Decoding the Gurus - Special Supplementary Material: Two Psychologists, One Anthropologist, Three Beers

Episode Date: March 8, 2025

In this special quasi-crossover episode, we stare deeply into the abyss while enjoying a beverage with renowned psychologist and occasional podcast co-host, Mickey Inzlicht.P.S. The Decoding of Naomi Klein is coming next week!Two Psychologists, One Anthropologist, Three Beers00:27 Introduction05:57 Mickey's Sabbatical in Japan12:13 Sensemaking 3.025:25 Francis Foster's Bizarre Podcast Roast34:38 Sabine Hossenfelder thinks Academia is Communism36:11 The Irony of YouTube Incentives39:34 Proper Criticisms of Academia43:28 Is Academia Centrally Planned?46:24 Culture War Pandering53:53 Entering the Matt-rix55:00 In Bed with the Russians notices the Red Scare Wounded Bird Pose01:00:03 On the etiquette of Replications01:06:17 Academic Debates on the Effect of Culture on Visual Illusions: Joe Henrich vs. Amir & Firestone01:11:18 The Legend of Captain Cook: Sahlins vs Obeyesekere01:12:58 Ideas vs People: Sarah Haider, Colin Wright and an epidemic of hypocrisy 01:17:19 Admitting Mistakes and Research Integrity01:24:38 Interpersonal Relationships vs. Adversarial Systems01:33:24 Wastage in Academia01:39:49 Elon Musk, Pregnancy, and Modern Cults01:49:01 Signing OffThe full episode is available for Patreon subscribers (1hr 51 mins).Join us at: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingTheGurusSourcesMickey's Substack: Speak Now, Regret LaterInzlicht, M., Cameron, C. D., D’Cruz, J., & Bloom, P. (2024). In praise of empathic AI. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 28(2), 89-91.Chicago. And a summary article by Mickey!Bad Boys Done Good vs Triggernometry host Francis FosterSabine Hossenfelder - Should we defund academia?Alexander Beiner - From Rebel Wisdom to KainosJoe Henrich's thread responding to the Dorsa and Chaz paperChris' old blog on Captain Cook and the second partAmir, D., & Firestone, C. (2025, January 25). Is visual perception WEIRD? The Müller-Lyer illusion and the Cultural Byproduct Hypothesis. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/y7mtfIn Bed with the Russians - Red Scared

Hello Hello and welcome to Decoding the Three Psychologists, Two Beers, Crossover Extravaganza, Podcast Psychology Crossover, me Chris Kavanaugh, him, Matthew Brown and me, Mickey Inzleck. Oh, that's weird. That's unusual. That's different. Hey, I don't have a beer. You both have a beer. Right. No, there's for me. No, you were sleeping. You are. Matt was asleep. We had a designated time when agreed upon time and he wasn't there and we had to wake him up, send him messages. But here he is and he's looking quite bright eyed and bushy tailed at the minute. Matt, you don't have to take this guy's abuse. I met him in real life.

I'm not nearly as fearsome as he sounds on the air. So, and he's much shorter in real life than you might imagine as well. I also know I'm rather short and I'm taller than you are definitely taller. But that's it. Like, Matt's not a giant, but he is bigger than he appears here. So that's true. I am a giant. Don't listen to him, Mickey. I am a giant.

No, I know I'm big bully. And Chris just played back to Mickey the supercut of my squeaky chair. It's like it's really silent, Matt. There's something missing that's just like you sound so clear today. Yes, I'm sitting on the new chair, the cross-picture's hundreds of dollars and I don't care for it. I do not prefer it. Try and what happens if you lean back and forward? Just give it a word.

Nothing. Silence. That's incredible. I told my daughter Emma about this and she got off to when, oh my dad, you're being cyber bullied. You're victim. They know about cyber bullying because they teach you better at school. It's not allowed. Beware of cyber bullying.

I'll be cyber bullied on my own show. This is it. Yeah. That's it. Well, the listeners appreciate it, Matt. And cheers. Mm. Cheers.

Cheers, Matt. Matt, you can grab a beer anytime you like. I can. I'm gonna go get a beer. I have beer. I can have beer. You can, you can. You guys talk amongst yourselves. You talk amongst yourselves.

You have agency. You can do it. Look at that chair looks nice. It's like a Brian Leller kind of chair. But this is an older chair, right? No, he bought this. Oh, that's the newer one. That's the new one. If it was the other one, you would hear it squeak night while the no one is there. It would still be squeaking. So, yeah, so since Matt's away, I'll say for those who don't know, we are a spin-off podcast of three psychologists for beers. There is a follow-up podcast that was around before us that was hosted by Mickey and Joel Limbar. UL. Thank you, Dennis. Thank you Dennis, put it this way, sorry UL. And Mickey is still involved with that? You're like an emeritus.

