Decoding the Gurus - Supplementary Material 3: Sand-worms, Anti-Capitalist Merch, and High Level Idea-Jacking

Episode Date: March 31, 2024

We test the boundaries of the Supplementary format with a stacked third edition containing: Matt's Review of Dune 2 and the Three-Body ProblemHasan Piker's Anti-Capitalist MerchThe Controversy Surrounding Andrew HubermanDifferential Charity and Selective DecouplingGrace before meals at Triggernometry and Christian HipsterismJordan and Bret's Pseudoacademic-eseHigh-Level Idea JackingDream InstructionsLinksHasan Piker's Ideologie StoreNew York Magazine: Andrew Huberman's Mechanisms of ControlSlate: So, Should You Trust Andrew Huberman?The Darien Gap & Postmodernism | Bret Weinstein & Jordan Peterson | EP 434Triggernometry: Can We Live Without Religion? - Alex O'ConnorImmune: A Journey into the Mysterious System that Keeps You AliveThe full episode is available for Patreon subscribers (1hr 33mins).Join us at: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingTheGurus

Hello and welcome to theoding the Gurus with me, the anthropologist Chris Kavanaugh, and him, the psychologist Matthew Brown, looking into the guru sphere and trying to discern its mysteries from the movement of the heavenly spheres. How was that for a radio style introduction matt do you approve that was all right but you forgot to mention this is the supplementary materials that was a key part that you needed to mention i was laying that up for you it was just giving you something to say but that's true this is supplemental supplementary whatever you prefer materials the little cake at the end of the meal yes yes i think i'm gonna enjoy this segment it's uh you know the pressure's off it's not a it's not serious business it's not a property coding episode we're not seeking to educate you know people can do the do the ironing there's nothing of value we're not seeking to educate. You know, people can do the ironing. There's nothing of value.

There's nothing of value. We're not going to say anything useful for anyone. You may as well just hang it up. Yeah. This is purely to keep your company on a long drive or when you're doing the ironing or something like that. That's the goal. If you're running now, faster. Go faster.

Wave, wave, slacken off. Speed up. That's right. Ignore the pain. Run through it, faster, go faster. Why are you slacking off? Speed up. That's right. Ignore the pain. Run through it. Yeah, come on. The gurus would do it.

Just think of David Goggins or whatever, one of those guys. Or Jocko. Imagine Jocko is behind you saying, run, run, run. Yep, he's slapping your butt as you go. Faster, faster. Yeah, if you slow down, that's what happens. So there you go that's motivation for those who save us for exercise activities that's done and for those of you for those of you ironing chris you know make it into a game you know see how many shirts and undies you

can iron in a 10 minute window count them and then see if you can improve on that score. Wow. That's gamifying. That's psychology in action. Matt's available for your nudge whenever. I could do public talks, whatever you need me for. There's lots of tips. I've got a whole box of them. Yeah, Ted will become calling. Well, we've got many things on the slate that we'll look at today.

And just to be clear, Matt, I'm going to make another public service announcement for people. These supplementary materials, about half an hour or so we put out on the main feed. The rest of it goes onto the Patreon. There's usually about an extra hour. Originally, we tried to keep the intro segments to around 30 minutes.

So, you know, just think about it like that. The intro segment is now the separate bit that you get just as usual on its own little intro thing. Easy to skip. And if you want more intro goodness go over to the Patreon and pony

up the $2. Or don't. Right? That's it. See if we care. Yeah, exactly. You're not going to stop us. So, you can't. So, yep, that's it. I'm just telling people because they might be freaked out

whenever the paywall music or whatever comes down. But there is a way. There is a way that they can access it so that's what i want to panic don't panic yeah you still have options and you're you're actually not losing things you're getting things think about it like that come on take a more positive mindset okay there's there's a way that you can hear more of us. There was no way before. There was no way before. Now there is a way.

All right. That's enough of that, Chris. That's enough of that. What have you got for us? We've got a few things on our agenda. We have a list of things to me. But don't go through it, Matt, because we might not get through all of them. So we'll, yeah, this is the one on our programming note.

