Decoding the Gurus - Gurometer: Naomi Klein

Episode Date: March 23, 2025

In the wake of our Naomi Klein episode, the masses have spoken. And like the responsible Gurometricians that we are, we've taken your feedback to heart and thus open this episode with a series of scientific and spiritual recitations. Then it's straight back into the sweet science—and mystical art—of Gurometry, as we test how well it measures up to Naomi Klein’s anti-capitalist spirit. Fun for the whole family!P.S. Don't worry—Chris Langan’s Gurometer has not been forgotten and will be arriving very soon!The full episode is available for Patreon subscribers (1hr 4 mins).Join us at: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingTheGurusGurometer: Naomi Klein00:00 Introduction01:29 Sponsor Shoutouts!03:29 Naomi Klein Feedback05:03 Podcast Format Limitations and Reading the Book!11:37 Consistency in Standards of Evaluation20:21 Evaluating the Arguments Independent of the Conclusions24:53 The Importance of Disconfirming Evidence26:28 Differing Definitions Cross-Culturally29:36 The Gurometer29:59 Galaxy Brainness32:03 Cultishness34:02 Anti-Establishmentarianism38:12 Grievance Mongering38:55 Self-Aggrandizement41:29 Cassandra Complex44:06 Revolutionary Theories46:53 Pseudo Profound Bullshit49:25 Conspiracy Mongering53:57 Excessive Profiteering54:48 Moral Grandstanding56:04 Final Scores and Reflections58:52 Quickfire Guru Bonus Points

Hello and welcome to Decoding the Guru's Gurometer edition. This is a sub-production of the Decoding the Guru's main podcast where we critically examine figures from the modern zeitgeist and analytically decode the rhetoric and techniques and all that kind of thing. But here we take people that we've covered and we score them on 11 characteristics that we have noted to be recurrent using a very technical, very scientific, some would say mystical, spiritual. It's a whole bunch of things mixed together.

It's a grometer. OK, and it's now McLean. That's how we're putting in over there. Matthew, the psychologist, over here, Chris, the psychologist and anthropologist, two things I have. OK, I live in the in-between. Don't try and reduce me down to one thing, man. I'm too many things. I break your paradigms.

Welcome. Welcome, Matthew Fine. Thank you. Thank you. And just to let people know that this episode is brought to you by our good friends of Johnny Walker, makers of the Green Label blended malt scotch whiskey. Brownest of the brown lickers, naturally intense with a distinct smokiness naturally intense with a distinct smokiness and a big multi-heart just like me. So thank you to them. I'm glad you mentioned that because right here I have a relaxing Twinnings of London Earl Grey tea decaffeinated. Chris Twining's twinings. Is it Twining? Decaffeinated Chris twining twinings twinings

God they're not gonna they're gonna take all that advertising money back right right twinnings twinnings Yeah, so sad we have to cosplay having a That's too hot. That's too hot. But yeah, no, we don't have advertisements. You give the giveaway. It was just you're enjoying a glass of whiskey. And I am like Captain Picard drinking tea, Earl Grey, hot. Too hot. That's right.

We don't have advertisements. We will not pop out of the well. I'm a little bit disgusted because I realize what I've done now. You know, I was trying to stop my sweet coffee habit, right? And I like tea, so I bought myself these Earl Grey packs. But you might say, well, but Chris, tea has caffeine in it. But this tea doesn't Matt I brought myself caffeine free Earl Grey tea which probably doesn't taste that good does it? Like isn't that so? I do not see the point it's like alcohol free beer why why do that to yourself it's a shame you're living a lie. Maybe that's what's been wrong. But yeah. So, uh, well, Matt, after that banterous introduction, I've got some serious

questions for you, Matt, there's been feedback. Okay. And the grometer is actually the most relevant place, I think, to put, you know, the feedback for the episode, given that we're going into things in more detail, the Naomi Klein episode has been out for a week or so. People have had time to offer their thoughts and thoughts they've had Matt. They've had them on the Reddit. They've had them on the Patreon. They've had them all over the place. Different thoughts falling out. Everyone's loving it, agreeing with this wholeheartedly, I assume. Yeah, this was the most unifying episode. Just everybody agreed that we did a bang up job and there's no issues with it.