Yeah, I'm an emeritus, a podcast host, although I just recorded one a few days ago on, we talked a whole grab bag of issues. We talked about cannabis, a dissecting of a paper, a terrible paper written by Norval Ko, who's the head of the National Institute of Drug Abuse in the US. And it's a quite poor paper, pre-registered.

Pre-registered. Horrendous. The actual title of the paper should be, Years of Smoking Weed Does Nothing, in terms of brain effects, which is for me an endorsement. That's it. Yeah, talked about that. Then we also talked about Empathic AI.

There's a paper written in The Guardian, which I strongly disagree with. Yeah. But I'm on occasionally whenever UL will have me back. And Mickey has a sub stack. He's a resident of sub stackers down as Tom Harris would say. Ah, yes, yes. So that is bringing me lots of joy, lots of pleasure. It's called, uh, what is it called?

Uh, speak now regret later, which is a name I regret, but, uh, in the summer it felt, felt right. And now that I'm as well in the winter, not so sure, but it's, uh, it's my brand now, so I'm just going with it. That's it. I'm not so sure, but it's my brand now, so I'm just going with it. That's it. And Mickey's podcast is still going. UL is the main host now, but rotating co-host.

But it was a victim of the woke mind Paris. There is actually a kind of interesting tale. Actually, you're not wrong about that. It took a long hiatus because I left voluntarily, not because I was... He wasn't cancelled, all right? He left voluntarily. Yeah, I left because I was bored. And it was a lot of work. I think Matt knows that you do all the work, right? Chris, is that correct, Matt? Yeah, that's the way. Right. Well, it's a lot of work. I am. I take care of the big picture.

He takes care of the details. Yes. So, yes, you can say that he does a lot of the work. Yes. Yes. We split the work with two psychologists for bears and man, it's a lot of work to put an episode together. It is. Tell more, Mickey. I'm going to. The editing in particular, that's the general thing.

But but look, I'm not going to say anything because 90% of my editing was removing squeaky chair noises and I'm not going to have to do that. So I feel this is a victory. A great burden has been lifted from your shoulders. But how are you liking Japan? How long have you been there so far? 24 hours? I've only just arrived.

I arrived a couple of days ago and I must admit I'm still rather jet lagged. Although I'm starting to perk up right now, so that's good. You know, I'm here with my family, my wife and two teenage children, which sounds like it would be a horror because it would be in a small room with two teens. But you know, they've really, my kids have really brought it in and they're having a great time. They're doing a lot of shopping mostly. They're sitting over there so quietly. Completely silent.

They're enjoying the place. Yeah, they are and we're leaving them alone. They're exploring as part of Tokyo on their own. Mostly eating, shopping. That's basically it. That's all you need. Yeah. Yeah. So far, so good. And I'm on sabbatical. So typically I like to travel.

So my first sabbatical, I was in your neck of the woods, Matt. I was in in Queensland, actually. God, yeah. God, you went there. I spent five months, I get this, Matt, in Noosa. That's where his roller lives. There's bull sharks in the water. Yes, that's right. There's bull sharks in the river, in the Noosa River. So I spent five months there, and people who know of Noosa are like, how do you swing a sabbatical there? And I'm like, all you need is an internet

connection, a quiet place to work'm like, all you need is an internet connection, a quiet place to work, that's all you really need. And there's a beautiful library right near a cultural community center. I loved it, I loved it in New Sur. Oh, is it the library next to the river? Oh, is it? No, no, no, that's a different building, sorry.

I'm not sure. It's been a while, it's been like 13 years ago now. But my children now did not want you to bring them here. They're like, yeah, we don't want to go. But why not? Is Japan? Yes. And they're like, because we have to be in school. We have to be with our friends. And we have a life. What? Yeah, pretty odd.

But they're very happy to be here now and not thinking about their friends. Although they do speak to them every single day while they're here. But so far so good. I'm quite enjoying it, noticing that the, you know, some of the typical things. Cueing in the escalator is very cute. Yep, yep, yep.

And that's not just because I'm there. I mean, I have, I increased the cute factor by about 10%, but 90% is Japanese people. Yes. And yeah, so far so good. But we really just arrived. So I can't I don't have, you know, the rich cultural commentary like you did, for example, in the US. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I know. I was there too long. I went too deep. I went I went native. You saw the underbelly. He's my guy. He's my guy. Yeah, I know you had a particular fondness for the Midwest, if I recall.

You even had kind things to say about St. Louis, which is a place that I've had the pleasure of visiting at once and didn't do nothing about it, but I was not unhappy to leave. I'm sorry people. This is why his podcast was canceled. He's insulting every city. And I also have to give Mickey credit because we are recording this from my office, which I won't talk to myself, but just to say it's not exactly the central hub in Tokyo, it might in fact be in a different prefecture. So Mickey has been dragged far out of the center

like Dorothy to arrive at this high quality microphone. I don't know. I've no idea what Dorothy has to do with any of this. You're not in Kansas anymore. You know that? I got the reference. Very oblique reference. That's how we were. Quite makes sense. Yeah. It's Mickey. Shoo shoo.