If you want to see the things that we're going to talk about, look at the show notes. Okay. You can see what's listed there or you can look at these bookmarks which i put in every episode which tell you all of the segments that are in so you could just look at the bookmarks now and be like oh look they're going to talk about this this and this and uh yeah it's all clear for you there are bookmarks available in all good podcast players yeah that that's information especially for the boomers out there you probably you don't know this you don't know you there are bookmarks available in all good podcast players yeah that that's information especially for the boomers out there you probably you don't know this you don't know how to do it yeah um well one thing we're definitely going to get to is my hot take about the three body problem

and dune part two i've got opinions and um i'm not i'm not going to stop record do it matt yeah well that's a nice positive note to start things i'm gonna take us down as we go on so let's start with something fun yeah all right all right let's ease people into it um you've seen dune 2 haven't you chris what did you think of it i thought that dune 2 was very impressive atmospherically in terms of the stylistic components. And it gave me what I wanted, which was more of the sandy planet and the space opera style intrigue from the first movie. I already know the story because I read, I didn't read the books, I read the summaries of all the books. So I already know what is going

to happen. But that was interesting. But it didn't give me much beyond that, I will say. It was not like Lord of the Rings or something where I feel that it was a kind of revolutionary experience in filmmaking or that kind of thing. It was very competent, very enjoyable, good space opera, but not particularly revolutionary or deep. That's the way I would put it. Yeah, I'm on board with all that. But I'm interested to hear you say that, you know, it wasn't like Lord of the Rings because I'd say it was very much

like Lord of the Rings adaption because, you know, very, very polished. I think very faithful to the books in terms of capturing like an interpretation of the vibe, the feel, the aesthetic, all that stuff. So just like I really enjoyed the Lord of the Rings movies because they brought the books that I've read many times to life and in pretty much the same way as I envisage them. I think my visualization of the Dune books, and I've read the whole series twice, by the way, Chris, twice. Oh, wow. Yeah. As a much younger person. But I don't think I had as strong of visuals in my head when I was reading them. But the way that they imagined it felt completely accurate to me yeah well i guess the way i would

put it i don't mean to say that it wasn't fearful to the books i know there's some differences and whatnot but i i think the general vibe is that they do did a very good job of you know converting the book into the media film but the difference that i mean with lord of the rings is you know if you look at the lord of rings movie a hell of a lot happens in the space of the two to three hours that is going on they cram in a lot it feels like there's you know a kind of very dense package of information, whereas Dune felt more like taking their time to atmospherically create the situation. And I don't know, it just, I feel that the thematic components of it are not particularly hard to grasp. I mean, that's also the case with Lord of the Rings.

But like, So religious fundamentalism can be bad, or people that are messiahs can create atrocities and death, and there are no completely good or evil people apart from the Harkonnens, in some respect. But you know what I mean? I don't know it just struck me as like a pretty straightforward oh this guy is going to be the messiah but watch out there's a lot of signs that you know

him being the messiah might lead to some trouble that's it that's essentially all that happens and you could say Lord of the Rings well they just take a ring from here they go for go for a long walk basically yeah but there's there's other the complexities there you know smiegel and all that kind of thing i just i don't know maybe if you read the book

you're getting a lot of the you know the depth which isn't so obvious to somebody that's only seen the film. But yeah, they just struck me as like a pretty straightforward story. And I enjoyed it as such. But I saw people, including the director, kind of responding to the point that, you know, he wanted the signpost that Paul Atreides is not the pure heroic figure there were some concerning aspects about the devotion of his following i thought he hammered that into the ground like repeatedly it's very very clear about that message but apparently for a lot of people that was subtext that was subtext so yeah you gotta you

gotta feel sorry for these directors they you know they make it so obvious yet still um but look i um yeah look i mean that's all that's all true i guess i think one way in which the dune books are a little bit more interesting than the lord of the rings i mean lord of the rings has its own great aspects to it and they're similar in the sense that they're you know they're sort of epic tales and they're kind of taking a medieval real world historical tropes and putting them into an unfamiliar situation which is what fantasy and sci-fi often does you're right and they even though doing this set in a science fiction it's very much great houses and palace intrigue and that kind of thing so it is like a medieval deal it just with big spaceships and planets instead of yeah territories and ships

and the the the the evocation of the middle ages goes beyond just the fact that it's kind of this neo-feudal type situation with a with a relatively weak sort of emperor type king person and all of the various barons and houses vying for control. As well as that, the sort of mercantilism and the way the economy sort of worked in the Middle Ages is brought in too. They didn't have the Chome Corporation in there, Combiner, Honneth, Oba, Advance and Merc mercantiles one of my favorite things but but even the the navigators who are a guild the talaxu and so on the sort of catholic church is there with uh bernadette um you know like it all sort of mirrors that sort of late middle ages guild based mercantilism where you know you essentially have monopolies of things that are controlled by certain organizations

which are sort of a power base in and of themselves. Yeah, I did get the subtle parallels between spice and oil and the colonial triad in the Middle East across the Middle East. Spice is spice, right? Like in the late Middle Ages, spice was a big deal, right? Well, yeah, yeah. But I mean that those parallels were, again, it's not very subtle, right? A bit like the Fremen are kind of like Arab people, right?

