Decoding the Gurus - Ranking the Gurus

Episode Date: July 25, 2024

Decoding the Gurus is now a venerable institution and as such we have built up quite a menagerie of would-be gurus and even a handful of not-really gurus.So like all the hip kids today, we decided to look back at our previous gurus and arrange them on a tier list of Secular Guruosity.If you would like to play along we’ve made a version accessible online so you can provide your rankings (available here) or you can see ours.Also, due to an image-importing hiccup, we missed Sam Harris (B), Robert Wright (D) and Richard Dawkins (D). All are now added to the template!Hope you enjoy and we will be back soon with a full-length decoding of Gabor Maté before the concluding chapter of the Dr. K trilogy.If you want to support the show, join us at: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingTheGurus

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Music Music Music Music Music Hello and welcome to Decoding the Gurus with the psychologist Matthew Brown and the cognitive anthropologist Christopher Kavanagh. We're here for a special episode, Matt. A little bit of a, you know, relaxed vibe vibe based assessment rather than our usual scientific dissection um you know we have the grometer it is a precise tool where we feed in the various

candidate gurus and quantify them on 11 factors went up by a factor of one out of 10. I don't know how to describe that in factorial terms. 10%. Yeah, whatever, any case. But there's also this, just this general thing, Matt, you know, statistics are all very well and good. Quantification, yes, science, yes, we are pro-empiricism, but sometimes you just got to go by a vibe, you know? We've discourse surfed. We know what it's like. So what I thought we could do today is go back in time from the beginning of this podcast, cast our minds back to the gurus that we've covered and see how they fare on a tier list from S to D with one that is actually good or not a guru, like doesn't even register.

I thought we will need that. Excuse me, Professor Kavanagh. I've got a question and also something that's more of a comment than a question yeah so my question is who invented these tears when did tears become a thing like i became aware of them at some point but i i think they were around a long time before then i associate them with computer games or something and for me i when i was a kid we had didn't have tears there's no like s what does s stand for i don't know what any of this means super special special it's like the best here actually in my university you can also greet a student and ask nice special and a so yeah because someone is

special in australia it's not a good thing should my brother teach special students look the colors are there to help you matt that's there to help you, Matt. That's there to help you, right? But now something for people to remember is that in our rubric, being a very good modern guru or secular guru in the way that we describe it is not a good thing, right? Because the characteristics in the grommeter are not positive. So actually, you would prefer to be lower on a scale, right? This is something to keep in mind, right? So whoever your favorite

figures are, you probably would root for them to be lower. Or in this little category I've added, which is actually good, or could be called non-guru. They're so low, they don't register. Now, I've spent more time than I care to think hunting out square images of the gurus that we've covered. So if anybody is curious about these people, you can find the previous podcast episode on any good podcast player, and you'll hear more details.

But some of them we've covered multiple times. But let's get started. We've got a lot of them. And we have to agree, Matt. We have to come to compromises here because there's only one tier list available. The technology doesn't exist for us. So there'll be some negotiations and back and forth.

There will. Or we'll see. We're very simpatico, more than you imagine. Until I eventually agree with you. I know how negotiation works with you, Chris. Okay. Look, mainly this is going to be an exercise in you jogging my memory and reminding me of the bad shit these people have done you've got visual cues and the first one this is kind of one these you in carl sagan we did a series on like historical gurus or or also personal gurus of ours and Carl Sagan was there so where would you put him on the I think despite any quibbles might one might have with Carl Sagan maybe a shady personal

life I don't know you can say I think we'd have to put him in the actually good category wouldn't we he's an actually good uh science popularizer and also there he crucially constantly acknowledged his limitations and when he was speaking about topics outside of his particular area of expertise and this kind of thing so yeah i don't think he would well maybe if he was alive now he could be a better guru doing the rumble tumble of the guru sphere but in his time he basically doesn't compare to the modern gurus that we look at in terms of being like the bad gurus you know modern secular gurus he wouldn't be a good one no um well he anyway he'd be a good one in terms of people get it chris just leave it alone get it, Chris. Just leave it alone.