So we can really move on from there. No, no, there was commentary. There was lots of commentary, which was positive. There was some commentary, which was critical, which is fine. We welcome criticism. It's fun. Yeah, no, we did anticipate that this would be the case, because anytime that we cover I can know Mczomski.

It's Chris. Chris. As night follows day, it was inevitable. We knew that whenever we cover a left-oriented figure, helping with Mczomski, even having with some of the earlier ones, the negative feedback will come, because our constituency does very much feel left. We don't have very many Jordan Peterson fans or Joe Rogan fans in our listenership who are going to dive in, throw themselves in front of the bullets and defend them, but we do have a constitution to the left. So it is as it should be. We welcome it.

Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Well, one recurrent point that was raised and we were asked to respond to was how very dare we do this episode without basing it on a critique of the book or at least having read the book, you know, like because it's, it's an interview where she's addressing ideas around her book. In one case, it was like the publisher's kind of promotional material for the book. So

obviously the more fleshed out version of things you would encounter in the book length treatment. So what have you got to say to that, Matt? Is it not a fatal flaw that we didn't read the book in advance of doing the episode? Uh, well, no. So as you know, Chris, this is something we talked about earlier on in the podcast where we set our parameters and we defined our rules and we, we, we knew early on, anyone had created a huge amount of material, then dealing with a single piece of content was always going to be limited and that we would be taking

people largely on the basis of what they said in that particular content. So we did bend these rules. We did go ahead and read some of Jordan Peterson's books, but we didn't listen to every single episode in his How to Make Your Bed series, 50 episode things where there's all kinds of nuance and so on. We took an individual thing and focused on that. But you know, when we do go and check out the extra readings, we generally find that what people say in these shorter pieces of content while it might lack some nuance is pretty

representative of The kinds of takes that they're gonna have in their longer format material So yeah, I'd say the same thing applies with only clock To some degree take it as it is take that limitation It's baked in because we we simply can. Like we would cover one guru a year if we had to read or listen to every single thing they'd done. However, I know in this case, Chris, you did do some extra homework, didn't you? Well, yes, as I said in the episode, I did listen to a couple of the most relevant

chapters because I was just curious about the way that she presented things. I didn't find much that left me extremely surprised after I listened to it. It was in line with the things that I had heard in the content that we listened to and also interviews that she'd given elsewhere because I'd heard of her in a bunch of other things, like she was on spirituality and so on talking about it. So I felt like I had a reasonably good grasp of the points that she was on conspirituality and so on talking about it. So I felt like I had a reasonably good grasp of the points that she was making, but I did check in like a targeted exploration of the book. But after we got the feedback for the episode, I went and listened to the

whole book. So I've now read the book. And my feedback, having done that, is that I don't think reading the book dramatically changes any of the assessments offered. There is more nuance in specific parts, but I think she does actually, to her credit, a fairly good job of being consistent across platforms in what she's presenting and arguing for. And now in this case as well, there are also stuff in the book that I would have ended up complaining about in more. The bits that I liked the best about the book were the later chapters when she's dealing with autism and the history of autism and events in Vienna, because it was better researched. The earlier chapters had more of a personal anecdote or story, narrative story, then move on to a

larger pouring and weave towards relevant research. For example, Gordon Pennecook was referenced and that's a researcher whose research output I know well, who is obviously relevant if you're interested in conspiracy theory, psychology and whatnot. But he was referenced only in regards to a quote from him in the New York Times, which is perfectly normal for somebody that is producing a book, which is mostly narrative. But it's the way that some people had discussed the other chapters. I was thinking, oh, maybe she did like a detailed breakdown of the relevant literature and stuff. But no, but there are points that are more nuanced,

you know, there's criticism and whatnot. But there's also a part, just to give one illustrative example of what I mean, there's a point where she's talking about somebody mistaking her for Naomi Wolf, and she normally ignores that. But on this occasion, you know, she would have a bad day or whatever. So she she snapped back on Twitter a little bit and the person responded saying, oh, sorry, it was auto correct. Right. And then from there, she riffs into is it not at the stage where the algorithm is auto correcting wolf decline?