A little bit presented. That's right. And that's not subtle either. No, that's right. Just like the correspondence between the Benadrysera and the Catholic Church is not subtle. That's what I liked about it. Like Lord of the Rings, it's epic, it's cool.

I love everything about it. It's huge world building. But as like a narrative arc, it's very much just good versus evil, right? Pretty much every group is either on the good side or on the evil side. There's relatively few people who are morally ambivalent. Well, Smeagol, yep. But that's not real life, right? That doesn't ring true.

And the sort of thing I kind of like about the Dune universe is that, you know, yes, you do have the obligatory bad guys, the Harkonnens, and they do make out the Atreides are loyal and you know brave and all that stuff but I like the aspect of it of how there's a lot of moral ambiguity to it and for me the the main story is and this is different from how most people online seem to read it and even how you described it which is this kind of like a like a moral warning you know like watch out for power is corrupting or like messianic religion you know jihads and so on is going to create lots of trouble you know that's a bad thing but for me

i saw it more as like a commentary on how like you have this fine balance of powers you know in this world with all of these different power bases vying for control the emperor's trying to keep his control of all of these powerful houses the houses are trying to one-up each other that the various guilds have got their own agendas so it's a delicate system and everyone's kind of edging closer to the precipice and they they set up the conditions for paul atreides to essentially be the catalyst for this cataclysmic uh jihad but you know it's it's unintentional kind of on all parts but basically they lose control of the situation and everything goes to shit and i think that's a good like that's that that's a more subtle and interesting narrative arc to me than just

good triumphing over evil yeah i guess so i mean i like the stuff it gets to with the golden path eventually and the potential issue if you were a omniscient clairvoyant or whatever who could see all the potential pathways and you realize that the one that lets humanity survive requires incredible bloodshed and totalitarian repressive like i think that is interesting and potentially more morally complex than the lord of the rings story or or whatnot so i can see that matt yeah there's but you mentioned the free body problem what's the connection with that yes and i should say i'd largely agree essentially with with your take on june i enjoyed it you know it was a it's a it's a nice story looked great good tone and all that stuff a good movie but still fundamentally just kind of a typical story right um despite all the sci-fi stuff yeah yeah now the three body problem and look a lot of science fiction books are like that too like they're basically space operas right um a big big rollicking

adventure but you know it's just a story in the end you very rarely in science fiction come across books that are new and different and yeah the three body problem the series of novels by uh what's his name lou chixin apologies for the pronunciation i read that a few years ago and you know i had really mixed feelings about it because the commentary that people have had about the adaption that's come on netflix was similar to my with to my feelings about the book which is like the dialogue felt wooden the characters didn't feel kind of real and even though there were lots of it was just very interesting the way it it followed like it was all about these interesting ideas it starts off

with the cultural revolution in china and it's very much a chinese china sort of centric story even though the rest of the world is involved too but it involves so many strange things like this virtual reality computer game and these strange aliens from a trisolaris system who are coming to earth and weird new technologies and fifth columns and all sorts of stuff. And it spans hundreds of years. So, the feeling you get from reading it is not only very interesting, like it brings in ideas like the sort of dark forest idea of how in the interstellar civilizations are all keeping quiet because of game theory and stuff if you say hello we're here then you you'll sort of almost certainly get

destroyed by some yeah more powerful civilization yeah yeah yeah um and all of that is sort of communicated in a pretty compelling way um so i mean i am enjoying the netflix series too i i don't think you've seen it but for me it is actually a pretty good adaption so far of of the book and while i i i've seen it criticized for exactly the same reasons that i that i like the sort of things that left me cold about the book but like that's okay that's what science fiction's about like if you want good characterization and and sort of like people's inner lives then go read lady shadley's lover or madam bovary or something like this is a hot take this is a hot take okay so your argument is like science fiction doesn't meant for good characterizations of realistic people