You go, okay, I'll leave it alone. No, I... God's sad, Matt. God's sad. God's sad. Well, I wouldn't put him as an S. He's not an S anything. No, he's not an S. On the other hand, he tries very hard to be one.

He does try. He probably gets an A for effort, but even with that, don't think yeah in terms of his concrete guru accomplishments and his skill at doing it he's not fooling anyone so i think i'm i think i'd write him a b what do you think b or c even a c or C. Come on. He hides under a desk, Chris. He's hiding from the work people under a desk. I know that's all he does, though. Like, is he B tier? He would like to be S tier. Like, in his mind, he's an S tier. But like, who's even feuding with God's hand? As far as I know, no one's paying attention um okay well um i'll be your c all right we can

always move them why don't we put them in c and then we'll see if we all right we if if we see some categories get too full we might shift people around spread them out a bit russell brand russell brand i i think he has got to be, I want to put him as S. My heart says S. I put him S tier. I'm absolutely S tier. Like, no, modern 2024 Russell Brand, he does everything. He's basically Alex Jones level conspiracy first with the whole Christian turn and that kind of thing.

So, and he's pseudo-profound, he's profiteering, he's conspiratorial. Yeah. S tier, Russell. Congratulations. Well done, Russell russell you're the first one you've broken the ice this is robin d'angelo matt next oh okay now this was this was from a while back this was from years ago um you're gonna have to jog my memory here. I can't remember. Well, just, you know, it's vibe-based. We don't need to think about our 11 factors and how she scores, but she would certainly score high on moral posturing and outrage-mongering. Big on the moral grandstanding.

We definitely had a few bones to pick with. Not so high conspiracy theorizing or anti-establishment rhetoric well but but still she is positing that there's a the fundamental reality underpinning all existences like her yeah still she's more annoying academic than anything else i'm gonna put her as a d that's that's where i would know now you're vetoing you're vetoing my d okay well, I would put her like, she's kind of the inverse Gazzard in a way. You remember the level of rhetorical tool being applied was very high. Remember the stories? I'm beginning to remember the self-aggrandizing stories.

Everyone stood up and clapped type thing. the self-aggrandizing stories and everyone stood up yeah type thing and also the the slippery logic where unless you basically agreed with her and went to her sessions you were one of the baddies uh so okay i'll i'll i'd be bumper up to see yeah okay she's i'll put her there they look like they're looking at each other um scott adams scott adams scott adams scott adams the simultaneous sip this is dilbert creator comic book dilbert the comic creator but more recently much darker unhinged conspiratorialist a yeah right-wing polemicist think dilbert but just master hypnotist so much darker i i feel like he's an s as well he's s tier he is s tier yeah there's not really anything to be he's terrible terrible person as well oh we've got an interesting one now matt constantine kissin i feel like god

sad he would love to be s tier you know he's doing those youtube shorts with the kind of impassioned rhetoric filled speeches but essentially he's you know an earlier career dave rubin he is he is um faux centrism it's hot right now it's very hot right now um i feel like he's a more effective guard sad yeah yeah which inclines me to i know where you're going at a b b yeah i i go there too like i would have had him down d or c but he's managed to effectively crawl his way up the totem pole so he's grinding yeah he's grinding hard and he's paying off so you know hats off to him he deserves some credit for that um next we have dasher from red scare okay this is dasher not gonna put her in actually good no no i will not on the other hand no no no

on the other hand she was simply annoying and not really guru-esque i think so yeah she's just a partisan to just she is who she is uh so d i would say yep yep yeah that's where i think she goes she doesn't really have like any deep philosophy just reactionary conservatism dressed up as ironic hipster rolling eye ism yeah so yeah that's a philosophy but it's a philosophy so there you go and then you're d we don't like you but you're not very good modern guru i'm afraid on the other hand you val noah harari um refresh my memory i'm kind of forgetting you don't need to say it much. That's going to be the constant referent. So the author of Sapiens, the person that caused philosophers to be upset, as well as fundamentalist Christians, they both got simultaneous risks. Connexion? Isn't that the

