Decoding the Gurus - Special Episode: Calibrating the Gurometer

Episode Date: January 8, 2021

Chris and Matt take a break from examining the endless stream of Guru galaxy brain takes to offer their own and calibrate their newly minted Gurometer.The Gurometer is composed of 10 key characteristics of guruosity which the decoders will be using to score the Gurus in future episodes.Listeners will learn about important concepts, like science hipsterism and pseudo-profound bullshit, and discover just how bad both Chris and Matt are at segways!LinksThe Gurometer 'current draft' Google DocGretchen's Blog Review

Hello and welcome to Decoding the Gurus. It's the podcast where two academics listen to content from the greatest minds the online world has to offer, and we try to understand what they're talking about. But today, Chris, we are not covering a guru. We are talking about something far more important, which we'll get to. But would you like to say a few words about the upcoming episode? So I agree, Matt. Revolutionary Insights are weird to the listeners.

They just need to hold on for a minute. But they may be wondering why we are not releasing our usual concise, short episode about Douglas Murray, as promised. And part of that is that the content that I convinced Matt to look at was a four-hour interview with Douglas Murray by Eric Weinstein. So it's taking longer than usual to go through, but we should have it ready next week. So there you go. Yes, I was struggling. I am struggling to get through it, but we are soldiering on and we will get there. But in in the meantime we do have some very important

work to present and that is to talk about our gourometer yeah so we're sticking out the new field of gourmetry right uh i i think you might suggest we can label ourselves gourmetricians which i'm particularly down with but it seemed a good idea to as we're going through and looking at all this colorful cast of characters and noticing the differences and similarities in their guruishness to try and produce something that was slightly more quantifiable, mainly just for our own entertainment purposes, but also to help get our thoughts about things in order a bit more as good social scientists. So we had various discussions and looked at previous papers that we were working on to try and distill some features which we think are

recurrent amongst guru types and to make a coding scheme where we can assign our own personal scores for the gurus that we cover on these different dimensions and then tally them up to give an overall guru score. And obviously people will be able to play at home using the the garometer if they should so choose yes you are free to play at home and use the garometer it is uh open license there's no intellectual property here um free to you so far so far so the the other thing too is that it's a work in progress. We've got 10 categories or themes that we will go through and look at. And we might end up combining some of those or introducing some new ones. And hopefully it'll grow and get refined and get better. And yeah, as you said, organize our thoughts so that we're actually learning something

as well as talking about specific people yeah and matt being a good academic is adding in disclaimers and hedging that we might we might not use some of these categories we might combine them we might drop them this is what caused the replication crisis matt um i on the other hand i'm purely concerned with having wrong numbers of features so the fact that we have to interrupt you chris and tell everybody that we had nine perfectly good themes it was great great. But that nine was doing Christopher's head in. His obsessive compulsive personality could not comprehend not having a nice, neat round number. So we did a bit of extra work and we got the 10th one.

Yeah, and it was an important one that we discovered. And I just also think, imagine a scale where you're like, the top score is 45. Like, what's that? A top score of 50? I understand. Like 50 out of 50? Great. But like a top score of 45?

No one would understand. That doesn't make any sense conceptually. Fair enough. Fair enough. Well, look, all was well in the end because you're right. It was a good category uh so we will get to it so we're going to do the shout outs as we always do to our fantastic uh patreons so christopher yes that's right just to note that i don't think we've ever

mentioned that we are posting stuff up on the patreon so like there's extra content there now there's a couple of videos about the well about designing this barometer sell it chris sell it there's there's like a if you if this discussion is not enough there's another hour-long discussion where we are trying to identify the features that we're not going to describe. And also some things about just asking questions and anti-vaxxing rhetoric and so on. So there is stuff up on the Patreon that might make it worthwhile. Yeah. If you're interested in that kind of thing. The other thing to encourage people with the Patreon is that when we do eventually get some money that will pay for the hosting costs um the second thing

we will divert it towards is getting some help with editing and the good thing about that is that will free us up and allow us to release more content essentially so you'll be contributing to the productivity and output of the feed don't don't give people false hope but yes so the the patreon stuff is to help the podcast so anyway anyway the first person is uh rebecca c who is a revolutionary thinker, revolutionary genius. Revolutionary genius. I can't even get this right, Matt. But thank you, Rebecca. Thank you, Rebecca. 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. That's right. You are. You are. And next is Chris Spanos. I have probably pronounced that terribly. But yes, Chris, friend of the pod and supplier of useful information. And I already knew this, but he is a galaxy brain guru.

That's the impression I get from him. Yep. Well, we had a strong suspicion from knowing him on Twitter, but now he's paid up. We have it confirmed. You're sitting on one of the great scientific stories that I've ever heard. And you're so polite. And hey, wait a minute. Am I an expert? I kind of am. Yeah. I don't trust people at all. Sorry, Chris. But you are so polite. That is true. That part was accurate, at least. And you're right not to trust people. And Dave Lavelle, who is a conspiracy hypothesizer, is the next person to thank. So thank you, Dave. Dave.

Thank you, Dave. Every great idea starts with a minority of one. We are not going to advance conspiracy theories. We will advance conspiracy hypotheses. That's right. Only hypotheses. That's what a real scientist does. Dave would never advance a conspiracy theory.

That's not his bag, man. No, but he's not alone. Mark Forne is in on his conspiracy hypothesizing. And yeah, so the two of them together are a potent force. Every great idea starts with a minority of one. We are not going to advance conspiracy theories. We will advance conspiracy hypotheses. And I now realize, Matt, that actually there have been multiple conspiracy hypothesizers as kind of contradicting the threat of Einstein's initial clear. But the last member of that elite group is Thomas McKenzie for this week, who is also a conspiracy hypothesizer.

So thank you, Thomas. Every great idea starts with a minority of one. We are not going to advance conspiracy theories. We will advance conspiracy hypotheses. Thank you, Thomas. I like that, you know, that rising inflection at the end. Conspiracy hypotheses. I probably get more joy out of these clips than anyone else.

