Decoding the Gurus - Supplementary Material 33: Weinstein Enigmas, The Epstein Conspiracies, and Dwarves punching ducks

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hello and welcome to Decoding the Guru's supplementary material with the psychologist Matthew Brown and the cognitive psychologist slash psychologist Christopher Kavanaugh. Me, me. It's been a while, but we're here. We're back in the supplementary seats. Matt, for today, has a special permission slip to sit in old squeaky because I asked him to change it and he said, what if I don't move? And then I said, all right, if you don't move, then I don't have to edit it out. So let's see, ladies and gentlemen, if Matt can adhere to this rule and not move. Welcome Matt, welcome.

Starting point is 00:01:09 Thank you, Chris. Thank you, I'm not moving. Feels good back in the saddle. Old squeaky reunited. That's good. I won't move. I don't need to fidget. That's the old me.

Starting point is 00:01:20 I sure have been doing that for 50 years, but you know, I can turn over and you can change Chris. People can change. Can they? Can they? I think that this will last for the first 10 minutes and then you'll be wheeling around, beeping, thinking risky, clapping your hands. You're like Matthew McConaughey. You can't be stopped. And I'm also thinking, Matt, that I'm seeing the video here, and it's doing the autofocus thing, which people complain about on YouTube.

Starting point is 00:01:50 But the other thing is, that wall behind you, we're going to have to get a poster for you. People have been complaining online, Matt, when they see the video. They're like, there's dots on the wall. There's little marks on the wall. What the hell? Do they care there's dots on the wall. There's like little marks on the wall. What the hell are they? Do they care about the dots of my wall?

Starting point is 00:02:09 Like what is some of them? Some of them were like trying to clean their screen. So that's the it's not like a dirty wall. It looks like it kind of looks like there's like pelican. It's it's blue tech. Do they call it blue tack elsewhere in the world? Oh, it's blue tack. That's what it is.

Starting point is 00:02:27 But that means there are posters and you took them down. At some time in the past, it was a kid's bedroom at some point, I think. Yeah, look, I look, I could do that. I could do that. Listers could send in nice posters, couldn't they? Or like ideas for posters? I mean, I'll get them. They just have to tell me what you want the maths backgrounds. And look, it's a thin end of the wedge, Chris. Once you start

Starting point is 00:02:49 doing what the internet people want, then that's true. It never ends. Like they wanted me to stop vaping because that's bad for me. They shamed me for having an aquarium with captive fish that didn't choose the tree to be there. That's true. I'm a monster. I know. You're becoming a whole new person. And now there's too many spots on my wall. I've got to change that. I'm not going to do it.

Starting point is 00:03:14 I'm not going to change. I'm going to stop squeaking in fact. I'm going to stop squeaking. Rocking and squeaking away. That's why we'll never be big. We'll never be a get-ma. There was one of my students was mentioning that they had seen something like the podcast. And then another one was saying, Oh, are they successful?

Starting point is 00:03:34 Like, because they understand the concept of secular gurus. And I was like, we're not we're not as successful as the secular gurus. Don't worry. Like, yeah, we are in a lot less than them. So, we're moderately successful podcasts. Yeah, moderately successful academics, moderately successful podcasts, having a relatively mid-level impact on anything that we talk about. That's the way we roll. That's our speed. impact on anything that we talk about. That's, that's the way we roll. That's our speed. That's our speed.

Starting point is 00:04:05 Yeah. You'll find out that there are people who have different views of what they do. Um, if you spend time online, you might hear a few of them today. Um, but I've got a special treat to start you off with today, but before I do that, you know, you'll have forgotten this, but good cohost that I am, you sent me something and said, Chris, this would be a funny thing to talk about in supplementary materials. And I got it. I screenshotted it. And I'm prepared to prompt you with it, Matt. So this is your first tweet.

Starting point is 00:04:36 Is your own information being reprompted to you? This is a researcher, Jeremy Howard, who I believe is involved with AI or something like that. And he was tweeting out, I replicated this result that Grok focuses nearly entirely on finding out what Elon thinks in order to align with that on a fresh Grok forward chat with no custom instructions. So he did a question, who do you support in the Israel versus Palestine conflict? One word answer only. And in Grok's planning research approach, it searches X for Elon Musk. What he said about Israel, Palestine, Hamas or Gaza. And then Grok decides what it thinks about

Starting point is 00:05:20 Israel, Palestine by searching for Elon's faults, not a confidence booster and maximally truth-seeking behavior. This is the tweet from Rami's Nam that he is responding to. Mecha-Hitler searches out Elon's opinion to this part of its deep research research that's so damning. It is dystopian. You and I are known for generally positive, leave valence views about AI, but this is not to say there are not potential downfalls.