word? Have a conniption? Yeah, that's right. He was talking about ideas. We thought he was talking about ideas we thought he was basically a ted talk type guy you know he is a ted talk all right and type guru but he's pro-un and he's pro-internationalism and this is a kind of rare fish in that regard because he's a like a neoliberal popular figure right like an actual moderate type person so he's kind of like destiny but not obscene edgy yeah but he's ready he's he's also written children's books promoting his point of view and stuff is he a net force for good or bad in the world do you think oh i i think he's relatively harmless and you know just a big ted talk ted talk big he's a villain in alex jones pantheon because he's pro internationalism so he's he's essentially saurus's hand maiden in their pantheon and he does have a lot of big

ideas he does have a tendency to present like ideas which are not that mind-blowing as imagine that everything is a fiction right or you know like that's right yeah yeah okay but he doesn't he doesn't do the in-group art group cultish stuff and all of that so he's on the spectrum you wouldn't he's on the spectrum so you're not going to put him as actually good because these are people that are because you know no no all right it's fine you know he's all right he's he's not a big problem but yeah so he's not bad so i feel bad putting him next to gad sad or something like that. Remember, it's Vibe here. So the thing is, like, I think he scores a bit higher in some of the areas, but he's definitely got much more depth to him than somebody like Dasha.

Right? Like, he actually has ideas. But this tier list is just the guru spectrum. So we have to, it's not about quality. It's not about quality. It's not about anything else. Yeah. Not about whether we like it or not. But gurus need big ideas and they need revolutionary theories and he kind of

has those okay well i guess he does go maybe maybe a c-tier yeah i'd put him there brené brown self-help a bit opera ish but also yeah talking about being brave enough to admit having trauma and that kind of thing. Yeah, she's... Head-talking. Yeah, somebody was telling me recently that she's, you know, still incredibly popular in academic circles. Really?

Yeah, like education department, stuff like that. Not the top tier of academia. Anyway. I feel like she must lose points because she's not really active you know like you're not gonna see her weigh in on the politics of the r or like get in the uh shoddy max with jordan peterson or something like that and she's got the self-help niche but not really the modern yeah i might put her on d or c even d yeah i'm having the same problem you have of putting her beside dash but you're gonna remember we're not

we're not commenting on their substance or just you know just yeah she's not a very modern guru type but but she is like a self-help guru just not our definition of like secular modern guru type but but she is like a self-help guru just not our definition of like secular modern guru now yeah old douglas murray i feel like he belongs naturally next to constantine yeah the thing is he's he's essentially like a polemical, right-leaning pundit. Yeah. So is Constantine? So is Constantine. I think when we covered him, we were saying,

well, he's not going to really score that highly because he's more just doing open polemical punditry. Like if you put him in the category, you would more put him in the polemical journalist than jordan peterson style guru right but yeah he does opinion it on a lot of stuff and he is the figure that eric weinstein presented as the archetype for the intellectual dark web yeah so and like constantine he does he does present his time to treat in pretty broad sweeping grandiose grandiose terms and i think that's the kind of thing that elevates

him on agoramidus so um yeah i think everything you said you want to put him b makes me want to put him on b i kind of want to yeah i feel like he might be C. I know, I know, he could be. We don't want too many people in C, though. We'll go with you for now. We can shift them around later. We can shift them around later. Yeah, yeah, that's right. So, D of Reuben.

Now, I think he's straight in as D, because he is just a pundit, and he wants to have high-level ideas and all that, but he's just a right-wing polemicist. That's all he can do, really. Yeah. Yeah. No, no.

I think so. Yeah, I'll put him a D. Yeah. Oh, no, this one's good. See, no, this is a dark horse, Matt, that people don't know. This is Michael O'Fallon of Sour Nations. Yes. We tried to warn people about what was coming.