So sorry about that. i think it's good and we're going to talk about the social dynamics of the gurus but in that vein i'd like to say that i feel like we have a very special and deep relationship to each and every one of our patreons yeah and your tone of voice even shifted there i got the hair stood up in the back of my neck so yeah i'm i'm i'm on board your cult matt so the last navel gazing component is the reviews which we solicit and duly reward people when they supply them. And this week, I do have a negative review and a positive one so I can balance the force. So let's start with the negative review, which the title is absolutely horrendous. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Just two leftist sheeple

who have been bought and sold by mainstream media. I didn't know I'd been bought. I haven't received any funds yet. What's going on? I know this is disappointing, but they take clips of what more successful people have said. True. That is true. And then twist them out of context, react with childish banter while jumping to conclusions, name calling, judging books by their cover, and using their bias against people who happen to be smarter than them. Don't waste your time on this garbage. One star. That's harsh, Krish.

That's really harsh. Look, don't listen to him or her. Well, the username for this account is also, I think, worth noting. It's I'm going to cough in your mouth. I feel like he kind of did with that review. Yeah. I also, you know, I just like the notion that we spend multiple hours on people going for their content but we're judging books by their cover if only it were that easy that's a particularly impressive way to summarize what we do but like yes thank you for that review i'm going to cough in your mouth we're not everyone's cup of tea and we're certainly not his so uh yeah

different strokes for different folks you can't you can't please everyone that's the sheeple that's what you are but um i mean i knew you were but i'm surprised that he extended that to me yeah yeah well hurtful but there we go we ask for reviews and this is what you do when you get them yes so the next one is quite long but i think it's very funny so i'm going to read it uh the title is utterly lacking in metaphysical substrate again this is pretty on the nose Already it's sounding very promising. I'll try to do this in one take because I think that will honour it.

You might say, for example, that another podcast that seeks to share knowledge and offer critiques of nefarious ideas is a good thing. But no, you'd be wrong. That's not obvious at all. It depends entirely on your definition of good and podcast and knowledge and thing. Without the requisite analysis of the metaphysical substrate that underpins these

definitions, making a good podcast is meaningless. And so is writing a bad review. And even that is assuming that this is a review at all and not simply using one-way conversation to develop my ideas in public. It may just be an exercise in free speech, which is a secret foundation of our existence, of course. What is clear, though, is that we connect through our faces. And this is a podcast that has no faces, only voices. And voices are used to tell you what to do and what to think. What do you think about that? Anyway, it should come as no surprise that if N is the number of podcasts prior to the existence of this podcast that serve the usual function in upholding Western democratic values, and that each of these podcasts represents an individual sub-process within a metaphorical

quantum computer of enlightenment, the computing power of negative N is now negative n plus one clean your rooms five stars oh slow clap that that was a work of art chris i am i am floored by that i yeah take that cough in your mouth that's how you do a review cough in your mouth. That's how it's done. And this was submitted by the Intergalactic Panda Wrangler. I mean, that's a more fun name. That's a much better name too. It's slightly less violently graphic. So, yeah, I think we've covered, you know,

the broad spectrum of our followers in this review of reviews i think that was just a wonderful review i that was that was parody at its finest yeah that's better than i could done and and also they got eric weinstein's weird use of mathematics mathematical analogies and obviously peterson is in there, but I also like hints of JPC as a recipe for guruism. This is chef's kiss. Very good. And the other great thing about it is that our listeners are providing content for the podcast, so we don't have to do it. So the circle is good. Chris. It's good. That's true. But like I say, Matt, self-indulgent book reading banter.

That's what we're fiend for. And that's what we deliver. So yeah, I'm content. Moving right along, Chris. I have to write new ones sometimes. You said that was our last bit of navel gazing, but it isn't. We have one more final bit of navel gazing but it isn't we have one more final bit of navel gazing with the help of gretchen a friend on twitter who very kindly wrote a blog post

about us which we thought was really good very nicely written and mentioned a couple of interesting points so did you get a chance to read that chris i did ma so don't dare try to call me out and do my homework and also uh i also should note that gretchen is a nice illustrator artist kind of person she drew up a sketch of the heterodox man the heterodox finger so also deserves credit for that so you will post a link to the blog post gretchen did raise a couple of little interesting topics i thought we could briefly touch on uh one of the interesting points she made was just pointing out that dilemma we've got in terms of collecting those snippets and playing those audio clips and then talking about them in a piecemeal fashion tends to suit what we do in terms of focusing on the form and the manner of presentation but it obviously isn't

so great for providing like a comprehensive overview of the actual content i should say gretchen's said very kind things about us that these were just offered as as observations but i thought that was very true and i don't know if there's anything we can do about that or whether i i felt this in the last episode on contra points that we dove straight into some some of the aspects of the presentation and then we tried to provide a bit of an overview of her argumentation as well and i think we did but we've got that dilemma that we don't want to just rehash the material because if you want to get the material you could go watch the original thing so what are your thoughts about that yeah i think there's a definite trade-off in some respect

and it doesn't just extend to the individual content that we cover because often the individuals ground of themes are not always represented but they they bleed into the content that we're looking at. And I think in general, we do try to highlight those where that happens. But part of it is by design, because if we dip into people's content on any given week, I think if we were to go back, for example, to Scott Adams in a year's time, I think that we would find pretty much the same kind of stuff, even if the topics that he was talking about had greatly shifted. And so my hunch is that the better thing to do is to focus not so much effort on the individual content, except as a jumping off point. We need

to deal with the material and the individual points being made in whatever the material we've selected. But I think the important thing is to try and link those two broader themes. But it is a trade-off. Yeah. Yeah yeah we're sort of analyzing stuff on a meta level so yes we are looking at the arguments they're putting together but really we're not about debating with them or offering our own hot takes on whatever it is they're talking about more if the arguments are just non-secateurs or contradictory or just bad reasoning then that's that's more what we're interested in detecting and pointing out yeah although i think we definitely do give our impressions on things and we flag this up more than most that we know that we are letting our

opinions and views color our responses in some respect. And there's simply, there's just no way that you can completely avoid that. And I think it's okay because you're trying to give your opinion, but I agree that it's important not to make that purely, that's the point, right? Like I don't agree with Jordan Peterson's social prescriptions or conservative worldview. So that's what I want to focus on. No, like it's fine for him to want to promote conservative views and for me to disagree with it. In analyzing his content, that isn't the salient feature, right? It might be what motivates people to look at people critically or that makes them salient to you.

