Decoding the Gurus - Supplementary Material 24: Dialogos with Greek Gods, the Metaphysics of Pepe, and Red-Pilled Embarrassment

Episode Date: February 28, 2025

Chris and Matt confront their inner demons, manifest their personal deities, and dive into the Onto-Logos.Supplementary Material 2400:00 Introduction02:32 Matt's Surprise Shaming06:39 Jordan Peterson's Inner Monologue Revealed10:04 Trump on Ukraine15:22 Sean Carroll explains US cuts to science funding16:47 Bleak Prospects for the US24:14 Aella vs. Arrogant Red Pill Man37:22 Be wary of Overcorrecting43:11 John Vervaeke meets Hermes52:59 False Dichotomies of the Spirit01:03:38 Entering into Dialogos with Matt's Inner Darwin01:07:39  Perspectival and participatory phenomenological identity transformation.01:09:20 Other ways of knowing spirits01:13:45 Materialists and their Monological Mindsets01:18:37 Welcome to the Onto-Logos01:24:06 Bad Faith Commenters01:29:35 Pageau and the Metaphysics of Pepe the Frog01:36:32 Next Book Review: Other MindsThe full episode is available for Patreon subscribers (1hr 41 mins).Join us at: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingTheGurusSourcesThird Eye Drops: Encountering Higher Consciousness, The Daimon & The Paradox of Reality | Dr. John VervaekeDave Rubin's video of Peterson's speech at the ARC conferenceWhatever podcast: She Did 100 Men In 1 DAY?! 1,000 NEXT?! Lily Phillips, Eva Lovia, Aella, Andrew! | Dating Talk#227Aella's SubstackSean Carroll: Bonus Episode | Cuts to Science Funding and Why They MatterSabine Hossenfelder: Trump and Musk Take On AcademiaHuberman tweeting excitedly about the funding cutsJonathan Pageau: Supplement to the Metaphysics of Pepe Interview with Jordan Peterson

Hello and welcome to Decoding the Guru's supplementary materials with the psychology professor, Matthew Brown, the anthropology slash psychology professor, kind of professor, not a good... Anyway, Chris Kavanagh, me, okay, that's me here, Asprof, as you might like to refer to me as. G'day, Matt, g'day. G'day, g'day, g'day, Chris. Yeah, you are, you're not pronouncing it right though. It's Asprof. Asprof, okay, okay. Well, I don't know, Matt, I've got a spring in my step today. I didn't sleep well, but just I woke up today and I feel I'm in a good zone. I'm feeling the vibe today. The joy of V. It's good to be pool, drove all the way in, 25 minutes in.

There's a school festival. The whole pool is closed. Can't swim. Get back in the car. Drive all the way back again. So my day is not going well so far. On the other hand, I did go to a cafe and I had cake. I think this is the cosmic entanglement. Like when I'm up, you're dying.

When you're dying, I'm up. There's only so much joy in the world. So, you know, I just woke up this morning like things are good. And you're like, oh, you know, I've got an equal aside. Oh, it's locked. And just, you know, things are, everything's coming out well. I'm having the Takoyaki party later today. You know, the little octopus ball party.

That's going to be fun. It's true. It's true. When you down on up and vice versa, we're cosmically entangled. There's only enough joy for one of us. We're going to have one of us is going to have to kill the other highlander style. You realize, oh, yeah, that's right. This is where this eventually ends up, and we need to get Chris Langham on this to explain the physics for us.

But we got a big we got a heavy load of things to get through today. You know, I know Supplementary Materials is a place to kick back, we can relax, but the people, they want some things covered. And we actually got a clip sent in from listeners. And it's specifically for you. Specifically for me? Yeah, yeah. It's about 40 seconds long, right? So you just gotta listen to it. But they wanted you to hear it because they said, you know, this is important.

Please make sure Matt hears this. It's important for the future of the podcast, okay? Okay, all right. It's quite a setup. All right, you gonna play it now? Yeah, I'm gonna play it now. So just focus to this and, you know, try and see how this makes you feel, Matt, when you listen to this. This is technology.

Conspiracy. I'll hold them up. Chris? Yep. Pressure. The annoying thing about it is that now Chris... It's still going. It's going. Almost done.