How it was happening. He's not very well known. Not very well known. But he has pretensions to be the top tier guru. And he's got all of the spiel down. He has the in-group, out-group thing. He's got the philosophical claims revolutionary theories conspiracy mongering cassandra complex don't forget cassandra

that's right hasn't really found his niche yet but yeah i do love the weighty tones in which he evokes these things so well but is he a tier is he a tier? Is he A tier? I think he's A tier. Yeah. He's not S tier because he's not actually particularly good at it. But in almost all of the features, he dings up the grommeter. He does. Yep. I'm happy with that for him in A. Boom.

A is populated. I got someone in A. It's good. Yeah. A is populated. Got someone in A. That's good. Yeah.

Peter Adia, the longevity health man, Huberman friend. No, he's not very guru-esque, is he? I mean, he's, you know. He's a health guru. He's a health guru, but he lacks the broad scope required of our top-tier gurus. Yeah. He's an optimizer health type person but for our purposes

yeah d yeah oprah oh that's a tricky one i feel that oprah is an obvious guru candidate in like so many ways but she doesn't fit into the modern guru template particularly well but she's still still on the scoreboard if you remember when we covered her she had these stories about you know being a gifted child and all that kind of thing so i would put a b or c tier she's kind of like in terms of success she's s tier but in terms of modern guru qualities, B or C? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I might go for C. I'll go for C.

All right. All right, there she is. Peter McCulloch. Okay. One of the COVID conspiracists that we covered when he reappeared on Joe Rogan. Shameless. Kind of. Anti-vax grifter correct yes um has his own podcast and has

continued down that path it's been probably been a while but if people go back and listen to those episodes it's not just that they're anti-vax contrarians it's that they have all these litany of stories where they are at the center of tons of discoveries and important things like they are conspiracy theories and it's all wrapped up together so yeah well i put him at a or b what would you vote for yeah i think i think a as well some of the details have escaped me but my vibe based assessment is he was very high for good reasons now this one what to do 70 paradigms 70 paradigms spinning all at once this is jordan hall of sense making fm not so super popular in terms of amount of followers but i feel a kind of guru's guru like yeah you know he's yeah yeah and that

tier yeah like he's a little bit different the sense makers are a little bit different from you know the conspiracy theorists and the anti-vaxxers and so on but like he falls into the category of i'm not even mad i'm just impressed so like yeah yeah you know and for that reason alone, my heart wants to put him at S tier because, man, that man can bullshit amazingly well. Amazingly well. His metaphors are incredible. Like, in terms of success, he's not S tier in terms of, you know, the level of fame and influence he has, but he is pretty good. Like, he doesn't upset me like some of the other ones do.

I just despise Russell Brand at the moment for various reasons. But he's just amazing. He's just amazing. So it's not that I dislike him a lot. It's just that I'm in awe at his metaphorical word spinning. I think you probably haven't seen that many of his tics might help. If I saw more of them, I'd probably just like him more. ARS, Chris, I'll let you decide on which bin there.

I think we've got to reserve the S tier for the absolutes. And like Jordan Hall, he's really good, but he's not up the top tier level. So that's where he goes. You're right. You're right. McKellla Peterson I'm putting McKayla at D

I say D D yeah she's got the meat thing she's got the conspiracies like she covers all the same ground as say her father but you know she's pretty basic the way she approaches it all

there's not many guru-esque qualities there. Yeah, that's true. Jonathan Haidt. Now, you might be tempted to put him in the actually good category because I like some of his work on moral foundations theory and the social intuitionist model as well, or whatever the case. And in terms of his academic work, I find him interesting. But in terms of his public output, the strength to which he advances the anti-social media stuff, I feel that's a bit alarmist.