Because so many people are making them. And like when I heard that, I was like, no, the person is just embarrassed. And like saying it was auto correct, right? But she instead leapt from there to the mystique has entered, you know, even the spell checkers. And it reminded me of when Douglas Murray was talking about his Google search experiments and how he decided that this meant that the algorithms had be changed in certain ways to prioritize things and it's just a specific example, right? But it's just to say that in a book length thing, you're going to come across some stuff that you like and some stuff that you don't, but it didn't absolutely

like, I wasn't like, oh, this is really entirely different from what she presents in the interview. So there's that, right? Having done what people recommended, I think that your assessment, that there are elements in this output that are a bit like Malcolm Gladwell is accurate. But I also think there's stuff of value in it, right? So it's better than Malcolm Gladwell, but some of the issues are akin to Malcolm Gladwell, which incidentally, Matt, was a similar criticism that we leveled at someone like Yuval Noah Harari. Now, Yuval Noah Harari does not have the same politics as Naomi Klein.

He's more something of a cheerleader in a way of neoliberal approaches to governance and whatnot technocratic approaches. But the same criticism applies. Like we detected that Gladwellian aspect to his work or the way that he presents things and that still applies. And that is the bit that I want to push back on the most strongly, which is that as you mentioned, many of the people that we cover publish books, Steven Pinker, Jonathan Haidt, even Dave Rubin, Jordan Peterson, they all publish

books or they all have like longer form content. Sometimes, you know, like Jordan Peterson will have a 15 part series on Genesis or whatever the case might be. And if the only time that you have noticed that the format is insufficient is when it's covering someone who you politically align with and find the ideas compelling, that speaks to me that there's an issue, right? Because I have more respect for people who are saying, well, this is a limitation of the format in general. When you're covering someone I don't like,

you need to actually read their book in order to critique them properly. But typically, it isn't that. It is only whenever we're covering somebody that people like. So I think that is a potential illustration that it might be not necessarily this big limitation of the format, but more an issue with the people wanting us to have a more positive take on someone or an ideology that they appreciate. Yeah, it would be amazing to hear from someone who was, I don't know, somewhere to the right of you didn't think of. Look, I've read Naomi Klein's books. I don't generally align with her politically, but I think you guys were unfair. You neglected some of the stuff in the book. Yes, all five of us.

Right? Someone who is very, very progressive, aligned and thought were being a bit unfair to Jordan Pearson because we'd mis-portrayed, he hadn't picked up the nuance in his religious stuff or whatever. Now that would make me stood up and take notice, but that is incredibly rare. And look, I think there is validity to the point. Like it is a limitation in the podcast. You'll always get more background, more information if you consumed every little bit of content. But I think the fundamental premise that what people say in a long format interviewing is relatively a good indication of where their stance actually

lies and what their reasoning is. I mean, if people cannot give the kind of elevator pitch, they cannot give a concise and straightforward representation of their views in a standalone format where you've got a fair bit of time to say what you want, then I think that's indicative. Like, I'd be quite happy for someone to take any individual Guru's point episode and critique that, critique me, without having listened to the entire back catalog that all read everything I've written. Like, that would be fine. So, you know, I will pay the feedback to some degree, but also I think

I would defend the premise of the format. I think, you know, there are other things. I mean, like, Naomi Klein is not ambiguous. Like, she makes claims in the stuff that we covered that were quite clear cut. Like, she does find that neoliberal capitalism or capitalism in general is responsible for many, if not all, of the problems that she has dug into. And so that's probably the first little warning bell. Like, you know, it's like Scooby-Doo when they're pulling the mask off the criminal, when it's always the same culprit. You know, maybe it's worth asking whether or not that was kind of the way things were set up to begin with. I think you can take a claim as it stands and evaluate it. For instance, you can evaluate the claim as we did. Was the deficiencies in the American

response to COVID attributable to the fact that they are so very capitalist and or neoliberal. Right? Like that's a claim, right? That's just pretty clear cut about. You can ask yourself very basic questions. Like if that were true, what would I expect to see? So you could say, well, the claim is that neoliberal capitalism has caused this. Well, why don't I do a brief survey? Because we have data on all the different countries in the world. We have independent organizations that assess them in terms of the economy, how free it is or how much it conforms to neoliberal principles, like private property, market competition, free trade and capital mobility.