But I don't think it should be the reason that we are looking at people. Yeah. I mean, we're doing our best to set that aside a little bit. I think a good example is Rutger Bregman, where I do basically agree with his progressive utopian worldview or his ideological stance. But perhaps it's just from being a grumpy professor marking graduate students bad writing with red pen in that I think at least to some degree I'm able to put that aside and grumpily point out the points where the argumentation isn't good. All we can do is try to not be too opinionated,

but it's fine for our opinions to bleed in there as well. So the other interesting thing which Gretchen pointed out, which I don't think we really explicitly got into, although we did hint at it when we mentioned that in covering ContraPoints, we were interested in stretching our wings a little bit to not only get in a bit more ideological diversity or political diversity but but also get someone who just wasn't like a middle-aged white guy yeah and gretchen points out that there's probably a good reason why the majority of gurus do tend to be these pretty well-off middle-aged white guys. And I think there's something to that. What do you think, Chris? Yeah, I think there's two things that go together. One is that there is an over-representation of men in the guru sphere and that white middle-aged men with privileged backgrounds do definitely

seem overrepresented in the guru sphere right so inevitably if we are dipping into gurus we will over sample from that demographic just because of the there's more of them available so that i i agree with her that that is the case and that there's things worthwhile discussing about why that might be the case, right? In terms of the societal structures and the way that media attention is divvied up and whatnot. But the second point that I think contributes to this is that us being who we are, we are not people that are particularly active in like the YouTube youth communities or the radical far left podcasting and so on. So there's an over-representation, but there's also that we are more familiar with people that fall into the category of centrist, heterodox, IDW types.

So that's going to bind to color things because I don't think it's true to say, for example, that there aren't a ton of women in the health and wellness guru sphere. Sure. Right. There's plenty. Sure. Right. There's plenty. And in alternative spirituality spheres as well, there are a bunch of people who don't fall into the white male demographic category. So those two things contribute together to make the white male middle-aged demographic overrepresented in the gurus we look at. What do you think? Yeah, I agree agree with that i think that's a pretty good summary really i think it would be interesting for us to branch out and look at people in the health and wellness or anti-vaxxer communities as well perhaps at some point um yeah and i mean i think that our general

view about this is we'll get to these people right right? Like this, if the podcast is here in the long term, then we'll branch out. We'll have times when we maybe do several episodes on a specific type of guru or so on. So I think that this is partly also an artifact of that we only have nine gurus covered so far. So so yeah let's see how badly skewed we are when we get the 100 sounds good sounds good and we don't need to do anything then for another 90 episodes okay so the other thing that gretchen mentioned which i agree with heartily is that main feature of that sense of of grievance and and victimhood that seems to be a theme with some but not all of the gurus that we've covered and indeed even elements of narcissism but we won't say too much about that right now i think because that segues nicely

into the features of our gurometer very good matt that was like almost a beautiful transition except you flagged it up um i wish i think you're not supposed to do when you're doing a segue it's not a segue is that well no it is but like i if you if you say you're doing a segue is it still a segue but i was quite proud of the fact that I did a Segway, so I want to make sure that people didn't miss it. You know, we might develop a reputation for being too self-reflective and have the navel gazing at this,

considering that we're now discussing the nature of Segways. That's on you, Chris. Oh, yeah. That is from me. That that is from me so i'll shut up now and and allow you to segue in peace okay segueing away let's start off with uh number one we've decided to call this galaxy brainness which okay so we should say that we're gonna we're giving all of these things labels there's no perfect label that sums everything up. So what we're going to do is we're going to summarize them now. We're going to give the label, and we're probably going to put this document

or something like it for reference on the Patreon so we don't have to rehash it every time. So starting with galaxy brainness, that's a fun term, but it's meant to capture the sense in which the individual is projecting themselves an image of themselves as a polymath being a kind of expert at everything because of their unique wisdom and insight makes them qualified to have hot takes and special insights and wisdom on on every topic under the sun. So to contrast that with someone who is a bona fide expert,

a bona fide expert will often restrict themselves to their particular area of expertise, which we don't think is in the least bit guru-like when they do speak authoritatively from that. And a bit of a flag, I think, for this galaxy brain is, I guess, signaling this smartness using things like unnecessary references to high literature, complex theories, or mathematics, or citing scientific, say, psychological studies in an offhand kind of way. And doing that stuff in a way that isn't really you know it's often not particularly appropriate and doesn't actually add anything to the dialogue it more seems to be about the signaling i think an important point to emphasize here is maybe some

people are thinking yeah but all not all gurus do that and that's the point that the with all of these features there will be some who engage with it more than others. And there are gurus who restrict themselves to a limited number of topics. But it certainly is a feature of a whole bunch of them that they feel qualified to discuss almost every topic under the sun. to discuss almost every topic under the sun and often favorably compare their own insights as better quality, more insightful than relevant experts in a given field. And point about making unnecessary references. The key point here is not that people referencing specialist literature is necessarily guru-ish. It's perfectly fine for people to have expertise and to be aware of references or mathematical concepts that might be applicable.

But I think the key component here is that it's performative. In making the references, it's often not really about flagging the content to people, but more demonstrating how much the guru knows and how widely read they are. This is the point of this. These 10 features are exploratory. They're like our themes or tags. And we're going to see what pops up and which ones tend to go together. So we're going to apply it to the gurus that we've already covered

and then we're going to cover it to each guru that we do in subsequent episodes. And, yeah, we don't know what we're going to find. It's just going to be an interesting little investigation, I suppose. So number two is cultishness. So this is the cultivation of unhealthy social dynamics, in particular, fostering a strong in-group versus out-group atmosphere. It doesn't necessarily mean that they're establishing, you know, a cult community in some backwater part of the American side.

Cult-ish, Chris. Cult-ish. of the American side first of all. Cult-ish, Chris, cult-ish. Yes, cult-ishness. So some features that would be worth mentioning are use of flattery and indication that followers are a special group of free thinkers able to see past mainstream narratives. And also within this would fall the tendency

to establish a personal rapport with followers, present them as friends or collaborators and colleagues. And again, I don't want to do this for all of them, but we've often said that there are ways that you can do this that are not sinister. And some of the features extend out of the gurus fear, like personal interaction with followers. It's a very common thing in the web 2.0 era. Or doing shout outs to followers, Chris,

nothing wrong with that. Yeah, for example, or reading reviews. But the difference, the thing that marks it out as like slightly more sinister with the kind of people that we cover is that there's often a strong kind of parental component or authority figure where the followers are chastised when they behave in a way that the guru doesn't like or they threaten to withhold their content or these kind of things so we saw some of that when we discussed Eric Weinstein's Discord community with Dan. But another separate component of the cultishness feature is that the in-group versus out-group dynamics means that they are extremely charitable when it comes to friends and allies, not willing to disparage them publicly and willing to look for the best interpretation of even their