I see. There you go. Finished. So how did that make you feel? Did you enjoy that? I see. This is a surprise shaming. I've been shamed for having this squeaky chair. What was that, Matt? What was that collection of creaky noises? Did you recognize that? I think this is an indictment on your editing skills.

Really, none of that should have swept through. I expected better from you, Chris. None of that did? I mean, I'm not sure. I mean, I'm not sure. I mean, I'm not sure. I mean, I'm not sure. I mean, I'm not sure. I mean, I'm not sure. I mean, I'm not sure. I mean, I'm your editing skills. Really, none of that should have swept through.

I expected better from you, Chris. None of that did slip through. That is me editing those out of just one episode. That's all from one episode. You said a listener sent that in. Okay, that was a cover story. That was a lie, wasn't it? You said that.

But you know, the thing is, so if anybody didn't know, that's Matt's creaky ass chair, right? Now you probably haven't heard all those creaks because I hear them. I hear them every episode. That thing haunts my dreams. I wake up some nights going, oil, you know, put it on. And Matt, I know, I know, right? I know that you have attempted to fix your chair. Your wife, who I trust more than you, has come in and all that.

And it hasn't worked, man. It hasn't worked. It hasn't worked. I didn't even discuss this on the Patreon. We've had several meetings with the people. There's been meetings? Yeah, there's been meetings about like, is it okay if we just send you a chair? Is that like, what's the, you know, why would that be taken? All right. Look, okay. All right. This shaming has worked. I'll buy a new chair. I'll buy a new chair. Wow. I can get a gamer chair. Like, you know, one like Constantine talked us in.

Yeah. That's really cool. I'm going to do it today. I'm going to order a chair. Wow. Okay. This is better than I could have hoped for. So that's fantastic. That's good. I added in just one clip of keyboard typing, but that's not really fair because both of us are guilty of typing on occasion when the other is talking. So that wasn't fair. That was a low blow, but- No, it was below the belt. Rest of it. What can I say? I plead guilty. Guilty as charged. Correct. Yeah. That's it. That's it. So that that's good.

We got the most important thing cleared first. The airing of grievances and now for the feats of strength. Yeah. Well, Matt, now, so I've gotten the look. This is just one clip that. So the art conference, Jordan Peterson's answer to the World Economic Forum. You know, the premier event for cranks and idiots of the conservative variety just occurred in London, actually in a conference center that I've been to. So there you go. And there were various people

speaking, Constantine Kissin, Eric Weinstein, you know, the greats, the great and the mighty and your usual collection of conservative political chuckleheads. Jordan Peterson finished off, you know, he gave the kind of cozying remarks at the end of it. And I've just got a little clip of it, Matt. Let's see what you think about it, you know, after you hear this. So here's Jordan Peterson. Not the best quality clip, because I think the stream from the Rubin's camera, but in any case, listen, those problems that take you in their mouth, like a dog

with a bone and shake you, those problems. Those are your opportunities. Those are your opportunities. You shoulder the burden of those problems and accept the responsibility and in doing so you call out what's best in you. Wow. That, so that, that psychedelic organ music that was playing there, that hasn't been dubbed. That was the accompaniment. Oh, man. It's even better than you imagine. There was an orchestra on stage to punctuate the emotional notes in Jonah Peterson's speech.

And also to top it off, he was dressed like Vivaldi, you know, in one of his garish, like in sea and jackets, piece of the ride, almost in tears, by the orchestra. And, you know, they these are the people that complain about the blue haired liberals and self-indulgence. That's right. They're their emotional ability, you know, screaming at protests and so on. And this is what's going on. Well, so these are the thought leaders, the Brett Weinstein, the Constantine Kisser and Sir Jordan Peterson.

What's going on with conservatism? We should all have an orchestra at our speech. That does feel a tad indulgent. The only time I've ever seen that, like an orchestra cup thing, is when I went to see Star Wars with an orchestra or some film with a famous score where they replace it with the orchestra. But I've never seen somebody give a speech with backing music. No. I mean, the closest equivalent would be like Beat Poetry in a jazz club. And well, finally Beat Poetry has something that is better than that.

So that's good. Congratulations to the Beat Poets. So yeah, you know, we're just getting more surreal, Matt. We're getting this, this feels like, you know, they talk about Leeds-Deech capitalism, Leeds-Deech gurism seems to be approaching. What's the line? It starts in tragedy and it ends in farce. Maybe that's what's going on here. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, so, you know, there was that and I, we should also mention just in passing Matt that, um, Trump came out with very strong invective directed against Ukraine.

