#1291 Christopher Kavanagh & Matthew Browne: Decoding the Gurus

00:00 Ricardo Lopes: Hello everyone. Welcome to a new episode of The Dissenter. I'm your host, as always, Richard Lops, and today I'm joined by a return guest, Dr. Christopher Kavanaugh and also a new guest, Dr. Matthew Brown. They are the hosts of Decoding the Gurus podcast. Dr. Kavanagh is associate professor in the College of Contemporary Psychology at Rikkyo University, and Dr. Brown is professor of psychology at Central Queensland University. And today we're going to talk about decoding the gurus. So welcome back, Dr. Kavanaugh. Welcome to the show, Dr. Brown. It's a great pleasure to everyone.

00:39 Christopher Kavanagh: Hello. Good morning.

00:43 Matthew Browne: We've talked. We, we started off with overtalking. That's a terrible way to start.

00:48 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, it's already what the, it's already the evening there in Japan and Australia or what?

00:54 Christopher Kavanagh: That's right, yeah, the late afternoon, but I'm considerate and just think about other people's time zones, so that's, that don't worry. Yeah, that's, that's, that's it. But not, it's, it's early for you, but it's very convenient for me and Matt. So that's why, good morning to you.

01:13 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah. So, I, I mean, I would like to to start by asking you, what got you guys interested in gurus? I mean, why are you so interested in this topic and why and how did you start your podcast?

01:30 Matthew Browne: Go ahead, Chris.

01:32 Christopher Kavanagh: Uh, WELL, so I think in my case, being interested in the, um, the kinds of figures we cover related to pre-existing interest in, um, like conspiracy theorists and anti-vax communities and this kind of, um, new religious movements and so on, and Um, the secular gurus that we discussed, figures like Jordan Peterson or the Weinstein brothers, uh, and such, um, were not directly the same as those kind of figures, but there were interesting parallels, um, and they were kind of getting A lot of uh attention in media and online, in online spaces and intellectual um pundit sort of spaces, so it was kind of uh A new phenomenon are connected to pre-existing interest in Um, related topics, conspiracy, communities, and, and so on, so there were some interesting parallels and some things that were, that were different, and that's why it, it kind of grabbed my interest, and then there was also the fact that um I listened to podcasts and what would be called like heterodox or alternative media for a long time, um, and noticed that, Uh, a lot of the people active there were displaying these, these characteristics, so it was kind of like, um, something of digital ethnography, but not imagined as that, that, you know, listening to people like Joe Rogan and so on talk, um, and then noticing the audience dynamics and the different features that they were doing, and then I ended up, um, Talking and commenting about it online, on, on Twitter, um, and before that on, on forums and such, and Matt was somebody else doing that at the time and with a similar academic bent to him, so we ended up, uh, talking together online, and then started to write a paper, which we have not yet finished, but it is still. It's, it's, it's getting closer, it's inching ever closer, uh, about this, this phenomenon of secular gurus, um, and in the discussions for that paper, I suggested, um, that I had been thinking of doing a podcast, um, around these figures, and Matt was interested and capable of co-hosting and. And the rest is history.

04:17 Ricardo Lopes: Uh, uh, BUT I, I mean when you say that, uh, it aligns with your interests, uh, does it align with your res with you guys' research interests, I mean, in terms of what you do academically, anthropologically and psychologically, or is it more personal interests?

04:38 Matthew Browne: Well it's a bit of both, but it does align with our research interests. Um, Chris's background is in the, the, the study of religion and how rituals and things like that are expressed in society and um. Uh, um, YOU know, I've got a background in studying anti-vax and complementary and alternative therapies and just general belief formation generally. So both of us in different ways have sort of just got this general interest in why people believe the things that they do. I mean, usually the things they believe are stupid. And it's interesting where I'm being somewhat tongue in cheek. Um, BUT, um, but you know, it's, it's interesting to, to know why, and a big part of why is, is they get these beliefs, um, from trusted figures. So it sort of begs the question. Um, WHO is good at making people trust them to get themselves perceived as an, an authority, um, that it, um, and, you know, likewise, how do these characters, I guess, decrease trust in other sources of knowledge, generally institutions and conventional sources. So, so, uh, yeah, um, as well as that we're both sort of tragic participants in the online discourse and, You know, just, um, routinely get provoked by various figures, so, yeah, so it all came together.

06:01 Christopher Kavanagh: I would also say, uh, Ricardo, I was involved in like skeptical circles like UK skepticism, uh, in, in the past, so you know, that, that movement was kind of focused around promoting, Science and, and like in early stages, you know, around um science debates uh against creationism and evolution and that kind of thing, but the interesting aspect for me was that, Um, a lot of the figures who were coming up in, in the kind of nascent guru space, they often, to me, seemed to drape themselves in the cloak of like science and skepticism and critical thinking and being heterodox thinkers. So, it, it was kind of like that they are claiming the mantle of, of skepticism and, and critical thought, and then deploying it very, Uh, badly, at, at the very least, or in a, you know, in service of often quite strong ideology. So, that was part of the, the thing that motivated interest for me is like, people claiming that they were doing, like, skeptical, critical thinking, but to me it looked very Similar to what I'd seen with conspiratorial thinking, and I'll just er er round off Matt's sharp edge by saying that like, when he's referred to what people mainly believe is stupid, I think he is taking for granted that people would understand. He's referring to things like extremely strong anti-vaccine views or like anti-establishment views that everybody in establishments is lying to all the time, UFOs are, you know, real and haven't been disclosed, and that there's, uh, like new physics that has been prohibited. So, when you're familiar with all of those kind of narratives that people, Push, they can seem like, you know, very silly, but they're often um not on the face of it, like completely ridiculous, right? So I'm just, just saying Matt, you maybe you want to put it another way,

08:13 Matthew Browne: let, let me round off Chris's rounding off uh of, of my statement. I mean, basically, uh, in, in psychology where we are, we are. Just generally interested in, in attitude formation, motivations, all that stuff. And the, I guess the null hypothesis, the basic premise is that we're perfectly rational beings and we perceive the world perfectly accurately, and psychologists are particularly interested in the ways in which we depart from that. So for instance, just today, I played a game called Pickleball for the first time, which is like tennis for old people. Um, AND, um, and despite it being, uh, not a particularly adventurous sport, I severely overestimated my abilities and dived around after the ball, fell over a few times, and now I'm in a great deal of pain. So, so that's an example of just, uh, overestimating one's own talents, right? A, a, a kind of form of narcissism, which is a almost ubiquitous, um, psychological trait. So, so when I Uh, jokingly refer to things that people believe are usually stupid. Uh, I include myself in that because an awful lot of our beliefs, uh, are not perfectly rational and not perfectly.

09:25 Christopher Kavanagh: Good, good, good.

09:27 Ricardo Lopes: No, you know, it's very interesting because you mentioned the skeptical community, and I mean, it's not that I was ever directly involved. In any skeptical community, I mean, I was sort of a sympathizer of that for a few years, but it's interesting because there are some people, of course not all of them, but there are some people that were part or are still part of those kinds of communities. I mean skeptical community, rational community. You can have perhaps even new atheists. To that and so on where they seem to have, even though they might deny it, they seem to have some guru-ish kinds of thoughts and behaviors. I mean, like for example, new atheists and we could even talk here about people like, uh, I mean just to mention some of the most prominent ones, Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris. Uh, I mean, the, the, for example, the kind of claims that they make about religion, many of them seem to run counter to the science of religion, to what, for example, cognitive. SCIENTISTS, anthropologists say, uh, about religion, uh, and, and so I mean they, they, they seem to be sometimes very arrogant in the way that they talk about um. What they consider to be irrational behaviors, the behaviors, some behaviors from religious people, for example, and others, and uh I mean when it comes to the skeptical community, for example, I, I, er, I've always seen, not again, not in er every, not everyone had that kind of attitude, but I've always seen that sort of, that sort of. TENDENCY to, OK, so for example, if I just memorize all the different logical fallacies out there and if I just memorize all of the different cognitive biases and heuristics identified by cognitive scientists, then I mean I'm immune to irrational. Basically, so I mean, you know, I don't know if you've also noticed those kinds of attitudes and behaviors among people who are part of those communities, but it seems that many times people tend to think that, oh OK, no, no, I, I, I don't have those kinds of irrational behaviors, but actually they do. So

12:14 Christopher Kavanagh: yeah, so I mean definitely. The rationalist and skeptical communities have their fair share of non-rational dogmatists and, and people invoking Bayesianism and, and little Bayesian um equations to justify, Their arguments, right, just inserting if it let X be that I'm right, right? And, and so on. But, uh, and I think that Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris suffer from no shortage of confidence in their opinions on, on various issues. Um, AND I would agree that especially in the case of Sam Harris. He doesn't seem to have almost any interest in the research literature, uh, around like, uh, the psychology of extremism, or whatever, because he had a couple of bad interactions with, uh, particular academics, I think anthropologists in general, and so he's written off the entire field. Um, PERHAPS not the most rational response, but, um, I will, Um, in defense of them, a little bit, say that I, I think in part that especially with Dawkins, that Yeah, it's better to think of them less of a researcher, when, I mean, Richard Dawkins, you know, a, an important figure in the history of like promoting, um, understanding,

