt on this. A colleague of mine wrote a paper asking whether slot machines pokey machines are the crack cocaine of gambling and to some degree they are but even other products like fast food right that's a little from column a little from column b they want to sell burgers

and chips right that's what makes them money on the other hand they are aware that there's a general cultural thing where people are wanting to be more healthy they're suffering a reputational hit they're getting perceived as an unhealthy option and people getting steered away to whatever, Fresh Mex or something. So they've taken steps to try to offer lower calorie options and things like that. So it's a bit of both. I think I'm probably more with Pite on this. You shouldn't assume that the companies running social media or McDonald's or Poke Machines have your best interests at heart. They don't. Yeah. So like I said, Matt, Lex heavy,

let's get back to Lex or Lexi. So Lex has a person that he likes. He likes Elon Musk and he suggests, let's have a chat about Musk. Can I ask your opinion on something here? What in terms of the times coming back in terms of twitter being the editorial board for the prestigious journalistic organizations um what's the importance of the role of mr elon musk in this so um you know it's all fun and games but here's a human who tweets about the importance of freedom of speech and buys Twitter. What are your thoughts on the influence, the positive and the negative? The question, of course, being did Elon buy Twitter seems uncertain at the minute. He certainly made waves with the making, if he doesn't buy it, he's going to have to pay a penalty

for making such public declarations and stuff, I think. Indeed. So this is asking, and Hyde's response is pretty universally negative to Elon, not in the view of like, he's kind of on board with Elon's calls for more civility or whatever on social media and partisanship has gone too far and that kind of thing. He says all that stuff. And then he's just like a shit posting guy who inflames the culture war. And he makes partisan comments about how he's now going to vote Republican. So Lex and Haidt discuss the responsibility or lack thereof that Elon has. It's not that a CEO can't be a partisan or have views, but to publicly declare it in that way,

in such a really insulting way, this is throwing fuel on the fire and it's setting a precedent that corporations are major players in the culture war. And I'm trying to reverse that. We've got to pull back from that. Let me play devil's advocate here. So, cause I've gotten a chance to interact with quite a few CEOs. Um, there is also a value for authenticity. So I'm guessing this was written while sitting on the toilet and I could see in a day from now saying, LOL, And I could see in a day from now saying, LOL, just kidding. There's a humor. There's a lightness.

There's a chaos element. And that chaos is not. Yeah, that's not what we need right now. We don't need more chaos. Well, so yes, there's a balance here. The chaos isn't engineered chaos. It's really authentically who he is. And I would like to say that there's.

I agree with that. That's a trade-off because if you become a politician, so there's a trade-off between, in this case, maybe authenticity and civility, maybe like being calculating about the impact you have with your words versus just being yourself. And I'm not sure calculating is also a slippery slope. Both are slippery slopes. Alex Ferrari- Lex, I think makes a case for that the appeal of Elon is a bit like the appeal of Donald Trump. He tells it like it is for better or worse. He just wears his heart in his sleeve and just tweets out things without

considering their impact and height acknowledges one, we're not in an environment where we really need more chaos agents out there throwing fuel on the fire. But there is a trade-off between authenticity and being careful with what you say. But the counter-argument by Haidt, I think, was quite good. Our world is actually structured into domains and institutions. And if it's just like, oh, you know, talking here among our friends, like we should be authentic. Sure. But the CEO of a company has fiduciary duties, legal fiduciary duties to the company. He owes loyalty to the company. And if he is using the company for his own political gain or other purposes or a social standing, that's a violation

of his fiduciary duty to the company. Now, there's debate among scholars whether your fiduciary duty is to the shareholders. I don't think it's the shareholders. I think many legal experts say the company is a legal person. You have duties to the company. Employees owe a duty to the company. So he's got those duties. And I think you can say he's being authentic, but he's also violating those duties. So it's not necessarily he's violating the law by doing it, but he certainly is shredding

any notion of professional ethics around leadership of a company in the modern age. Yeah. So I'm certainly with Haidt on this. You don't want the president of the United States shitposting and making these lurid claims and things on Twitter. And you don't want the CEOs of companies or the vice chancellors of universities just weighing in like a bull in a china shop with really broad, off-the-cuff statements on every little thing, just expressing their individuality and their

chaotic nature. Even myself, my Twitter account is sort of semi-anonymous one. And I just do that because I do approach it in just a casual, personal way. And even though I'm just a mere professor at a university, I want to sort of signal and keep it clear that I'm just messing around with this account. I'm just a rando. And the thing with Elon Musk is that it's not always lighthearted. It's not always just a bit of fun and a bit of a laugh. He's often angry and dunking and it's all mixed together. And yeah, I think that stuff matters. So I feel like Lex is whitewashing Elon a bit there.