yes yes because it's very hard to do everything at once like like science fiction is known for being bad at this right and look in an ideal world and maybe some there are some exceptions there are famous exceptions to this but yes yeah yeah i mean but it's it's just very hard to keep all of those balls in the air and sort of do everything at once you know so so science fiction usually compromises and focuses on interesting ideas and strange situations and that is often at the expense of characterization and stuff well i can give you an example of this because there's a series of novels by adrian chakowsky chakowsky is that how you pronounce it anyway children of time i think

is the first one. Love them. Right, yeah. And this is basically the thing is there are evolved spiders in it that become intelligent and later other creatures, right? And you get from their viewpoint. So that's interesting. But exactly what you said, I find that very interesting initially, but it basically ends up that the spiders are essentially weird humans

because it's hard to keep a story where you have a completely alien viewpoint if you are a human writing it so yeah you know it's still a decent story but i think the the spider and dollar alien aspect ends up like just being very human-like at the end so yeah, yeah, I stand out from that team. Oh, wait, just hold your thought. Just before you do, because this will be really quick. You mentioned spiders, yeah? I did, yeah.

Spider civilizations in science fiction, and it would be remiss of me to let that go past without mentioning A Deepness in the Sky by Verna Vinge, a sequel to Fire Upon the Deep, which also involves intelligence spider civilizations and it is very good very very very very very good it's very difficult to find an audiobook format though i will say but that's neither here nor there but so and i will say the culture war the way that they have reacted to this is there's a very visceral portrayal of the cultural revolution in China with a physicist being executed on stage and made to denounce science in favor of the revolutionary

ideology. And it's a very emotionally effective portrayal of that situation. And as a result, because it's the communists doing very bad things to intellectuals, it was culture war fodder. Fodder. Culture war fodder. For people to say, look, communists were terrible. This is what it was like, and so on. So that's all I've seen of the problem. Well, the cultural revolution was terrible.

Yeah. And, you know, that was accurate. And, you know, even I mentioned to you, I forgot his name. Who is the current Chinese premier, super leader? Xi Jinping. Xi Jinping. Like even his family, his parents were hit by exactly the same kind of thing. It was just so common across all of Chinese society.

It was, you know, traumatic essentially for such a huge number of people. So I actually really liked that integration into the story chris because i think there was a deep message there because in the three body problem basically the traumatic experiences that the protagonist the female scientist experienced as a result of the cultural revolution sort of led to a deep mistrust and pessimism about humanity and our culture and our potential for whatever and that that's had led her to a kind of a nihilistic thing so i thought that actually fit pretty well and it's you know i've read opinion pieces about um sorry the chinese leader's name again xi jinping uh you know i've read opinion pieces about him saying that his kind of obsession for control and not let the you know like you know the dangers of

losing your your grip over the country can can lead to that kind of chaos so it's a theory it's a theory a bit too psychoanalytical for me but i'm sure it's it's at least part of the contributing i don't know if it's true it was I remember it was a reputable article that I'd read. I think I read it too, actually. This all rings a bell for me. The final thing I'll say about that, though, is that I think you've also got to make a bit of an allowance in terms of what feels like wooden dialogue and what feels like non-identifiable characters.

A lot of it could be the fact that it's kind of lost in translation. I've noticed this a bit in reading books that were originally translated. Yeah, so you've got both the cultural differences, but on top of that, the sort of translation differences. Well, you're a free body problem apologist, Matt. That's fine. That's all right. I think that's a relatively uncontroversial stance to take.

And actually, I do have something that relates, you know, while we're on the subject of cultural revolutions and potential apologists for various regimes involved. And we have recently discussed someone who is tanky-ish or tanky-adjacent, Hassan Paikar. You remember him? He's been up to something that i thought would be worth mentioning i remember his friend our favorite anti-capitalist what a guy what a guy what a guy so

i think this just merits a short mention that i saw him promoting i don't know if it's new or it's just a new line, but he has like a brand of merchandise called Ideology. It's a bit like the, you know, what is it? I'm thinking about that spoof movie about the modeling industry. Oh, Zoolander? Yeah, yeah. There's some homeless chic thing that he's promoting. Oh, God, yeah.