13:34 Ricardo Lopes: uh, evolutionary biology,

13:36 Christopher Kavanagh: right, yes, yes, and, and the, you know, the selfish gene and so on. Matt and I, big fans of that, that book, and, and actually his evolutionary writing in, in general, is still pretty good, I think, but the um, When it comes to religion and stuff like that, I see both him and Sam Harris, Sam Harris being, uh, in a slightly different category, uh, but, but Richard Dawkins as being like kind of an atheist activist in a way, and so when he's writing about religion, he's mostly talking about like a, a fundamentalist, um, you know, creationist or, or fundamentalist, uh, creationist position in, Mostly monotheistic Abrahamic traditions, right, and I, I think in that context, his arguments are often, you know, against that, reasonable, but when you are talking more about the like social or Cultural evolutionary role of religious traditions and societies. He doesn't seem to have very, very much of note to say. And as he's gotten older, I think his opinions have become stronger and more like publicly stated and perhaps less well informed, so. Yeah, I, I, I kind of concur with your assessment and, and definitely with the, um, the rationalist community in our experience, we've, we've looked at a couple of figures from that movement, and there, there is variation there, you know, there are people within there that, that are practicing like good approaches to things, but there's, there's a lot of, um, People dressing up their intuitions in, in scientific and, and Bayesian logic or, or that kind of thing and, um, yeah, so you, I think the advice with, with any of these things is like, you know, read whatever blogs you want, consume whatever content you want, but just do it critically, um, and yeah, and be wary when people tell you they're like the most rational, um person approaching things because usually not, usually not.

15:48 Ricardo Lopes: I mean, I guess that if someone tells you directly, OK, so I'm a rational, I'm a very rational person, I'm a great critical thinker, you should take that with a huge grain of salt. I mean, I, I was just thinking, for example, about that guy that I was not even aware of him at all. I just became aware of him because he participated in a recent, I mean fairly recent Piers Morgan episode where Slavoyzek was also there. Warren Smith, and and and, and he was presented as the foremost critical thinker or something like that. And I and I, and I, and I was like, what? What? I never, I never heard of this guy. And then immediately, I mean, and one thing that really bothered me immediately was that when he was starting to discuss with Slavayzek. Brought up, oh, OK, so communism killed 100 million people, and I'm like, oh, OK, here we go again. The figure from the Black Book of communism, yeah, communism was not great, but come on, the Black Book of communism is just BS because for people who know, for people who are aware of this, I mean they know that the main author, the I mean the The other authors, apart from the main author are distanced themselves from the book because they said publicly that the main author from the very beginning wanted to arrive at the 100 million figure there, so I mean he was already working toward. Uh, TOWARD creating artificially that 100 million figure because it sounds like a very round number and so I mean the way he ended up making that number up, uh, he even considered like for example, oh. People who were supposed to be born that weren't born also come as deaths of communism. So what are we talking about? And this is the guy who is the foremost critical thinker who's Using, I don't know, anti-communist propaganda. I mean, you can be anti-communist, but it's just resorting to that sort of propaganda. So immediately then and there I was like, yeah, I'm not taking this guy seriously, so.

18:26 Matthew Browne: Yeah, and I, I, I don't think it's a, it's a competition, is it? Um, IT, it, it doesn't, it doesn't really matter if it was 50 million or 150 million, right, or, you know, it's, it's, it's the, the argument isn't based on that sort of thing. Um, YEAH, look, but getting back to your other point, uh, certainly, look, there's these big warning signs that some of the gurus we cover and some people online. Will speak directly to their own wonderfully high IQ, which is always very funny. Great big red flag in somebody who's telling you their IQ and, and telling you they're a very high IQ person. But there's lots of other ways to kind of signal that you are a very smart person. Uh, YOU'VE probably seen all the bios on people's things, and they call themselves a free thinker or a first principles thinker, you know, add that on to, to Bayesianism and, uh, uh, and it's, you know, so these things often end up being Basically intellectual virtue signaling, which, uh, you know, just, you know, acting a role and uh playing the role of a very wise, very erudite, very well informed, very well educated, super smart person, so, so trust me, believe me, um, and don't listen to, you know, don't, don't try to deconstruct my arguments or, or, or or look too carefully, uh, because, uh, you know, so yeah, we, we, um, we, we look for those sorts of signs.

19:49 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, I, I also like those people who finish PhDs and then everything that they do has to, I mean, every place they put their name on, they have to have PhD in the front, and then it's like even if they're writing something. That has nothing at all to do with their area of expertise. Oh, blah blah blah, PhD. Oh, OK, so now you have to listen to me because I have a PhD in, uh, I don't know, psychology and I, and I'm talking about quantum mechanics.

20:25 Matthew Browne: Exactly, yeah. So, um, so Chris, Chris could probably tell you more, but, um, you know, that's, that's another thing where people are, are straying well outside of their lane. So, it's like you said, you know, getting some expertise in a particular area takes, takes a long time, and you can gain a fair bit of expertise in something specific, and it doesn't make you. Uh, A, a, a general purpose expert on, on everything, and I think, um, the, um, the, a certain degree of hubris, um, can, can creep in, especially when you are a media commentator and you attract a certain following, and you have a lot of people out there who are telling you that you are the, uh, the smartest business person in the world, you can see that it can be a little bit, uh, tempting. To um stray into all kinds of areas and start opinionating on them more confidently than you should, so it's perfectly fine to have opinions, we've all got opinions about everything, um but I think it's a, it's a matter that about the degree to which you claim, the, the mantle of specialist expertise and how willing you are to discount the advice from people who might know a lot about a particular specialized topic than yourself.

21:40 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, but I mean, tell us more about the gurometer and the 10, I think it's 10 traits that you came up with. I mean, how did you come up with the gurometer and explain each of those 10 traits which I think are Anti-establishment, Cassandra complex conspiracy mongering, occultishness, galaxy brainness, grievance mongering, profiteering, pseudo profound BS, revolutionary theories, and self-aggrandizement. I mean, tell us about that.

22:19 Christopher Kavanagh: Uh, YEAH, so basically, the The area that we're talking about is um people that present themselves as alternative epistemic authorities, if you like, charismatic epistemic authorities, they're often providing like a, a world. And like Matt mentioned, claiming polymorphic, um, abilities. So, it's a, like guru as a, a broad category has existed in a whole bunch of different cultures and there's related concepts around, you know, like prophets and And shamans and, and, and so on, but, um, we are focused on the, uh, variation of that that emerged in the more contemporary period and that draws its authority from secular sources, so often this is from academic knowledge or at least academic, uh, disciplines like a, a knowledge, specialist knowledge of science, specialist knowledge of history. Of psychology, these kind of things. So they might um make reference to religious or spiritual traditions, but they're often interpreting them for, you know, Jungian psychology or something like that, right? Like, so the, the reliance is not, uh, usually on like divine insight. It's, it's kind of more grounded, um, at least superficially in secular sources, and, um, When we were looking at, at characters who fitted around us, and, and a lot of it in the beginning was people online attracting large followings, who, who were seen as these kind of charismatic figures, giving people, uh, you know, life, life advice and uh opinionating on a bunch of topics. So, like I mentioned, you know, um, Jordan Peterson fits the mold quite, quite well. Um, AND once we had covered, uh, a couple of them, and, and also just in discussions, we noticed that there were like recurrent features which kept coming up every episode because the format of the podcast is that we would take a long form piece of content, and we could, we'd kind of like critically examine the tropes that were in it. And, There were various tropes that continued to reoccur, and this is what we have tongue in cheek referred to as a gometer, right? There's 11 characteristics because we added moral grandstanding and, and you mentioned them, right, the things like polymorphic self-presentation, anti-establishment, uh, Posturing and, and in that sense, it's not just like you have some critiques of some mainstream institution, but I can make, it's more like everyone in every mainstream institution is lying to you all the time. You can't trust academia, you can't trust media, you can't trust politicians, right, you can't trust me, the alternative epistemic authority, and then, Um, thing, there are things that I think are relatively straightforward, like extreme narcissism and self-aggrandizement, um, the tendency towards conspiracy mongering, um, some of the things that maybe people wouldn't immediately grasp is that the figures tend to have, uh, or lay claim to revolutionary theories that are not yet being recognized. Maybe they're recognized by their followers. Uh, BY their followers as very important, but not by the relative, the relevant like expert communities, right? So it could be in physics or it could be in biology or whatever, and, and maybe they even have credentials in those fields, but they have theories where they're not just like attempting to contribute to a discipline. They have theories that they believe will completely revolutionize, uh, entire fields. And perhaps the world, right, if they're properly understood, but often a very limited track record of any actual, you know, output or research or anything that you might normally associate with that. So, the claim to revolutionary theories, um, is, is somewhat distinctive. Moral grandstanding is often presenting their motivations as like extremely pure. They're only motivated by. Um, THE best things, and that if people are criticizing them, they are morally suspect because they're standing against their kind of righteous crusade or against like historic evils, right, and, and related to that, when we are talking about cultish dynamics, we're really talking about the tendency for people to um manipulate their followers and create these very, very strong parasocial attachment to them. As figures, and um a, a kind of binary worldview where following the person, consuming their content, promoting them, makes you a good and thoughtful person. And if you are part of the people that are critical, or might be like reading critical material about them, then you're part of, you know, the, the evil cabal, which is set on destroying the world and often attached to nefarious forces and all this kind of thing. So all of these are like features that don't typically go. With people that are public intellectuals, right, sometimes the, the, the concepts overlap, but in general, public intellectuals tend to like, be more focused on a specific subject uh that is related to their expertise, to include more caveats around and limitations, when they're making claims, right, and to not engage in this level, Of kind of personalized audience, uh, manipulation might be one word for it, but at least like cultivated attachment, right, you know, even if you regard people like Steven Pinker, as, as potentially, you know, falling into some of those traps that we talked about, he, he doesn't really do the, the level of parasocial cultivation, um, that we are, uh, talking about, so that's, I mean, there's other features, maybe Matt, you have some that you want to, I mentioned that that I might have missed, but, but that's, that's really what it is, like we, we viewed it as a way to, um, keep us on track, that we would, um, keep a record, basically for all the people that we covered to the extent they do it, and they don't do it all to the same degree. It's, it's more like a family resemblance category, you know, when they're all, all these features are high, you do have very likely, uh, a secular guru or a cult leader, um, but, uh, some of them are doing, Uh, some of them, but not all of them, and that kind of thing, so it's, it's on a continuum.