Yeah, well, let's hear. Lex has a response and I think it speaks to a point that we often find amongst the intellectual dark web types, but let's see what he says. So the reason I like, and he's now a friend, the reason I like Elon is because of the engineering, because of the work he does. No, I admire him enormously for that. But what I admire on the Twitter side is the authenticity, because I've been a little bit jaded and worn out

by people who have built up walls, people in the position of power, the CEOs and the politicians who built up walls and you don't see the real person. That's one of the reasons I love long form podcasting is, especially if you talk more than 10 minutes, it's hard to have a wall up. It all kind of crumbles away. So I don't know, but yes, yes, you're right. That, that, that, that, um, is a step backwards to say, at least to me, the biggest problem is to pick sides, to say,

I'm not going to vote this way or that way. That's, that, like leave that to the politicians. You have, you have much. Yeah. There's a part there,

Matt, like it's a good point that expresses this approval of the kind of talking about parties that you're going to vote for and all that kind of thing. But it's more, one, he kind of implies that Elon is responsible for the engineering. It's one of these perennial debates about like Steve Jobs. He wasn't the engineer creating things, but he was the kind of hype man. That's what Elon is. He's a hype man. He's not

an engineer who designs the AI systems or who works out the structural stuff for his rockets and stuff. He talks like he is often, but he isn't. He's the promotion man. And lots of people pull him on the fact that he's very good at promoting, very good at making promises, which don't come true. On the other hand, you know, he has delivered a lot of things that people haven't been able to deliver, like a electric car, which is popular and launching rockets without government being the main component of that. So there is things there, but Lex's admiration, it's very interpersonal. And this notion that if you listen to people for more than 10 minutes on a podcast that

you can see the real them, I don't think he's factoring in that a lot of people are able to, one, the real them might still be a shitty person, like might just be a troll, right? Again, he talks to people like Michael Malice and stuff has no issue. But the other thing is that people can make personas. They can have talking points. Politicians are frigging excellent at holding character or presenting a particular kind of image. And that seems to imagine that, well, if you talk with someone, you would see through that. And I just think that's slightly naive.

I agree with you. I think there's a broader trend amongst the types of people that we cover. Sort of right-leaning, I suppose, to one, fetishize individual personalized relationships and two, to sort of have that great man theory of the world. Yeah, I've got an example of this that you might enjoy hearing.

And so my preference is the threat of regulation in a friendly way encourages you really shouldn't need it. You really shouldn't need it. My preference is great leaders lead the way in doing the right thing. And I actually, honestly, this to our earlier kind of maybe my naive disagreement that I think it's good business to do the right thing in these spaces. So sometimes it is, sometimes it, sometimes it loses you most of your users. Well, I think it's important because I've been thinking a lot about world war three recently. And, um, I, it's, it might be silly to say, but I think social media has a role in either creating World War III or avoiding World War III. It seems like so much of wars throughout history have been

started through very fast escalation. And it feels like just looking at our recent history, social media is the mechanism for escalation. And so it's really important to get this right, not just for the mental health of young people, not just for the polarization of bickering over small-scale political issues, but literally the survival of human civilization. So there's a lot at stake here. Yeah. So getting back to the beginning of what Lex was saying, thank you for playing that, Chris. That's a perfect illustration, I think, which is it is terribly naive to say that you don't

need regulations. You don't need institutions. You don't need rules and things. You just need great leaders, like great people. Like Elon Musk. Like Elon Musk, right? Who will sort it out. And where do you even begin

with that? That's not right. That's the wrong way to think about things. Yeah. And he is right that I'm sure social media will have a role in future conflicts for good or ill, but. He mentions World War III. I mean, so if we're talking World Wars, World War I, one of the big contributing factors on a discourse level was actually lack of communication. They didn't have like a hotline and there was a lot of paranoia about others' intentions and Moscow and Berlin and Paris were a long way away then. It was hard to communicate. So it was actually the lack of social media, the lack of internet. Like everybody, I hope there is no World War III, but if you look at the conflict in the

