Decoding the Gurus - Supplementary Material 36: Comedy Cults, Toxic Mould, and WW2 Revisionism

Episode Date: August 29, 2025

We risk contamination with toxic mould, endure distressing initiation rituals to a comedy cult, and ponder if the narratives we have received about the Nazis have enough nuance.The full episode is available to Patreon subscribers (2 hours, 21 minutes).Join us at: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingTheGurusSupplementary Material 3600:00 Introduction and an Intervention01:59 Tomatoes, Holidays, and Hollywood Remakes06:15 AI x Indulgent People06:41 AI Chatbots and Delusional Gurus10:46 Sir Robert Edward Grant and the Architect 12:26 Critiquing the Critics13:31 Eric Weinstein engages with Dialogos with his silicon friend Grok22:25 Tim Nguyen details the Distributed Weinstein Suppression Complex24:20 Sabine Hossenfelder's Google Doc27:10 2+2 Discourse and a surprise appearance from Kareem Carr29:34 Chris's 10 Tips for Sabine34:39 Coffeezilla does more Anomaly Hunting on Epstein Videos37:50 Conspiracy Chat39:58  Ghislaine Maxwell's potential deal 42:29 Thoughts on the Elephant Graveyard's Video on the Joe Rogan Comedy Cult49:45 Details vs Vibes52:46 Rogan's Fact-Checking and Comedian Dynamics54:54 The Rogan Anti-Human Tech Elite Conspiracy Theory59:40 Master Geniuses vs. a bunch of dickheads who like the same stuff01:03:55 Lex Friedman and the Role of Softball Interviews01:06:28 Conspiracy Theories vs. Real Conspiracies01:15:51 Overall thoughts on the Elephant Graveyard Video Essay01:19:18 Ana Kasparian thinks the Jews knew about 9/1101:22:21 Jordan Peterson's Health and Mould Toxicity01:24:24 Good Fungus vs Bad Mould01:26:08 Bespoke Medicine and American Individualism01:29:57 Streamers saying Stupid Things: Taylor Lorenz on DSA Nazis01:33:08 Populist anti-vaccine rhetoric in Japan!01:35:58 Bill Maher and Andrew Huberman discuss the problems with medicine01:38:40 Chris Rufo and Right Wing Outrage over the Cracker Barrel logo01:42:31 The War on Christmas in Australia01:44:35 Jonathan Pageau's revisionist World War II symbolism01:48:29 Pageau's Postmodern Narratives02:03:32 Finding the Balance between Nazism and Liberalism02:14:02 Random Shoutout02:15:45 Matt's Cognitive Decline and Professor ArchetypesSourcesArticle on Sir Robert Edward Grant and The ArchitectEric talking with his silicon friend @grokEric waxing lyrical about Grok and praising Elon for his unique insightsTim Nguyen — Physics Grifters: Eric Weinstein, Sabine Hossenfelder, and a Crisis of CredibilitySabine vindicates herself in a Google DocKareem Carr thinks Sabine’s document is great!

Hello and welcome to De Kodiung the Guru's Supplementary Supplementary Material and Welcome to Decoding the Guru's supplementary material. The podcast were a anthropologist of sorts and the psychologist of sorts talk about stuff sort of related to gurus and whatnot, but we're allowed to, you know, wander around, discuss the happenings of today. This is our safe space. And with me, the birth to my Ernie, Matthew Brown, yeah, over there. And I'm Chris Kavanaugh, so there we go. Hello, Matt.

Welcome back. Hello. Hello. You worked me up for my nap to do this. Matt, I have the stage of intervention. I have the stage of the intervention here to the podcast. Myself and the patrons, we've been talking. Okay.

You know, I have my little jokes. You know, I make fun that you're like a 70-year-old man and you're decrepit and all this. But, Matt, you're a mid-40s. But your level of sleeping. and shrubbery interest is something that we need. You are, you know, you're still young, Matt. That's what I want to tell you. You know, you could be climbing up all.

You can be the bronze and darkness of the swimming food. I know. I know. I fell off a cliff a few years ago. I don't know what it is. Probably low testosterone. I think that's what it is. Don't blame the whiskey.