29:08 Ricardo Lopes: Right, right. Um, I mean, it's interesting because particularly when it comes to anti-establishment attitudes, sometimes they seem to combine with grievance mongering in certain academics that have decided to abandon academia. I mean, I'm thinking of people like, for example, Brett Weinstein and others who, I mean, they, Sort of present themselves as people who have this sort of um and again connecting to another feature revolutionary theories about, I don't know, in the biology, medicine, I mean whatever kind of area it is and then they just go on podcasts or go on to create their own podcasts or go on other platforms. Claiming that the entire establishment, I don't know, the entire biology community, the entire medicine community or whatever other kind of community, that they are wrong or at least they're wrong in a particular aspect or in a particular topic, and they know the actual truth. It's just that people, because they're sort of these. Cabal to silence alternative voices. I mean, people in academia just want to protect the status quo and so they don't listen to them, and but they have the truth and other people outside of academia who are more sensible or something like that should listen to them. But in fact, I mean, the issue is that The sort of theory or hypothesis or even papers that they tried to publish for the most part were just not that great, and that's the reason why they are and weren't taken seriously. It's not because there's this massive conspiracy in academia to silence, to silence alternative voices, right.

31:22 Matthew Browne: Yeah, yeah. And, uh, Brett Weinstein and his brother Eric, are, are, are perfect examples. They, they ding pretty much every one of our barometer features, and you did a good job there, Ricardo, I think, um, running through most of the main ways. And it's quite, uh, ironic, they have a, they have an interesting relationship with the establishment, oftentimes. So, uh, on one hand, they, as you said, have a kind of a, a conspiratorial and grievance laden backstory. Which is that they've been exiled from the institutions because their ideas were too dangerous, too exciting, too real for the institutions to handle, um, so they're connecting directly to the people, and um some of them talk about sort of doing their science or research. Like through their podcasting or their YouTube videos or whatever, which is, kind of laughable, right, that that just literally isn't how. Um, uh, EVOLUTIONARY biology or physics research or any kind of research actually happens. So on, on one hand they seem very thirsty to be, to be recognized by institutions, um, like Eric, uh, Weinstein for instance, recently. Um, YOU know,

32:38 Ricardo Lopes: I mean sometimes they claim they should have won Nobel Nobel Prizes.

32:43 Matthew Browne: Indeed, indeed, sometimes whole families, uh, Eric, his brother, and, uh, Heather Haying, his, his wife all should

32:51 Christopher Kavanagh: have, no, no, not his wife, it's Eric's wife, Helen attributed.

32:56 Matthew Browne: Yes, oh, poor Heather, poor Heather, um. But, but in any case, um, yeah, so they, they seem to very much want to, uh, be recognized. They, um, Eric has called for, uh, you know, rich philanthropists to basically fund, you know, $500,000 professorial, uh, chairs for, for him, for, uh, who, who else, uh, Jordan Peterson, uh, basically him and his friends should be given a whole bunch of money to, to do the really important sciences because in his mind, They have proven that they are the only real scientists and intellectuals living and as you said, if you actually look at their track record, they've produced, like next to nothing in in terms of of outputs that um have been recognized or indeed should be recognized. Um, SO on one hand, they will portray universities and the other institutions as, as entirely corrupt, entirely broken, and indeed they'll sometimes work to create alternative versions of their institutions. Jordan Peterson has his various academies and so on that people can, can, can study in. Um, THEY say it's all broken, it's all corrupt, it's all a bit invaded by wokeness or whatever the, or whatever the, the, the bad thing is. Um, BUT they're also very keen for recognition, like they, they very much make a big deal about their elite, um, credentials, uh, that at least that's how they, uh, portray them, and take every opportunity that they can to remind the audience that they, of, of, of whatever kind of, um, recognition or standing that they might be able to point to. So it, it's an interesting, uh, kind of relationship, and I think it parallels like a, You know, everybody knows Donald Trump and everyone knows the dynamic there, and there's an interesting way in which they get to have their cake and eat it too, cos on one hand, populists like Donald Trump, um, demonize the elites, uh, demonize, frankly, the most of the institutions, um, but at the same time, Donald Trump is signaling, both that he is a man of the people, and speaks directly for the people and is draining the swamp and, and stands against, These, these so-called elites, but, but is also, you know, is the most elite person you can imagine, he's got like gold plated, you know, uh fixtures for God's sake. So, um, yeah, so it's an interesting, uh, sort of populist dynamic in terms of both being anti-elite, while also part of the appeal is for them to lean into their elite membership at the same time.

35:34 Christopher Kavanagh: And there's a tendency for them to begin to get very upset whenever, like they, Uh, people that operate in this role will spend an inordinate amount of time just shitting on institutions, often once they're associated as well, right? And then, um, like in Jordan Peter's, uh, Jordan Peterson's case, he hadn't taught at the university in nearly a decade, right, um, but had still retained his position, and they moved him to an emeritus position, which, you know, actually quite nice of them, right, because it's not like he was ever going to. Um, BE at the university again, um, while he was working as a, you know, a pundit for the, the Daily Wire, um, and, and doing his tours and all that kind of thing, and he was enraged at that, right? Like, he, he wrote a, uh, penned like a very strong, uh, public letter chastising the university, you know, for, for daring to do that, and Sabine uh Hassenfelder, a, a YouTube, um, figure who comments on physics. And and has taken a bit of a turn herself towards, um, like, physics populists, as some people have dubbed it. Um, BUT, uh, she too spends a lot of her time just explaining how all the physics institutions are moribund, that people are not doing interest in physics, nobody's funding good research, nobody's interested in good questions, and she,

37:00 Ricardo Lopes: and she, and she claims that for the past few decades, Uh, bits of theoretical physics like, uh, quantum mechanics and I think more specifically string theory has been just a complete waste of money or something.

37:16 Christopher Kavanagh: So there's a, there's a common like distaste for string theory, it's, it's a popular like punch bag for people, but she had her uh affiliation with some institute, you know, kind of like I have an affiliation with Oxford because I was a, Researcher there and have, you know, like a, an, an email address attached with them, but they, uh, you know, they could remove it any year, right? Like for whatever reason, just it, uh, it also doesn't really mean anything, except like, you know, you can access the library services or whatever. But she again, released the YouTube video, you know, saying, I'm being attacked, this is, but, you know, and again, her full-time position now is YouTuber, and that's mainly what she spends her time. But they're allowed to critique institutions uh as very, very strongly and imply that the people in it are corrupt narcissists. And when institutions, you know, say, well, this kind of damages our reputation, maybe we don't want you using us as like the cudgel to give yourself credibility, they're, they get extremely upset, so it's just like this double standard where they are free. And indeed should be like listened to by more people to, to criticize everyone else in mainstream institutions, mainstream theories and so on. But any pushback immediately reveals the conspiracy and like er the plan against them, so there's just, there is this unbelievable level of double standard in, in almost everything that the secular gurus do, and it's, it's quite impressive, really.

38:53 Ricardo Lopes: No, no, yeah, I, I mean it, it's curious because it seems that's, uh, I mean, I'm not sure about all of them, but at least some of them seem to be. DO not like to be held accountable, and I mean they don't like to really for the proper standards, academic standards to be applied to them because many times what they are complaining about is not people as they claim, trying to suppress them or their opinion or their ideas, but actually I don't know, people from academic journals, people from their academic institutions just trying to tell them, OK, so you should be more careful about what you say on social media. You should be more careful about making this or that type of claim that is not supported by the evidence. I mean, you wrote this paper, you should try to change this or that part of the paper because that's not proper writing or proper science, something like that. But, but, but then they pick on those things and run with them and they make, make up these huge concerns. Conspiracy theories about how the entire establishment just wants to suppress their genius ideas when some, when many times it's just, yeah, you're not doing a proper job. I mean you should write better papers, you should do better research, you should be more. I mean, you should try to uh to be a little bit more, uh, I, I don't, I don't, I don't know, I'm missing the word here, but you should um be held up to the stand uh uh to the standards of academia and you just don't want to do it and then you exit academia just to go on. Podcasts and elsewhere spewing your ideas where there's no one to hold you accountable. So, and I mean sometimes they make a huge conspiracy theory out of what are just normal academic, uh, procedures, I guess.