You'll call them. I it's yes. Andy, you've been out of the podcast game too much. So I feel that Matt is way too easy on you. I feel that he he is, you know, the target of your abuse. Now I want to give a little. Now, no, no. I'm on team abuse. Now I want to give a little now. No, no. No. You're on team that you just haven't had a good chair.

Audio or orally. No, we have to be careful. What's the one or oral or oral appears? Yes. Yeah. Let's make that clear. That's what I'm clearing that Matt has done. So Mickey is here, and we had you and we interviewed you about replication crisis. We really probably should use your expertise, but we thought that puts pressure on you.

You have to have insightful things to say. You have to think about stuff and it would be kind of nicer if you had a more relaxing supplementary material experience. Who doesn't like supplementary? You put everything in there. I love it. It's my favorite part of your show. Yeah. So normally I'm not going to assume, Mickey, that you know the format because I know that you're probably an Uber fan, but just in case, just a new chance.

We normally play a couple of clips and go through general topics normally related to the gurus that we've covered on stuff that we don't want to do a full episode or things that we just like want to be able to talk freely without the confines of having to play. But in some bizarre twist, it's ended up that I still have to prepare. So I do have a variety of clips on topics. So it's not just like a magic of podcast. It's actually true that you prepare everything,

Matt wakes up and you just play stuff for him. Is it true? He dances to the clips. That's not true. He's been listening to Naomi Klein's lectures like me for the past week. He's been sending me notes about them suggestions. So Matt does listen for the me in episodes, but I feel it's better when he's organically surprised by the content for the, you know, it's more authentic. It's a natural reaction for the supplementary materials and that's okay.

Excellent. Yeah. So the first one, Matt, the first topic. So do you know what the sense makers are? I've learned about them from you. And I, I know you, both of you have a soft spot for them, but every time you talk about them, they sound like literally the most annoying humans on this planet. Aren't you at university with John Vervecky?

I am. Just a separate question. So we'll go further on that point. But so there was a website that was called Rebel Wisdom. It used to be run in part by a guy called David Fuller. They had some run in with Brett Weinstein. You may or may not remember. And they were like a hub for sensemaking.

They would often, you know, kind of arrange events and talk about sensemaking stuff. I had a pretty good relationship with the guy, David Fuller. He's now incognito. He's removed himself. He's basically just not online at all. But his partner at Rebel Wisdom, the other person, has posted a blog post that they're rebranding. So they're no longer Rebel Wisdom. The era of Rebel Wisdom is done. That was culture war 2.0. We're into the next evolution now. So his co-founder, Alexander Berner, made a kind of sub-stack post. He said some sub-stack. And he talked about how they're swapping from rebel wisdom to Kanoos. Kanoos. Okay. And I feel I have to read a little bit about what Kanoos is bringing to sense making and see what you think about this.

Okay. So this is dramatic reading. Kanoos was born from a longing I have to combine sense making with artistry and a frustration with the notion that we can think our way out of the crisis we're in. We'll also have to dance our way out, to sing our way through, and release the wild potential we all hold in our bodies. We won't find lasting solutions to environmental collapse, the meaning crisis, institutional decay,

and other wicked problems we're facing by relying on old perspectives. We need new ways of seeing and being that help us to move with a world that is rhythmic and unpredictable, intense and gentle, dark and alive. K-NOS is a gathering point for different perspectives. Heterodox sense-making and systems theory, academics and occultists, artists and intellectuals. Bringing these perspectives together is fun, but it's also vital. If we try to detach from popular culture and the gritty reality of human expression, we come

up with ideas that don't survive in the real world. And if we can't see beyond culture or escape the confines of our own minds, our ideas become limited and pro kill. So as an opener, what do you what do you think about the next stage of the evolution of sense making? Is this exciting? I actually think dancing our way out of a climate crisis actually makes a lot of sense. And I and I maybe will dance right now. That's, I mean, we can try. There's nothing else. Matt, what about you? Are you excited for this injection in the sense making? What it was lacking was kind of rhythmic. Oh, yeah. I mean, see, the problem with sense-making is it was too restrained, too restrictive.

They're too buttoned down, too constrained by old ways of thinking. This is a much needed refresh, I think, Chris. It's good, I think, and fortunate that the kind of rhythmic, expressive, dancer-sizing way of thinking they're proposing is not only just the thing that is needed right now to solve the climate crisis, the meaning crisis, the decay of our institutions, but it's also fun. That's good luck, isn't it? It'd be boring if the thing that was most needed right now was just like, I don't know, accounting or something. No, it's this.