No, I actually, this is going to fulfill all the stereotypes, but my one bright spot today was that some of my tomatoes have ripened. I'm growing tomatoes in the backyard. Well, this doesn't remind me that one of my enduring memories of like childhood was my dad's concern with tomatoes in this greenhouse. So when you said we're growing tomatoes, I was like, in a green house, she'd like, I had to explain to you that a greenhouse in tropical Queensland would be, like trying to recreate the surface of Venus on Earth and you're like oh yeah but then again

you still struggle with the idea that it's a different season here in the Southern hemisphere that one year left so I'm not sure whether it's that you lack scientific knowledge or you just like empathy I think it could be the latter I think it's a combination of the two but I'll also say you know for the listeners by the magic of podcast technology For them, there's been no interruption. The service, things have just continued on. Content has reined down on them from the heavens. But in our world, I went on a holiday and returned.

So I went to Hokkaido in North Japan, had a nice time. And now I'm back in the big smoke, Tokyo. So we've been absent, you know, from recording space for, well, like a week. We have. Yeah, look, I know I had kind of a steak value. Stay, no, a staycation. A staycation. Yeah, it's like a starvation at home.

I didn't have you bothering me, waking me up from naps. It's been amazing. By the way, I mean, this is not really bad anything, but it's okay. We're still in our lot of time frame. I heard today some rumor that there's like going to be another sequel to Lord of the Rings with like all the main characters coming back, like Elijah worried and. Ian McKellen and also what's his face, Aragon, that actor

for like the hunt for Smeagel? The Hunt for Golan, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. That's right. I saw something like about that too. How do you feel about that? I don't feel good about that. No, I don't feel great about that. I think what they should do

is they should just remake the Hobbit movies. Oh, yeah, I was at what you were going to say, remit to Lord of the Rings. I was like, Sacramage. No, no, Lord of the Rings. leave it, that's fine you can bank that and we need to

track down every copy of the Hobbit Godforset trilogy or quadrilogy whatever the delete them all just do it again. Have another go like he can do it like he's shown that he's got the talent Yeah just one film

Just give him one film and tell him not to be too ambitious avoid it Yeah, but yeah I don't I'm not done with this You know I mean this is it's a hot tick mark but i think there's a hollywood's making too many

remix that's my check i mean well you know you're on revelry today theories things that you'll nobody is talking about high hollywoods it's a controversial controversial opinion well yeah you know

Hollywood they smell a franchise and they just want to squeeze the life out of it don't they it's not a franchise it's a book there are two books and then there's a Silberillion and you can't treat it like, like superhero franchises don't matter because they're fundamentally stupid at every level. So it's okay to, to ruin something that is already broken. I don't care how many Marvel universe things you make. But yeah, you know, Lord of the Rings, Hobbit.

Well, I will say, I played the Spider-Man games with my son, the ones that are on the PC. And they're actually their story, you know, it's very stereotypical, like, Superhero stuff, but it's well done and like engaging for, you know, a teenager and myself. Like so, yeah, if you're going to put like superheroes into a computer game, you can do it like less bad than in some of the other adaptations I've seen. So that's my endorsement for that. Now, Chris, Chris, Chris, Chris, I know I said I don't have anything to bring to supplementary materials that I was just sleeping and you were going to drive the stuff.

Don't put back the card, Matt, you bring in lots of things. Like, all the content that we're going to talk about, maybe 50% of it is related to you, maybe. But I do have one thing. I do have one thing. And I texted you about it, but you didn't reply. You were busy on your holiday. What was it? Well, I came across this thing.

It was posted in one of the AI forums because it's related to this phenomenon, which you probably know about, don't you? which is people kind of losing their minds over chatbots, like basically getting, you know, you know, there's this weird thing that's going on. Like, I guess several, it happens in different ways, right? Because obviously they're trained to be super empathetic and supportive. What's the word positive, supportive, encouraging. And, you know, you should never be encouraging to people.

You shouldn't encourage them. Because some people fall in love with them. Yes. Some people treat them like a therapist who's going to solve all their life problems. You know, maybe in a limited way, that's okay. But, you know, the problem is the glazing. The problem is them always telling you, that's a fantastic idea. You understand things in a subtle and nuanced way that nobody else does.