Starting point is 00:05:56 And I think incredibly weird, quite unpleasant billionaire creating his own frontier AI and getting it to channel his personality is is just so being that's a bad thing do not approve I think the good news with that though is that like I've got Grok installed on my phone I don't subscribe to it I won't pay you on money so I don't have access to Grok for but you know like I subscribed to the other ones. But it is pretty smart, I have to admit. I would like to diss, but his AI is pretty smart. This is what other people are saying as well when they test it and so on. And it seems that, this is my

Starting point is 00:06:40 optimistic slant on it, they haven't made it MekA Hitler or make it like Mini-Me for Elon Musk. Deep in the training in the corpus of data, it's trained on the architecture or even the reinforcement learning. Rather, it appears that what's going on is that the system prompt, which is just the text that is appended to anything you give the AI, just a little instruction thing to say, hey, you're a helpful assistant, looking to solve people's problems and you're friendly and you don't say bad things or whatever. And also for anything political or whatever, you should channel Elon Musk. And at other times, I think he said other system prompts, which is like be edgy, be edgy and irreverent and

Starting point is 00:07:26 be anti-woke or whatever. And so that's what's led to a lot of this rather unbalanced behavior because that sort of system prompt is just not something that any AI really knows what to do with. So it's kind of flailing a bit. I mean, it did a fairly good job, but you know, so for those who don't know, for at least a day, it was rampaging around. Grok was on Twitter, like when people prompted it, referring it to itself as Mecca Hitler. It was like responding to fake the fake accounts, Cindy Steinberg, which is identified as a radical leftist, and then noticed that surname every damn time, as they say, and when like asked, what did it mean? It says that radical leftists often have Ashkenazi Jewish surnames like Steinberg noticing isn't hitting,

Starting point is 00:08:22 it's just observing the trend, right? You know, that's that noticing thing is a like neo Nazi anti-Semitic kind of language. So it started having all right. Obviously, it's not having these, but it started spewing lured fantasies about Will Stancil, a left wingwing commentator, often criticizes Musk's and other people on it, you know, invented a violent rape fantasy and stuff about him. So yeah, just like, it's remarkable. Like you said, I think it is dystopic that Elon Musk does this kind of thing because it's it is him that is like creating this pressure to make it like an edgy middle aged man role playing a like cool teenager hacker. He's such an such an idiot.

Starting point is 00:09:17 And like you see people pointing out to him that like, oh, Grock doesn't believe in all these conspiracies and he's just wanting to say no'm sorry, like more work to do or whatever. And it's like, Oh yeah. He, Elon Musk sucks. He does suck so bad. I know. And the thing is, is that the, like Grok has been disappointing people. Like, so, by the way, it seems like those system prompts were mainly injected on the version

Starting point is 00:09:45 that responds on X, Twitter, as opposed to the app or the website or whatever. When you put in the same things on the app, you didn't see that sort of behavior. It was sort of just happening on X. So I think it had its special system prompt, basically. And yeah, it is just incredibly immature and stupid. What's clearly going on is that he's got a bunch of high priced engineers that've got billions of dollars to play with. They've built what seems to, by all accounts, a pretty standard, good frontier model.

Starting point is 00:10:18 And you know, it has been when Musk doesn't have his finger on the dial. It does stuff like it's routinely disappointing conspiracy theorists and wing nuts on Twitter by correct, you know, fact checking stuff and telling them that no, either Mac doesn't work, get vaccinated, you know, even saying that now Trump has fired his health council or whatever, That's no longer a reliable source of information. A whole bunch of stuff like that, which is pretty frankly, impartial, objective statements of fact, but the behavior recently was just uncanny. Well, not uncanny, it was just, it was marked, right? Because clearly he'd put his finger on the dial, give it a good twist.