There's a whole bunch of well established indicators you can measure how capitalist an economy is. And the data on the number of deaths from COVID is also pretty well established. You can do a quick bit of research and take about 20 minutes. And you can see whether or not, you would expect to see if the claim was true,

you would expect to see a the claim was true, you would expect to see a correlation between countries that were more capitalist to have higher death rates from COVID. At least from my little investigation into claims like that, which I did as part of that episode, I found my intuitions were correct, which is that they don't really stack up. Now, it may feel very convincing when someone like Malcolm Gladwell or Donnie Klein is weaving together a narrative, providing anecdotes, digging into specific things that all support the case that's being made. It's going to feel extremely convincing. I myself have read Malcolm Gladwell books and come away with it going, you know, gobsmacked, like, wow,

that's amazing. I didn't, but that was true. And then it wasn't until later on that I went, hang on, and then checked it out. And that sort of thing is going to be much more appealing when the conclusion that it is all meandering towards is one that already is something that you're kind of emotionally or politically committed to, if it's something you already agree with. You're going to find it very compelling and feel completely true. So it takes a little bit of effort or will to actually do that kind of falsification test. And I just want to emphasize that it has nothing to do whether or not. Like you can put the things you like aside in evaluating the argument that's being made. So you mentioned Stephen Pinker before, Chris.

I've read that book, Enlightenment Now, and it was okay. But you know what? It was a book where he basically covered a whole bunch of statistics, basically pulled out a whole bunch of statistics, plotted a whole bunch of statistics since the 1700s or earlier, basically over time, and showing that according to a whole bunch of metrics, things have generally gotten better for most people across most metrics, and you know, things picked up after the Industrial Revolution. And then he sort of ends the book with, well, that's why enlightenment values are so great. Without doing any of the intellectual work, to actually link this sort of stuff that's happened over time to that

conclusion. So people that are sort of liberal love the conclusion, right? It's great. Yes, you know, enlightenment ideas, we love this stuff. I love this book, right? It supports what I want. But actually, you know, there's a whole bunch of historical things that are going on. Technology, for instance,

which doesn't necessarily align with enlightenment values. China's done very well economically, brought a lot of people out of poverty, a whole bunch of veterans, health, education, you name it, have all increased off the map. And they don't really have a great commitment to enlightenment values. So that's an example of just thinking critically and saying, well, you may agree with the conclusion. And for the record, I kind of agree with Stephen Pickers' conclusions. I kind of agree with Naomi Klein's conclusions. I am a social democrat. Like her, I like more spending on health, more spending on education. I don't like privatization of everything. I don't mind capitalism, but I want it under firm control.

That's my sort of pre-existing biases, but I don't have to like the quality of the arguments that are being made, even when it's for the thing that I generally like. Yes, I agree. I will say a couple of points you made there, that one, I definitely do concede and agree. And I believe we've said this on a bunch of episodes, especially the one where we did the science and art of grometry, right? Where we reflected a little bit on the approach that we did. But even from the first episode, we were clear that by focusing on single pieces of content, it allows us to go into greater depth, but it limits, you

know, the scope. And we think that's still useful because themes are recurrent and whatnot, but it's definitely like a thing with a trade-off, right? So I'm not at all saying that that's not the case. My kind of point is more around like the consistency that people apply their critiques. But the other point that you mentioned there that I think is worth emphasizing is some of the responses seem to be viewing it that we, in particular you, were basically lauding the benefits and the greed

aspects of capitalism and that capitalism is always greed and that you're pro everything that Lava Cone is anti. And I think that's the wrong thing because the argument when you were highlighting, for example, the positive impacts that could accrue to someone from self-branding, your argument was not. Therefore, self-branding is greed and we're all happy to do it and it's all voluntary.