Right. You know, similarly he spoke about Palestine and he's going to turn it into the Riviera, like the U S will control it. And he said that before, but we're going to take all the oil. I can't remember where, which country it was, but he's going to go and take all the oil. Yeah, right. Like, so he does say these kind of things. But in the case of Ukraine, he's actually talking directly about, you know,

Zelensky being a crook and corrupt, stealing money from the US, not holding elections. Actually, very similar to points that Lex Friedman raised, you know, in this interview with him. And yeah, it's, it's really, it's really genuinely appalling. And also, also opposing the description of Russia as the aggressor in that conflict. Oh yes, that's right. Much like Lex saying, you know, that Zelensky hasn't taken the opportunities for peace, why is he prolonging the war as Russia invades his country? Right? Like it's It's Kafkaesque, right? But so they one thing the once semi silver lining

I don't even really think it is much of a silver lining. But nonetheless this does seem to have been something of a line for the usual of a line for the usual mega sycophants. I mean, most of them are still there. They're probably gonna forget it in a week, but more than usual, there has been response from people saying, what are you talking about? The Russia's the aggressor.

Yeah, we don't like this. Yeah. So people aren't immediately just, you know, during this kind of mental recalibration, they're finding a way to change their views. So it's perfectly in sync with Trump. The cult is showing at least a few cracks. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, that's not go overboard that most of them seem to be okay. Yeah. Like, but not just to highlight the example, right? I mean, this is somebody who has a very dubious moral compass in any case, but Piers Morgan. So a couple of days ago, he tweeted out, have I got this right? The world's liberals are in range with a Republican U.S. president because he wants to stop two wars.

No, Piers, you haven't got that right. But and then more recently today at the time of No, Piers, you haven't got that right. But and then more recently today at the time of recording, Piers Morgan tweeted out, Zelensky is not a dictator. Vladimir Putin is a dictator. Zelensky didn't start the war in Ukraine. Putin did. Hope this clarifies things for anyone who's confused. So I mean, he could respond to himself from a couple of days ago. Maybe he's looking in the mirror, just yelling at himself. But you know, that I think highlights that a lot of people were saying,

Oh, it's, you know, four dimensional. I even actually saw Ryan Macbeth was surprised about this. I didn't know Ryan Macbeth, the kind of military commentator guy, was slightly at least sympathetic to Trump, it seems. Right. Yeah, no, I didn't know that either. But yeah, no, I think he wouldn't take that lying down, I would assume. Yeah, well, that's what's going on.

I mean, that's not the only terrible news to be coming out of the American political scene, of course. No. Yeah, Chris, this is not political commentary. We're not going to get into it. But yeah, it has been worse than I hoped. I hoped that the second Trump term would be more like the first term, where he showboats around and dominates the news cycle. And there's dramas and crises and firings and announcements and changing the names of the Gulf of... renaming things to be Trump or America. That kind of thing, froth and nonsense. But unfortunately, perhaps due to the influence of Musk and various other people who are getting stuck in, they're actually doing things. None of them seem to be good.

It's a shame. Yeah, I mean, I think it is political commentary, but I'm fine with that because it looks a lot like efforts to undermine democracy and this very cruel aspect to celebrating the anti-immigration things like they had an ASMR video of chains, like people being deported from the White House. So this came from the official White House account where there was like, and the editorial line was something like, you know, deportation, ASMR. And it was clinking of chains as they were videoing people being, you know, who were chained up, manacled, all that stuff, shuffling onto planes and things like that. Putting aside whatever you may think about immigration policy

and deportation policy, like the official White House account, posting stuff at that level, it just, it does tarnish, I think. Well, I mean, it's still, it was also tweedied out like a AI image of Trump with a crown on saying Trump has removed congestion charges in New York long live the King. Right? Like so I mean it's just it is very dark right and yeah Elon Musk is in there, Doge is in there doing the thing and one thing to note that is thematically on topic for us is that the impacts that the Trump administration is having on science and science funding,

there's a very good episode by Sean Carroll, where he discusses what's happening, he does it in a very measured way, and he talks about why what's happening is going to produce such like damaging effects on science in the US. And he's not someone to catastrophize. So, you know, you can hear him give a measured response to it. On the other hand, you have people like Andrew Huberman, Sabine Hosenfelder and whatnot,