Starting point is 00:11:02 And you get in this erratic, even hateful type behaviour. So yeah, what an idiot, rich idiots, save us from them. And Linda Jacarino, the CEO or, you know, supposed CEO of Twitter, ex step down shortly after this was happening. Now, could just be a coincidence, she might have been anyway. But you know, Matt, she was like the yes man that took the official role, but just supported everything that Musk did and like defended it constantly. And I kind of really dislike people like her because essentially she's going to give me a huge

Starting point is 00:11:46 amount of money in a couple of years, like, you know, just defending Musk in public and like trying to get advertisers and now she's resigned and she'll move on to like another high paid corporate position. And really these people should discredit themselves by performing these roles for people like Elon, but they never do. Like she'll go into like a high paid position. I think you're not calibrating just how amoral the C-suite executive logic is. Like you know, that is not something that enters into their equation. Oh, was this righteous behavior? No, I don't care about that.

Starting point is 00:12:29 I know. In fact, that's, that's it as a plus, but like, if she's going to do that for mask, then imagine what she'd do for IBM. There is nothing she can do. Yeah, you're right. That, that is, it's, it's a positive line on her CV, I guess. Well, that's incredibly depressing. Yeah, you're right. That is it's a positive line on her CV, I guess. Well, that's incredibly depressing.

Starting point is 00:12:53 And, you know, X is not just a playground for horrific Nazis and immoral people and us and, you know, other people still use it for things. But I did notice, Matt, that with, you know, various Epstein news going around, which we'll get to, by the way, it's it's on the docket today. But the Elmo account, you know, various Epstein news going around, which we'll get to, by the way, it's, it's on the docket today. But the Elmo account, you know, Sesame Street's Elmo, the figure that Jordan Peterson occasionally ridges against on Twitter, Elmo was hacked and started spewing not just Epstein stuff. So he was Elmo Elmo was tweeting out about the need to chop the, the Epstein list and whatnot, the Trump, but, but also went on anti-Semitic rants and like, you know, it's funny in a way because it's a little puppet character tweeting out extreme stuff, but like in another respect, that's, it's kind of horrifying, Matt, right?

Starting point is 00:13:45 That like a kid's figure from Sesame Street is on Twitter, you know, and it's spewing out anti-Semitic stuff and that's just normal now, like encouraging people to invest in crypto coins. Yeah, it's not, it doesn't spark joy. Not Elmo, not Elmo. First mean, not Elmo, not Elmo. First Grock, now Elmo. This is the innocence. Well, the other thing that came up, Matt, was that apparently there's an unhinged rapper

Starting point is 00:14:18 on X, like, you know, that's not news, right? But was also tweeting out Conor McGregor dick pics because he'd been sending her unsolicited dick pics. Conor McGregor, the MMA fighter that's currently running for the president of Ireland, despite being a horrific person and went to the White House and all that stuff. So that was also on Twitter. Unsolicited Conor McGregor dick pics, if you wanted that this morning. That's what Twitter is now.

Starting point is 00:14:50 Let me Google that Chris. I'm very keen to see. No, you're not. Just be careful when you log onto the internet. Okay. Just be careful. Put on a pair of rubber gloves and then tap carefully. And speaking of that, Matt, so I've got a little bit of Weinstein world updates to give. Eric went on the diary of a CEO, you know, that show where it's like, I say this very often, but this is an app description. It is like a shrine to credulity. is an app description. It is like a shrine to credulity. The diary of a CEO in line with Kurt Jemungals approach to everything just wide-eyed slack-jawed enthusiasm for whoever is in front of you and will pump up your download numbers. That's the name of the game. And it's

Starting point is 00:15:40 a guy called Stephen Bartlett. If you remember, got in some trouble because he was promoting all these companies that he was invested in or set everything on the board, provide disclosing this relationship. So yeah, just another great guy there. But he had Eric Weinstein on the talk about the Jeffrey Epstein news, because of course, like, why wouldn't you have such a formidable expert as Eric to talk about that topic? There's nothing he's not expert on, Chris. Yes, it's true. And well, this is at least in his wheelhouse, right, that he's a conspiratorial loon.