41:12 Matthew Browne: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, a perfect example of that is the, um, um, uh, Eric or Brett pointing to papers that are rejected from a journal that they submitted. And uh pointing to this immediately as evidence of, of a conspiracy because of course, there can't be anything wrong with their paper. Their paper has to be the absolute best thing that has ever been done. I mean, and you know it's, it's interesting that that works, I mean, you know, as a working academic myself I've published, Hundreds of papers in academic journals. Just, just, uh, yesterday I've been working on one where we had a bad run. It's been rejected 4 times from different journals. And that's entirely normal. It's, it's actually, it's a good paper, I do believe so. Um, YOU know, the comments and stuff are quite, maybe a little bit harsh, a little bit pernickety, but we've taken, we've taken them seriously and working to make a better paper. That's just, that's just, that's just normal academic functioning. Um, SO you can see how a lot of these gerometer dimensions kind of dovetail with each other. Like if you are a, a narcissistic person who has this inflated idea about every idea you've had, every, every paper you've written is just, is just the best thing since sliced bread, then you're gonna be more prone to react like that, uh, it, rather than, um, you know, work to, to sort of improve and take the, the negative feedback seriously, but, It's connected also to this, these narratives of grievance, cos obviously little incidents like the, like that which are mundane and mean nothing, get folded into a backstory, where they are being persecuted, where they are suffering for the great moral stance and the amazing ideas that they've had, and that again dovetails with the sort of cultishness that we're talking about, the kind of affiliation, because that's exactly the kind of story that is emotive, like if you, if you accept it, if you accept their version. Of events, then you accept that they are a genius, they are being persecuted for doing the right thing and trying to make the world a better place and the institutions are holding them down, so it's the kind of thing you're gonna feel sympathy with and want to get on board this kind of moral crusade that they are off and on. So, um, it's interesting the way in which these different um aspects of the barometer connect, uh, together, um. Yeah.

43:32 Ricardo Lopes: No, and it's, and sometimes it's a bit sad because for example, in the case of Jordan Peterson, at least as far as I know what I read from his academic work, he was doing actually a proper, he was doing good work when it comes. To, for example, personality psychology and studying alcohol addiction and all of that. I mean, I've even interviewed, for example, one of his students, Colin D. Young, and he's also been doing a great, uh, great work in personality psychology and uh people who studied under Jordan Peterson, some of them have great things to say about him, and they are proper academics. It's just that it seems that Jordan Peterson could not stay in his lane. I mean, for him it seemed like, OK, just doing a proper personality psychology. I mean, I, I, I'm, I'm more than that. I mean, I. I have to do more than that because I'm a better and more, I should be more more prominent figure than just a a professor at the University of Toronto doing good personality psychology.

44:51 Christopher Kavanagh: I, I might have some pushback around the level of quality of his psychology research. Oh,

44:59 Ricardo Lopes: OK, so I'm, I'm not saying that I'm like very well familiarized. It seemed to be good, but it's

45:08 Christopher Kavanagh: better than 12 Hours for Life. I'll give it that, but I think in terms of like his previous research, I suspect his Co-authors deserve a lot of the credit for some of the more empirical work, and Jordan's contribution, I think, is more towards the speculative Jungian side. So if you like that sort of thing, then maybe if you're, you'll find I do know, but I, but I do know that when he previously, and, and this is the case with many of the people that we've covered, when they begin. They are often a lot more circumspect about the statements that they make, and they gradually, as their audience grows bigger, and the attention they receive and, and the topics they're asked to respond to expand, that I think what Matt talked about, the, the kind of narcissistic personality type takes over. And they get um kind of carried away by their own myth. Now, I think in most cases, the people that we've looked at, actually, when you go back and look at their pre-frame. Uh, HISTORY, there's actually significant warning signs, um, and there are behaviors which are unusual, like just to take one for Jordan Peterson, when he was asked to submit an IRB for one of his research in the University of Toronto, he railed against that uh somebody without a PhD like him should have any position on a panel that assesses it, right? HE demanded to see the board. And to like ask why they have the right to assess the validity of his research, right? Now, that's not normal, right, that's, and that, that was chalked up to him being, you know, a, a kind of unusual and, and like kind of passionate figure, right, very bombastic and all that kind of stuff, but I think that speaks to the features that we're talking about, but it, but it is the case in certain, Examples of people that we've covered that they actually do have a body of legitimate work that they've published. Um, MOST of the gurus, it's fair to say, do not, but, but in certain cases, they, they do. And what often happens there is like there are original. Work is, it, it can even be influential in a particular field, right, in a particular area, but they then, uh, veer very far from there and speak with like the same level of confidence across like topics that they know. Nothing, um, about or, or, or very little, so it's, uh, it's not always the case that like a track record of publications and research, papers like there's a, a fellow called Peter McCulloch, who was influential during the COVID pandemic, he's a, a physician, but he has published a large amount of, Papers, but he became one of the primary figures promoting ivermectin conspiracies, right? And in that case, does that mean all of his previous research was, was bad and unreliable? Like, no, it, it, it doesn't, right, but, uh, if you see how he behaved during the pandemic, it was definitely in the role of like an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist, um, so, Yeah, it's, they're not all completely fraudulent, um, but I, but I think their legitimate work is often, uh, like a lot less revolutionary than, than they will present it as, as being later, and, um, yeah, that's, that's just like a caveat I'd, I'd keep in mind.

48:56 Ricardo Lopes: No, yeah, and I mean for sure when it comes to Jordan Peterson, at the very least his classes, I mean the courses he taught at the University of Toronto were really, really bad. I mean, I watched some of the classes and they were all over the place and there was very little scientific rigor there. I mean, One time he was talking about, I know Jung, and then he suddenly moved to mythology and suddenly he was talking, he inserted that BS about how people from certain societies through the use of psychedelics were seeing the DNA double elixir. It's like what is this? It's all over the place. Is this a university class. Come on.

49:52 Christopher Kavanagh: There's actually the, the guy that hired Jordan Peterson, or, or was like pivotal in getting him to the University of Toronto actually mentioned that, you know, the things that attracted to him originally as a candidate, that he, he was this kind of, you know, big ideas guy who would connect all these divergent topics and, and, and charismatic and so on, like a, a bit of a renegade, right, within the field, were appealing, but then, Uh, as time went on, and there were like some concerns around his lectures and stuff, when people sat in, they noticed exactly what you said, that like, he mixed in completely valid and, and like well supported theories with these, you know, grand expositions, and, and like idiosyncratic interpretations of religious beliefs, and, In a melange, where if you're an undergraduate student, you were receiving them all, you know, like, and, and that's something that we see with a lot of the gurus is that they, they're often like uh teaching or making reference to valid theories or, you know, established research, and they Use that kind of baseline to establish credibility, and then they leap from there into like the, these really elaborate schemes and, and like extreme extrapolations, but when you push them, they just point back to the, like established literature, as if that means that their extrapolation is true and like it, it, it doesn't follow, so. Um, YEAH, that's, that's part of the reason we find them interesting is they're often quite slippery like that, like a figure we covered recently was Iain McGilchrist, um, that some of your listeners might know. Oh,

51:34 Ricardo Lopes: that, that, that, uh, um, I, I mean, uh, the, the brain guy, right? I mean,

51:40 Christopher Kavanagh: realization,

51:41 Ricardo Lopes: the, the atmosphere is the left hemisphere, right hemisphere guy, right?

51:46 Christopher Kavanagh: Yeah, and, and I, if he's known by people. Well he's generally known, and I would say, you know, just in the ether by me and Matt before we focused on him, as somebody that like might have these, uh, like quite idiosyn idiosyncratic interpretations, but he's rock solid when it comes to the neuroscience literature and stuff, so, and our experience of uh looking at his content was, that is not, that is not the case at all. Like he, he is miss. Representing the neuroscience literature very badly, and then from there, leaping into like massive extrapolations like that society is left or right-brained in different eras and, and, and so on, and that this proves kind of the, uh, that determinism and materialism is false as well, like he has a whole bunch of things attached to it, but the basic thing is his underlying representation of. IS inaccurate and, and actually fairly misleading, but that's not his reputation, and he is invited to give lectures at, you know, prestigious institutions and uh for like various debates and stuff regularly. So, um, yeah, just, just, it, it, it seems that it's not a barrier to completely misrepresent the scientific consensus of the topic either.

53:06 Ricardo Lopes: OK, but let's be, let's be fair to Jordan Peterson. I mean, don't you find it fun to listen to 30 minutes of a guy interpreting the Lion, The Lion King through a Jungian and pseudo evolutionary psychology lens and saying that, OK, now really made Simba. Become a man because boys are afraid of girls and they have to grow up to really meet up girls' expectations. I mean, come on, it's fun, right?

53:39 Matthew Browne: Yeah, no, it is, it is fun, and that's part of, that's part of what we, uh, enjoy looking at it. I guess if you, if you treat it as very much as light entertainment and, and nothing else, then enjoy, that, that would be our recommendation, um. Yeah, um, but, uh, you know, they, they are very much, um, big picture thinkers, very intuitive, very conceptual, um, like we, we cover a group called the, well, we call it, well they call themselves sense makers, um, and they're, they're in, they're in a similar kind of vein, and it's interesting, and you know, Ian McGilchrist is in, in that group too. And you can sort of see them hop around from idea to idea and connecting things just on the fly, um, so it's, it's almost like a form of beat, jazz, poetry,

54:28 Ricardo Lopes: you know, sometimes, sometimes I, uh, uh, I think that some of these people might have a sort of schizoid personality because they are making associations between, I, I mean across everything else.