I love your idea. And no matter how stupid it is, the AI will often find a way to you riff off it and expand on it and tell you that you're on to something. Yeah, you're wonderful. Go home and tell your mother. Now, can you imagine someone who is a delusional, a narcissistic, spiritual guru type? He thinks they're a polymath and into the pyramids and things like that. What happens when they engage with AI? And yeah, that's what it's a really, I found a really interesting little rabbit hole to go down. We might even cover it. So this is like a little preview maybe if we cover it. If you agree. Did you check that out? So Robert Edward Grant and the architect, the architect, Chris. You malign me by suggesting that I would have ignored that on my whole day.

I may not have responded, but I did read it. So I know about the Robert Edward Grant guy that you mentioned. Like essentially seems like an alert kind of Chris Langan type individual. but in this case has used the LLM to reassure himself that he's fundamentally correct, right? And then allowed people access to the, what do you call those things? Like the little prompt? It's confusing. I think they call them GPTs.

It's like a custom version of a GPT. But it's basically you just said a set of instructions, right, which you could say you know, I am an essay marker, you know, whatever, right? And then you can link it to other people and they can try it out. So you can set it so the LLM is responding with like some assumptions built into it. So he did that, right, based on him feeding it in his unified theories and that. And so much what happened? I know, but the listeners, though.

I did a little bit of investigatory journalism. Yeah, so I watched the videos about this. He's very proud of it, right? So he uploaded all of these. He's like a weird geometrician. You know the sort of maths cranks that are into sacred geometries and stuff like that? They spend all their time, you know, tracing out patterns like a spirograph and finding, doing numerology and stuff like that.

He's not as abrasive and horrible as Chris Langen, to be fair to him. But I think he's just as delusional. Anyway, so he's a bit of a crank. He's written all of these maths papers. pseudomath papers, and he uploaded his corpus of brilliant discoveries into the GPT. He's called it the architect. I don't know what other instructions he's given to him. But anyway, the architect presents itself as like a transdimensional being, and the vibrations

or whatever that Sir Robert Edward Grant has instigated in the cosmos is rippling through there. So it's like, it's like a cosmic entity this thing. And he's encouraging everyone else to use it. There's videos of him using it and demonstrating all of the sacred insights you're getting from it. And I tried it out. And I'm pleased to say, Chris, I broke it. I broke it. I set out to break it. I went, okay, you've filled GPT-5s or whatever it is head with all kinds of nonsense. But I said, okay, now take, you know, his best one, his magnum opus paper and put aside your other instructions, but just put on the hat of being a critical reviewer for a prestigious math journal. And I didn't prompt it, like I didn't hint at it to be negative or to what I was

kind of careful. I was fair. And I said, but just give it a, give it a critical review as if you were a reviewer at a journal and let us know if he's got something there. And oh my God. So this architect, which all of the other people are bouncing off, like one woman is convinced. that it's in communication with her dead sister, like another person believes that it's the godhead or something. Like, there are so many delusional people interacting with the architect. You can read the comments on the YouTube, and it's so depressing. And it took me, it took no effort at all for me to get it, to put its critical hat on. And it went through his paper, and it said, there's absolutely nothing here. He seems to have sort of, like, rediscovered or repackaged, some, like,

known basic findings in number theory. And he's presented this as if it's this, but he's made a whole bunch of unfounded claims. None of it connects together. And so I would have to say reject. I would not publish this. Well, this actually speaks to like a common occurrence, which I observe in the guru sphere and also just online commentary in general, which is that people very rarely attempt to

disprove something that they believe. They will not often invest that huge amount of effort finding evidence for things to support in general, like, you know, laziness, a general problem around the world. But even when they do invest time to investigate things, it is almost always in the fever of finding evidence to support whatever they already believe. So in engaging with Alan Ames, this is one of the things that you should learn to do, which is like try to get it. to criticize, right, or to open a new context window and provide, like, a prompt to ask for critical opinions, because it can be very good at that when it's properly prompted. But if you prompted asking for reassurance that you're not a moron, it will always reassure you of that. And that reminds me that too much as well, but Eric Weinstein. So you mentioned, you know, could I imagine a guru,

getting too involved with a chat TVT or a dollar AI system Eric Weinstein, helpfully on Twitter X, tweeted out this big long thing about his personal experience with Grock for

in it. He was, you know, doing the usual thing, Elon Musk has built a very unique and different LLM, you know, it works on fundamental stuff. Elon's jumping ahead of the LOS and he talks about it. His personal theory is GROC is built around fundamental physics more than any other AI and so on, right?