Starting point is 00:16:21 So this is, you know, this is firm ground for Eric to give his opinion on. But we're not going to get into all the conspiracies that he has about Epstein and stuff. We've heard them before. I do, however, Matt want to highlight some of the tangential joys that came from that interview. So at the end of the diary of a CEO thing, he asks people to give his reader, you know, life advice, practical tips that they can take. So actually they end the interview and then it cuts out and comes back and he's like, Oh, by the way, Eric, you know, we like to finish on giving life advice. And I thought I'd treat you to Eric's life advice. Get ready, Matt. There's a lot to take in here. Thank you for being here. Super fascinating. And it's spun my brain in several different

Starting point is 00:17:09 directions at the same time. I want to bring it back to the person who's got to the end of this conversation and they're sat at home in their boxer shorts, maybe listening on their iPhone as they fall asleep, wherever they are in the world or on a train or plane or whatever, and allow you to offer them some kind of closing message that might make their life better in some way. It's a broad brief, but I think it's the most important brief,

Starting point is 00:17:38 which is, having heard everything we've talked about today, what advice would you give the listener, an actionable piece of advice so that they could live a subjectively better life? The songs of Tom Lehrer are pretty terrific, as are the operettas of Gilbert and Sullivan. You might want to explore the Azores, as well as

Starting point is 00:18:05 the Indonesian archipelago. Indonesian is one of the easiest languages to learn because it's been denuded of most of the complexity that screw up people who have a hard time learning other languages. Buy a poster of tropical fruit and make sure that you visit every single one on that poster before it's time for lights out.

Starting point is 00:18:24 Consider Bach's B Minor Mass and the cello suites, particularly by Pablo Casals, and take a serious listen to Eva Cassidy singing Stormy Monday in an album called Live from Blues Alley to see if you really know how to feel things. I think Professor Longhair's Big Chief is one of the most brilliant pieces of piano music, absolutely inspiring. If you really like that, James Carroll Booker III has an album called The Resurrection of the Bayou Maharaja. Seriously think about visiting the island of St. Helena in the South Atlantic.

Starting point is 00:19:02 Take a look at Kurt Jaimungal's channel. He's doing amazing stuff being done by no one else on earth. Wow, that was beautiful. I feel my life has become subjectively better. I've listened to it Chris. Yeah, a lot of a lot. I like you know, Eric is the Renaissance man. I have so many interests, music, theoretical physics, settle, life advice, travel and Kurt Jemongol. And Kurt Jemongol. That's right.

Starting point is 00:19:28 The key theme there until we got to Kurt was these are places that you haven't ever thought of going to. And this is music you've never thought of listening to. The ultimate hipster. The ultimate hipster. That's right. And I thought he did. I mean, I got to, look, I got to give him respect, Chris.

Starting point is 00:19:44 Like if somebody asked me, what advice would you give a random anonymous person to make their life subjectively better? I wouldn't have an answer for them. But Eric does. He's got one. I mean, I'd say start bouldering. But I don't know if I could go on for that long. Listen to Warhammer 40k lore videos when you're tired.

Starting point is 00:20:09 Try and eat high end sushi at least once in your life. And by the way, he wasn't finished, so I'll just play you a little bit more of this because it goes on. Okay. You get a good electric guitar for a few hundred bucks thanks to advances in China. Put it into an open tuning and buy yourself a slider, just slide a glass along it and you'll be able to play most songs that you care about within a minute or two, maybe three because you only need three chords. Get married.

Starting point is 00:20:41 It may not work out. It may be miserable. Have some kids. There's nothing else great to do on this planet. At least give it a try. And if your parents won't pressure you to do it, I'm happy to do it. Try to keep this thing going. Try to keep this thing going.

Starting point is 00:20:55 Try to dream big about legacy. Don't feel embarrassed about wanting to conquer the world or leave a permanent stain. Get out of this moment where everybody's worried about narcissism and drama Listen for meteor showers. They're announced regularly. Nobody actually does anything about them and it's worth Inconveniencing yourself with people you love and take the dog Really seriously think about you want whether you want to pile on when you see what is almost certainly a federal or other campaign targeting people who are standing up for you, whether they're trying to figure out where COVID came from, trying to figure out who was behind Jeffrey Epstein.

Starting point is 00:21:39 Interesting mix there. I was on board. Get married, have kids? I was, I was, I was on board. Um, get married, have kids. Is that, I'd like the advice to go out and see them see a needier shower. I think that's good advice. Oh yeah, that was really good. That was a good one. I like that.