I did feel like that wasn't some, you know, when I was listening to the SenSpeaker SenSpeak and they would often reference the need to like engage in, you know, the kind of things our species have done throughout evolutionary history, get together beside the campfire, dance, playing on the drums and so on. I do feel that they did have this element already, but I guess, you know, it's going to be more emphasized. There's going to be more interpretive dance, more bongo performances. And yeah, I for one welcome our new Sense-Creating Masters. Sam Harris should be here. So is there any content yet or is is just the promissory note?

There's never any content. It's sense-making. Mad. That's system A thinking. That really betrays. You are trapped in GMA. That's right. That kind of binary yes, no, is there...

We like the existing injunctive in between. But they did announce the inaugural event and did feature talks from Jimmy Wheel, Jordan Hall, who's the other one? The bearded man. Oh, oh. Daniel Schmackenberger. Yes. Yes. So I they're bringing up fresh perspective of all the CM people that were there before, but maybe a little bit more artistic stuff coming.

And, you know, they mentioned that the original, like the first wave, they said that they explored the phenomenon of Jordan Peterson and the intellectual dark web. They drew on integral theory, the therapeutic work we were training in, wisdom traditions, psychedelic science, academic theory and embodied experiences. But it was a bit too intellectual. They took a yes-signal approach, which we noticed. They did take that approach. That's true. But they say, you know, things have changed. And now we're in this post-truth authoritarian potential era supported by big tech. So that's an interesting thing that all I'd but what is needed is more sense making. That's the last crisis, you know, was getting so far sense making, but not enough. And that's the right flavor. I mean, okay.

So, Nicky, I mean, what do you think of this? Like, what are the tenets of sense-making in that whole genre? Is that they don't believe in there to be these silos and specialities, right? You know, it's wrong to have this atomic thing where you zero in on a particular puzzle, but rather that you step back, right? You go big and you encompass everything and everything comes in there. So they really love the idea of blending together disparate disciplines, right? So you can't have philosophy just by itself, right?

You have to have philosophy and spirituality and also science and politics and everything goes in. And to me, like, this is the exact opposite of what I think is good. Like, when I look at other things, like not sense making, but other areas of academia, for instance, which which I don't like very much. So that kind of critical theory, the sort of sub discipline of academia, which actually takes methodologies from the humanities and literary criticism and things like that. Art theory, for instance, which I think is kind of fine and good when applied to art theory or criticizing literature, taking

that and applying it to understanding society and people in psychology as one. So that to me is an example of just, you know, you blend together two pretty colors and you get a brown. And I think that the sense-making people have just exemplified taking this to the nth degree, where you blend everything together and you end up with nothing. But this, I know, speaks to my own prejudices. Sorry, I just thought I'd check. What do you think? I feel I'm not nearly smart enough to be a sense maker. I feel like I don't have the requisite knowledge in anything, actually.

I'm not even sure I have the requisite knowledge in psychology to contribute a meaningful dialogue. But maybe is expertise required or a requirement of being a sense maker? You said dialogue. It's dialogue. Dialogues. That's what you need to enter. And you never use a normal word if a pretentious word can be substituted for it. This is sensemaking 101.

You'd have fallen at the first hurdle. Unfortunately, the Omega rule requires that we find the one percent of truth in your statement to run with it. And I I feel the very fact that you're asking about expertise is an error. That that shows you're like, you know, but am I qualified to do that? And a true sense maker doesn't ask that they just run through it. They just run with it and they are qualified in everything. maker doesn't ask that. They just run through it. And they are qualified in everything. It doesn't matter.

And I feel the counter Matt's pessimistic kind of presentation there. I should finish with Alexander Boehner's, how he ends his final call for what's next with sense making. So he says, counter to Matt. What I feel most in the zeitgeist is a deep yearning for transformative beauty. I see beauty as the way the secret expresses itself in daily life. It can take us beyond ourselves like nothing else, and right now we're trapped in our own minds. A question in my mind at the moment is how we might use the essence of beauty

to create a new kind of activism, one that is rooted in the world, connected to the body and fearless in its expression. Take that, Matt. Fine words. Have you guys seen these, you know, these word salad, you know, apps, or the you know, like Jordan Peterson word salad. This is what all this all this says making stuff sounds like to be. And again, I feel inadequate. I'm like, I'm not smart enough to understand what's going on. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

They are full of shit. It's one of the it's definitely one of the two by two. But in any case, we welcome in SenseSpeaking 3.0 and adding in art. Why not? Why not? We already have spirituality, reactionary politics. Let's add in art. And let's see what the next generation of SenseSpeakers can bring to this world. I, for one, cannot wait to find out. So that's your update for SenseSpeaking for this world. I for one cannot forget the flying kite. So that's your op-ed for Sense Weekend for this month. Just a thing to keep an eye on, Matt. Integral Theory,

that's Sense Weekend 1.0. This is multiple paradigms spinning. Yeah. Yeah. They are in love with the spoken word. This is the thing. This is the Jordan Peterson-esque pseudo-pre pseudo profound bullshit poetic language. And there are people, many people for whom it resonates with. And like, I'm just fascinated by it because it's a kind of, it's a cognitive style where words and the semantic connections between them is like this magical wonderland which you can explore and connections and so on. And none of it needs to kind of make sense. It doesn't need to be coherent.