Oh, yeah. What was that called? Derelict. Derelict. Yeah, derelict from Zoolander. So a bit like that. But the interesting thing, I already know, I can hear a voice that

the capitalist wheeling getting ready to send me the meme of the guy jumping out of the well no the one meme of a guy jumping out of a well does not answer every question people no it it does not so it's essentially essentially a line of hoodies. If you told me that this was like a movie and it was parodying an anti-capitalist, I would say it's too on the nose. But he's released a set of shirts with messages like corrupt collusion collapse. We're doing a coup. Capitalism in decay capitalism seems to be doing

fine on that website uh spend 100 get one free rolling along the top he's got he's got a nice shirt there capitalism is voluntary uh which is definitely true i think in this case um 65 for that and you know so this is more than just like the obligatory merch shop that some podcasters do like this is like a fashion line an anti-capitalist fashion line of yeah of overpriced basic shirts and sweat sweat sweaters and things like that with edgy communist slash anti-capitalist slogans on them. And they're all modeled by him. He's the model for every item on this website. Right. So now let me explain a little bit to people who don't get this. Yes, it's perfectly

fine to be a socialist or somebody highlighting the issues with capitalism and not being living in a hovel in the ground, you know, a house that you fashion together from twigs and sticks. Yes, that's correct. It's perfectly reasonable to be critical of economic systems and to exist within them. What is hypocritical is being a hyper-capitalist. Like somebody who is a millionaire living in a mansion house with luxury cars and releasing overpriced t-shirts that are selling slogans against capitalism while you profit mightily from those.

Like there are degrees, right? We have a category in the grometer which is called excessive profiteering people recognize this when it comes to their ideological opponents but for some reason when it comes to well for some reason because they they like you know the for a very obvious reason yes go on they give people like hassan a pass and they their universal responses that trot out the little cartoon of the guy popping out of the well but the guy popping out of the well wasn't popping out to sell you his brand of t-shirts right them so this is i mean it is beyond parody it is absolutely on the same level of zoolander of some fashion house releasing a line called Derelict

to raise attention to issues faced by homeless people like that's that's basically the deal I mean this is socialism slash communism anti-capitalism as just a fashion statement and that that sums up Hassan Piker perfectly in my opinion yeah opinion. Yeah, that's it. So there you go. I just did Warren short mention. And, you know, if you really like what Hassan is selling and you think that he's doing, you know, a lot of good, why don't you go have a look? There's lots of good fashion.

They've got a good message on it. You know, we'll put the link in the show notes. So there we go. We're doing our part to take down the capitalist system, we'll put the link in the show notes. We're doing our part to take down the capitalist system, okay? So don't get annoyed with us. Oh, very good. Good on you. Well, there's Hassan.

There's Hassan. Okay, let's stop talking about him. I want to forget about him again. I was so happy not thinking about him. Don't. Get back, Hassan. Back into your well. him again i was thinking about him don't get back as i'm back into your well now the other thing that happened which was quite notable recently matt is that there was a very long article released about one andrew huberman by the new york what's that the new york magazine

i believe it is The cover story was called Following for Dr. Huberman by Kerry Howley. Now, as the title suggests, this is a rather critical piece. It essentially covers Huberman's personal relationships, yes, but also alleges that he's oversold his backstory about you know his troubled upbringing and humble beginnings and that he is not running a productive lab as presented there doesn't seem to be much going on at stanford and generally there is presented as a relatively narcissistic, flaky person, quite self-obsessed. But the main issue which got attention was that he is revealed to have been simultaneously dating six women while making them believe that they are dating exclusively, monogamously, right? And this includes sharing living arrangements with one of them

and also having them undergo IVF fertility treatments, right, to try and increase the chance to get pregnant. So this is seen as being somewhat counter to the image which he has tried to develop of a considerate, very thoughtful, compassionate science guy. As he comes across in the piece, it presents him like sort of sociopathic, right? Somebody that is perfectly content with manipulating six people simultaneously. and there's all the weird things about one of the points made is that he is encouraging of unprotected sex with his partners without divulging to them all the other activities that he's engaged in and some

one of them gets a sexually transmitted disease right right? Yeah, insisting on unprotected sex while at the same time secretly having sex with a lot of other people. Yeah. Now, the reaction to this piece has been rather varied. One category of reaction is to say, this is just a hit piece. It's digging through the dirt,

bringing up ex-girlfriends and their stories. And there's always he said, she said aspects to this. And what does this really have to do with the content that Huberman is pointing out? Like, isn't this just gossip, right? Tabloid level gossip. That's been one reaction. What do you think about that, Matt, as a argument? What do you think about that, Matt, as an argument?