who seem to be, you know, reveling a little bit in what's going on that they might disagree with certain aspects of it, but, you know, fundamentally, this is an enjoyable thing. I think Sabine has been less clear than Huberman in this respect, but yeah, I think it's a good contrast to listen to someone like Sean Carroll, who is not approaching it from like a super strong political stance. He's approaching it from a scientist. And, uh, it'll give you a good outline of why the reforms that are planned are just hugely damaging to America as a scientific nation, like as a

producer of scientific knowledge. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good example of how someone like Sean is different from, from those other characters. Yeah. yeah. Yeah. That's a good example of how someone like Sean is different from from those other characters.

Yeah. Chris, I was just having coffee with colleagues and one of them's American. And, you know, his take is one that I don't entirely disagree with, which is that, I mean, his background is in economics and he's very pessimistic, unfortunately, about the future of America because he sees the underlying cause of this kind of thing is essentially like this new Gilded Age. The share of the economy, the gross domestic product that is made up of wages keeps shrinking relative to the amount of money that's being made in business and elsewhere. Essentially the richer wages are stagnating. that's being made in business and elsewhere, essentially the rich are kind of getting richer,

wages are stagnating. And what happens historically, when you get such a large degree of social inequality is you have social unrest and you have increasing political extremism. And that extremism is not always directed towards the kind of workers unite to get going the means of production, it can easily go the other way. And the big end of town, people like Elon Musk or Rupert Murdoch or whatever, they do control the media sphere to a large degree. and at least they own the narrative in that constituency, which is directing the object of that discontent towards what suits them, which is like their own bespoke definition of elites, which doesn't include the oligarchs in Trump's circle. It involves people like Andrew Fauci or immigrants or what have you. And he doesn't let the Democrats off the hook either, because,

you know, he doesn't think the Democrats are serious about fixing that either. Like it's probably going to, like over the long term, probably inequality will continue to increase and that just, you know, sociologically causes that political instability and growing extremism. So anyway, I find that a huge downer, unfortunately, but I don't necessarily think he's wrong. What do you think? I know you're trying to pull my mood down. And just to be clear as well, I agree that Murdoch and Elon Musk, these kinds of people

have a lot of power to shape right-wing narratives, but there is other sectors of the media, right, that are not that influential with the constituency that you're mentioning, but just they don't have control of all media. Not yet, but an outsized influence and the level of hypocrisy where people were complaining about, you know, if you just imagine Mark Zuckerberg or whatever, like any of them acting anything like what Elon Musk has, you know, just imagine them sitting beside Joe Biden as he like asked questions about how to run the country or whatnot. It would be unthinkable. There would be randing of garments and whatnot. But in this case, it's fine. So they've got an issue with like the rich, the elites, you know,

it's a populist movement, but it's headed by a bunch of billionaires and, and people who are obviously part of the elite. But as Barry Weiss has argued, they have branded themselves the anti-elite elite. And people like her were happy, you know, to go along with that branding. It's a remarkably self-serving branding, but it does seem to work. Yeah, yeah, that's right. And to be clear, what he's not proposing is some sort of conspiratorial view where, oh, they control all the media, it's, you know, manufacturing consent or whatever. It's just rather that the discourse is aimed

in certain directions and policies too, which are not actually directed at the root cause of the problem. So for instance, people are disgruntled, perhaps rightfully so, about stagnating wages, plenty of things that are hard to get by, college is expensive, all the usual things that a normal person is going to be disgruntled about. What are the options that are on the table? Well, something like throwing tariffs on everything. As any economist will tell you, putting tariffs on things primarily benefits domestic manufacturers of those objects. Actually, the cost is paid for by the consumers, i.e. those people who are disgruntled. So, you know, it's a matter of a mismatch between policy and actually addressing the root causes of the concern.

And unfortunately, you know, in a perfect world, you go, okay, well, those policies don't work after four years and people will go, okay, well, I was wrong. We should do something else. But it can be seen as well. They haven't worked yet. We have to go harder. We have to be more isolationist. We have to throw out more immigrants. Don't worry. You know, we'll fix the problems, but you know, they're still out there. Right. The elites, the technocrats are still interfering with our mission.