It's all intuition. It's poetry. It's all sense making. So it doesn't need to make sense, but by not making sense. You're such a BMA. Such a reductionist. I know you guys are taking a piss here. But Matt, be honest, you love you secretly love this stuff. Yes, I do. Yes, we I do. I do. Because it is it's

a thing of beauty. You know what I mean? It's like it's like with Seinfeld, you know, remember, the Seinfeld is a show about nothing, but nothing, you know what I mean? Like, that's what I love about it, that they've managed to build something, this enormous thing out of nothing. And then the minute anyone tries to define what that thing is, they immediately deconstruct it and it vanishes in a wisp of semantics. So it is a kind of art. So it is a nice holiday, honestly, just speaking genuinely, it's a nice holiday from some of the war. They occasionally spoil it by like hosting neo-Nazis. Like occasionally.

Or they produce like a blueprint for a new society, which seems to be reinventing fascism. Only the elites who achieve citizenship will be allowed to vote. The underclass'll need to earn credits to reproduce and stuff. But you know, if you set that aside, it's a lot of fun. They're just thinking outside the box, Chris. They're just thinking big. Let them dream. Let them cook. Anyway, that's them. That's them. That's them. They're far away. Now, Mickey, we're easing you in here. I know.

You know, these are the kind of fun aspects of the gurusphere. Have you come across a podcast called Trigonometry? Again, only through you. Although I do, you both are my source of all the flotsam and garbage of the internet. Otherwise, my social media feed is clean and pure and normal. I love this. This is us. We're like beachcombers We're with their Wandering along the sandy shore of the unit seeing what kind of flotsam in Jetson

What kind of detritus watches up and we pick it up and we carry it home and Chris shows it to me Look what I found a cat a cat bringing you a dead animal. That's that's what I shows it to me. Look what I found. A cat bringing you a dead animal. That's what our show is all about. I cannot refute this with what I'm about to do because I find a video with the help of our subreddit, our very large subreddit, most of them don't know where it's at, but they came across it at Jam, which is Trigonometry has two hosts, Constantine Kissin and Francis Foster. Constantine Kissin, you might know. Yes. Francis Foster, you probably don't know, but he's the kind of lesser host, right?

He's so- I feel like Chris. I feel like Chris in this podcast. Similar to me. Similar to me in this podcast. He plays a similar role. to this podcast. He plays a similar role. So. Francis Foster, not constantly gets

guests appeared on a podcast called Bad Boys Done Good. Now, it might be a successful audio podcast, but on YouTube, it has 600 subscribers. OK, so we're not talking, you know, Joe Rogan. Here we come. And Francis went on there. And it's a comedy podcast. It's like 35 minutes. It seems to be British comedians kind of roasting the guest.

But I don't know if it's the gimmick of this episode or this is the general gimmick, but they're doing impressions of the Sopranos guy, Tony Soprano and Ray Winston, the London gangster actor. So it's two comedians doing impersonations, interviewing Francis Foster and kind of roasting him about his role in Trigonometry. I kind of roasting him about his role in Trigonometry. So I've got two clips, only two, only two. Right, but and a warning for those who may be traveling with children, the language in this clip is quite spicy, more spicy than we usually have.

OK, so I'll just play the first clip now and then get Mickey and Matt's reactions. But it's something about the image of you sitting there with Constantine and then get Mickey and Matt's reactions. I actually felt myself gravitating to the other side just because it was so fucking annoying. Is that potentially the root of identity wars problem? Is that you don't want to be associated with those cunts, so you go over there with those cunts. I found myself thinking, is that my tribe? I watch the new three all smiling with their cigar. By the way, cigar don't suit you mate, I don't know what you were trying to get there. But is that the problem we've got is that people are so worried about who they're not that they align themselves with someone else?

I think the problem is, is that a lot of people are scared. A lot of people are scared of being cancelled, of being denied opportunities, of having friendships ended. So they don't actually say what they really think or believe on a variety of hot button topics. You got a big platform. You could say whatever you want. I mean, you interviewed Weinstein. Yeah, we interviewed Brett. There you go. That's the first. So how does that make you feel? I've dropped a dead bird in front of the air.

What do you think of that? I like the accents. The accents are good. They're pretty good. They're pretty good impersonators. But the one thing that you will have heard there is like Francis is responding quite straight, right? Like he's kind of playing the straight man, but they're just like, you know, you and Rogan, you look like a dick, you're a noice and stuff like that.