the social media stuff and i feel that's a bit alarmist but is that just skewing my opinion because i think like he's a you know a bit alarmist and like kind of misrepresents criticism and stuff yeah i mean if he's a bit annoying online that he's he's not the only one right i mean most of us are we're on the internet yeah yeah you're right he's not like when i think in terms of secular guru stuff he isn't the problem is putting him in the actually good category i feel like i'm endorsing his views but i i think that's that is where he belongs let's define our actually good category as just like on the net it's not that we think they're wonderful it's just like if there's a net kind of badness goodness thing they fall just on the plus zero side rather than the negative yeah it's my fault for the labeling here it should probably say oh it should probably say

like fine let me see i'll just do it now not a modern guru yeah there we go good great now now we don't have to hear about people on reddit saying that we endorse such and such that's that's right jp sears oh god jp sears what a blast from the past what's he doing now is he still poodling about i have yeah he oh he was doing something very terrible recently i can't remember what it is he started a platform it's kind of with someone that you wouldn't expect him to have a crossover with, but it was terrible. I can't remember the details of it, Matt,

but he's continuing on as terrible as he always is. He's deep in Trump world and all that crap. That's right. I've seen him do the really crazy MAGA stuff. Yeah, he falls into that category. He's that guy up there in S. What's his name again? english guy and russell brann i mean i think it's one of the characteristics of the gurus even though it's probably not on our barometer is that they're so malleable they're

so mercurial they'll drift and switch from thing to thing as opportunities arise and i think it really reflects the sort of grifting attention-seeking nature of it which is they'll change their tune they'll turn on a dime when they see opportunities and that's kind of how they'd be successful and so he's a good example of that you can just see him following following the money around you know yeah he's also he is a conspiratorialist of the highest order yes like i i feel he's he's really fairly limited in his own capacities to develop theories or whatever and he's bad at being a yeah philosophical guru type no he's yeah he's like a bottom feeder he can he can do this sort of mega that's odd yeah he's very

solid it gets sad but he's he's aggressively grifting i kind of want to put him at b that's where my heart's telling me my heart's saying c because of his limitations that he he goes hard but anyway all right we'll let you have him let me put him up there b hassan hassan hassan um he doesn't really oh well no no, that's not true. I was going to say he doesn't promote the philosophy and, you know, all that. But he kind of does. It's just a very politically violent one. And there is the personality cult and there is the conspiracy mongering and all that kind of stuff.

all that kind of stuff but he again falls more into the polemical political commentary space as opposed to the modern guru yeah yeah no my gut doesn't want to put him high see yeah yeah yeah i think c c feels right i think he's saying no see no look this should highlight to you it's not about politics right because you've got you've all know and you've got and you've got what's the name on the left uh d'angelo d'angelo and yeah it's not about politics guys uh lex friedman lex friedman he is really something i do not like that guy not that that's going to affect my judgment. But he's not, you know, like the thing is, he's a full centrist tech utopian, Elon Musk. Plattitude, saccharine, yeah.

Yeah. Plattitude, spurious. He has the depth of a puddle. Yeah. He has the depth of a puddle. That's right. He's got the emotional complexity of a 13-year-old boy. And he would like to. He has pretentious of grande grandeur and he is doing all the

things about weaponizing his audience he controls his reddit and his social media presence with an iron fist uh with a team of moderators that are very leg-shift shall we say but in other ways not that good he's more of a facilitator than he is a... I think you've got to award more marks for effort. Like he's someone who's trying really, really hard to be the thing. He's not convincing to you or me, but a lot of people think he's one of the smartest people in the world, right? So I vote for B.

I vote for B. I'll put him there with Konstantin Kisin. Those two belong together. Yeah, agreed. they're there now we've got Anthony DiMello an odd figure nobody has heard of including me but

we covered him by there he is he's a Jesuit that was like kind of promoting a type of Christian mysticism that was close to buddhist spirituality popular in the 80s and 90s i think the sheer fact that we've covered him is just proof that we're not trying that hard to be successful because if we were we'd never cover people like that chris this was purely to make chris happy to cover this guy. No, no, we covered him because we were saying

people that might fit our gurus, like gurus in our past, people that we found attractive when we were younger, their philosophy or whatever. And yeah, I don't think he's a modern guru though. He's like, he's more self-help spiritual motivational speaker guy from the nineties. If you want to see some of the bad things he did, go and listen to the episode. But he wouldn't really fit into the category. No, he's totally fine. Look, I'm impartial, have no feelings about the man one way or another.