most ridiculous pronouncements. And that does not extend to the out-group, right? The out-group in general is a homogenous morass of bad takes, low quality criticism and enemies. I guess that in-group out-group distinction can take different forms with the IDW people that we've tended to cover so far they tend to define the in-group not just as the their their audience and their listeners their their select group but also they define it as people like us who in their minds are the people who are you know heterodox thinkers who are who are non-ideological, but above it all and committed to reason, etc. And the out group for them would be people who are purportedly more ideological, partisan, or convinced or enthralled to these institutional narratives. So they position

themselves as our in group is above it all. So it's a little bit like your classic cults, like the First Baptist, I forget what they're called, the extremist Baptist group in the United States, who would think of themselves as the elect and everyone outside as flawed and sinners in some way. But that's for IDW types. So it's worth mentioning that that will change.

That definition of the in-group and the out-group will change depending on how the group or the guru positions themselves. So if you're an anti-vaxxer, say, or you're into health and wellness, it could well be quite different. Yeah. So I just wanted to mention a nice example of this that's my current favourite is what we call the emperor's new clothes maneuver and the classic case is eric weinstein or it could have actually i think i

remember scott adams doing this too saying something like what i'm going to say next is very sophisticated so i don't expect all of you to be able to understand it but the more perceptive of you will and then that that will be followed by their hot take so obviously the manipulation going on here is that nobody wants to be the dullard that can't comprehend these these smart ideas they want to be one of the smart people one of the in-group so that so it it makes them more amenable to the message so yeah i'd fall out under cultishness too sure and i think the corollary of that specific point is that it's often presented that anybody who would disagree is fundamentally like limited so it isn't just

that you're super perceptive if you get it if If you don't get it, you're a moron. And Scott Adams is very explicit about that, isn't he? Yeah. So it's a low-quality criticism thing. It's just classifying any disagreement as essentially invalid in advance. invalid in advance. And in all those cases, there's always this supposed pristine realm of criticism or alternative views where people would be willing to engage and hear them out, but you just don't really ever see that. Or if you do see it, it's very minor differences from the take offered by the guru so yeah defining any negative assessment

of their view as essentially being a limitation of the person offering that is a is a cultish characteristic well done so that's cultishness done we're only up to number two but our listeners are in for the long haul chris as i said this is a halfway between the normal ridiculously long episode and they short uh no they're not short the like the special episodes which are just the normal length forecast so this will be almost ridiculously long all right well back to the grindstone we're up to number three i'll introduce this one and we've called this anti-establishment anti-establishmentarianism yeah why use a shorter word when you could yeah look and it's a little bit related to the previous one because especially

for the idw type people or heterodox free thinker or conspiracy theorist people they see themselves and this is true of anti-vaxxers as well and even when i think about it you know holistic health and spiritual health and wellness people they see themselves as anti the establishment and the establishment could be you know climate scientists epidemiologists the pharmaceutical industry the government and the and the government public health messaging or the universities and these other sources of knowledge so i think a really good guru good in inverted commas is always undermining trust in the establishment they'll generally be saying things like that they're corrupted by the incentive structures or they've got groupthink or some other kinds of reasons why they can't be trusted well in the

interest of keeping people's daily schedules not filled up by us i'll move on to grievance mongering because i think you did a good job with the anti-slabbering humanitarianism oh my god no no comment that's amazing chris yes so in part it's because I'm so eager to get to the next one. A personal favorite of mine and one which I think the importance of cannot be overstated in most of the gurus that we've looked at and that I think that we will look in the future is the grievance mongering. So this is the tendency for gurus to have their personal victimhood narratives that they carry around where they feel that their ideas are being suppressed by institutions, the media. What are you saying, Matt? That's a bad cough. Yes. And in general, there is a tendency

to have lists of enemies that people succeed on. So it's this sense that somebody has been hard on by not giving their fair shake. And often it's accompanied by, though we'll get to this, given their fair shake. And often it's accompanied by, though we'll get to this, the view that this is why their ideas have not been given, you know, due attention by the world or why people are failing to understand what's going on in the world. They're not able to hear the insights from the guru because the guru is being suppressed and has the goods and history to explain that to anyone that will listen. So yeah, it's just a frequent retelling of victim narratives and fixation on the people that are holding them back. It's also very convenient because it explains why when they claim for instance to have

discovered a revolutionary new theory of oh i don't know say physics quantum mechanics economics evolution evolution up just just random examples you know, it's very convenient because it kills two birds with one stone. On one hand, it plays into this narcissistic, self-aggrandizing mode and provides a convenient explanation for why there is very little evidence or very little support for their claims to brilliance. So yeah, the next one is narcissism. And this is a particularly important one because

when we look at these gurus, it does seem to be a common feature. And I think the best analogy is someone that we're all familiar with is Donald Trump. And he's someone who's been called a fascist and authoritarian and racist and all of these things. And he may well be, or he may well enact many things that fit with those descriptors. But in my humble opinion, what he's really all about is about Donald Trump, right? He's a rampant narcissist and everything he's doing is purely to perhaps not purely but primarily to fuel that psychosis now this is i guess people will call this an ad hominem but we do propose that many of the gurus are motivated by narcissism perhaps i don't look i don't think it's an ad hominem to know when people are presenting themselves as people with world-shaking insights that see things that almost no one else is talking about or willing to recognize and emphasize their own brilliance is unusual.

It's a really weird feature. Like when you, when we play the clips about people talking about how insightful and the level of knowledge that they have, it makes me physically cringe at times. And I'm not the one making the claim, right? Like it's, it defends my, my Northern Irish self-deprecation sense that anybody could make those levels of hyperbolic self-aggrandizing statements. So I don't think it's ad hominem. I think it's simply acknowledging the reality that self-promotion, self-aggrandizing, and the narcissistic streak is a really common and really important characteristic, maybe one of the most defining aspects about what makes someone a guru. And I think that's part of the reason that people

reacted negatively to us, including someone like ContraPoints, who is clearly openly self-deprecating, right? So for that reason, they don't seem to fit the guru template well. And I agree with that. So this is a feature that if we cover other people like ContraPoints, that's a part of the reason that maybe they aren't so widely recognized as gurus. Yeah. The good thing about this scoring system is that it helps illustrate why we think that's a part of the reason that maybe they aren't so widely recognized as gurus. Yeah. Yeah. The good thing about this scoring system is that it helps illustrate why we think someone that we cover actually isn't a guru, at least in the negative sense. I guess the one thing we have to mention is that obviously we're not using the word narcissism in a clinical sense. You know, we're making no clinical diagnoses here.