He's like, ah, yeah. I've been 35 minutes. So when he's saying, you guys look like a fucking pair of cunts, I might want to go down the slide. Yeah, he doesn't have a snappy comeback for that. He's so Mickey is this, is this something you might listen to?

I would not, I did not listen to it even now. It's hard. It is hard to hear, but like, so the thing that surprised me about this is yes, they, they talk about like Francis is getting thick when he smokes his cigar, but they also hit quite a lot on his feelings of inadequacy next to Constantine, that like he is not allowed to talk and they prepared like props and like a fake poem that he's written by Constantine. So this is the next clip, but you get to hear this. Okay. And I think you hear a little bit more of the Sopranos guy impersonation here.

So here you go. Is that poem not yours? No, I don't write poetry. Right. Well, what is that? Looks like something you both made up. Constantine, Constantine, let me get a word in. Let me get a fucking word in.

Let me get a word in. Constantine, Constantine, kiss and tell, kiss and tell. Tell your mum I fucked her. The expression is there. You're hurting, you're hurting. It's okay, Francis. You can talk. Tell us, tell us what happened. It's more like a free verse, you know?

Tell us what happened. What was more like a free verse. You know, tell us what happened. What was the incident that made you think this? Somebody's got to change my boundaries are being crossed. I'm a cuck. It's actually not very this is a men's mental health podcast and I'm feeling shamed for don't be shamed. Fine. I'm queer, you know, for being for being labeled a cuck.

I don't think it's no shame I said if you write it's okay to be a car But we can all change my mind and say actually no, you're not a pro Hitler simply little cuck This is the last time I've seen it. What do you... So, you're making... I mean, I actually think those guys are pretty hilarious. And what's his name again? Francis Foster.

Francis is, I think, just dumbstruck about being completely roasted. Why would he go on this show? I don't... I don't... Maybe he's friends with them. But it's like it is a it's pretty like strong. It's also surreal because it's Tony Soprano. Yeah, right. It is the only thing that's on him, and he's not actually now like he's picking up on it or. But he can tell, like he's he's trying to make a feeble

Come back there, which is oh, I'm feeling ashamed right now, though. You're just like but he's he's not up for it He's not up to it. You know, these guys are going very very medium by the way in case you You might not be able to tell from that You might not be able to tell from that. That is surreal. That's just surreal. 35 minutes of that. That's what it's like.

So, you know, there's only been 970 people that have viewed it at the time I recorded. So you could be 971. Like, so I see what you're trying to do here. You try to bring more attention to this. I'm trying to boost the numbers for this channel. I genuinely don't, I don't know what this is. So that's trigonometry. Can you imagine the experience of going on a show where you're having good faith, you're thinking,

okay, you know, this will be fun. And then the entire time they're taking a piss on you. I can see the enjoyment of that, but I feel like you have to, you know, kind of play along, like you know, or punch back a little bit, right? But I don't know what the dynamic is. Maybe this is what the show is. Because Chris Williamson went on the show. There's a guy called Finn Taylor who does roasts now. But it's very like it's kind of punchline after punchline.

And your role is to play the straight man. Of course, in this case, he kind of feels a bit bad natured. You know, maybe Francis just like, you know, agreed to it and then they didn't check everything they were going to do before. But you know, there's credit. He went on and you know, I deep cuts there. That she was a bit mean. Yeah. Well, Matt, the next thing is more substantial. Okay. So good. two small spirals. This is a crow that I came across. And actually you alerted me to it. You said, Chris, look over there. I hope, you know, to to listen to it and retrieve clips from it. So are you making of Sabine Hosenfelder?

Again, through your show. Again, you introduced me to all of it. This is okay. Well, this is good. So she's a physicist who has some issues with academia and we've kind of pointed out along with other people, a YouTuber, Professor Dave and others have noted that she's leaning into the kind of culture war clickbait framing on YouTube. war clickbait framing on YouTube. And yeah, so one of our most recent videos was the kind of thumbnail was Academia is Communism? Question mark. Right. So and I believe the title was something like Should Academia be Defunded? Yeah. And so Nikki, of course, you remember her big thing is that academia is corrupted by these bad incentives, you know, such that, you know, many of us, if not all of us, are

just spinning our wheels, pretending to do research, just painting by numbers so that we can just keep getting money. Right. So there's bad incentives causing us to depart from the truth. And so it is ironic, right? When you're a YouTuber and the YouTube monetization engine means that the more clickbaity, the more you tap into dark stuff, everything is a conspiracy, they're all lied to you. Here's the real truth, academia is communism.