54:42 Matthew Browne: That thought has occurred to me too.

54:45 Christopher Kavanagh: I, I, I think one of the things about that though is like, it's often, um, like, enjoyable, the metaphors and stuff that they go on, or the, the like interpret interpretation of Pinocchio, right? But, but often what, what comes up when you're enjoying it, is you're, you're enjoying this like connections and the claims that it very often connects to the Bible, right, and, And these kind of things, but the yellow, the more of the content that you consume, the more that you also see, it often, very often, Uh, connects to like a particular political, uh, worldview, and a set of themes, which are like, extremely repetitive, like so with Jordan Peterson, for example, almost everything that he talks about, he will, uh, relate to the concept of verticalness, like things going up and orientating towards higher things, and, And, and you can, you can do it for almost anything, and he does do it for almost everything. And then he connects that, he uses that to say, like, orientating yourself upwards, is like orientating yourself towards God and the heavens, and therefore, everything is ultimately connected to like religion, and you will often find that each of the, like, little gurus or sense makers, they have their own. Sets of concepts that they like to play with, and they will talk to each other, but they're mainly not really listening to each other, they're, they're just waiting for an opportunity to say, yes, and that's why it connects to the vertical, right, or, you know, whatever the case, the other one might be. So, uh, Matt and I still have a perverse enjoyment of listening to like people spend 3 hours talk about metaphors together. Um, AND, and go on these journeys, but it does get incredibly repetitive the more you listen to the content, because the same themes just repeat over and over, and it's, it's very often is tied to justifying, um, conservative anti-immigrant, um, positions. And you know, whatever your political views are, uh, on, you know, what should be the correct immigration policy or whatever, that's one thing, but it's just like, it's not being sold. As if it's like a political ideology, but it almost always is pushing a very specific political line, and it's, yeah, it's frankly like annoying because you're like, it would be a lot more enjoyable if it was just about like Pinocchio and interpreting the symbols and stuff, but it's always like Pinocchio means that Christianity is the best religion and we should reduce immigration into the West.

57:37 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, I mean, but, but some of these things seem to be at least partly genetic because they seem to run in the family, because Mikaela Peterson also has these, some of these tendencies, and I mean every time she comes up with BS about the lion diet or something like that, as. Supposedly we should all just eat meat or beef specifically. I, I, I don't know why the obsession with beef. I mean, why not chicken? Why not pork? I mean, why don't,

58:14 Christopher Kavanagh: they each have their own specific animal that they only consume, I believe his wife only consumes ruminant meat, uh, so, uh.

58:23 Ricardo Lopes: But I, but I mean, I, I don't, I don't get it why people just make this stuff up about how supposedly during the Pleistocene women, uh uh not women, humans just ate meat and uh uh and I mean even in agricultural societies, apparently, uh, the adaptations that we evolved, uh, um, by, uh, I mean through millennia of living in agricultural societies. I mean to process cereal, milk, uh, eggs, beer and all of that, apparently that doesn't matter either, so. Yeah.

59:02 Matthew Browne: Yeah, well, uh, you know, I think that's a good example of where the, the guru stuff can intersect with other things, like so there's, there's health and wellness woo, which includes diet fads. It's obviously its own thing, right? You, you know, the diet fads have been around for, for, for, for so long and there is any number of weird, Health beliefs that that are incredibly popular because, somehow our, our health and, and being, you know, like living longer, um avoiding disease and avoiding, you know, being sick is, is somehow an existential concern. That kind of gets all of our juices flowing and seems to prone most people for being quite quick to take up non-evidence based beliefs. So, anti-vax is obviously the poster child, um it's, it's it's almost like. The anti-Semitism of the health and wellness world, right? It just keeps popping up. Uh, IT'S perennial. But, um, but there's just something about eating as well, like the, you know, the choosing what to put in your mouth, it's a very intimate choice or whatever. It seems to, seems to trigger their, um, almost Freudian, uh, issues. I don't know.

1:00:15 Christopher Kavanagh: Yeah, and sadly for the genetic explanation, the nature and nurture, Jordan Peterson's wife also does the same thing. And, and we listen to Michaela's content and there's a whole ecosystem, and they, they're all eating very specific different types of fruit or, or maybe somebody is just eating like a type of berry or whatever. They, they all have like their specific things, but, but the carnivore diet is, um, Yeah, it had its a moment there and, and still does amongst some red pill communities, but it hasn't done Jordan Peterson any figures, like he, he's currently out of commission in case you haven't noticed, um, due to, I believe, two diagnoses ago from Akila, it was toxic mold perhaps infused by demons. It was demon, um, infused toxic mold, but I believe now it is, um, Uh, symptoms from taking, uh, medications to wean yourself off, uh, addictive drugs, the side effects have emerged after 5 years, maybe triggered by the toxic mold. So yeah,

1:01:29 Ricardo Lopes: because, because apparently he, I don't know how many years ago, 6 years ago, perhaps he was abusing benzodiazepines, benzodiazepines,

1:01:39 Christopher Kavanagh: and then he, uh, He took himself off them at Mala's advice by Uh, putting himself in an induced coma in,

1:01:47 Ricardo Lopes: uh, and he, and he went, he went to Russia, right?

1:01:50 Christopher Kavanagh: Yeah, yeah, I, I, I, it's one of those things where like when you hear it, it, it doesn't quite land like what that, because, you know, to me, induced coma, it sounds like, you know, it, it sounds quite severe, but like when you think about it, it's actually like putting someone unconscious, right, for several days and keeping them in a medically induced coma while They don't go through physical withdrawal for, for drugs, and there's a reason that generally, you know, in, in Canada, where they were, that they wouldn't recommend doing that. And actually, according to Michaela and Jordan, when he came out of that, he had brain damage, um, as a result of the, the treatment they, they presented that, you know, as kind of the treatment or the addiction or whatever the case, um, was. But, but it's certainly the case that like after he returned to public life after that, he. He was remarkably less stable. He, he was crying in, in almost every public appearance, and he became like, uh, he, he always was, you know, very aggressive and shouty, but, but like more emotion prone and stuff in, in appearances. So, you know, I, I don't know, but in any case, all of the various, um, health approaches and restrictive diets, they don't seem to have done them any good, um, with, so. Maybe, maybe there's other things at play there psychologically.

1:03:15 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, I mean, I actually thought that if it was true, because, you know, sometimes it's actually hard to figure out if they're actually telling the truth or not, but if it was true that for the past several years, Jordan Peterson was on a carnivore diet, I think there's also a very good chance that he was missing some essential nut. Is there, I mean, because come on, you have to eat vegetables, you have to eat apparently not a little, you have to eat a little bit of carbohydrates, right?

1:03:51 Christopher Kavanagh: I mean they are, they are prone to exaggeration, like Jordan Peterson, I think on one of his appearances for Joe Rogan claimed to have been awake for 27 days straight after drinking a glass of apple cider, so. There are, um, there are various games that you have to take with a pinch of salt. And, and actually, that was one of the things he was allowed to consume. Yes, he said that he was eating exclusively steak, I think salt and salt and sparkling, sparkling water and the high-end toothpicks as well. I mean, not consuming them, presumably, but this was something he was chewing on, which again, I don't know, it just doesn't sound like the healthiest lifestyle, so. Um, YEAH, but that, that he has made so many health claims, and, and this is one of a, a common thing like Matt said that often the gurus will have, um, if not lines of supplements that they're hawking, they, they will often have very bad. Heuristics when it comes to medicines and, and health, right, and they, they tend to like be very susceptible to anti-vaccine narratives and, and that kind of thing, not all of them, but it, but it is a common thing because, you know, the obvious thing is the system is lying. Uh, THERE'S a, a truth which they're trying to suppress. Joe Rogan and the alternative media are, are, you know, trying to get it out there. So, actually, like Joe Rogan, part of his whole thing when he promoted the anti-vaccine thing was because he was listening to, um, gurus like Brett Weining. Einstein, right, on the, the topic, so they can have a very pernicious influence on, on health, um, when they're uh heated on these topics, and in the middle of a pandemic, they are like a deadly effect on, on public health.

1:05:39 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, but it's funny because at the same time that Joe Rogan was promoting anti-vaxxer content. I mean, when he got, when he was diagnosed with COVID, uh, when he got COVID, he Physically took a cocktail of different medications, so I, I mean, OK, so vaccinations are or vaccines are big pharma, but then a cocktail of different medications, that's not big pharma.