It's simply used in the- Is this Matthew Bryan attempting to avoid legal threats with your identification of yourself as a psychologist? That's good, Matt. Good. Yes, we are not offering any clinical diagnosis here. Actually, you know what, Chris? Let's just be doubly cautious and

relabel this narcissism-ish. Yeah, that's fantastic. That won't be hard for me to pronounce at all. So narcissism-ish. I just wanted to hear you try to pronounce it. And the other thing to be said about this self-aggrandizing, attention-seeking narcissism thing is that it does seem to be a feature of this new infosphere that we all inhabit which many people have recognized is a kind of attention economy where everybody is competing for people's limited attention and operating in pursuit of clicks and likes. And I feel pretty confident in saying that many of our gurus do pay close attention to the kinds of statements and signaling that they make on social media, and they respond to those incentives, basically signals of more attention. And to some degree, they, and all of us, are somewhat being

trained by these platforms and just the medium in which we inhabit to be more narcissistic. So this is something we had a very interesting conversation today with a philosophy professor, Ty Nguyen, which I actually hope we'll be able to interview on the podcast soon and he he talks about some of these issues so number six is what we have titled the cassandra complex the tendency for gurus to present themselves as warning of a danger that others cannot recognize and often that they are uniquely qualified to identify. So in terms of the gurus that we've covered, we've probably seen this most clearly in the James Lindsay example, right, where he explicitly compared himself to the scientists in 90s movies who were warning of impending disasters. I think this is a common feature

also of claiming to be able to explain the present social moment or elements of social fractioning or, you know, the stuff that we see around us today with the culture war and with the collapse of trust in institutions and so on. So basically diagnosing the social ills of the day trusted in institutions and so on. So basically diagnosing the social ills of the day and identifying where the threat is coming from. What's the cause? What's the core issue of this threat? And another component of that, or something that's highly related to it, is the tendency to present themselves as having correctly diagnosed the situation, not only now, but in the past. And so examples would be that you were aware of the financial collapse, right? You saw it coming before anyone else, but were ignored. What do you think, Matt?

Given my deep familiarity with the character cassandra i'm i'm worried that i might have mixed some nuances but uh how did i do yeah you you had it you had a dead right so yeah definitely they do style themselves as somebody who is is warning people of a usually of a dire threat they may be positioning themselves in a situation where they are the ones who can see clearly what's coming and the rest of the sheep or the institutions or whatever can't see it. Left the sheep on that. That's the sheep. And it's something that you talk about a lot, which is this tendency of gurus to essentially make a lot of predictions, a lot of hot takes.

It's going to happen. That's going to happen. And they fire off a lot of them. And most of them just quietly vanish into the ether. But if they make a hit, if they get one of those predictions right, then obviously you can bet that they'll be returning to that and crowing about how they called it yeah and it's also as as is always the case with those predictions the definition of what is a hit and the definition of uh you know a precise prediction

is extremely flexible so the ability to claim hits is pretty much always there, right? Like, as long as you word things carefully enough. So getting hits and even actually retrospectively going back to things and reinterpreting them seems to be a common feature. It's quite similar to the tricks that psychics and tarot card readers use. It is. Yeah, it is. So like I say, the Cassandra complex, that famous figure from Russian literature. No.

I'm just demonstrating my galaxy brain nature. I know all the grits and that's that's why i understand completely that reference we are cementing our reputation as anti-gurus in every sense of the word so we've called the next one revolutionary theories and these are these claims to have revolutionary theories and super deep accomplishments in one or more fields of endeavour. The guru might hypothetically claim that they're worthy of a Nobel Prize, for instance. They were that good.

They might claim to have insights into, say, psychology, putting together theories and material from other sources to essentially provide a completely unique point of view. And the other aspect of it is this thing that you've coined, Chris, scientific hipsterism, which is this idea that the guru isn't content with the most straightforward answer, the kind of answer that most people might believe. They really want to mark themselves out as being special and different. So they are drawn to an alternative take, which distinguishes themselves as having that unique insight. Or it may be that their take is the same as everyone else's,

but for different reasons. So, for instance, they might, well, yes, I don't think that COVID was released from a Chinese laboratory, a part of a secret weapons program, but it's not for the reasons you think. It's actually for this reason. There's a beautiful illustration of that that brett weinstein offers where he casts doubt and skepticism in in the manner of climate change skeptic about the accuracy of climate models and the reliability of the measurements that we have and projections and so on.

So all of the familiar things. But yet he doesn't arrive at the usual skeptic outcome. And that's because of the YAML creators. Haven't heard of the YAML creators, Matt? You wouldn't have heard of them. No, because I'm not very cool. I'm not tuned in to what's cool at the moment what what are they these are like uh large keeping holes in the siberian peninsula which have emerged possibly because of like i think

pockets of methane or i i can't remember that i looked in there at the time but like they're very visually striking and they're a lesser known thing and they are potentially connected to climate change. But essentially, they are not the key piece of evidence in that edifice. But for Brett, those are one of the key pieces of evidence that convince him. Those are one of the key pieces of evidence to convince him. And it is not things like the IPCC report or the general consensus of the relevant scientific experts. It's these visually striking, lesser known geological features. And I think that's like the nice illustration of the tendency. Like I can almost imagine someone at a dinner party saying,

you know, the YAML creators, oh yeah, you wouldn't have heard about them. Yeah, I know. So it's all about that very strong drive to have the special insights that nobody else has. So when they are not happy with taking the contrarian point of view in this case saying that climate change isn't isn't happening the next best thing is to go well yes i do agree with the thing that the everyday people all the rest of you think but not for the same reasons for much more interesting reasons yeah i'm just a better person before you segue i wasn't going to segue i wanted to say one more okay i'll say one more thing in you segue. I wasn't going to segue. I wanted to say one more. Okay, I'll say one more thing.