There's a little bit of irony there in terms of talking about bad incentives. Would you agree? I definitely would agree. I don't disagree with her prognosis about bad incentives. I mean, I think, at least for scientists, clearly there are bad incentives. They're not aligned with the truth, but it seems like she's going in a different direction. Yeah. So she, one thing to note is about two weeks ago, she had a video where she read out an email

that she got seven years ago. And the email, like she didn't divulge who it's from, but it basically said, it was an academic saying, Sabine, I read your critique of physics. You're absolutely right. We're all liars and we need the money though that our kids through school, we're all doing shit and shuffling papers around. Don't tell anyone about this.

You're completely right. And please be quiet because you'll jeopardize all our cushy jobs." She read this out and it was full of somewhat what physicists pointed out afterwards were elementary mistakes where people like, you know, getting the theories of the people that they're mentioning wrong or whatever. And yeah, it does look like a quite credulous reading of an suspicious email and that got 2.5 million views two weeks ago. So she has cultivated a kind of anti-science, anti-establishment hungry audience. And in the turn for the books, Matt had an interaction with her on Twitter where he pointed out the hyperbolic Academia is Communism headline. And she kind of said, well, Mr. Matt, I'm paraphrasing. But you know, I guess if you just want to tell your audience

what they hear all the time, then you won't admit the horror that is academia. I'm just telling it like it is. Now, that does ignore that on YouTube, saying that all scientists are liars and science is a bitch actually is actually quite a popular thing. I don't think her audience is exactly like, you know, pro science cheerleaders. So yeah, and the thing is the way they'll represent it if, you know, people like us push back on some of the hyperbole or some of the broad brushstrokes, you know, and, you know, it is pretty huge. Like she'll extrapolate, people like her will extrapolate from one incident that they had, you know, they had a bad meeting

seven years ago, right? And then they're from that, right? They know that it's all corrupt. When you respond to that, though, that was like, oh, well, you're just defending the status quo. You know what side your bread is buttered on, right? So you're just trying to stifle dissent. And this is so hollow, right? Because as you know, you guys talked about it publicly all the time. We do too. You talk to any scientist, any academic, and we will talk to you for as long as you're there to listen to us about all the problems in science and funding and academia, in publishing.

You know, the list goes on. But the thing is, what do you think of this? You cannot name any field of human endeavor, like any complicated system that involves human beings, that isn't just a pile of shit in some degree. Like look at the criminal justice system, right? You can, you can make a list a mile long about all the things that are wrong with it. Um, yeah, that's right. Even crypto. Yeah, crypto, high finance, corporate, you know, corporate

behavior and then so on. Like anything that involves people is going to have a list of grievances a mile long, most of which are perfectly valid. But I think there's an interesting sort of jump where you go, well, look here, look, there are some bad things about this institution, about this thing. Right. So we need to burn it all down. Right.

But if we applied that rule, we'd burn everything down, literally everything. Mickey is a, you know, with UL, whistleblowers of sorts are, you know, open science celebrity. At the Finder, some regard Mickey as the source of the open science. Like, in my case, you know, I consider myself a cheerleader for open science and methodological reform, not a particularly good one, but you know, one that typically says, well, that's a good idea. So like the notion that you can't be critical of mainstream science

or the way that it works, like, no, you, you definitely can't. And it's, it's even rewarded in certain sectors now to do it. So being acts as if it's like, you know, nobody would dare say that previous research is invalid. And you're like, yes, they do. They can say it all the time. And so I do have tips to illustrate this. So maybe we make it you should hear the clip. And then you can react. All right, it's a reaction If I can hear it, yeah, this is right. This one might be a bit clearer than the previous comedy one. Let's see Okay, so this is the thesis that academia is communism. Let's hear how I

Recently angered some people by saying that if I had any choice in the matter I wouldn't want my taxes to pay for research on the description of smell in the English literature. Some have taken that to mean that I want to defund all of academia. So let's talk about it. Should we defund academia? Yes! No! Hope that clears it up. Thanks for watching. Of course I didn't say that we should defund all of academia. That'd be insane. And I'm not insane. Though this is of course exactly what an insane person would say, isn't it? What I said is,

I think it's going to happen. Academia will be defunded. And that isn't entirely a bad thing. But it isn't entirely a good thing either. It's going to happen because the current organization of academic research works badly. It's an inefficient use of money and that's for a simple reason. It's a planned economy. Yes, academia is a planned economy. We're financing it the same way that the communists finance their production chains with centralized decision making, committees and five-year plans. It worked badly for the communists and it works badly for research. We have oversupplies of string theorists, undersupplies of computer scientists, group think and corruption all over the place.

It's a disaster. I don't understand why anyone ever thought this is a good idea. And once you realize that the key problem with academia is the central planning, it's obvious what's going to happen. That really clears it up, don't you think? I think, like, like, I think, I think, you know, does she think we should defund academia? Yes.