There's tons of times where it's not voluntary, it's a pressure from outside and it sucks and people don't like it and it's higher in certain industries and whatnot. But the argument is more that if you only present the negative side, you're missing the nuance, right? You're missing positive cases. So in presenting, well, what about this case?

It doesn't mean that you're therefore ignoring all the negative. Our argument is there are positive and negative aspects, right? But in the Naomi Klein content, what we were arguing against is there seemed to be a more selective presentation, in particular, like neoliberal capitalist policies or whatever, as universally negative, but a conflation with them

with North American individualism. And as you said, there's different things at play there, but it doesn't mean that Matt and I think that there's no exploitation going on in any of the global south. Capitalism is only potentially exploitative in North America. It's great everywhere else. And that Singapore, for example, is a shining beacon where there is no exploitation of workers. There's no ethnic inequality in the distribution of wealth or that kind of thing. That doesn't follow. So that's not the argument that we're making, nor are we making the argument that neoliberal policies in general never have an impact on the society or culture. They do. The argument is that it's not just a kind of monolithic North American negative model.

That's the argument. Not that it's completely irrelevant to talk about economic policies or the impacts of capitalism. Perfectly reasonable to do that. But if you have a preset conclusion that you're reaching for, it limits the way that you approach a topic. Yeah. Yeah. So that's the final thing I'll say, which is just, I just encourage people to decouple the conclusion from the method and the argumentation that's being used, right?

Because you can have a very low quality polemic style, collective, very picked narrative driven argument for a conclusion, which is ultimately perhaps correct. Perhaps it isn't true, it's totally correct. Right. I just want to add in that you're talking about like an extreme example. You're not saying that Naomi Klein's work is off that terribly, the worst standard because like, you know, I'm giving an extremes.

I'm talking. Yes. I just want to mention that because like know, I'm giving an extremes. I'm talking. Yes. I just want to mention that because like, overall, I think actually, and this grometer is likely to reflect this that she wasn't at the worst scale of things. And actually she had, you know, interesting presentations of things. Like when I was talking about her interacting with Ryan Grim, she was the one pushing back against them. Right. So like, I'm just saying we didn't, we don't think she's like a polemical mirror world of Dave Rubin. That's not the argument.

No, I'm talking about something separate now. Yeah, sorry. That's a good clarification. You know, what you should value is an even-handed kind of analysis that takes all of the evidence available in an unbiased way and comes to a conclusion. And often the conclusion will be a shades of gray kind of conclusion. It won't be particularly satisfying.

But that's kind of what we value. And, you know, if I'm reading a student's assignment and they could be arguing that my theory is 100% correct, I can still return it with a whole bunch of red pen. Wait, you've got to take into account this evidence against it. You haven't been quite fair to this and you've been selective in your literature review. Yeah. And I will add to this, if people were viewing this as well, this is related to their commitment to their particular political ideology or views or whatever. This thing that Matt's

talking about, like being willing to acknowledge contradictory evidence or willing to deal with the fact that evidence doesn't align with your initial hypotheses, that is something that I am endlessly waffling about in the Decoding Academia series around the reason that we need open science and pre-registration and why we want people to be willing to publish null results, why we want people to be happy when theories don't line up with the evidence and so on. So it is not only in politically veiling stuff where this is relevant. This is our stance, particularly my stance in academia around like the way to approach research topics. So you can disagree with that. You can think that actually we need instead like activism driven research

priorities and we don't want people reporting results that are inconvenient or whatever way the people might frame it, but that is a general position that we have that is consistent in political and non-political topics. So I'm just saying it's not just around capitalism. Okay I keep thinking this is the final thing I'm gonna say that this is probably the really truly final. The really the final finalist. Yeah yeah which is I think a lot of the apparent disagreement there too is partly in the use of language particularly between North America and the rest of us. Like I see often with people that are on the progressive side in the US and Canada, who brand themselves

as anti-capitalist. And they sound kind of revolutionary and use a lot of language in those terms. But when you actually talk brass tacks, what they are often arguing for is a lot of stuff that is considered basically social democrat, like a mixed economy. Like Norway or UK. Norway and even to some degree Australia. Even Australia? Yeah, even Australia.