We have to go further. The deep state. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is true. And I do feel like one possible counter argument is that while people seem to like before the election, that we're talking about a lot about economic anxiety and these kinds of things, like when Trump is in power, there is at least a certain segment which

seems to not care anymore. Like if prices go up because of Trump's policies, they're kind of like, well, that's the cost of us being back in control of our destiny. So it feels like there's a certain willingness to change what the motivation is and the primary motivation seems to be like they bought into the cult of Trump. If he is arguing that this person is a good collaborator for America and is somebody that we should support, then they're on board. And if the next week he tells people that actually that guy's bad and has always been a snake, a lot of people seem to go along. So I just see a lot of it seems to be

to go along. So I just see a lot of it seems to be personality cult kind of stuff, but latching on to the standard issues that populists like to focus on. So I'm not saying there's nothing to it, but I'm just saying there does seem to be a willingness to accept economic, all the stuff that under Joe Biden was a huge issue. It's less of an issue if Trump says it's OK. Right. Like if Trump said he needs to increase spending because he's got these programs, I think you would see lots of people saying, oh, that's fine, you know, like, so just whatever the king says goes. Yeah, that's that's part of it, too. Just the partisanship. Comforting.

Well, anyway, that's that's America dealt with. There partisanship. Comforting. Well, anyway, that's America dealt with. There you go. Good luck. Good luck over there. Unfortunately, though, they are having their impact on the rest of the world. That's a problem, but maybe the rest of the world will get its arson gear as a result of this. So, you know, as I said before in other venues, you can tree Trumpism to the Obama years.

Right. Now it's not Obama's fault, but I mean, you can see him as a reaction to that. So who knows in 10 years what the reaction to Trump will be? Could be this topic or could be, you know, that we have a kind of resurgence of liberalism. Let's see. Let's see. Come on. We can have a silver lining, okay? Yeah, we can get it.

Yeah, that's right. I hope to God my friend is wrong. God, what a depressing topic to bring up over cake. That's not fair. Now, okay, Mark, I've got guru clips for you. The meat and veg of this podcast, right? Now, this is an area of the online discourse sphere that we rarely venture into. The Manosphere.

I mean, we've been around there, the ideas seeped through. We covered Pearl. You remember Pearl? When she appeared with Trigonometry. That's on the Patreon for people who would like to see that. But yeah, so Ayala, Ayala, Ayala, I think it is. You familiar with her online sex worker slash rationalist person? Yes, an interesting character. She's was it she's neurologically divergent, I think, as part of her brains.

Isn't she somewhat autistic? I believe she does identify as that and was raised in a fundamentalist home and then became like an escort and advocates for sex work and whatnot, but is also a part of the rationalist community running big surveys on sexuality and whatnot. So she went on one of these talk shows or online channels where, I don't know if you've seen them, where they get a panel of women, usually like young women, many with OnlyFans accounts,

and they kind of question them. It's usually like a religious conservative man trying to point out the contradictions in the worldview. So this is a standard format? Like a group of- Yeah, it's a popular format. You know, I think Fresh and Fit are part of the people who do it.

This particular one, I forget the name of the show, but I mean, we're not advertising it. Right, it'll be in the show links if you want to see. I think it's called whatever or something like that. But anyway, so this is what they do. The normal format is load of young women get asked like critical questions by the host and be made to look stupid.

Right, that's the typical format. So Ayala was on, it's like it always or something that you know, it's a live stream kind of thing. But there's an exchange that happened between her and this conservative commentator. He actually looks exactly like Jonathan Pajol. It could be Jonathan Pajol in different lighting. They're very similar kind of guys. And yes, this guy is a conservative Christian. But they had this exchange about science and research

and methodology and it got a lot of attention online. So let me play. I've got two clips, Matt. Here's the first one for you to listen to of that exchange. Tell me how we can have science absent a control for an experiment. All experiments, experiment by itself, is literally inferring that there's controls or we couldn't have an experiment. Okay, let's think of a slightly simpler example. Let's say I want to see if there's a correlation between height and weight in a population. How would you propose that we test this?

Between height and weight? I don't know, you tell me. Well, I told you my strategy for the last one. Can you tell me your strategy for this one? Why would it matter what my strategy is? Just so that I know how you're thinking about this. I don't know, I mean, I have no idea. I know that it is like, you like to put me on the defensive by asking a lot of questions and then you won't answer questions because that would put you on the defensive.