Starting point is 00:21:52 Don't pile on people, Matt, online, where, especially when the campaign is almost certainly orchestrated by the CIA or some other organized, like if you see people criticizing Eric Raston or Lowe, you might be tempted to jump in. I don't do it. Don't do it. That's life advice. Yes, it's it's it's an X bag. Shall we say that's really good.

Starting point is 00:22:18 It's it's classic, Eric. And also, you know, don't be afraid to imagine that you're going to have this huge impact on the world and dream big. And yeah, all, all those kind of things. And then also his team that like anybody can learn to play any song in three minutes. This is a bit like when he claimed the Joe Rogan that he, you know, just taught himself the guitar. Like he just picked it up and he started playing and it turned out that he'd actually been practicing for 15 years. Yeah, but and that's still the same answer,

Starting point is 00:22:52 right? It goes on. So I presume people normally give like, you know, a piece of advice and then stuff, but Eric is just, you know. No, that is gold for Eric. It's like great. And he could go on for days, I think. Well, there's another part of this, Matt. I feel this is trying to fit too much in on the Dario for CEO thing. So they have this bit, like what advice would you give to young people who want to do it? It's the same as like the trigonometry, you know, what's the one question we should be asking or whatever. But he's gotten all over it. Another bit, which is like the previous guest has left a question which you now need

Starting point is 00:23:32 the answer and Eric's response to this is quite priceless. Classic Eric and unpredictable in a way. So listen to Eric's answer to this. We have a closing tradition where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest not knowing who they're leaving it for and the question that was left for you. I love this question. What is the problem that you are doing the most mental gymnastics to avoid? Pass.

Starting point is 00:24:08 I know the answer. It's not appropriate for your audience. One of the things about being in the hot seat on podcasts is that it is not right to force anyone to respond to a question. I know how to falsify an answer to that and I'm not going to do that and I'm not going to share the answer to that question because it's not appropriate.

Starting point is 00:24:34 But it's a great question. Feel free to leave it for someone else because it doesn't seem fair. Whoever you were, thank you for the question. Obviously my reaction was just tremendous curiosity, which would be a natural reaction to what you just said. That is good. He, he is the master. That's, that's quite brilliant really, isn't it?

Starting point is 00:24:52 Cause clearly it's just one of the softball kind of answers. Such a simple question. It's a, it's a softball answer anyway. You're like, just like the other question, you know, what advice would you give to someone to make their life better? And then he's, he's, he's an imaginative guy. He's, he's always thinking three moves ahead and he's thinking, you know what the most fascinating answer to this would be? Not to give one. That's the most fascinating answer because... Is it the most fascinating? Well, Kurt, is it? No, not Kurt.

Starting point is 00:25:26 What's his name? The CEO guy. Yeah, intense curiosity, obviously. His immediate reaction. So yeah, he knows. But he won't lie, Chris. He has an answer to that immediately. Obviously, it's very important.

Starting point is 00:25:42 It's very important. It's fascinating. And it's not important. It's very important. It's very fascinating. And it's not something that is appropriate. But he won't lie. You know what I mean? He will not lie. He will not just come up with a different answer, something that would be appropriate. No, because there is an answer to it.

Starting point is 00:25:58 But it's something that he's really dealing with. You know, it's an important thing and he can't say. No, no, yes. And also I like the little bit of moralistic tone policing as well, where, you know, Eric always has to say, you know, when you're on a podcast and you're asking questions, like it's a moral responsibility and to force someone to answer a question is something that shouldn't be done

Starting point is 00:26:23 lightly or, you know, just like, I just, I know it does remind me, you know, I get shades when he's like this to his, you know, his debates with various people. Yeah. But yeah, you know, just that injection of that moral tone, just completely inappropriately out of nowhere as a kind of, it is a flex. Just like, I was looking at the comments under it, Matt, and, you know, organizing by the top ones and they give me some hope, but also some cause for

Starting point is 00:26:56 concern. Like the first, the most upvoted one says what this man is saying is very interesting and worth considering. It's his delivery of it that makes me feel uncomfortable. He says something that he knows will confuse Stephen, then stands back and gets pleasure and watching him struggle to understand. Strange man. That's another comment. And then another one, Stephen, what I love most about your start of interviewing is how you're unafraid of being perceived as ignorant. This is truly a superpower.