Well, I think I saw something with someone who described it as, I guess, defended him as not judging people for a polyamoric lifestyle, which seems to be, you know, a fairly blatant rebranding, you know, like a 1950s madman territory. You'd simply call someone like this a womanizer or a you know a creep but you can't just say well i've unilaterally declared that he's created but the young people pointed out that like the new york mag has positive articles about polyamorous relationships but the the key point there is that people in polyamorous relationships, whatever you think about them,

everybody is supposed to be informed that they're in a polyamorous relationship. That seems key. That does seem key. Yeah, that is generally something stressed. So when it is one person who is in the know that they're in multiple simultaneous relationships and the other are unaware, then that's not the same as the polyamorous ideal, right? Now, what about the fact, Matt, that it's irrelevant, that this is just personal gossip? We all have things in our lives that we wouldn't want discussed in public so why are we

digging through the garbage on huberman's personal relationships that's right it's it's just salacious gossip he's doing nothing more than putting that expensive testosterone replacement therapy to good use what's the point of being an alpha if you don't get what you want yeah some people i believe some of his fans did mention the charming phrase chad ramming he's just he's just chad ramming or whatever the kiss might be he's a millionaire matt he's a super influential man he's very handsome and rugged and virile and so what he chooses to you know lead on six women what are we moralizing church nancies weird this is 2024 i'm a person an individual can do what they want right people can do what they want yeah look i mean look there is obviously an aspect to it which is uh yeah a personal hit

piece in a way you know what i mean it may be a well-founded hit piece, but you know, just like with say Donald Trump, you know, and the various personal revelations that occurred there. At one level, it is about him personally and it isn't about his policies or whatever, but people still consider it relevant. So yeah, look, I mean, for me, I guess I do take, like I'm not such a high decoupler that I'm going to take anything that is like the various bits of information you have about somebody's background about the kind of people they associate with the way they conduct themselves in their personal lives I mean a lot of this stuff can be relevant when you're forming an opinion about someone and way before these revelations I mean this doesn't really change our evaluation of him

very much at all because we identified a whole bunch of issues that we've got with his approach to his podcasting career and science communication and the way he evaluates literature and he's somewhat disturbing connections to the woo health and, you know, maximizer alpha male manosphere type thing, which he kind of, yeah, he has like a dual personality in his public broadcast, which is presenting himself as, you know, a very normal, a very respectable researcher and not just a manosphere bro pushing Wu health and supplements. And, you know, know so for me this further information about his personal life while you have to treat it with you know you don't necessarily assume that everything that is written is 100 true yeah it does fit with the less charitable interpretation that you and i had

about his activities yeah so to me there is validity to the criticism that one, the piece is overwritten. It's extremely long. I would say 10,000 words or more. And it gives a lot of detail as a result. You know, it's at times feels like what is the point of this four paragraphs you've spent on a particular issue? And I think there's legitimate points to be raised there. But one aspect that I would want to emphasize is that it isn't just a matter of he said, she said.

For a magazine like this to publish this kind of piece, they would have done fact checking. And the story that they are recounting involves people receiving messages, receiving videos, and so on. And they indicate in the piece that they have confirmed via these sources. And the fact that they have, you know, multiple sources giving the same account from different perspectives means it isn't just he said, she said. So anything that's in that piece will have been checked to make sure it's not actionable, right? That they have reason to support it. And similarly, that's why they provide the responses from a Huberman spokesperson consistently, like denying things and then saying where the evidence contradicts what

has been said there. So it isn't just the case of he said, she said. Yes, it doesn't mean that you should take every account that's provided, every quotation by the women as the God's honest truth and the exact objective presentation of, you know, what happened. But it is also not the case that everything is just equally as likely, right? No, it definitely seems that there was a misrepresentation of exclusivity with these women, right? Now, that's one thing. But the other is that people are mistaking this as, so if somebody has six girlfriends, we shouldn't be able to heed their health advice. And no, that's not the point. The point is somebody who presents themselves

in a certain way and then has a personal life which suggests a completely different character than is presented to the public. That is what is usually considered hypocritical, right? You know, like the preacher saying gay people are an abomination and then sleeping with gay prostitutes, right? It's the delta between their public persona and what they are actually engaged in. That's, I think, part of the thing that people are missing. So Huberman's presentation of himself as a very down-to-earth, humble science guy who is producing content about resisting giving in to temptation, about treating people with respect, about how to form meaningful relationships.