Ukraine, it's geopolitics and it's a leader and the desire for an empire. And social media is a factor. There's disinformation campaigns, there's trying to organize resistance and document crimes on social media and stuff. But with Putin and the Russian tanks and stuff, they didn't come from Facebook. Certainly Putin's regime uses social media and all digital tools to do propaganda. And people like Chomsky or Robert Wright would argue that the media system in the West might do a similar kind of thing. But that propaganda was working perfectly well with previous technologies. So last thing, Matt, that we'll cover that they talk about is the issue about disinformation,

right? And there's an example of this. We get to hear one of Lex's kind of deadpan jokes in the introduction to this topic. So here's how it's brought up. And watch out for that joke. I've seen the word misinformation misused or used as a bullying word like racism and so on, which are important concepts to identify, but they're nevertheless instead overused.

Does that worry you? Because that seems to be the mechanism from inside Twitter, from inside Facebook, to label information you don't like versus information that's actually fundamentally harmful to society. Yeah. So I think there is a meaning of disinformation that is very useful and helpful, which is

when you have a concerted campaign by Russian agents to plant a story and spread it. And they've been doing that since the 50s or 40s even. That's what this podcast actually is. Is what? It's a disinformation campaign by the Russians. Yeah, you seem really Soviet to me, buddy. It's subtle. It's between the lines.

Okay, I'm sorry. That was one of his better ones. Yeah. It lacks in the delivery somewhat, but I like it. I thought that was good. No, it was good. It was good. I mean, these words do get overused, don't they, Chris?

Censorship, for instance, that gets overused as well. So Haidt, basically, they were saying there is a technical use of the word disinformation. There are campaigns by governments and there's misinformation put out. And that actually is a useful concept, right? and there's misinformation put out. And that actually is a useful concept, right? Lex was going for the more IDWA talking point about disinformation is just a term used to label anything that the mainstream considers too controversial, right?

Lab leak or Brett Weinstein's thoughts on anti-vaccine or on the vaccines. So I noticed Lex leaning that way, but I think Jonathan Haidt did a good job of talking about the technical definition of disinformation. But he also does talk about what you're referencing. And I heard echoes of Jerome Larnier

when he discussed this. So in regards to content moderation, he clarifies. Because we often debate and think about the content moderation, the censorship, the ideas of free speech. But you're saying, yes, that's important to talk about, but much more important is fixing the dynamics. That's right, because everyone thinks if there's regulation, it means censorship. At least people on the right think regulation equals censorship. And I'm trying to say, no, no, that's only if all we talk about is content moderation. Well, then yes, that is the framework. How much or how little do we... But I don't even want to

talk about that because all the action is in the dynamics. That's the point of my article. It's the architecture changed and our social world went insane. Yeah. So we don't want to get drawn into this endless debate about censorship again. I'll just note that yes, all words can be overused. You can label things you don't like as misinformation. You can label people you don't like as gurus or whatever. Everything can be weaponized like that. But at the same time, as you say, people like Brett Weinstein run at the other direction, in which they do spread blatant falsehoods and sort of hide behind this shield of free

speech. But let's just leave that there. We've seen it at the start of this episode, the clips that we played. That's exactly what they present. They say we're misinformation and disinformation. They say that, but who are they to judge us? Right so yeah that's right but look putting that aside like i'm really on board with height on this topic and you and i have talked about this too and firstly i'm fully in favor of moderation the censorship thing is this crazy binary imagining that there's some government department that vets all tweets or something that's not it right it's just about building digital institutions and like you know

we've got moderators on the decoding the guru's reddit page that's an example right it's not censorship right it's just can be censorship or lexus subreddit you're not allowed to post any critical content or it gets deleted so that would be an example of censorship the decoding the guru subreddit is relatively lax. Yes, you are allowed to criticize us on Decoding the Guru. So who's the censor now, huh? Anyway, but look, putting that aside, I like where Hyde's going in terms of tinkering with the machinery.