Oh, no, you weren't going to segue. My segue detector malfunctioned, so I'll just reset it. So please continue. Okay, final word on this topic is I just wanted to distinguish this, number seven, revolutionary theories from number one, the galaxy brainness. Because if you remember, galaxy brain is is about being a polymath and being like an expert at sort of everything whereas this so that's more about breadth

this one in terms of having those deep takes is more about well depth yeah yeah i have my own deep insight to offer which is that, so the clearest example of this is when you actually claim to have a theory that will revolutionize a discipline or that can resolve some social problem. That's clear, right? You either have those or you don't. But I think there's degrees of it in that there are gurus that we've looked at who are not really offering their own individual revolutionary theory. They're more offering ways of thinking and criticizing the mainstream views. But that's different from that you have some new science that you want to introduce the

world to if they will only listen. And it might fit in line with, if you think about Scientology, the system of analysis that it offers, Dianetics, this new science for understanding the self and working out all your personal problems. That to me would be the prototypical example of somebody having a revolutionary theory. Whereas there are gurus who don't claim to have such a specific thing. Like Scott Adams might have insights into persuasion and techniques of manipulation, but he's not so clearly outlining the Adams field of manipulation or something like that. Maybe this is me not knowing his content well enough,

but it's just to say I think there's degrees. Yeah. No, I think you're right about that. I think he would fall short of claiming to have revolutionized a whole field or having had discovered something that fundamentally would change the world, had discovered something that fundamentally would change the world. And that is something that's claimed by, say, Scientologists or certain other gurus. Yes, yes. Okay, just a question on this.

Sorry, Matt. I'll never let you escape number seven. But Jordan Peterson on this, where would you put him? Because I don't think he has something that he would regard as completely revolutionizing psychology or physics or so on. But he definitely does have a kind of view of the world and the system for interpreting what's going on in the world, which is very particular to him and which has specific concepts like post-modern neo-marxism and whatnot so like for me i i put him maybe somewhere in the

middle but what about you actually i was going to say exactly the same i would have put him somewhere in the middle yeah that's because we're great people who think alike. So, yeah. You must be right. This is just showing the gyrometer is a very precise instrument. Yes. This is inter-rater reliability. Are we ready to go into number eight? Well, I was going to segue. Look, I had a good one.

Go ahead and segue. All right. Here's a beautiful segue. In contrast to the clarity that we just offered with our gurometer, the next category is titled pseudo-propound bullshit. That was a great segue, Chris. I'm proud of you. That was good. Yeah, it would have worked if it wasn't for you pesky Australians.

I would have got away with it. Yeah, it would have worked if it wasn't for you pesky Australians. I would have got away with it. In any case, this is a category which we took the title from a psychology paper, which is quite well known, looking at the tendency for people to interpret meaning into things which look profound and complex. Well, Chris, I should just say that yeah that paper has got a marvelous title it's called on the uses and abuses of pseudo profound bullshit but it's also worth saying that this is something that's studied by psychologists but also is studied in the in the

philosophy literature as well so yeah yeah so it might surprise some people but bullshit is a technical psychological and philosophical term are you saying philosophers actually did research on something and produced uh insight this is when i say research i'm using putting my fingers in the air and waving them around yes they do research in the sense that they they think about it and they write about it wow i was i'll just delete those emails i was sending to liam and aaron but uh yeah sadly that this won't be an example to tell them but so uh being the expert in this that you are uh what is pseudo-proven bullshit okay so we already talked about sort of the revolutionary theories and that's more about the content. Yeah. They're claiming that they have content, a revolutionary theory of some kind.

This bullshit is really about the form, about the manner in which nothing is essentially presented as something. So the master of bullshit who was often cited is Deepak Chopra. And I don't have any Deepak Chopra-isms to hand, but I might just quickly Google that while we talk. But if people are familiar with him, that's the perfect example. So it sounds very meaningful. It sounds like something quite important and deep is being said. But if you actually stop and think about it you realize that very little is being said at all yeah maybe it's a bit like techno babble in star trek where it sounds like they're actually making sciencey discussions but it's just jibber-jabber using scientific terms to advance a plot point and similarly we've seen with gurus like Jordan Peterson and Russell Brand have this

remarkable ability, which Dan Gilbert noted with Eric Weinstein, that they're able to link together complex metaphors in a very poetic way and often to create impressive edifices of layered metaphors to make rather banal points. So this ties in a little bit with, you know, references to literature and theories, unnecessary references, because that always helps if the metaphor is from some obscure discipline or unknown scientific theory to help bolster the credibility of it. Yeah, yeah. So there's a wide variety of techniques and flourishes that one can use to give that sensation of something very important

is being said while actually saying very little. I think it's broader than the Deepak Chopra-isms, but I'll i'll just read out a couple just because they're fun okay see if you can spot the problems with these with these quotes chris it is the nature of babies to be in bliss that yeah i like that okay that's okay let's let's not let's not overanalyze this no No, I just, given that I currently have a one-year-old baby, I would say it's not the only aspect of his nature. That is true.

As a parent, I agree with you there. Here's another one. There are no extra pieces in the universe. Everyone is here because he or she has a place to fill, and every piece must fit itself into the big jigsaw puzzle i'm conjuring up images of nazi germany and the people fitting into the cogs of the machine you will contribute to the state apparatus but i don't think that's what he has in in mind there but yeah that's it's beautiful in a way last one to think is to practice brain chemistry that's true that's true when you're

thinking there's chemical things happening in your brain yeah so that gives you a sense but it's much more than that like that's so that's kind of saying nothing while appearing to say something so it's the kind of you know it could be the kind of thing that you see on those inspirational memes but it could also be just a kind of double talk where you you say a but it's kind of also not a it's also it's it's maybe a and b but also neither it depends on your point of view that kind of thing yeah i think this actually is a skill because you know we often highlight how authoritative and and clear speaking many of the people that we cover are. And this might be partly a process of, you know, editing, not that we would know anything about that. But I think it is still true to say

that most of the gurus have a high level of verbal agility, that they're able to express themselves in a way that sounds authoritative, which is often evocative so yeah that like i think it's a genuine skill and can't bleed into charisma but doesn't necessarily have to like scott adams like scott adams yes we've got the charisma of a rattlesnake i'm sorry let's just test out this particular one. If you had to rate Jordan Peterson on this, what score would you give him out of five? Five. Five, yeah.