I don't know how I would conduct such a study. Why would that matter? Just think, do we have a whole bunch of people and we're trying to see- Like literally, what would the relevancy be, regardless of how I answered, right? Whether or not- Well, it's how you do science. It would have the addition of control. I'm just curious how you would test to see

if there was a correlation between height and weight. How would you do the science? What's your strategy? I have no idea. I've never thought about it. All right, so that started off with him making some points, sort of blustery points. Oh, you know, to do science, you have to do experiments.

You always need to control. And then Ayera returns with this very simple, I thought, question about how to measure an association between height and weight, but it's not biting Chris. That's what I'm hearing. Yeah. So this was in the context of like Ayala has this massive data set, which she collected from like online. You know, her account is quite popular, so she put a survey out online

and collected, I think it's 800,000 or something responses about sexuality and sexual interest that people have. And she says it's the biggest database ever collected by this kind of question. But the guy, Andrew Wilson, is saying, well, it's useless because it's a, you know, it's not a representative sample, right? It's skewed towards online younger people that follow Ayala, right? That's fair. But it's also not an experiment. Yes. And she has faced this criticism before and she didn't have great answers initially. She wasn't particularly statistically competent or methodologically competent, but she's got better. And she kind of acknowledges fully that it's not representative. But it's basically

saying, if you look at the other databases that people use to draw conclusions from, they all have their own limitations. And you can do various things to try and adjust for the norm representative of your sample. But she's also arguing that if you find these patterns in this data set, you could look at them in general population samples or this kind of thing. So she is not completely naive about the limitations

of her data set. She's able to answer questions about them. She's faced questions like this a lot. She has a blog where she's going through these kind of questions. So her response to Andrew Wilson is very reasonable. She's trying to just get him to think through, if you wanted to look at height and weight in a population, how might you examine that?

Because as you might infer there, Matt, if you didn't have a representative sample, but you wanted to look at the relationship between weight and height, you could still collect a non-representative sample. And you would likely be able to just collect the two measurements and say, oh, there is indeed a correlation. And maybe if you had a very specific sample,

you had sumo wrestlers. But still, there is indeed a correlation. And maybe if you had a very specific sample, you had sumo wrestlers. But still there is a correlation in sumo wrestlers between height and weight. So she's making a very basic point, but obviously he wants to. Like, I don't even think he understands how he would do it, but he's trying to avoid saying anything, you know, that will make him look silly. Yeah, exactly. I mean, because what he said at the beginning does sound silly, right?

Because he was totally dismissing any kind of survey work because it's not experiments. So all science is experiments, Chris, and that's the end of the story, which is a childish kind of view. Yeah, her data sets are not representative, but we very seldom get representative data sets, even supposedly representative data sets. Like, you know, I routinely work with these population surveys, where they do their best, it costs like a million dollars to employ a whole bunch of people who work in caddy telephone centers calling people up on random digit

dialing and stuff like that and trying to get a random sample of a given population. But Chris, maybe you can tell me, can you think of any reasons why that is or isn't perfectly representative? With Santa Cam? So a bunch of people calling up potential participants, random digit dialing, calling their mobile phones or their landlines or whatever. Why that wouldn't be representative? Would it be representative?

It's random, right? So like you're not waiting it for the relative population densities like male, female, you know, like I suppose if you did a random enough sample at a big enough size, you must start to approach the general population. You're missing the key. You're missing the key limitation. People who have phones, people who answer their phones. And also people who agree to do a survey.

Oh, right. Well, there's lots there. Yeah, there's lots there. It survey. Oh, right. Yeah, yeah. Well, there's lots of it. Yeah, there's lots of it. Too many, man. Too many. That's all right. I know. It's not fair. It's not fair.

I have a specific answer in mind. But all the things you said were true, too. But yeah, I mean, that's just an example, right? That's us. You've got a million dollars in your pocket. You're trying your best to get a representative sample. And it's still kind of impossible. You'll never have a perfectly representative sample.