Twitter recently introduced an anonymous downvote button, which I think is intended to help identify replies, which are just kind of throwing a hand grenade into the conversation. I don't know whether or not it'll work. I'm sure there may be testing it and all that stuff. And little tweaks like that may well help in the algorithm might steer things in a healthier direction. And I think it sounds good. Yeah. And Twitter recently put out some research that is showing that these little prompts they had about your tweet is abusive. Would you like to edit it before you send it that actually does work a surprisingly large amount leading to people it worked on you a few times it might have worked on me yes

well it's like yeah most people don't tweet like this and like well okay just change idiot the eejit they should put a little advisory there. Matt Brown wouldn't tweet like this. Yeah, they should just make it more context specific. But in any case, actually, this leads to the final point, which is that a lot of Haidt's suggestions about how to deal with things, despite all these lofty debates and stuff,

I actually think most of the things that people are suggesting as possible things that we can do, they're quite practical. They're relatively reasonable. And for example, they discuss this. And so if you did that, then in order to get an account where you have posting privileges on Facebook or Twitter or TikTok or whatever, you have to at least do that. And if you do that, you know, now the other people are real humans too. And suddenly our public square is a lot nicer because you don't have bots swarming around.

This would also cut down on trolls. You still have trolls who use their real name, but this would just make it a little scarier for trolls. Some men turn into complete assholes. They can be very polite in real life. But some men, as soon as they have the anonymity, they start using racial slurs. They're horrible. One troll can ruin thousands of people's day. So this is not completely eliminate anonymity, but basically make the barrier slightly higher.

And this will increase civility on platforms. And I think that's true. It gets borne out in all the cases where a user is tied to an identifiable ID. It does improve the discourse. Yeah. And I seem to remember some research indicating that the large percentage of the negativity is the fault. A small percentage of people yeah yeah and because it's a wild west the most disruptive and negative toxic users can drive the dynamic and it could be the relatively small tweaks to just interrupt people trending in that direction could make the whole place a lot healthier it's part of the reason why lex and stuff are kind of wrong because like removing alex jones

this perennial debate which comes up with rogan types and removing alex jones this perennial debate which comes up with rogan types and stuff alex jones is the one 0.01 percent worst you know conspiratorial spreading malignant influences so like that's what you do want to take is those are kinds and the argument from the libertarian types is that it's always the thin end of the wedge. That, oh, if you ban Alex Jones, then that's going to open the door to this rampant censorship. And they use the same arguments with respect to the COVID restrictions. Oh, as soon as you allow the precedent of people having to do this or not being allowed in here, then suddenly we're a police state. It'll never go away.

Well, it did go away. You know, it's not the thin end of the wedge. And Paul Joseph Watson is still on Twitter. Even an incredibly racist conspiracy theorist who co-hosts InfoWars is not removed. So there are cases where people get kicked off or penalized, especially if you're a smaller account. But there are lots of examples where there are people spreading lots of disinformation and they should be penalized and they're not. So look, I'm going on record saying I'm pro-censorship. If pro-censorship means

banning the most extreme toxic accounts, and no one's got a problem with banning, say, pedophilia accounts, right? Ban them. Ban people like Alex Jones. Embrace moderation of various kinds so people can select. Political. Yeah, that's right.

Unless they sign the manifesto of the communist party, then they're out. And try fiddling with the mechanical features of it and see if they help. In that Facebook study about the little reminder not to post abusively, 1% of people made their tweets more abusive. That's the 1% you got to get rid of. I will edit it, but it'll make it worse. Okay. Another solution to the problem that comes towards the end is this. So the question is, how do you become smarter, stronger, and happier? And the answer to all three is, it's a number of things, but it's, you have to see yourself as this like complex adaptive system. You've got this complicated mind that needs a lot of experience

to wire itself up. And the most important part of that experience is that you don't grow when you are with your attachment figure. You don't grow when you're safe. You have an attachment figure to make you feel confident to go out and explore the world. In that world, you will face threats, you will face fear, and sometimes you'll come running back. But you have to keep doing it because over time, you then develop the strength to stay out there and to conquer it. That's normal human childhood. That's what we blocked in the 1990s in this country. So young people have to get themselves the childhood, and this is all the way through adolescence and young adulthood, they have to get themselves the experience that older generations are blocking them from out of fear and that their phones are blocking them from out of just hijacking almost all the inputs into their life and almost all the minutes of their day. Touch grass.