Not much hesitation there, Chris. Well, I still have the alchemical lemon and the great crystalline structure lodged firmly in my databank, so I'll never get that time back matt very good all right there's we could say more about that but we'll press on number nine yeah a personal favor another personal favor it's almost like we planned this out um based on what we thought okay yeah i was meaning the order that we're doing them in although we didn't plan that out so i don't know why i was hinting at the conspiracies but that

is relevant because this category is conspiracy mongering oh yeah great segue um anyway yeah so conspiracy mongering is something i talk about all the time. And I think it's a really common characteristic of gurus. And it is what it says on the tin, this tendency to present that underlying circumstances and events. There are conspiratorial forces, which are often mainstream media, government institutions, scientific bodies that are conspiring together for some nefarious end, often to control society or to advance a particular narrative. Yeah, I guess the key thing about this, this is standard stuff. It's a well researched area. Conspiracy theories theories they basically involve uh the secret

coordination of powerful and malevolent groups and institutions who are operating in secret and yeah powerful influences in the world and they're kind of the go-to core factor to explain events so even though their theories are kind of simple in a way because it's always aliens or it's always the lizard people or the New World Order or whatever, there's often quite elaborate theories constructed to explain what can be quite mundane events. And something that you've pointed out a few times, Chris, is the strategic use of disclaimers.

So it goes straight to that. I'm not saying it was aliens, but it was aliens meme. You know, people kind of know that conspiracy theorizing isn't great. So there's quite a clever technique to say, look, I know this sounds like a conspiracy theory, but we're just exploring some hypotheses here. So that's a bit of a red flag as well. The other interesting thing about this factor of conspiracy mongering is that they sometimes make it personal. So there aren't just broad scale global conspiracies to cover up or create lies around climate change or something. There's actually specific conspiracies that are targeting them and their

friends. So, Scientologists, for instance, believe that there are powerful groups out to get them. The Westboro First Baptist Church believes in conspiracies about the powerful institutions are out to get them. And some of our gurus have these tailor-made conspiracies that the world is targeting them or suppressing them and their friends. So it does dovetail nicely with that grievance-mongering that we discussed earlier. Yeah. I think this ties into a lot of things because it's also, you know,

the suppression of their revolutionary theories is often tied into these conspiracy edifices. And like you said, it often involves hinting that they agree, but not for the normal reasons, with well-known conspiracies. It's a kind of propensity towards conspiracism as an exploratory framework that is valid, right? And which offers good explanatory power for the world and why it is and why people would oppose their insights. And I think conspiracy theorists are often overlapping with the kind of people that are called gurus. So there are gurus who are conspiracy theorists and vice versa, and there are some who are not. But I think a low level of conspiracism is almost a prerequisite for being a guru. Maybe there are people who don't do it,

but I think they would definitely be more rare. You know, it's kind of ironic because it sort of fits into what's his face, Foucauldian worldview, right? That everything is about force and power, or at least the popular portrayal of him. And our gurus are often reeling against that kind of model. But in a very real way they do

see society as a competing array of forces and the really interesting thing is that even though the gurus like scott adams or eric weinstein rail against these malevolent forces of exerting power and manipulation and secret networks of influence, they are actually quite proud to report on themselves enacting those self-same manipulative tactics, which is, I think, an interesting giveaway in terms of essentially what you just said, that they really do have a very cynical worldview that is primarily about the exercise of of power yeah so just to make sure i got it right you mean

they're identifying those forces in the world or they are crowing about their ability to manipulate the world using those powers i'm saying that they crow about their ability to manipulate the world using those powers i'm saying that they crow about their ability to manipulate the world we heard scott adams be quite proud of the deceptive techniques that that that he uses he he is but do you think in general people are i'm also thinking of for instance the, the Brett Weinstein story where they were railing against the supposed academic networks of influence that were suppressing them. But also going ahead and using their connections to do quite what is in academia quite unusual things. For instance, getting very important people to write a letter to a journal to say that you really should accept this paper.

Oh, yeah, they definitely do it. But I don't think they are aware of, like in the case of Eric and Brett, I don't think they would acknowledge that they were doing anything manipulative there or attempting to use network. Are you saying that they lack self-awareness? Yeah. But look, I actually think that there is another point where they do overlap more directly, which is Eric and various other gurus would regard themselves as being able to understand how systems of power work and whether or not they make use of those structures. They all often cast themselves as being aware of it. And if they wanted to, they would be able to ascend or to influence things, but they aren't going to play the games

that people want them to. And so there's this presentation of seeing through the illusion, right? Peeking behind the curtain, but that they themselves are not subject to the same restrictions or the same dynamics that limit others. So in that sense, it is kind of having your cake and eating it because they are still often interested and willing to play with those networks but they're kind of presenting it as they're doing it on their own terms yeah and look i definitely agree with your characterization as peeking behind the curtain then they they have a view into the hidden world about what how things really work and so someone like scott adams or eric weinstein are strongly implying that they have insight into that and you know

that's that's part of the wisdom that they share with their followers yeah and i mean you already hit on that but the strategic disclaimers thing is a really key component to this general tendency to conspiracy monger because if you're going to conspiracy monger you're going to get called a conspiracy theorist and you need to have a strategy for how you will deflect those criticisms and by and large it tends to be iller to point out that conspiracy real conspiracies exist. And therefore, kind of like the Galileo gambit was the people who talked about like Nixon and Watergate, was that a conspiracy? So you would have disparaged them. But also to include statements that make it so that you have the ability to retreat from any claim, right? Or to emphasize for different audiences that you're not saying the Twin Towers

was brought down by an insider job. You're just asking questions, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, those are really good points. And yeah, you almost can't overemphasize the degree to which this conspiratorial reasoning is the framework, is the glue that holds pretty much all of the argumentation and content together. It really, the thing that distinguishes this stuff of poor

argumentation generally is making large leaps or positing these, you know, systems with many intricate moving parts with very little evidence and, you know, cherry-picking evidence and ignoring the other evidence. So really, like if you took away the conspiratorial glue, that logic, that framework, then they really wouldn't be able to say very much because you need to engage in that conspiratorial ideation in order to be expansive in the various theories and ideas and um suggestions that are proposed yeah it's like

it's a complete partner to the anti-establishmentarianism category the two of them pair up nicely so that i think leads us to our our final beautiful rounded number 10 category it is grifting grifting grifting this is doing terrible stuff like um pressuring people to become patrons on your on your podcast so that you can pay for stuff. Yeah, this is that fourth wall irony thing we talked about with ContraPoint. Yeah, we're very deft at that. Yeah, I think that the level of income, however, makes it a different proposition from us and the people that we're talking about. But yeah, so grifting essentially is the way that people might, this is a common accusation in the current atmosphere. The implication is often that

people are not sincere. They're just out to make like a quick buck. But I don't actually see the two things as in contradiction because I think in many cases, the people are sincere insofar as they believe what they're selling, but they are then perfectly willing to use it to make a profit. And we could call grifting profiteering because I think that's the element of it that makes it into a guru feature. The willingness not to just like have books, you know, this is what like all public intellectuals or all prominent figures will have something

because they, you know, they have an income. So in many cases, they are selling books or they are selling courses or whatever, but there's degrees and elements of profiteering like willingness to shill supplements or to monetize content in a way that is more about like branding, putting your name on things.