So it's nice to have them. It's nice to have as wide a sample as possible, but the perfect representative samples don't exist in the social sciences in practical terms and most of the time. So, yeah, you know, it's a cross-sectional data that isn't representative as long as you keep the scope or the recruitment bias in mind is generally perfectly fine. Yeah. In any case, like the, this isn't their first exchange. They've been going back and forth and Andrew seems to be like caught up, like,

you know, that science requires controls, right? The experiments, science, you know, experiments require control, but he's, he's ignoring that, you know, there are other ways that you examine things in science rather than control the experiments. The nature of control in experiments is also a topic that's more complicated, but it goes on, Matt. If you thought that maybe he was making a valid point, but just expressing it badly, listen to this second part. expressing it badly. Listen to this second part. Yeah, okay. Well, there are ways to do this. There's statistical things we can run. Like we make a chart, X and Y axis, it's a chart. If you would like to call one of the axes

a control, we can put that word on that if that makes you happy. What else would it be? The X axis. It's the X and Y axis. It's like you plot the data on a graph. This is just the way that it works. Okay. Yeah, why are we doing that though? Well, I'll explain. Because we're controlling for what? Because we're controlling for what?

We're not controlling for anything. Oh, we're not controlling for anything. We're testing to see if there's a correlation. Do you know what correlations are? So we're controlling for a correlate. We're not, no, we're running a calculation on the, do you know what a correlation is? Yes. Okay. Can you tell me what, do you know what a correlation is? Yes. Okay, can you tell me just to make sure that you understand?

What a correlation is? What a correlation is, like how is a correlation calculated? Maybe something that could be loosely or vaguely or non-vaguely associated with some other property. Very close, yes. It helps tell you how much you can predict one variable by knowledge of the other variable. So for example, if we want to check the correlation between height and weight. Yeah, I don't care about a monologue.

I'm asking how it's not a control. Your question makes no sense. I can explain to you how correlations work. I can explain to you p-values. Yeah, I know. I can feel how correlations work. I'm asking about controls, not correlation. The controls are relevant for certain types of questions. Perhaps they are. I'm trying to say controls are not a good... Controls right now and if you... No, I think you...

Okay, I have a graph and it divides it in half and it's putting this half over here, this half over there. You have now introduced a way to control what your experiment's going to be. I can continue. So if we have a graph. Oh dear. This is gold, isn't it? So this is him attempting to kind of... Or in a lower... Yeah. In terms of, show her up, you know, because he knows what science is and, you know, he's proved that she's not doing anything about science because of whatever but actually he's very unclear about what a correlation is and

even what a xy plot is. Yeah and I think a lot of people empathize with Ayala's response right which is like no no you're confused this doesn't what your question does. What do you do with that? We're just trying to explain a correlation to someone and they go, I don't care about that, but where's the control? Let's step in the time. Yeah, so this is, I think in part the reason this became so catchy online is that the format of the show is that it's these red-pilled conservative men showing up how illogical and the contradictions in the views

of these airheaded women. But in this occasion, instead is a conservative Christian who knows absolutely nothing, not even the basic things about like science and statistics displaying it for the world, but talking in a way as if in that. What an idiot. Yeah, that's right. In that arrogant, blustery. Yeah, Taran. Yeah.

You just have to give everyone is with. Yeah, I'm this one. Yes. Now, one one thing to say as well is like, Aiella, so she actually voiced this online, that she was like, it's weird that suddenly everybody's celebrating me because I haven't really changed, right? Like I've been doing this all the time, and now I'm being presented as like, what a great person,

whereas usually people are making fun of me. And I think she's right, because like, what a great person, whereas usually people are making fun of me. And I think she's right because like, for me, Ayala's blog posts and research are like, you know, they're interesting, you can take them for what they are. I think she does have a database that's like a lot better than a lot of the social science research. But I also, I remember her talking about like that she's going to get better at statistics and do all these things. And then she seemed to lose interest after like a month

or two. Right? That was the impression I got. So like, my view here is like, Ayala is somebody who has like, you know, probably competent undergraduate grasp of statistics. And she's collected a big data set and she's worked with people. So she's not talking nonsense. You know, she's interested in this, but she's like an interested amateur, right? She is not like a statistician of high regard or this kind of thing. Like there's some inferential statistics and the stuff that she does, but it's mostly, you know, kind of descriptive stuff, which is fine.

But people presented it seem to like swing to the other way where she was not, you know, like a rationalist God who is destroying with facts and logic. And I'm like, no, that's not right. But as I know, she highlighted that and was kind of, you know, saying it's weird to suddenly be loved by everyone. And yeah, I don't think that is the takeaway. I think the takeaway is undergraduate graphs of statistics with experience trumps absolute ignorance. It does. It does indeed. It does indeed. That's right.