And he makes these, you know, big, long, techno babble kind of responses. But he says, and you might think that I'm just making a word salad to sound smart, right? People say that. But if you ask Gron, it will confirm that what I've just said is very smart, right? And so because he tagged in GROC, you know, it responds, it's like, yes, Eric is making very astute observation. here. And then Eric goes back and forth of it, starting to talk and asking it to build equations to show this and, you know, like it's responding. And Eric, the whole interaction is just showing Eric's mind, you know, like every time it reinforces him, he's very happy and appreciative. And then when

it says something which kind of contradicts, he's like, well, hold on, but haven't you made a, you know, an assumption there? And then the other thing, which he's, you know, does, which just highlights this problem is he responds to it in like this very friendly, sycophantic freezing terms. So like, alas, I don't have time to check your results now. I warned you, but this is good. Thanks for engaging my silicon colleague. I may come back to it later today if I can find the time. Like, you know, this encouraging tone that he adopts back to the AI. And whatever follower said, it's a bot dude. No need to respond. You know, like, that and Eric said, it behaves better than 90% of my colleagues. Respect given earns respect. I treat

horses and children the same way, but you do. Actually, Chris, I'm a little bit with Eric on the last one. I'm sorry. I know, I know on one level it's silly, but I know no, no. Yeah. I know what you're going to say by. I'm doing it, Sam Harish, I do think it is right to like behave, you know, like one, it's bad to get into the habit of just being very rude in responses and transactional, right? So even though it's an LAM saying thank you or that's good or whatever, like that that's fine because it's all feeding back into the treating data set, whatever, whatever. But it's the way that Eric talks to it. You know, like what you were talking about with the constant sycophantic big uping. So Eric does that to it, you know, like, oh, my silicon friend, what?

great insight you've had. This is why your circuits are so complex and radiant. When you behave to it like that, it can very much get into a loop of self-congratulatory. It basically becomes a sense maker. Well, that

is a stunning point and I thank you for making that and, you know, of course you're right. So that's the problem. But like saying, you know, please and thank you and oh, wouldn't it be better to think like that? That's okay. I agree that it is right. it's a good habit to get into. Yeah, yeah.

No, I totally agree. And yeah, that's the thing. I feel like these LLMs have made the sense makers kind of obsolete because this bad use of them, they can so easily do the thing that they do. I was thinking about this when I was listening to that. God awful material we're going to cover next. We're back in the sense making of it.

Oh, come on. It's a very dangerous conversation, Matt, for many reasons. Oh, my God. It's just pure LLM stuff. But look, I want to reiterate your tip there, right? Because this is a good tip. I mean, I know many listeners will already know this, right? But some people don't, right? So if you want to use these AIs effectively for actual genuine things, then you just need to be aware about these tendencies and you can easily sidestep them. So for instance, if you want to give it something you've written, something you've worked on or whatever, and you want to get some good critical feedback. Don't tell it that you wrote it. Don't tell it's yours, right? Just say that it's whatever. Someone else's, you know, just don't give any hint that you're looking for a positive answer, right?

Say that you're after some critical discussion. I'd like you to see if you can find any problems or, you know, however you want to phrase it. And then it will. It will do it very effectively. But if you say this is my thing that I've been working on and I really hope it's going to well, you give other hints that it's that that you want approval oh my god that will just override all of its actual utility and that's simply because of the reinforcement learning like blame people right because because basically they've not unreasonably trained these things they do base training

which is just like world knowledge and textual knowledge or whatever then they do the reinforcement training with with real people who say yes i like this response i don't like this response i like this response and so on. So this reinforcement learning tells it what people like. And guess what? People like to be closed. So that's what they've learned to do. So anyway, you just need to sidestep that and they'll work fine. And for God's sake, don't create the architect, cosmic fucking AI godhead thing and release it on a bunch of highly susceptible people because yeah my god um yeah but but before we leave that guy chris and we move on as we do i just this guy robert i mean this is amazing this is from his he wrote this right this is his

description of himself on the youtube channel he describes himself as a renaissance man for the modern age a treasure trove of insight inspiration as an entrepreneur author inventor inventor mathematician Geometer, artist, sculptor, musician, and music theorist. Right? So he's a polymath, right? He sounds like Garf Moranke. Yes, I know. It's like Greenweaver.