I think that's the thing which i'm envisioning because so it doesn't mean that all the other stuff isn't there this isn't like an or to me it's an and you can be a grifter and be somebody who genuinely believes in your insights yeah yeah look i i like this category even though i don't necessarily like the term just because it's you know calling someone a grifter is just is has been overused we could say profiteering yeah we can call it profiteering um and look i just want to distinguish it from normal monetization or making an income like if something like you and i don't make an income from doing podcasting or whatever but you know some people do and there's nothing inherently wrong with that. So if ContraPoints is getting advertising revenue from YouTube or even people

subscribing to a sub stack or a Patreon for a particular guru, giving them a few dollars a month, you know, I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with that. Or for instance, being an author and, you know, not giving your books away but selling them you know and getting royalties like any author would so that's all normal stuff i guess one can get hints so that grifting is going on like when you say that some in alex jones type style they're selling brain enhancement supplements which clearly even someone as mental as Alex Jones knows is just ripping people off. Wow. Okay, bad example, Chris. There's a really good example, which is from Alex Jones,

which is that he is now, although he wasn't before, in the coronavirus skeptic arena, right? It's all exaggerated. It's not that dangerous, blah, blah, blah. Masks are about social control. However, he sells masks on his website and he actually had to address this recently this contradiction but but that's the thing right it's it's completely counter to his ideology but it's it's a way to make money yeah

it's clearly profiteering i mean a great example i forget his name unfortunately but there was a famous australian health and wellness guru who recently got cancelled for being a Nazi. We talked about him. But I mentioned then that he, as well as being a COVID skeptic, he was also selling some sort of machine for $10,000, which claimed to cure basically all illnesses, including COVID. So that's grifting, right? including COVID. So that's grifting, right? Yeah. Also the infamous vaccines cause autism guy. What's his face? Wakefield, Andrew Wakefield. It's worth noting that he was at the time that he was writing his publications, casting doubt on single dose vaccines. He was also had a patent or was involved with some company that had a patent for multiple dose vaccines, he was also had a patent or was involved with some company that had a

patent for multiple dose vaccines, right? So he was financially incentivized to cast doubt on the single combined dose vaccines. In any case, I think a good illustration of why this category is not necessarily so completely clear cut is like there there are gurus who i don't particularly like in terms of you know what they do or what their output is like the weinsteins and there are elements where they are monetizing followers right you know they have patreons and they but i wouldn't actually class them as particularly high on this yeah where i would jp sears yes alternatively so i don't think it's just the case of us saying it's fine for the people we like to make profit or the people that

we agree with that's not the point it's it's more about kind of the level of crass commercialization that is in your your guru's spiel and jp so jp series for me is a four or five and someone like eric or brett are probably a two or something like that yeah i'd agree with that i i'm sure they would quite like to make um as much money as they could but that's true of a lot of people i don't see ridiculous amounts of crass commercialization or exploitation in a financial way but if you take someone like jpc as in his connections to uh the organization the london real which has complete nut cases like oh what's what's the lizard guy what's his name david ake david ike the guy who came up with with those um crazy theories they scammed like 1.6 million dollars from

from their followers to help them shift all their content from youtube to a private platform where they would then charge them um much larger amounts of money to access a blatant case of grifting so long story short i know you have to go soon chris i think number 10 is a good category and we are done we have a bonus points uh round though you're not out of the woods yet listeners we're not done yet uh we we now we might think of more of these in fact people could write in and suggest any uh suggestions for bonus points but at the moment we have we will award bonus points on the Gurometer for every invented neologism or acronym that the guru comes up with.

Yeah, prominent ones because there are people who invent them every day. So it would take us too long to catalogue. But ones that have slipped into recognised usage, I think, are good or that they commonly are known for, right? I was just going to say, if they invent the acronyms or the neologisms in the content we cover, then it's only fair to give them some points for it. Yes, agreed. Agreed. do this more frequently, but a bespoke terminology and vocabulary is something that you find in cult communities. And I think a lot of gurus use as branding. We haven't covered him, but I think

Nicholas Taleb is one such person who has a habit of making books to advance a specific concept. And the issue to which that these are very innovative is one that we might consider, but it's certainly true that they are good at making themselves associated with specific concepts. So, so yeah, bonus points. Bonus points. I mean, look, we could technically fold something like this into number eight, this, you know, profound bullshit where neologisms and digitally technical sounding or acronyms people do intuitively associate that with sciencey technical type writing so um if we really tried we could fold it into that but i think it's fine

to have a bonus round so we'll we'll leave it out and we are open to more suggestions for bonus points. Agreed. Yes. We're so any, any suggestions, email us at decoding the gurus at gmail.com, or you can message us on Twitter at gurus pod. And we are both individually on Twitter at our first C dent.

That's yours, right, Matt? And mine is C underscore Kavna. So look at that. I just did the segue, Matt. And I also did a smooth, beautiful outline of ways that you can contact us. Wow.

How was that? What would you rate that? A segue and an outro together. God, I'd give that a five out of five. That's, you know, particularly since you've never done that successfully before. So yeah, full points. Me too. Me too.

That's what I'd give myself. So yeah, next week we will have the Douglas Murray episode out as promised. But hopefully this is interesting. And like Matt says, we'll make this available in some document somewhere. And in the coming weeks, if you want to play along, you can score the gurus as you go. We should make some sort of document that people can print out. So like a little sheet that they can mark it on. Yeah.

And we can monetize it, Matt. Yeah. Five bucks a copy. All right. That's fantastic. All right. It's over and out. Thanks, guys. Yeah right. That's fantastic. All right. It's over. Over and out.

Thanks, guys. Yeah. See you next time. Bye. Ciao. Thank you.