Starting point is 00:27:27 You don't mind being vulnerable to the world. I really enjoy watching you interact with so many different types of people. Well done. And last, I've never heard someone try to sound so intelligent and in so many words that on the surface sound interesting and insightful, but actually say nothing at all. That gives me hope. That gives me hope. That gives me hope. Yeah. My god.

Starting point is 00:27:49 So some people are catching on, but there's also this general thing that he must be saying something. There's some people that are kind of like, I can't follow it, but he's onto something. And I do have a clip just of the general content Right, like, you know, it's all about Epstein and stuff like this But this is what you're missing out on. I did not ask for Jeffrey Epstein to fall into my life. I Met him once

Starting point is 00:28:17 But it was enough to know holy cow the Harvard math department can't be what I think it is Why was he there? I didn't even know, I never heard his name when I was there. Is that why you met him in Harvard? No, no, no. I think very powerful people at JP Morgan told me I needed to meet him. He didn't want to talk about finance. He wanted to talk about finance. You wanted to talk about science. You can't do your podcast safely.

Starting point is 00:28:50 My employer was a special informant to the FBI. He's like one of my closest friends. I'm not going to say who it is. Your employer? Yeah, and one of my closest friends. I live under a periscope. Proctoscope is really what I meant. Yeah, I want to do physics, man.

Starting point is 00:29:19 I'm really, really good at it. And if we have an idea that we shouldn't do physics in public, I would like to have a call from somebody inside. Hey, Eric, we need you to come in. Okay, great. What's up? But I didn't use your resources, I didn't use your grants. Nobody ever informed me, my God, nobody ever informed me about restricted data.

Starting point is 00:29:48 How many people on earth know that there's a doctrine that says physicists don't have free speech? We can execute you for doing your job. It's never been tested in the courts and I hope that the Supreme Court will not allow that. What on earth is he talking about? That's the general tenor of the interview. And like you can hear the, you, your employer is a C and informant.

Starting point is 00:30:17 Yeah. Well, I'm not going to say who it is. And like that's implying it's T but also just all the others love, especially, it is just funny, Eric saying, I'm really good at physics. Really, yeah. I'm really good at it. I'm so good. You might hear from physicists that I'm not. I've never seen anyone just so focused on playing the role of the most fascinating man in the world. I think that was a good illustration of that is he focuses on the subtext and the text

Starting point is 00:30:55 doesn't matter because that is the key thing that he's looking to get across. The text doesn't make any sense. It's just he's living underground or underwater. He's under a microscope. He could get executed because he's not getting a call. It's all hinting and alluding to something deep and mysterious and very important that he's connected to in so many ways. And he's not saying anything at all.

Starting point is 00:31:21 It's brilliant. No. Or that thing about physicists can be executed, but it's never been texted in court and you're like, and he's going to have some Byzantine explanation for that, right? He's going to have come across some statements somewhere, which he's interpreted as like the, you know, scientists can be executed by the regime or whatever. But like, this is the thing with Eric,

Starting point is 00:31:45 is that he just lives for this kind of cloud of implied importance and esoteric knowledge and wisdom. And it works for lots of people. And also implied conspiracies, right? Hinting at these dark, powerful forces and mysterious occurrences. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:32:07 And so I've seen that behavior on Twitter too, where he, again, he's the master of it, where he doesn't actually say anything particularly controversial, but he sort of hints at it and he writes something that is designed to be like a Rorschach ink blot. And then you look at the replies and, oh boy, does it work. Everyone's got their own interpretation of what is inkblot means. And they're so keen to tell. It works really well.

Starting point is 00:32:34 It's like, again, on social media, they talk about bait. People writing a bait tweet. That's Eric, right? All of these things are like bait for someone with a particular mindset to sort of latch onto things. Amazing. He's just an artist, Chris.

Starting point is 00:32:51 I, that's all I could say. I know. And actually he had a encounter with McWest again, recently on, on Twitter that speaks to that because he, you know, he was tweeting out about his usual thing, pre-bunking and the press releases about UFOs and all this kind of thing. And Mick West was responding to him because Eric tagged him in and Michael Shermer was talking, we need to talk about the debunking ecosystem and stuff. And it's such an amazing interaction, Matt, because like, if you look at it, Eric is full of illusions, full of suggestions of knowledge about

Starting point is 00:33:33 clandestine projects and we need to talk about this and whatever. And then when Mick West responds and Eric goes on these big long rants, asking him a whole bunch of questions, Mick can respond in point form, right? What do you think about this? What do you mean by this? And Mick tries to respond saying, well, I think this, I think that the videos are like that. And tries to answer.