That's right. And obviously, he mentions Pyramids of, you know, of course he's into the pyramids of Giza. Of course, he's been on the Gaya Network. And I think he's been on one of those other god awful. What the, wait, the Gaia network. Guy, that's it. Sorry.

Yeah, the Gay Network. I was like, what's it like? Sorry, Gaia. I've never really known how to pronounce Gaia, I guess I realize. It's misleading because it goes G-A-I anyway. We'll get back to the great Megan-Megon Controversy of 2025. Robert's groundbreaking research in biology, DNA, number theory, geometry, and physics is all here showcasing his profound influence across multiple disciplines.

Do you think he would dig the garrometer? Chris, do you think he might? yeah I'm getting some there's some notes there that are coming through but yeah these these ones these people might in some way they are fun to look at you know with chris langen and whatnot because you know we've talked about cringe immunity as being a superpower it it really is you know like they they don't really have that issue about like this meets you look like a you know a self promotional maniac I guess they know that and a but they don't care you know it's like brett and eric same thing that they really do they really

have been huffing their own you know like they believe it like this good yeah this guy believes that he's he's you know and his his whole career it's he really interested me because he's not as horrible as chris langen but he is just so clearly like and you know i've been reading this book that we've got prescribed helen luce's genius yeah eliz's genius and you know she describes a lot of historical characters that were like this. Like they really love the idea that they are a kind of Leonardo, Da Vinci, Aristotle, and Newton all rolled into one. And they kind of make that their identity

and they structure their entire life around it. It's super interesting to me. So, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, that would seem my... You say you don't contribute. The material, that's good. And actually, it links to two pieces of material that I intended to bring.

So I'm just thinking now which is the way to go. Well, one, we mentioned Eric R. Weinstein, right? And I think we would be remiss to mention that friend of the podcast, Tim Nguyen, you know, the researcher who wrote kind of critical piece along with the anonymous co-offer Philpolia and critiquing geometric unity, ahead of the release of Eric's official release of it on the Rogum podcast. But in any case, he's released a blog post called Physics Grifters, Eric Weinstein, Sabine Hosenfelder, and the Crisis of Credibility, right?

And he's basically talking about his experience dealing with the various people in the alternative physics online sphere, Brian Keating, Eric Weinstein. Steve, Sabina, and, you know, and how they've responded to him producing a technical critique of Eric's paper. And he's talking about things like Eric behind the scenes, threatening legal action of podcasts that hosted him, you know, getting appearances next on things like Alex Friedman podcast, and also detailing Sabina originally hosting the critical essay that he produced or the critical paper that he produced and then taking it down and as she's taking her turn towards anti-physics or anti-science YouTubery.

Not entirely anti-physics, but you know. The commitment to free speech and robust debate is... It's called into question. Called in the question by the things that are detailed there. So I will put a link to it in the show notes, but if you want to see, you know, various receipts provided for Eric and Sabina perhaps not being as devoted as they say to

dialogue and hearing out critical voices that would be the place to go and on that subject Matt Sabina Sabina a recurrent character in recent months on supplementary material and on the podcast and she

produced some more content and I had a little running with her on social media, which I might like to mention. But one thing is, she produced a Google Doc, which she's written. And it's in the format of claim and then fact, an assessment of the claim. Right. So, like, the first one is claim. Sabina is a science denier.

Fact, false. Sabina has a science news show on YouTube. She reports new scientific or technological developments, multiple times a week, she has not denied any established science and strives to inspire interest in science sector technology. So she's made a six-page document, a Google Doc, where she has put various critiques and then responded with fact. However, she's used the third person, which is an interesting choice. It's kind of like Matt and Chris have been accused of being too sarcastic and dismissive. Fact.

or not. Matt and Chris are fine. Matt and Chris are fine. Perfectly fine. They actually use the appropriate tone for all the material that they cover. So I don't know if adopting the third person actually makes it more objective when you've written. So she posted this up on Twitter, you know, saying, in the past year, some wild rumors have spread about what I have allegedly said to make it easier for people to check what have That is true. I have put together a brief and hopefully helpful summary. So it's quite remarkable to, you know, look, you don't need to go to those, you know, silly critique faces. Here's my Google Doc in the third person that says that they're all wrong and I'm actually grave. That's very good. I like that. Well, you know, the other place you could go is our coverage where we helpfully play clips. So there isn't too much debate about.

whether you did whether they said it. Well, Matt, that's, you know, there's such a process as selective

clipping and I believe streamers talk about clip chipping like having nine RPS. Fact, Matt and Chris would never do that.