And then you get a piece which is essentially detailing a litany of abusive, manipulative relationships. And also as part of that, using optimizer and therapeutic language to justify your behavior. It speaks to a worrying disconnect between your public and private personas. I think the analogy with the religious preacher, he's got a dodgy personal life that sort of holds with him a bit, doesn't it? I mean, he's followed the line of a lot of our heterodox type influences in proclaiming relief in God and sort of finding religion. That happened a few months ago, I think. Yeah. And he has talked about, you know, the importance of honesty in relationships and all these kind of things. In fact, Matt, there's a clip that's been doing the round where he was talking to David Buss, the evolutionary psychologist who talks about male and female relationship patterns and these kind of things. And listen to this segment.

You can't have long term affairs with six different partners. Yeah, unless he's juggling multiple phone accounts or something. Right, right, right. And some men try to do that, but I think it could be very taxing. So that doesn't mean men's people, you know Your Enthusiasm music at the end, but that was them talking about men who would do this kind of thing about having different phone accounts and all that kind of stuff. And Huberman's response to this was also interesting because he tweeted out, if you go and look at his account,

he's just tweeted out some promotional stuff from the episode. He hasn't said anything about it, except the episode that he released was one with a magician talking about, you know, the psychology of magic and whatnot. And let's just listen to a segment of the clip that he used to promote the episode.

It's like falling out of love something like yeah that's really i mean a previous guest on the podcast carl deisroth one of the best bioengineers neuroscientists and psychiatrists in the world um went on lex friedman podcast and they were talking about love and carl said something interesting that's very relevant here he said um he's a colleague of mine at Stanford, very poetic guy. He said, you know, love between two people, romantic love, that is, is one of the few things in life that we collaborate with someone to story something into the future. You know, this is different than the love of a child or a sibling or a parent or a pet, et cetera, or a friend, right? You're creating a story that's based on

real experience of past and present, but there's this storying forward of love. That's great. And falling out of love involves, of course, the ending of the story moving forward, but also a, in some cases, sadly, a revision of the events of the past. Yeah. So I wonder if there was any subtext to the choice of clips that he used there. Yeah. Yeah. So he released that after this article came to light. He hasn't responded to the article directly, but he released that. came to light he hasn't responded to the article directly but he released that no he just released a clip indicating that when relationships end people have a tendency to feel disappointed and revise their assessment of the relationship so yeah maybe revise the facts and yeah get yeah

yeah so you know that is a response i would take. But the point there as well, Matt, if you assume that this was not planned as a response, is Huberman is often talking very sincerely about relationships and love and connection and human bonding and these kinds of things with his audience, right? these kinds of things with his audience, right? So I feel that this is why some people would regard the revelations as being contradictory to that image that he cultivates. And actually, although you can find immediately the heterodox fear, the kind of Lex Friedman

extolling how much Andrew Huberman is a good man, Scott Adams retweeting things about the media attacking him or whatever. His subreddit actually does have a lot of people saying, well, this is just causing me to have a very different opinion of Andrew. And it's fair to say there's also a clear gender divide in the responses where women have recognized the issue that you know his behavior indicates more readily whereas with men there does tend to be more well boys will be boys you know he's a millionaire alpha what did you expect yeah yeah i mean the way that the usual suspects and the podcaster stan just join shoulder to shoulder on things like this every time

something like this comes up like lex fridman's response there was totally predictable from him and this is someone lex you know he's all about just just pure love love honesty all all of those things schmaltzy saccharine bullshit frankly and of course his response to this was it's heartbreaking to see a hit piece written about my friend andrew hoodman i know him very well and can definitively say that he is a great human being scientist and educator hit piece attacks like this are simply trash clickbait journalism desperately i can't read the rest because he's blocked me so clinging on to relevance andrew should be celebrated period his podcast has helped millions

of people including me lead healthier lives keep going brother and that response is very illustrative but but one thing to say though i'll just mention quickly is like so what lex and so what all these bros that are talking about huberman's, that doesn't actually undo any of the things that are detailed in that page. You can get benefit, but it isn't all about you and your workout routine, right? That's like not the point of the article.