Touch grass. I'm in favor of touching grass too. That's another one of the axioms I live by. No, but seriously, I've got my quibbles with the evidence here. And I don't think, like Hype, that the internet is going to destroy us all. But when I think back to my childhood, me and my friends, we would explore the local state forest, and we would spend a lot of time literally out in the woods doing stuff that's sometimes dangerous stuff, sometimes stupid stuff. And that was good. good my wife who grew up in japan they were basically free roaming kids as well in japan they have those big sort of corporate

residential developments blocks where there's like hundreds and hundreds of families all with young kids often the same age i know i live in one yeah i thought you were going to say japan is full of roving bands of gangs. I was like, yep, yep. Bosuzoku, Chris. Bosuzoku. So, look, I think that's good. And I have noticed, like most people my age, that it's a bit different for the younger generation. You kind of have to use a bit of a crowbar to get them out of the house.

And if your parents want them to be physically active, you tend to take them to a lot of sort of organized and supervised activities as opposed to them being their own. So I'm all for it just on sort of first principles. I'm just not sure of the evidence that supports those opinions. Yeah. I think in general, I suspect a lot of people who are parents that broadly think it is good for children to face adversity and whatnot. I'm also aware when my teenage years, there may have been underage drinking and there may have been bad decisions in forests with Ollur. That's on the Bible. How bad, Chris? Yeah.

Where are the bodies buried? Didn't kill anyone. I mean more in the environment of Northern Ireland that led just unwise conflicts and all these kind of stupid stuff. It fights, that kind of stuff. So there's a balance to be struck. We used to make bombs. So do we.

I was going to say, but not for political purposes, just for fun. Yeah. I almost burnt my face off once actually with one of them. So I don't want my kids to do that. I know a young guy that was hit by a train and died and stuff like this. So there's costs. I think that some of the metrics about teens not drinking as much and stuff like that, it's not necessarily bad.

So there's nuances there, but I'm sure Hype would recognize those as well. So I'm just saying his solutions overall, you might find some of his rhetoric a bit too extreme. Broad? Yeah, too broad. But most of the stuff seems, the suggestion seems reasonable. So that's all I wanted to say. Look, we've covered both of them.

And I think as we set it up from, we've really ended up in the second half, mostly discussing Haidt's thesis, not really Lex, right? I want to make the point just for my summary is that Haidt as a guru, if we are counting him as a guru figure, I think he is very much a social science academic-y type. He might be a bit broad in his rhetoric. At times there's stuff I disagree with, but I think he is somebody that has nuance, that

tries to approach things from this kind of framing he has about trying to understand different perspectives and so on. And I do tend to find him a little bit leaning towards the get off my lawn space. But fundamentally, to me, he falls into the realm of public, intellectual and academic. And you can disagree or agree, but I think the Steven Pinkers and the Jonathan Heights of the world are not the same as the more toxic gurus or the more just straight up gurus that we all discuss on this podcast. So with height, that's what I would say. I would say the same thing.

I've mentioned my quibbles with height. I think he does tend to be a little bit broader. And when we covered him on Decoding Academia, I thought he was maybe guilty of a little bit of conceptual rebranding to make things a little bit more interesting and sexy and new. It must be emphasized, a very normal academic faults. And he's definitely within the Overton window of reasonable social science. And he's smart. He writes really well. He's pretty good. He has a big Google Doc where he invites people to contribute. And it's actually useful if you want like a resource of hundreds of studies about social

media. I'm less convinced that it is the future of creating collaborative literature reviews. But still, the fact that he invites critics to contribute to it, I think that's a good sign of him trying to live up to his ideas in a techno boomer way. But we're all techno boomers to a certain extent. We'll all get there. Yeah. Nothing wrong with that.

Nothing wrong with organizing all your literature and collaborating with the Google doc. I'm all for it. Yeah, yeah, it is. It's good. People who do that are smart. Now, Lex on the other hand, old Lex, Lex Friedman. You know, I described him when we looked at this daily routine

as a naive techno monk. And I think that's pretty accurate. One thing that has slightly changed in my assessment from looking at this content is that I had seen, as I mentioned, Lex as like a more potentially duplicitous character presenting himself as just naive and concerned with love but giving these platforms to egomaniacs and partisan figures and offering apologetics for that and i think he does do that and can be rightly criticized for that but i do get the feeling that he actually is sincere like all this talk about love and the beauty of the world and how love's going to save everything