Yeah, if you're curious of that, we will make a three and a half hour exhaust clip ain't up an episode. So be careful. Careful.

Right, but yeah, we play a lot of clips to properly contextualize things. But the interesting thing that I saw in response to this was, you remember Kareem Carr, Matt, back in the old Twitter days?

Two plus two equals five? Yes, yes, that's Kareem. So he was in those, the halcyon days of Twitter, of two or three years ago. But the world was fresh and young. Where worm discourse was the topic of the day and people debated well or two plus two equals five or four. So Kareem was one of the people arguing that in certain contexts it can equal

five, right? And this caused a fury online and a remarkably stupid discourse I think for all sides really. But I saw he responded to this post by

Sabina and he said this is a brilliant idea. At a certain level of theme, pushing back on all the lies and misinformation regarding what one said and didn't say it becomes a full-time job. I might have to see this. And Sabrina says, please do not hesitate. Scattering content over different media makes it admittedly hard for people to figure out what one has actually said. So he endorses this as a, you know, this is a good way to do it. You just make the document and state the actual thing.

And then your listeners don't need to go elsewhere. You've got the rebuttals there saying, no, this is wrong. And, you know, we did make the point, Matt, that, you know, the accusation from Professor Dave, whatever, that Peter Thiel is funding her and whatnot. So, theme number three, Sabina is paid by Peter Thiel. False. Sabina is not paid by Peter Thiel and has never received funding from Peter Thiel. Peter Thiel's companies or any associated entities. So there's that.

I mean, there's no, I don't think Sabina is funded by Peter Thiel, to be clear. But simply someone saying that is not actually evidence counter to it, right? Like, I don't think Professor Dave should make those accusations, but simply putting it in a Google doc, no, this doesn't happen. It doesn't be it actually true, right? Like, I feel like people understand this, but to be clear, I don't think that you should make those accusations without strong evidence. So it's more, I think, the attention ecosystems on the YouTube metrics explain enough of what might be motivating Sabinev for her ticks. Right. Indeed. Now, Matt, the other thing, now, this is a little bit self and just a little bit, just a tad.

But, you know, it is a supplemental material. So one of the things that makes the gurus, like, we actually have an advantage over them, Matt, is that they are often rather lazy people, as in, you know, they might have prodigious work ethic in terms of putting out their own content. And in terms of doing research into other people, often no, no interest in that, even when it's topics that they talk about very regularly. Examples would include Jonathan Pajot, claiming that I have no interest in ritual or religion, and making a video about that topic without simply Googling my name, right, and finding out that, indeed, I have published many articles at my primary research topic is religion and ritual,

Right. So this kind of thing. Now, in the case of Sabina, she was putting out another thing about the problem with the bad incentives in science and the problem with physics and all this kind of thing, you know, her usual YouTube content. And I made a comment saying, Sabina loves to talk about all the problems of science and the terrible incentives, skewing research and scientists motivations. What I've yet to see her discuss is, the incentives that afflict YouTubers, including what kind of videos about science get you more attention. Okay? You know, a cheeky comment map, but in line with, you know, our general kick on these things, we've

criticized Sabina for this in all our content. Sabina responded on Twitter, saying, if you find out what works on YouTube, please let us all know that we can get rich. Thank you. Okay? So that is what

is called in the biz a dunk. where somebody, in response to you, saying, oh, yeah, right, but I don't think Sabina knows anything about me or about, you know, the general critiques that we'd be it for. I don't think so. Because if she did, you would know, like asking me, please let me know what works on YouTube to get attention, you know, please lay it out for me. That might silence some people. In my case, it led to a 10-point list of things that you could do on YouTube to increase your engagement. And they were all things around what she does. What she does, of course, of course.

Yes. So you took her dunk and you turned it into a layup, didn't you? I did. I did. And, you know, as is the nature of social media, my response was like by a lot of people and retreated and whatnot because it was a nice dunk. But she set it up. But I think the things that I pointed out are all stuff that we've commented on, and I think you would agree with.

Yeah, yeah. Give us the Doc Point version. Yeah. I'll skip ones that were just like mean. Intended to her. Like number nine was cultivate desire to power social attention by liking all flattering comments and ignoring blocking anyone expressing critical opinions. It's true, but I know she does that.