1:06:13 Matthew Browne: I

1:06:13 Ricardo Lopes: mean,

1:06:14 Matthew Browne: yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean you can see the parallels there, right, because um I guess these, these uh influencers and their audience like to think of themselves as incredibly unique. Incredibly special people, like not, not part of the flock, not part of the herd, and I think there is something about the bog standard, universal health treatments that I think just rubs them the wrong way, the the idea that they just get the same thing as everyone else, and that there's nothing super special, so you see them, With these obsessions about health and their need for incredibly bespoke diets, um, there's an exact parallel there, I think with the attraction for someone like Joe Rogan, who will pay happily, you know, thousands of dollars for, you know, uh, uh, just, just, um, a week or whatever it is for, for one of these cocktails, and it's just, you know, crammed full of weird things, as you said, probably produced in laboratories just as artificial, whatever,

1:07:14 Christopher Kavanagh: but it's it's. He had monoclonal antibodies as part of it, which is, you know, it's it's a valid treatment, it's extremely expensive,

1:07:24 Ricardo Lopes: and by the way, they're always complaining that I mean mainstream medications are just big pharma trying to make money out of it, but they don't complain when the The supplement industry makes billions around the world and through medication that is not properly regulated or tested.

1:07:49 Christopher Kavanagh: I would, I would also mention on that point, that it doesn't get mentioned enough that on it, where Joe Rogan was a, uh, like. I can't remember his exact role, whether he was like an early investor or a spokesperson or somebody, but he had a senior role in on it, this, this supplement company which he promoted Alpha Brain and various other things on this podcast. It, it was sold to Unilever for, uh, undisclosed, but estimated to be, you know, it, it, at least in the tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions deal, um. And that's selling like a, a supplement company to a transnational corporation, and Joe Rogan, right, is one of the senior people in it. And I mean, all that, that should, should, doesn't that count as, as somebody earning money, right, like for hawking their audience supplements or, or collaborating with, you know, corporations and so on, but somehow that kind of thing just, that never counts, it's, it's only, You know, mainstream medicine, so even if you have like Peter Hotez, for example, the uh figure in America who worked to make like low cost uh vaccines available, right, so the profit motive isn't there, but he was cast as a villain by Joe Rogan and, um, the anti-vaccine community, right, because he's trying to make low-cost vaccines available um to developing countries and stuff, so.

1:09:19 Matthew Browne: Yeah, it's an

1:09:21 Christopher Kavanagh: incredible,

1:09:22 Matthew Browne: it's an incredible trick like Joe Rogan is a perfect example, like getting back to that notion of the elite, right, or someone on the inside, right, he's, he's rich, right, he's got interests in financial, direct financial interests in a lot of these things.

1:09:35 Ricardo Lopes: I mean he's a he's a centimillaire at this point,

1:09:39 Christopher Kavanagh: right? Yeah, he had a 100 million deal with Spotify alone without all the ads.

1:09:44 Matthew Browne: Yeah, and so, so massive conflicts of interests in, in, in, in many ways, but, but very similar to Donald Trump. Like the branding is that he's, he's an everyman, right? He's, he's just, he's just Joe Rogan, he's just a guy, he's just talking about stuff, he's just like you, right, so, um, but the business model, uh, speaks, speaks differently, so I think there's a strong analogy there again with, With Donald Trump and that you, you can seemingly have a kind of anti-institutional, an anti-elite kind of and present yourself as a completely independent figure untainted by any kind of other interests apart from just being a genuine guy. And where the reality can be the exact opposite, it doesn't seem to matter.

1:10:30 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, I also find it funny how many of those guys have this sort of cop out where, I mean, if someone confronts them with a claim that they made that is not supported by the evidence, they just say, oh, I'm just asking questions. I mean, I'm just exploring ideas, something like that, which Curiously enough, seems to be something that is very attractive to certain types of people who say, oh yeah, I'm just interested in the truth, so this guy right here, I mean, yes, like different ideas and I kind of like ideas. It's like a sort of Dave, Dave Rubin kind of attitude. Oh, I'm just, I mean, I'm into ideas, ideas, you know, stuff like that.

1:11:19 Christopher Kavanagh: There's a Well, there's a, a kind of symbiotic relationship where these secular guru figures will constantly reaffirm to their audience that they are critical thinkers, they're free thinkers, they are people willing to hear different perspectives and so on. But they are very, very strongly reactive to hearing critical voices. We know, right, because we have a podcast dedicated to producing critical content, um, uh, around those figures, and Universally, they do not respond well to that, right? And, and their audience, by and large, do not like it either. There's a couple of, uh, very few, but there's a couple of exceptions that I can think of where people are receptive to it, but, um, it's, it is this kind of pantomime, where people are presented as, as constantly, Uh, being free, free, free thinking members of like the, you know, the public exchange of ideas, but the, it, it's within a very controlled atmosphere, and basically, if you want to be a member of that club, you have to be very circumspect in your criticism, and you have to be overall, very, like, um, congratulatory and, and praising. Of the other person's ideas. So, you can disagree, but you have to frame it that the other person is a very important thinker, and that you're both like doing a great service to the public discourse by having your, you know, discussion in person. And, uh, yeah, Matt and I have often noted, right, like, you know, not that we don't have any illusions about academia, right, that academia is always this productive thing where people aren't just having conferences where They're waffling or, or doing papers that are, you know, making minor contributions, myself and included, right? Pushing numbers around the spreadsheets, or whatever the case might be. But the thing is that they really present what they're doing as so much more grandiose and important, and that, and they give people, I think people who often feel that they've been overlooked or they didn't have the chance to get, like, Education, or, you know, they wanted to do a PhD but they never did, and now they are being told by people, those guys all look down on you, the whole system is corrupt anyway, this is actually a replacement for university level education, this conversation, you're listening to, and look at all these figures, right, you have a philosopher here, and you have a neuroscientist, and you have a biologist, and we are here having the kind of conversations you were never supposed to hear. And there's something very appealing about that for the audience, and I, I think anybody coming from the outside and saying, that guy's talking shit, like, you're, you're not going to be received well, because it just punctures the illusion. That this is anything more than, you know, like, like what you talked about earlier, it's like, it, it can be fun and indulgent and enjoyable to listen to people, you know, speculate on big ideas, but it's not science, and it's not academic, and it's not building robust theories, and they present it very much, that's what they're doing. They're like refining their theories, one podcast at a time, but nothing ever changes. It's always the same conversation just with different figures.

1:14:39 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, by the way, talking about academia, what do you make of the heterodox people? I mean, what kinds, I mean, do you think that there are perhaps some points where they are right, but I mean, more, more broadly, I don't, I want to hear your thoughts on this because I think that at least some of them. I mean they seem, or apparently at the beginning they seem to start with good intentions like just pointing to some biases, particularly political biases that maybe are. Prevalent in academia or at least in certain parts of academia, but then it seems to turn into just people who are saying that for example, oh if If people are denying the reality of race, if there's no scientific racism in academia, if, if there's no, I don't know, eugenics in academia, I mean, usually it's far right ideas, then it's because they are suppressed by the far, far left, the radical left, the wokes or whatever term they use. Before it was SJWs, I, I mean, what, uh, I mean, do, do you, um, OK, so what do you think about the orthodox people and do you think that perhaps there's something to that idea that maybe at a certain point they're just trying to inject particular political ideas into academia even if they don't have any scientific credibility.

1:16:33 Matthew Browne: Yeah, I think, um, I think in principle, the idea is great, right? Um, A a diversity of views, um, um, being, uh, you know, not being constrained by some kind of orthodoxy and being able to contemplate different directions. I'm totally in favor of that and I'd uh even concede that I think, uh, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm a liberal left wing person myself, but I think academia, you know. It's such a, it's such a progressive liberal place that that can bleed into a lot of different disciplines and just affect how, you know, the kind of, the kind of hypotheses and theories and things that, that get, that gain traction. Like for instance, in my field, I, my day to day job is working in gambling research and addiction. And there are just, it's, it's quite clear that there are some perspectives that are more popular and some topics that are more popular because of that sort of bent. So in principle, I think it's good. In practice, very, very little has come, come out of that good that I can tell, because the, the difficulty, I, I remember looking at like the program for some heterodox journal or uh, uh, you know, table of contents or the subconference and things like that and, And it was just a grab bag of weird nonsense as far as I could tell, because it's, it's, it's very hard to, it's very hard to have, like you can't just have OK, these, these ideas are different, these are, you know, they have to be good ideas as well. Um, SO, um, I think, I, I think um I think at least some people in, in that movement are probably, I think had, have good intentions, but it's, um, you know, but for some it's just, oh they, they wanna do the opposite. Of, of the, the woke kind of thing, they like they wanna inject, I think bad ideas, you know, and you know very reactionary ideas into academia. Um, BUT I think, I think any of them just suffer from the problem that it's very difficult to sort of initiate such a program of just creating more heterodoxy. Um, WHAT, what do you think, Chris?