Australia is a bit more neoliberal, probably. But so often it can seem, and I don't know, I think there's a weird rhetorical flourish that is done there, where it's presented as an anti-capitalist thing, but actually what's being argued for is actually much more moderate. And it's just saying stuff like, we should have the government interfere with things in order to create, say, public housing, in order to ensure that everyone's covered by health insurance, to ensure that there's a social safety net, to ensure that companies like Elon Musk's ones can't be interfering with the political process and so on. In other words, all of which, you know, I consider my politics to be very normie, moderate,

progressive, lefty, but moderate, all of which I totally agree with. So I think often there isn't really a bit schism. So I suppose if I have a problem, it's really more that kind of that. I don't know how to describe it, but that that particular kind of language around it and the rhetorical style, which makes things sound more revolutionary than they are. Yeah, I don't know. Well, there we go.

So we've addressed the feedback now to a certain degree. If we missed some points, if we let us know, but we're trying to keep the responses to the episodes into the grometer episode. And the good thing about this is like, the fact that the episodes into the grometer episode. And the good thing about this is like the fact that we're addressing the points means that people like that they are presenting arguments and whatnot. Cause our case is like with Chris Langan, for example, where there is no, there's no, there's no argument, right? So there's no need to address the responses because there's nobody strongly arguing the case for Chris Langan.

He must have his fans though, Chris. I mean, we don't know them. They're the kind of fans that don of response to the feedback that we've received, but that's because figures like Noam Chomsky or Naomi Klein, they generate more feedback. I wonder why. I wonder if there's something that links those people. But in any case, the grometer. So let's get to that. We don't have all day here.

We've got appointments and dinner as the cook and that kind of thing. So let's put her into the grometer and see how she fares. Though I think, you know, I don't think she's going to be one of our parascore. Don't spoil it. OK, OK.

You don't. You don't. We'll see. OK, so the first one. Galaxy Bree in this. What would you score her on on this facet like venturing very strong opinions across a constellation of topics like kind of clean polymorphic ability does she have that

No, not really. I you know, let's let's look at her output. She's sort of she of investigative journalist, I suppose, or popular novelist, Malcolm Gladwell again, in that mold, or Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond, that kind of thing, or John Pilger maybe is another analogous one. I'm just thinking of people that are journalists, that are writers, that write these sorts of things. And she does tackle topics that are, you know, across the spectrum. Um, there's, there's a wide variety of different topics that she digs into. Like we said, we don't love the quality of research, perhaps, you know what I mean?

From an academic point of view, it does, it is more. Depends on the subject. Depends on the subject. Depends on the subject, I guess. But, um, but that's not really polymathery. That's more normal behavior for... Or claimed polymathery. Yeah.

No, I think she's pretty clear about like, you know, that she knows things about something. She does investigate a bunch of different topics, but it's basically, I mean, she presented that she covers a complete wide variety of things. But I felt it was mostly around thematically connected kind of things within a particular anti-capitalist, anti-corporate kind of perspective of things. And that's fine. And she does acknowledge when the amount of research that she's done for things and whatnot. So like, I feel that this is low. It's not one because she isn't like a McWest, right? But it's certainly not like Russell Brand or Jordan Peterson. So I'm going to give her two.

I think that's fair. I'm going to give her two, too. So the next one is cultishness Sort of those manipulative social dynamics, you know what cultishness is. You're shaking your head I didn't I didn't feel she did this because like even in the Content when she's kind of talking about the if you'd like to continue listening to this conversation You'll need to subscribe at patreon.com slash Decoding the Gurus. Once you do, you'll get access to full-length episodes of the Decoding the Gurus podcast,

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