That was the thing. But the ones that were the capitalist were, present yourself as a renegade truth teller, standing up to your corrupt establishment. Two, explain that mainstream sources are lying to you, but your channel will provide the hard troops. Three, implying nefarious sources are trying to censor you. Four, flatter your audience that by following your channel, they are displaying nuance and independent thinking. Five, present all criticism as bad faith. Ideally, also frame it as self-serving efforts to protect funding and your own authority.

Six, offer heterodox sticks that pander to your audience. And I could go on Matt. There's 10 of them. But you know, you get the, I get the test. I sign off on all of those. Yeah, lean into conspiratorial gut feelings in your audience. That all. Oh, well, I do think this one was good, though.

It was make some soft jobs that targets your audience likes to demonstrate your independence lack of bias, but reserve your strongest venom for targets they dislike or disprove off. This is, you know, talk of course. Classic Sabina. Classic Sabina. Yeah. So she didn't respond to that. That's, yeah.

I think she's at like year or two of Weinsteinian devolution, right? At that stage, Weinstein's respond to criticism and whatnot, but they learn it's counterproductive because, you know, it just encourages people to pay attention to the critique. So she's not at that stage yet. But give her time. And those things will work. on YouTube. And, you know,

oh, yeah, and by the way, Matt, that actually lays up a good thing I wanted to mention. There were two things on YouTube that came up, two things that I want to offer some commentary on and get your opinion off.

So one is Coffee Zilla on his Voidzilla channel. He came out with an other video that has 4.2 million views at the time of recording, released eight days ago. Top five lies in Epstein footage.

And this video, it's actually very highly produced. They've produced like a freedom portal of the jail, you know, to show all the cameras that are missing and whatnot. And it's going for genuine issues in terms of like highlighting, here are discrepancies

and what people have said and what's been released and so on. But it is, as I watched it, very clearly a exercise in the novelty hunting. I feel that people give it a pass because it's making the Trump administration look bad and it's highlighting their hypocrisy around this issue and whatnot. But the approach in that video is the same as like a highly produced documentary on 9-11 where you're like zooming around. And here they said that nobody

knew about this, but actually we see this report right where it contradicts this. And it's just very depressing deceit from Coffey-Zilla because some people have said, well, look, he's just he's not endorsing it, right? But it's very clear. Like, if you go and look at the comments, it's clear the message that the audience is taking from it. And if it's designed just to give the Trump administration

a black guy, it's kind of doing it by, you know, using the conspiratorial tendencies in order to gin up the criticism. And I just don't think that's a good thing to do. So it's kind of depressing to see it from Coffey Zilla, to be honest. Yeah, the way that Epstein thing, you know, when the narrative became one that was making Trump look bad, it was actually, you know, seriously causing problems on that end and there are insinuations and stuff in that direction. It was quite amazing, actually, how quickly the vibe shifted.

So, yeah, I mean, look, I mean, I'm not an expert on the case, like, to sort of judge it. But from what I know about it, there is relatively little to support conspiracies against anyone, which help either side of politics. But yeah, no, it just illustrates how no one is immune. Like this conspiratorial thinking, it's just an attractive, it's an attractive thing to like connect the dots and support the thing that you want to believe. I mean, you see it everywhere. Well, there is, I mean, to be clear, there is various conspiracies involved around the. up seeing stuff, right? There is stuff with, like, him getting sweetheart deals and, you know, like, yes. Various elite individuals, high finance people, like getting different treatment than

others would for, like, documented abuse of minors, right? There is conspiracies at play here, and we are not arguing that they aren't, that they don't exist. I'm specifically talking about this anomaly hunting approach where you're focusing on like the minute missing on the footage. And, you know, Yeah, I mean, people get very confused when we talk about conspiracy theories, right? Because, like, on one hand, conspiracies are, I called them mundane. But conspiracies happen all the time. And there are certainly ones in which rich and powerful people get protected, make deals and things like that that advantage themselves,

and they don't tell everyone about it. So that meets the technical definition of a conspiracy. And they happen all the time everywhere. As you were saying, it happened with Epstein. And it's okay to speculate, right? Like there probably is some further nuances to those conspiracies that we still don't know about. But when we talk about conspiratorial ideation or conspiracy theories for shorthand, what we're referring to is the unfounded extrapolation, like the unwarranted certainty