and great leaders are all going to come and all that. I think it's genuine. And so when he talks about social media makes him less lonely and Hitler isn't a bad guy, that's true. And, you know, I think he genuinely thinks that. And I still do think, however, that there's still room for criticism with that level of sincerity, because teenage boys who want to present themselves as worldly and sophisticated individuals, they can be very sincere in what they're saying as well about whatever Dostoevsky they've got up on their shelf. But I still think it's okay to point out the potential pretentiousness of it or the shallowness. I will also say the last thing with Lex was that when he was canvassing for the opinions about the Ukraine and Russia conflict,

a lot of his posts had a very both sides nature to them. He had a kind of fascination with Putin that he expressed for years that people noted. But in particular, in that form where you could describe your thoughts and your experiences, there was a drop-down category. I looked into it where, you know, what kind of feedback is this? Is this a story about your experience? Is this feedback on the podcast? And one of them, the categories was romantic offers or romantic proposals for Lex. And this was in a questionnaire he created for, you know, audience feedback. And that combined with the day in the life optimization stuff that we've seen at the start, I think there's a little bit of potential cultivating of a guru following, which could

be unhealthy. So I think people should watch out for that. There's potential signs there. But I think the sincerity is genuine. That's something I will say. Yeah. After hearing some of his jokes in that material, it's occurred to me that maybe that response option was one of his little jokes.

Could be. Just saying. It could be. I mean, if it was that, then that's pretty good. I applaud that. Like if that is a deadpan joke, that's pretty, you know. But it's also not beyond the realms of possibility that someone with 1.8 million subscribers or whatever devoted fans might maybe half ingest the recruiting remedy.

But look, we don't know. I didn't mean to insinuate that he is recruiting a harem it's more like there's just aspects of it the controlling your subreddit so critical stuff isn't there it's soliciting potential romantic proposals from your audience even in chest it's just there's a little bit of a vibe that's concerning there, but parasociality is a ever-present thing in the modern internet era. So I would urge Lex to be cautious with playing with those dynamics. Yes, that seems like good advice. I think I'm going to withhold judgment to some degree because we didn't hear a great deal from Lex in terms of his persuasive argumentation and in terms of making hot takes and things like that.

We got the day in the life. We got a narration of his personal techno monk lifestyle. And hey, you do you. Everyone could do their own thing. And in the second part, he was really mainly just playing the role of a pretty neutral interviewer. Yeah. So there's not a great deal to go on. So I'm quite happy for it to be, for the jury to be still out on this from my point of view.

I didn't hear much from him throughout the entire thing that went beyond platitudes or what sounded like reasonably naive or bland thoughts, but that's not a crime. No. And that could be the role if you're in an interviewer position so like we might look at lex again in another context people suggested look at them discussing with musk and rogan yeah so maybe we will but for now i kind of think a naive techno monk but somebody with genuine interest in technology and stuff like that. Yeah. David Pérez- Just to emphasize, I mean, as we said, he's built differently from us. He's maybe a little bit neurologically divergent and I was certainly

giving him the benefit of the doubt. We're definitely not accusing him of recruiting a harem. That's not what we're saying. We're not saying he's recruiting a harem. David Pérez- It's like saying you don't have a bomb on a plane. Sounds much worse if we just keep denying it. But anyway, so that's Lex. We'll listen back

and we'll remove all the most mean stuff that we've said. So whatever you've heard, that's actually the edited version. Sorry, Lex. You're probably a very nice guy. We didn't hate you. I thought some of your jokes were good. I didn't get a bad vibe overall. Yeah, well, you didn't think Guts Heart had a bad vibe either. He's a lo you didn't think Guts Had had a bad vibe either.

He's a lovable uncle. Is he? Well, okay. So that's it for this week. It's been short and succinct. And there we go. As always, we probably bite off more than we can chew when we do these episodes of looking at multiple pieces of content. So we might have to reconsider that in the future.

But anyway, there you have it. That's a blimmin' lot. Yes. consider that in the future but anyway there you have it that's a blimmin lot yes so now matt reviews of reviews the roundy night segment where we engage parasocially with people who have deemed to leave us reviews and so i do have two reviews that i'm going to read. And they're both short. Unfortunately, they're not negative. But one of them is negative in a way. So the title is Two Dads, Five Stars. And it's by eCurtainXYZ.

It says, like being rebuked by your two dads, one more in sorrow than in anger, the other more in anger. Being rebuked. Okay. We're not rebuking him. We're not rebuking the listeners. They're on our side, we assume. Rebuking gurus sometimes. Yeah, that's true.