And like, you know, not there's anything wrong with that. It's good to have, you know, an undergraduate graphs for statistics and to have a go at collecting data and to do correlations and summaries and other types of descriptive statistics. That's good stuff. Yeah. And like Andrew Wilson and the Nuller part kind of takes issue because she describes like the standard samples in social science as being inadequate, having the same kind of biases. And he's like, how do you know that? What do you mean? Right. And he kind of acts like there is going to be these massively higher quality, you know, data sets than what's expected. And the field of sexology is not a field which is known for its robust methodology. I think it's a field that's dominated by convenience samples just like Aella's. So you could do a lot with those. She was mentioning online that her sample skews younger, liberal, and female around 30.

So she's aware of the demographic skew. And even in the interview, she pointed out, you could actually take a subset of the survey and restrict it to over 30-year-olds or whatever, to make it less skewed by internet type people. But in any case, she's not completely, 30 year olds or whatever, right? Like to make it less steward by internet type people. But you know, in any case, she's not completely, she's much less naive about this than Andrew Wilson, but his confidence level is so much higher, which is what makes this such a delightful

clip and why it went completely viral. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's also the good old gender aspect to it too. I mean, that's... How about that pass with that comment? I mean, that is the thing with these blokes. So confident, so blustery, so overbearing, so quick to interrupt and so on, and well, knowing absolutely nothing. Yeah. So like, just to say about, she said, guys, my research is not Twitter polls Jesus fucking Christ I use polls for fun to test out wording and in rare cases spot-check my actual researches surveys built on guided track Typically with FA selected questions and I often pay random samples to spot-check representative

I write about this clearly and repeatedly whenever I write up results I have never ever clear my Twitter polls of reliable research outside very narrow scopes. Why does everyone repeat this all the time? So confidently you all belong in the whatever podcast. Okay. So there's, there's the podcast, right? There were the whatever that's what it's, it's called, but, um, yeah.

So like she is not just relying on, you know, Twitter polls or this kind of thing, but there are still issues with the data sets and whatnot, but that's the same for all research. So yeah. Yeah. And like you said, the, the, the wrong takeaway is to get on that sort of cheerleading thing. Like the guy she's talking to is an idiot. Therefore I LR is brilliant.

She's the best and she's, she's, she's the statistics God now. And when you do that, you kind of oscillate backwards and forwards in your hero worshiping to some degree, then you'll be disappointed when she does make some mistakes and some things are not accounted for, so there's not enough awareness of X, Y, or Z. So yeah, I think it's a good topic for citizen science, that kind of thing. Yeah, yeah, perfectly reasonable.

I did a survey of like 500 Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu practitioners when I was an undergraduate, right? Like by just asking in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu forums, not a representative sample, but it was actually much bigger than most other surveys I saw of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu practitioners. So you know, that's just the way it is. And it was published in a paper, but eventually, so whatever, whatever. Now the name of the podcast, I'm my sentiment here. So the other thing, Matt, the media, main course for today's supplementary material.

We're turning to a figure that we've covered a couple of times. We've, we've been on the conversation in dialogue with them directly. on the conversation in dialogue with them directly. John Vervecki, somebody on our subreddit highlighted that he had a conversation about, well, I don't want to spoil it. I don't want to spoil it. So I've got a couple of clips from this conversation and well, I shouldn't say a conversation. It might be I shouldn't say a conversation. It might be better to name it something else. Well, first of all, Michael, it's a great pleasure to be back here with you. I really thoroughly enjoyed our last wasn't even a conversation. I think it got into dialogos.

Oh, thank you so much. You can't say a nicer thing to a sensor maker than, you know. That's right. It wasn't just a conversation, Chris. It was dialogous. Yeah, we got into dialogous. Together. Yeah.

And the reporter was responsible. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So we're looking at an instance. Well, the previous conversation was dialog dialogue. This might be another instance. We'll see. We'll see from the clips.

Right. So this is talking about the guy that's interviewing John Vervecki, heard him on another podcast, talk about an experience he has. And he wants to get some more details about it, right. And kind of explore what it means. And it involves Hermes, the messenger. The messenger. Winked fate. Winked fate. Does he have winked fate?

I think so. I think so. Yeah, well, don't they all? So let's hear a bit more about the experiencing question. So before I ramble any further... 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,

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