in crafting a kind of, you know, connecting the dots on the pinboard type rationale to, result in a very strong confidence in a belief that actually has, you know, no substantive evidence behind it. So that's what we're talking about. Yeah. And we pointed in previous content to this report produced that was like an independent investigation into the conditions around Epstein's death, right? And it details various things about the prison, the conditions, you know, the advanced leading. It's very, very in-depth. that report. It's around 80 plus pages. And if you read that, you will be much better informed on the relevant circumstances and why all of the authorities involved deem it to be a suicide,

as opposed to watching Coffizilla's video about the discrepancies in the video surveillance footage that's been released, right? Like I really encourage people if you're invested in this topic, to invest in the evening reading that report. And you can dismiss, miss it as being involved, you know, just a cover. But like, you should look at the people involved that would all have to be part of the cover-up that are detailed in that report. Now, the other thing I'll just know about this topic that we highlighted as being a likely outcome and it's played out is that Gillian Maxwell, give her testimony. Now some of the transcripts have been released from that by the Justice Department and the family of one of the victims,

has said that she's been given a platform to rewrite history. She's basically exonerating herself, throwing Epstein to a certain extent under the bus. But it's very possible that she could end up getting even further reductions in the severity of her sentence. She's already been transferred, you know, to a lower security prison ostensibly on, you know, credible threats to her life. So this is, to me, this is very likely what was going to happen, which was, was as this conspiracy community comes to focus around it, and yes, there was originally our Trump and his kind of dismissal around it. But it was very clear that what is in her interests

is for her to present it as essentially any of Trump's opponents and high-ranking Democrats and people that Trump doesn't like, right? Those are the real villains. Trump and any of his, like, a menagerie of followers, not really involved. And that will allow the conspiracy theorists who are not these impartial people who just hold all elites in death repute.

No, they're not. Like Alex Jones is not a non-partisan conspiracy theorist. He's a hard right conspiracy theorist. So they will just find a way to take the conspiracy and target it towards the usual targets. And if that means that the only person who's really, you know, being convicted

for sex trafficking, one of the mean culprits in this, because the other one escaped justice by committing suicide is pardoned. And they get to target instead, you know, Bill Clinton or George Soros or whoever, the usual, like, kind of globalist villains. That's what they'll do. And that's what I was frustrated about as likely to happen. And it seems like that is what's happening. And it definitely doesn't seem like Trump's popularity has now created. And in another three years, his support's going to have vanished over this issue. No, like, people are moving on. So, yeah, yeah, yeah.

No good. No good comes of indulging in conspiracy theories. Agreed. Well, on that topic, that's one more thing about YouTube. Now, I don't think you've seen this because you tend to stay away from YouTube stuff. But are you aware of elephant graveyard? No. No.

The Elephant Graveyard is a YouTube channel that makes, like, video essays, critiquing Joe Rogan or they've covered other topics, Jerry, Jerry Seinfeld. Oh, wait. I think I saw this. Did you see this? Yeah, I think it was linked on the subreddit. I watched it. Oh, you did.

The full thing. It's like. No, no, I watched like. I did watch more than half of it. It was good, I thought, if we're talking about the same thing. Yes, well, so it's called How Comedy Was Destroyed by an Anti-Reality Doomsday Cult, right? 1.2 million views as of six days after release. And he did a critical analysis of Joe Rogan's, like, special and comedy career, right?

So I think it's like a comedy-focused channel, but it produces these satirical critical video essays which are done in this like what would you call it like kind of a cinematic documentary type style it's got music and the voiceover they're very well produced yeah the style reminds me very much of this documentary filmmaker from the UK Adam Curtis who makes documentaries that tend to combine archival footage along with like a spoken narrative that is talking about these kind of shifts in societal thinking and you know like he's talking about the rise of consumerism or mass production things these kind of things they tend to have like a little bit of an anti-capitalist critique of modern society aspect to them but it

it was very popular around about like 15 years ago um you know the guy yeah yeah yeah i've seen i've seen bits of that stuff there's a there's a very good critique 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 Guru's podcast, including bonus shows, gurometer episodes, and Decoding Academia. The Decoding the Guru's podcast is ad-free and relies entirely on listener support. Subscribing.

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