1:18:37 Christopher Kavanagh: I, I think that, yeah, I, I agree that in principle, I, I, I'm fully in support of like, you know, welcoming people with diverse perspectives. And, and that kind of thing, including people that are more conservative or, or more religious or whatever the case might be, right? But, um, I also think that a lot of the solutions to what they claim to care about are resolved by things like the open science movement and pre-registration and registered reports and uh just, Any of the open science transparency things, right, you're, you're making your hypotheses clear, you're, or you're working in adversarial collaborations, uh, to design studies, all these kind of things, and yet there's almost no interest that I see from a lot of people in the heterodox movement towards that, not universally, there are people in the heterodox movement that are also pro-op science and so on, but, but the level of interest is surprisingly low, right, given, That is the goal, and to me, that is the solution, right, because if you, if you have things where people's, uh, like, they, they have the studies and the hypotheses are set out, and they're, um, like transparently available, they can't move things and so on, then you're, you're kind of, you know, at least on the track to making the research better and more robust. And so, if it turns out that there There's a result which is not aligned with like, political convictions, it will show up in the results, right? And yes, there is a way that you can frame things and you can measure things, and, you know, I think some of the complaints about like left-wing authoritarianism, for example, being like a, a topic that was a little bit taboo in the psychology discipline, like there, there's validity to those points, but often, like Matt says, the unfortunate thing is that I often find myself, Like, in, in agreement about the criticisms of the biases of the mainstream academic discipline, and, and, you know, the liberal bias that, that exists to a certain extent. But then the people who are doing the corrective, they're often importing, like the opposite bias, uh, and sometimes like in a very direct and strong way. And the, the uh conference that Matt was talking about was, there was one. Um, HELD in the UK I think recently there was like, uh, how to reform heterodoxy in academia like 2.0 or this kind of thing. Half the speakers, or almost half the speakers were figures like Ganad and Chris Ruffo and, Uh, you know, and, and not Marjorie Taylor Greene, but it was, there were some other politician figures that were, you know, the same kind of people, and you're like, what do they know about running good research and stuff, and, and Steven Pinker and some other people were there, and they might have, you know, valid things to say, but when the other speakers like reform candidate Matthew Goodwin, I'm, I'm kind of like, Yeah, I don't think he is the person to listen to for methodological reform, given he's conducted a bunch of like polls and stuff in recent terms that are very, very bad. So, um, I'm all for methodological reform and for attempting to make things more objective and reliable, and to have more diversity of voices and, and not crowd out things because of political points of view. But I, I think the modern heterodox movement. Is, uh, often like let down by having a, a kind of political activist agenda that's a mile wide, so that's the thing, I, I generally say that I, I would consider myself like heterodox sympathetic, but when I think about the heterodox movement and the people online identifying as heterodox, I'm like, Jesus Christ. So, yeah, that's the, yeah, that's the kind of, in principle, great, uh in practice. Less great, but um,

1:22:37 Matthew Browne: yeah, I mean in, in, in short, Ricardo, two wrongs don't make a right, right? You, if, if, if there, if, if there is some left wing bias in academia, the solution isn't to introduce right wing bias, right, the solution is. Is to bring us more to getting, getting that kind of political and activist kind of mentality away from the idea of just being curious and wanting to know the correct answers to things and gathering data and as Chris said, good methodologies like from the open science movement. It's, it's having that kind of commitment. Uh, NOT, not the activist attitude of we're gonna, we're gonna inject some sort of antidote to these other ideas. Um, YEAH, that's, that's the way.

1:23:19 Christopher Kavanagh: I like, I like heterodoxy as practiced by Mickeyan's like, I'm not endorsing all of his takes because he likes to make provocative like tweets or whatever they are on Sub stack, but I think his approach is in line with that where he will often go. Against the grain of a consensus, but then conduct good research to, like, argue the case, right? Or to introduce, like, you know, oh, maybe there's some relevant criticisms here. And I'm, I've no issue when that happens. And I, I do think there are cases where you can point to, where there's definitely been, like, political overreach, with people being targeted, you know, for articles and journals where they're perceived. As like, going against a liberal consensus, and I don't think that's a good thing. But I, but as Matt says, I don't think the solution is that you create, like, like pseudo-journals that just end up publishing 90% about race and IQ and Muslim crime statistics. Like, that's, that's not the solution. Yeah. I,

1:24:20 Matthew Browne: I, I think the kind of heterodoxy you want is another good example is Peter Singer. So, like I, I don't, I'm not a philosopher, I don't know whether, you know, I, I've, I've, I've read his stuff in a very casual kind of way. But he's a, here's an example of someone who is very, you know, out of step, right? Say a lot of contro, you know, has controversial positions and is out of step with other people, but it's, it's the, it's the good kind of diversity, I think that, uh, you know, but it's, that's, that, that's not a kind of figure you would generally associate with the heterodox movement because, um, so, yeah, I, I think, um, Yeah, I, I think we should, um, encourage more eccentrics and, um,

1:24:58 Christopher Kavanagh: and, and there, there is an editor, I think it's like science now, um. I always pronounce her first name wrong, but Simon Vzier, um, who, who is like a, a big advocate for open science and reform, and, and she's like the editor of one of the biggest psychology journals now. So, you know, that's the kind of thing where I'm like, there actually is reform going on, and, and you're seeing, you know, more pre-registered studies. More many lab studies and so on. That's, that's what we, that's what we want, we need in all areas of science, like more transparency. But, but that's one of the things that's like kind of notable to me in listening to these gurus' content. They never ever bring up open science or anything like that. And it's directly relevant to what they are. You know, claiming, uh, as the things they want to involve, you know, secret networks and non-transparent reviews and all these kind of things, but they just have no interest in that entire area, so it's, it's a weird, the only time they reference it is to mention the replication crisis means you can't trust like social science research at all, right? Yeah.

1:26:10 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, no, so you, you, we are reaching our time limit, so I have just one quick question to ask you, and the date we're recording this podcast on. I mean, the World Cup is still ongoing, and so there was this one video on your YouTube channel where you asked whether Gary Stevenson was the Cristiano Ronaldo of economics, and I think that you did something there that you didn't even notice because he is the Cristiano Ronaldo of economics, but it's It's not because he's the best economist out there, it's because he's the most delusional economist.

1:26:53 Christopher Kavanagh: Just, just to be clear, we ask that because Gary compared himself to Cristiano Ronaldo in his own context, so yeah, that's uh, but, but that is an interesting point to, to make, but I, I. I still feel like if Cristiano to Ronaldo to football is not Dary Stevenson to economics, like his level of achievement far outstrips.

1:27:21 Ricardo Lopes: OK, his level of achievement, I agree, but uh uh just recently said that him winning the Euro 2016 is the same as winning the World Cup, and uh. I mean, that's just coping hard, man. That's

1:27:36 Christopher Kavanagh: just, they, they might have similar levels of delusion. Uh, THAT'S, that's definitely possible. That, that's, uh, yeah, I, hard to beat Gary.

1:27:47 Matthew Browne: But yeah, but since you bring up Gary, he's a good example because he's, he's, he's obviously a left wing actor. ACTIVIST, very different from most of the figures that we covered that are right wing, but if you look carefully at the stuff we've been talking about, like his constant references to his elite background, his elite education, how he got the best grades, how he was the best trader, but he's also a man of the people, speaking for the people against those elites, the system, sticking it to them, right? Um, YOU'LL see a lot of the same patterns, and a thing that many people seem to struggle with is they say, well, hang on, I agree with that message. I, I, you know, I, I, I, I don't like billionaires. I think we should have a more equal society. It's like, of course you do. Nobody likes billionaires. We all, we would all like to see a more equal society.

1:28:32 Ricardo Lopes: Are you, are you sure about that? Are you sure that nobody like billionaires, because I see lots of. People on necks, people like Elon Musk's,

1:28:43 Matthew Browne: that's true, no, I, I was overspeaking by saying everyone, but these are incredibly popular positions, right? And, and, and all we'd say

1:28:50 Christopher Kavanagh: even Elon Musk doesn't like other billionaires, right?

1:28:54 Matthew Browne: That's right, that's right, um. So you know what we'd say is just just decouple the two things. You can, you can agree with the general thing that one is, is activating for, and then there's a totally separate question which is, is this person a credible and authoritative and useful source of information about the topic, or are they giving you, A simplistic paint by numbers message that is designed to appeal to your emotions, because these are completely separate questions. Like another good, I, I'll give you a personal example, um, I personally am incredibly supportive of Ukraine and I have very strong feelings on, on that conflict, and I, I absolutely cannot stand some of these pro-Ukraine propaganda channels, and in fact like the even the Sun and the Telegraph run these YouTube things. Like if you believe those channels, you'd believe that Ukraine was on the cusp of winning and Russia was collapsing every week for the last 4 years, right? Like it, it is stuff that is designed to, to tap into your emotions and provide a comforting yet inaccurate view of the, what is a very serious issue. So I, I think it's a direct analogy there to if you're someone who cares about inequality. Uh, REALLY hedge billionaires, want something done about, you know, taxation and so on or house prices, then just think, well, is, is this, like, is, is, is, is, this is a separate question, like I, I feel offended when someone is giving me inaccurate information about the Ukraine conflict because I care about it a lot. I think people should feel the same way about, about Gary Stevenson and and

1:30:30 Christopher Kavanagh: there's there there's also in that specific. In instance, there is a figure that you can point to that, you know, I don't think Gary would appreciate the comparison, but Russell Brand, uh, you know, about 5 or 6 years ago, was very much focused on wealth inequality, uh, addiction, and arguing against, you know, the The kind of billionaire class and, and all this kind of thing, and, and calling for a left-wing revolution, right, that was, I, I mean, it wasn't particularly well articulated, but he was going on speaking tours with um Left-wing figures like Owen Jones and so on, right, in the UK um and now has completely shifted, right, to like the right-wing populist, uh, anti-vaccine figure, and now people are extremely skeptical, right, when he declares himself now into Christianity, or that kind of thing, but, You should be skeptical when he's endorsing the thing that you like too, because, you know, wealth inequality can be a problem, and it doesn't mean that Russell Brand talking about it is doing, you know, that you can't criticize him because he's talking about a real issue. As Matt says, the two things should be separate, but they're often not so in our audience, people often enjoy us criticizing people that they don't like, who are on the like political opposing team, and then they. Very frequently, when we cover a left wing figure or whatever, they'll say, well, it was, it was all, you were, everything you were doing was right until you decided to look, and it just doesn't work. When you look at like someone I like, the whole system falls apart. You're like, did it? Did it really? Uh, um, YEAH, so that's, that's, but, you know, we're, we're all human, so we all have our, our biases and golden cows. So that's the way it works.