But in terms of Lex, it totally illustrates what you've said before, which is that his like hyper empathy and hyper love is extremely selective. And in this case, it's very selective in terms of being targeted at his mate bro bro and he'd be the same with joe rogan or any of these other people but certainly would not extend it to to to other parties i think just trash hit piece journalism, nothing to see here. Yeah. And the other response that you see quite a lot is people beginning their take by saying,

I haven't read the piece on Huberman, but right. And it's very common that people don't read the piece. They focus on their interpersonal relationship with Huberman. I find them, they always be nice. You know, he's always been very kind and important to me. And then, like you say, relating it to where they see him as sitting in the culture war. So if they're a heterodox, you know, like podcasting bro, then absolutely what's the issue and vice versa as well i feel like people have very very uh flexible standards another thing you said to me is that if it was like impraham x kendy about which these personal dealings had come to light which didn't reflect

well on him they would not forego the opportunity to put the boot in right some consistent people might but generally speaking no and this thing in the general heterodox fear about high decoupling and that kind of thing it is very rarely practice consistency so they do not take the arguments of people they dislike in isolation from the people that is very rare it is almost always somebody who they agree with that has something bad that they don't want to like focus on selective decoupling i've decided to brand this selective decoupling yes selective decoupling is is correct. It is an epidemic at the minute. And, you know, so basically the summary is that the piece presents somebody who engages in self-mythologizing,

who's deceitful, uses therapy speak or optimizing terminology in order to justify self-gratification and fairly abusive behavior. And that is completely contradictory to the public image that Huberman has attempted to cultivate. And so it's notable for that reason. It doesn't matter if Huberman wants to sleep around with tons of people, that's all fine. And he has disagreements with his exes. That's fine. But the reason that this piece is notable is because of the discrepancy between the public and private image that it details and some of the worrying manipulative tendencies, right? So no, you don't have to stop listening to Huberman for your protocols if that's what you get.

But you also perhaps should consider, you know, the people that you're getting your important life advice from, how far they exemplify the values that they're preaching about. I think that does matter a little, but maybe some people, not at all. Yeah, I mean, my final word on this is that we had our take of him and what his operation modus operandi is, and it was different from how he presented himself as being nothing more than a scientist

and a public educator and somebody who is looking to promote health. This new information is entirely consistent with our take on him and is inconsistent with the way he presents himself. Yeah, the one last thing I'll say about the whole thing is there's a segment at the very end of the article where they detail him talking to a guy, Conti. I think it's a therapist and particularly a therapist that Huberman has worked with.

And they're analyzing this email which Huberman got, which he read as passive aggressive, where some colleague, when he doesn't respond to an email in time that they guess he didn't want to collaborate on the topic. And him and Paul Conti then spend around nine minutes on their podcast dissecting the psychological flaws in that person. And, you know, what are all the issues that they have that are going into that kind of response? And so this article represents that Huberman often like, you know, doesn't respond to things in time or whatever, which is not a big sin. But the point is willingness to analyze someone's character publicly for nine minutes on your podcast and then argue that, well, nobody should be interested in any details about how you behave, you know, interpersonally with people. It feels like an inconsistency to me. And the fact that him and the therapist don't consider maybe the issue isn't with the other person, right? Maybe there is a legitimate grievance or something like

that. That just speaks to some of the issues involved here and yeah the different levels of charity being granted but but that's it that's it matt and you don't have to think that the women involved are saints or that the any of that you don't have to take everything on trust just take it for what it is a critical article which details you know some worrying tendencies. Agreed. Well, well, Matt, we were also discussing the tendency that you have seen across a whole bunch of figures in the guru sphere,

especially the ones that cultivate a more conservative audience, that they often turn out to, surprise, surprise, have developed a new appreciation for christian values and religion right now yes their audience also tend to be more religious and find these things valuable but that's just a coincidence it's really that they've done the intellectual work to consider the issue more fairly. So you see this in Huberman has come out discussing his religiosity. He's not perhaps one of the

worst offenders, but Russell Brand more recently discovering Christ and the Bible as very valuable sources. You know, he always had an interest in mysticism and various Eastern traditions and whatnot, but suddenly Christianity, good old Christianity, it's become of more interest to him. Yeah, more appealing. He may have overlooked some of the important insights there. And Constantine Kissin also, he hasn't gone full bore of embracing Christianity, but he has come out at least on his sub-stack in what declaring his lack of faith in new atheism, right? And his growing appreciation for the importance of religiosity. Maybe he was too quick to dismiss the importance of religion.

You know, Dave Rubin as well. Who is the original cultural Christian? 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,

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