No. Well, that would be crazy, but I totally it's going to happen. But it will happen. And it's a good thing. So I'm not going to lie. Like, again, you know, she she has she identified some issues, but it's completely wrong. Academia is centrally planned. No, I mean, that's silly. I mean, I look at my career, for example, I started out studying X, I went to Y, Zed, and literally I'm studying fucking cannabis now. 20 years ago, I did not and it's all coming from me. It's not some central planner telling me do that because no one would want me to study

this. Are you not a string writer? I'm not a string writer. But that's so sure isn't it's such a reason that like it's it's the complete opposite of what she said. Like it is the least centrally planned of any job you could do. Like when I've worked in other industries and you have a boss who tells you what you're going to be working on that day. I have a I haven't spoken to my

Dean for years. He doesn't know what I do. I do what I want. I'm pretty sure my bosses have no idea I'm in Tokyo right now. I'm outing myself. And I mean, it's so silly. It's behind the paywall. Nobody's here. I mean, it's such a bad diagnosis of how academia actually works. And again, there might be some curls of truth to what you're saying.

Yes, there's bad research. Yes, there's corruption. Yes, there's misuse of funds. Essentially planned? That just- It's communism. It's communism. The thumbnail says so.

There's the culture war frame of linkinetic communism, right? But there's also, she is clearly, with the reference to string theorists, and okay, a stretch computer scientist, but like, she is talking about physics, right? Like that is what her complaints are almost always revolving around. But as others have pointed out, she constantly sweeps across to all of academia, which she doesn't seem to actually know anything. So she might be saying that, like, you know, the LHC or CERN is causing a particular

like kind of approach to particle physics or whatever to be elevated. But that's a very different claim than all of academia is centrally planned, like the communist states, which we all hear. Like, I'm sure. I'm sure the Manhattan project to some degree was centrally planned, right? Yeah. You know, you have big projects that are going to be different. And you know, it's beyond our pay grade. We don't know about the Large Hadron Collider.

You know, I'm not equipped to judge whether that's a good idea to be spending your money that way or a different way. I do know that a lot of physicists think that she's completely wrong. She's welcome to her opinion about the physics stuff by all means, but just saying, it's not universally shared and other physicists are not all mindless drones just being given their talking points by the central commissar. Yeah. So the framing is very culture war centric, right? Especially the reference to communism. But if you didn't pick up on that, like slight hint. So the last clip from this might give you a stronger indication

that she is playing in the culture war tropes. So here you go. A last clip from this. People have complained about useless research in academia for half a century and nothing has happened. So why should this time be different? It's because of what Elon Musk and his fans have called the woke mind virus. Among other things, the diversity equity and inclusion trends that manage to take hold, especially at American universities. This might seem like an entirely different problem, but it's the symptom of the same disease. The reason that people in the tech sector and venture capitalists go

on about DY is that it's anti-meritocracy. And because of that, it's inefficient. It stands in the way of progress. Or maybe I should say it was, because things have changed dramatically in the past weeks. DUI was all about some people's idea of social justice, that candidates should be selected for positions because of who they are, not because of how good they are at their job. DUI puts social justice first and scientific progress second. It's a clash of values. And scientific progress has won. This is how the two things belong together.

The balance is swinging towards the desire for scientific progress and against inefficient government spending. Just listen to what they're saying. The Silicon Valley billionaire Mark Andreessen has declared that the ivory tower is an enemy of progress. Elon Musk has called academia a bastion of communism that operates with no feedback loop to reality and he said entirely correctly that most scientific papers are useless. I think success on an academic level would have been quite likely because you can publish some useless paper and most papers are pretty useless.

And Peter Thiel thinks that scientists are basically on governmental welfare and therefore need to be silent about dissenting views. The scientists can't talk freely about the science and if you have dissenting views. You know, the scientists can't talk freely about the science. And if you have, you know, if you have, if you have dissenting views, you better keep them to yourself or your government funding will get cut off. And they're, you know, they're all in the sort of government welfare or something like that. It's, it's very subtle.

You might've missed it. I feel there's like a hint of culture or stuff like it's sleeping in there. But I also love that she, I believe I, if I heard correctly, she didn't say DEI. She said DUI. She said DUI. Being like responsible times. I heard that too. Striving under the influence.

That is bad. That is bad. We're not, we don't condone that. Oh my God. You know, it's just garbage because again, she's picking up on some correct things. There are some overreach and now it's being corrected, I suppose. But again, to throw all of academia under the bus for this sin is just silly. Or to present the Trump regime as like their restorative science to its rightful place as they defund the NIH

and you know like prevent people from publishing papers about climate change. If you'd like to continue listening to this conversation, you'll need to subscribe at patreon.com slash Decoding the Gurus. Once you do, you'll get access to full-length episodes of the Decoding the Gurus podcast, including bonus shows, Gurometer episodes, and Decoding Academia. The Decoding the Gurus podcast is ad-free and relies entirely on listener support. Subscribing will save the rainforest, bring about global peace, and save Western civilization. And if you cannot afford $2, you can request a free membership, peace and save Western civilization.