1:32:16 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, and it's, it's not that. Just that it's not because someone is on a particular issue is right or is on your side that you cannot criticize them on other issues, but it's also the fact that even if you agree that economic inequality is a problem, you don't have to agree with every left wing claim made about it because some of them might just be wrong.

1:32:45 Christopher Kavanagh: Yeah, or, or in that particular case he has, he's proposing a wealth tax. Many people have said that is not a good solution, you know, for various practical reasons there are other solutions, and he's kind of oversimplifying and, and in some cases, as, as Matt pointed out, completely dismissing other. Approaches and, and positions and say no other econ, you know, but now he says a couple of economists, but generally he says economists aren't allowed to talk about inequality, they don't have any interest in it, they don't want to address it because economists are rich, out of touch, elite bastards, right? And you're like, is that, there's a whole bunch of like economic institutes focused on inequality. There's charities working on inequality, and there's other proposals beyond a wealth tax, but, but that's the kind of thing, right, where you could fundamentally agree with the problem and just disagree about, you know, the proposed solution or the implementation. And

1:33:40 Matthew Browne: the other problem about, about populist messaging is because it's so simplistic, it often misdiagnoses the problem. So like in Australia, you know, you might have populist anti-immigration rhetoric, and they'll point to a whole bunch of things and point to immigrants, so the issues they point to can be real, but because they've misdiagnosed, The cause of it, then they're not helpful at all. I, and if it's the case that actually say housing prices, uh, are expensive, not because perhaps the billionaires are buying up all of the houses, but maybe because of certain financial incentives and, you know, the injection of money due to COVID and just, you know, aging population and you know what I mean, asset prices, maybe the answer's a bit more complicated and maybe the solution's a bit more complicated. So if you sell a very compelling, simplistic story. That, that, that points people away from the complicated, difficult, maybe slightly painful solution, that actually you're doing the cause a disservice, that's my opinion about that.

1:34:40 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, and I think that in the case of Gary Stevenson, and that's also another way that he is quite similar to Cristiano Ronaldo, I guess, is that I mean he presents himself as if he's the only one doing particular kinds of things out there like, oh, I'm the only one talking about economic inequality among The economists, I mean, really, really, I mean, just the, just the other day you have Gabriel Zucman on the show. Gabriel, he knows an econ and he points

1:35:15 Christopher Kavanagh: to Zukman and like one or two other economists, but, but in general, yeah, there's a lot more.

1:35:22 Matthew Browne: I mean, Chris raised the very accurate parallel uh with um. Uh, OH God, I've forgotten his name. Russell Brand, cut that out. So Chris pointed out the accurate parallel with Russell Brand, and, and, but my little quibble there is he presented Russell Brand as doing this big turnaround, you know, completely changing his thing. Actually he didn't, right? Russell Brand has always been about Russell Brand. Right, the, the actual stuff that he's doing, the particular topics are less important than him doing his hypnotic show and dance and being the center of attention. And I think, you know, you wanna look at certain figures, you know, and and we're picking on, on Gary at the moment, but, but, but apply this to anyone. Just, just think, are, are they mainly kind of about themselves? Are they mainly all about you subscribing to their thing and sharing your thing with other people, and are they mainly present centering themselves as the most important locus of attention, and are they maybe using these issues that you care about? Like maybe you're a young person, you're looking for guidance and you listen to Jordan Peterson, or you can't afford to buy a house, so you're listening to Gary Stevenson. Maybe it's just possible that they're, they're playing on your, your normal emotional responses to make for, for their own benefit. So it's just, yeah,

1:36:41 Ricardo Lopes: yeah, you're they're playing on your vulnerability in that specific case, I mean maybe you're psychologically vulnerable or you're economically vulnerable or some other issue like that,

1:36:53 Matthew Browne: right. That's right, and the vulnerability is completely valid and real. And so it's, it's, it's, it's a different thing to have an issue with, with the guru, and, and it's not to say that the, the, that, the, the sort of things that draw people to them are invalid. A, a lot of people, uh, follow our gurus initially, mainly just because they're curious, and they just like to hear interesting ideas. And, you know, that's, that's a great motivation. So, um, yeah, we, um, yeah, we, we, we just encourage people to consume stuff critically. And maybe just pay attention to a few of those little warning signs to avoid getting taken in.

1:37:29 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, great. So let's end on that note, and I mean, decoding the gurus, where can people find you on the internet?

1:37:39 Christopher Kavanagh: All podcast platforms that they care to, and there's some videos that are put up on YouTube, but the majority of the content is like in long form audio, uh, format, so if you're interested, that any podcast thing is the place to find it.

1:37:58 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, it's like you were listening to Joe Rogan and you were like, oh, this guy is doing 3 hour BS podcast, so now we're going to do 3 hour proper podcast.

1:38:09 Matthew Browne: It takes 6 hours to to to decode 1 hour of bullshit, Ricardo, it's not our fault, this is how it works.

1:38:15 Christopher Kavanagh: I think we did a 50 minute episode on the 9 minute um episode that Sam Harris released, so you know. We should be careful with throwing stones.

1:38:28 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, yeah, OK, so look, uh, thank you so much for coming on the show. It's been a really fun conversation, and I mean maybe someday we can do this again. So thank you so much. Yeah,

1:38:40 Christopher Kavanagh: you

1:38:40 Ricardo Lopes: can

1:38:40 Christopher Kavanagh: invite Cristiano Ronaldo when he retires. That's.

1:38:45 Ricardo Lopes: No, my God, that, that conversation would be hell. I mean, I would have to confront him with all the statistics. He gets wrong, and then he would, he would be coping all the time and calling me names and uh

1:38:57 Christopher Kavanagh: no. Sounds fun. I like. Let's hope it can be red.

1:39:04 Matthew Browne: All right, thanks very much, Ricardo. Ciao.

1:39:07 Ricardo Lopes: Hi guys, thank you for watching this interview until the end. If you liked it, please share it, leave a like and hit the subscription button. The show is brought to you by Enlights Learning and Development done differently. Check their website at enlights.com and also please consider supporting the show on Patreon or PayPal. I would also like to give a huge thank you to my main patrons and PayPal supporters, Perergo Larsson, Jerry Muller, Frederick Sundo, Bernard Seyaz Olaf, Alex, Adam Cassel, Matthew Whittingbird, Arnaud Wolff, Tim Hollis, Eric Elena, John Connors, Philip Forrest Connolly. Then Dmitri Robert Windegeru Inasi Zu Mark Nevs, Colin Holbrookfield, Governor, Michel Stormir, Samuel Andrea, Francis Forti Agnun, Svergoo, and Hal Herz Agnon, Michel Jonathan Labrarith, John Yardston, and Samuel Curric Hines, Mark Smith, John Ware, Tom Hammel, Sardusran, David Sloan Wilson, Yasilla Dezaraujo Romain Roach, Diego Londono Correa. Yannik Punteran Ruzmani, Charlotte Blis Nicole Barbaro, Adam Hunt, Pavlostazevski, Alekbaka, Madison, Gary G. Alman, Semov, Zal Adrian Yei Poltontin, John Barboza, Julian Price, Edward Hall, Edin Bronner, Douglas Fry, Franco Bartolotti, Gabriel P Scortez or Suliliski, Scott Zachary Fish, Tim Duffy, Sony Smith, and Wiseman. Daniel Friedman, William Buckner, Paul Georg Jarno, Luke Lovai, Georgios Theophanus, Chris Williamson, Peter Wolozin, David Williams, Di Acosta, Anton Ericsson, Charles Murray, Alex Shaw, Marie Martinez, Coralli Chevalier, Bangalore atheists, Larry D. Lee Junior. Old Eringbon. Esterri, Michael Bailey, then Spurber, Robert Grassy, Zigoren, Jeff McMahon, Jake Zul, Barnabas Raddix, Mark Kempel, Thomas Dovner, Luke Neeson, Chris Story, Kimberly Johnson, Benjamin Galbert, Jessica Nowicki, Linda Brendan, Nicholas Carlson, Ismael Bensleyman. George Ekoriati, Valentine Steinmann, Per Crawley, Kate Van Goler, Alexander Obert, Liam Dunaway, BR, Massoud Ali Mohammadi, Perpendicular, Jannes Hetner, Ursula Guinov, Gregory Hastings, David Pinsov, Sean Nelson, Mike Levin, and Jos Necht. A special thanks to my producers Iar Webb, Jim Frank Lucas Stinnik, Tom Vanneden, Bernardine Curtis Dixon, Benedict Mueller, Thomas Trumbull, Catherine and Patrick Tobin, John Carlo Montenegro, Al Nick Cortiz, and Nick Golden, and to my executive producers, Matthew Lavender, Sergio Quadrian, Bogdan Kanis, and Rosie. Thank you for all.