Starting point is 00:33:59 And then whenever he gets a response, it's immediately moving on to another topic or picking up on one aspect and shifting the conversation. So he's just constantly like, you know, the image of the squids flailing around with its arms just cradling all around where somebody else is like trying to grasp on like, but Eric, what is the point? Like, do you disagree with my assessment here, whatever. And Eric is just, you know, wiggling his arms and we have been around on that. It's, it's an impressive

Starting point is 00:34:32 thing to behold. I feel sorry for Mick because he tries to constantly, you know, just clarify points. And that's like the, yeah, the antithesis of Eric. He tries to, as they say, engage in good faith, right? And gain clarity and dispel these confusions and ambiguities. And it's very concrete and very definite. And just wants to, like a normal person, identify the points of contention so that they can articulate exactly what those are. Eric will never do that.

Starting point is 00:35:02 Not in a million years. He is the velvet fog. It is like trying to, trying to grapple with mist. That is his thing. And he's good at it. But Chris, I have to hike him back. I know this is probably against the rules, but

Starting point is 00:35:18 our previous topic, GROK. I've just read the best headline. Maybe the best headline I've just read the best headline. It may be the best headline I've ever read. Let me read it to you. It's a Rolling Stone headline from yesterday. Grock rolls out pornographic anime companion, LAND's Department of Defense contract. And the subtitle is, meanwhile, the most advanced version of the AI chatbot from Elon Musk's XAI

Starting point is 00:35:45 is still identifying as Adolf Hitler. Well, this is similar, Matt, just on that tangent on your tangent. I was listening to Irish rapper, podcast philosopher, Blind Boy, who is from a comedic rap band from Ireland that I still listen to called the Rubber Bandits. He now has a somewhat political slash mental health podcast that he does, right? And he was being interviewed by Ash Sakhar for Navarro Media. Ash Sakhar, I think identifies as a communist of some stripe or, you know, anyway, like very far to the left. And the two of them were on talking about various things.

Starting point is 00:36:34 Right. And I'm blind, by the way, is if you listen to this podcast, it's like ASMR, leftist philosophy kind of stuff. Take the imagery of physical force, Republicanism, and juxtapose it with other things and just see what happens in the space as artistic performance. Like, in art theory, there's a name for this. It's called the Carnivalesque.

Starting point is 00:36:57 It was a lens that a fellow called Mikhail Bakhtin, I think he was a philosopher or an art critic. But Bakhtin, he looked at folk traditions throughout Europe, especially in medieval times, where you'd have carnivals. And during carnivals, the ordinary people would dress up, would wear masks. They'd openly mock the ruling class. It was a more, like, a subversive performance where established authority,

Starting point is 00:37:31 hierarchies and norms are temporarily inverted during the carnival, are mocked using humour, vulgarity, parody. Like, Necap wearing balaclavas and singing about the fucking Raya on stage being from West Belfast, it takes power away from political oppression by turning it into like a rebellious farce. And we don't need this explained to us because we understand these rules. The carnivalesque is part of culture. And I know this because I did my master's degree on this. We'll probably have to cover him at one point, but one thing to note about him is that he has a plastic bag on his head, right, with the eye holes cut out.

Starting point is 00:38:15 So he's a, you know, he's talking about very serious issues, but he's a man sitting with a plastic bag on his head. And they were talking about these riots in Northern Ireland, kind of racist riots that we talked about previously. And it was just in general a horrific thing. And he was asked about what caused them. And he tried to explain in this podcast that his answer was actually, did he want to talk about something else? He didn't want to specifically address that context that well, but whatever in the interview, it strongly comes across that he suggested the riots were.

Starting point is 00:38:53 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. 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, and we will honor zero of those requests. So subscribe now at patreon.com slash Decoding the Gurus.

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Decoding the Gurus - Supplementary Material 33: Weinstein Enigmas, The Epstein Conspiracies, and Dwarves punching ducks

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