So, rebuking ourselves sometimes as well. Yeah. There's enough rebuking to go around. That was a good review. And I've only got another positive one. I'm sorry. We need more reviews. We need more negative or positive reviews.

So, obliged. Lex fans, come get us. So this one is from Robertow5150, and it's titled Dynamic Duo. And it says, an incorrigible Irishman and an intellectual crocodile dundee endeavor to decode, dismantle, intellectual crocodile dundee endeavor to decode, dismantle, destroy, devastate, derogate, and sometimes disparage the bevy of charlatans, mount banks, hucksters, fraud, shysters, phonies, and every other stripe of undesirable listed under the word crook in my thesaurus, which aided me mightily in the crafting of this humble review. I was going to say that.

You beat me to it. Good stuff. Okay. Yeah. While the navel gazing of these snarky fellows is more of a heaping tablespoon than a pinch, the meatballs of insight in this can of SpaghettiOs are worth the hours of friendly ribbing between Matt and Chris about their coffee and swimming habits. I have been binging this podcast for the past few weeks.

Please don't judge me. I just realized there are this podcast for the past few weeks. Please don't judge me. I just realized there are a lot of food metaphors in this paragraph and then they list their lucky numbers. So that's a good review. That was quite a thorough review. Yeah. I liked it. I liked the alliteration, four marks for alliteration. I feel bad. You had to suffer through all the good natured ribbing to get to the meatballs, but some people come for the spaghettios. That's all I'm saying. I don't even know what they are. So I'll just take it all as positive. And yeah, so thank you for that.

I enjoyed that. And there is a bunch of other people who enjoy things, Matt, who deserve recognition, who we should shout out with our Patreon shout outs. Yes. Shout them out. Shout them out indeed. Right. So Matt, this week, I'm actually only going to thank

Revolutionary Geniuses and Conspiracy Hypothesizers, merely because the file I have open doesn't have any Galaxy Brain Guru 3 Average Trader out yet. So here we go. It's a special week for you. Revolutionary geniuses, Jay Graves, Kerry, Christina Flinders, Jesse Hodges, Peter Clarkin, Tim Graubach, Roddy, and Kagar. Thank you all you revolutionary geniuses or revolutionary thinkers. Maybe you can spit out that hydrogenated thinking and let yourself feed off of your own thinking.

What you really are is an unbelievable thinker and researcher, a thinker that the world doesn't know. Okay, now for the conspiracy hypothesizers, Matt. Now for them. Yeah. Blake Lever, Dutran, Jeff, Daniel, Laura Renger, Yuki, Bronstall Inglesen, Adam Bosnian, Dustin Hall, Josiah Martins, Kylie Hudson, Chris Saville, and Ian Greave. Yay, very good. Good job, all of you, and Ian Greave. Yay! Very good.

Good job, all of you. Thank you very much. Every great idea starts with a minority of one. We are not going to advance conspiracy theories. We will advance conspiracy hypotheses. Yes, we will. Yes, we will. And all of these people are contributing a little bit of money,

or sometimes, in a few cases, more than a little money each month to help with things like paying for the hosting of this podcast, which is surprisingly expensive, actually. And also editing, paying a little pocket money to the kind, kind little elves that help us out with that time consuming job. So it's appreciated and it does help keep the podcast flowing. time-consuming job. So it's appreciated and it does help keep the podcast flowing. Yes. And we have very solid places that you can find us. We have a subreddit, we have a Twitter feed that we sometimes update. There's an Instagram account by a lovely volunteer. And I think we're on Facebook and stuff as well. Or you can reach us at thecodingthegurus at gmail.com. We will be continuing with our tech season for another one or two episodes. Elon Musk might be on the cards.

Balaji Srinivasan, some Bitcoin people, this kind of thing. But we haven't decided yet. So maybe we'll take a poll of our Patreon members to see what they'd like to see next. So tech season continues. Yeah, especially the Reddit group. They have lots of opinions. So if there's some really, really good tech guru

that we're forgetting about, maybe grab our attention. We want to get them all. All right. So that's it. Thank you, Matt. Thank you, everyone. Sorry, Lex. And we will see you, Matt. Thank you, everyone. Sorry, Lex. We will see you

next time, but always remember, note the disc, consider the gin, Matt. They are always in my mind. Thank you, Chris. Adios, amigo. Arrivederci! Thank you.