You don't even know him. I don't even know him. I don't care about him. He's dead, isn't he? So he doesn't mind one way or the other. I listened to his content. I thought he was fine, even though he's into that spiritual stuff, which I am not.

Anyway. Bill Maher. Bill Maher. Bill Maher. Bill Maher. Bill Maher. Well, apart from being an anti-vaxxer, what's wrong with him, Chris? Oh, he's just a smug, dickhead that's his problem he is someone that likes to think

that he's got it all worked out and he's the only rational person looking at things he's commenting genuinely deluded i think rather than attempting to be run a game on people. I think I'd actually put him in Not a Modern Guru. I just don't think he is. Oh, no. Well, I mean, yeah, I kind of see. Maybe a little bit, but, I mean. No, like if Dave Rubin and Konstantino are on the spectrum, he's on the spectrum.

He's not someone that qualifies his views and he's promoted a whole bunch i mean he had brett weinstein and stuff on to talk about their alternative theories he often has on you know like people offering outdoor opinions and he's just gonna challenge them or this kind of thing okay no no i i hear you i hear you you remember him talking to dawkins don't Yeah, like the delivery is very different, but he kind of does fulfill the same role as someone like Joe Rogan, right, in the interfusal. Yeah, I would say he's a classic.

He's a celebrity pundit. Like that's what he is. He's got a talk show and opinions and he's an annoying prick. But I think his club random and his various anti-vax stuff yeah puts him a little bit somewhere there but no he's not good he's like d tier yeah yeah but what would you say to the argument that he's a bit like a joe rogan and that he's like a credulous conduit for a whole bunch of nonsense yeah well because jo Joe Rogan has all these conspiratorial tendencies which are really like central to it as well.

And it's not central to Bill Maher. Well, it is. It is. So maybe he should go higher. I think we would now switch positions. No, I'm thinking he needs to go a bit higher. Maybe C. Maybe C.

C tier? I also like that it's approaching a normal distribution this is this pleases me that's what did it i'd put him d tier but i'll accept that over it's hard to classify uh right of respondent jimmy wheel jimmy wheel sense maker seems like a pleasant guy seems like a pleasant guy um aims to please aims to. He was in that Sense Making Cubed video. Which was amazing. It brought hours of enjoyment to thousands. Yeah, and he's like kind of techno-shaman territory

in terms of like the general things he promotes. I mean, I basically realized he's basically a management consultant, but consulting to the kinds of Silicon Valley companies and stuff, which really go in for jack dorsey jack dorsey type guy yeah yeah yeah yeah i mean that's a job like it's a literal job description that's that's what people do for a living it's a sad comment on the society we live in but you know where to put him see i possess it yeah He's big on the big ideas. He likes the big ideas.

He is. He is. I think I'm leaning towards... B? B. Okay, there we go. Jimmy is up there, B tier. No, no, no, no.

Mr. Huberman. Mr. Huberman. Mr. Huberman. Mr. Huberman. Mr. Huberman. Interesting. Same lean, optimizer, self-help bro type. But I think in some respects, more effective at utilizing the cult of personality. Yeah.

And actually a bit more leaning into pseudoscience. The more that you look at huberman the more you see him taking various pro-pseudoscience stances so like adi as far as i know during the pandemic was not promoting covid conspiracies now huberman wasn't dealer but for somebody communicating about public health and talking about evidence-based treatments essentially never recommended vaccines i wonder why so yeah well i put him at b or c i think okay well i would put him at A because of the parasocial stuff, which is a bit unfair, so I'll put him at B. Okay. Compromise, compromise. Ah, Christopher Hitchens.

Hitchens. Yeah. So there's the possibility of him going here, right, because he isn't a modern guru in many ways. Again, like a kind of pundit, public intellectual. But he definitely, I think think straight into secular guru territory i mean remember being somewhat of a secular guru doesn't mean you don't like them i quite like pigeons he's a good he's a good writer at the same time he is a master rhetorician and it is very slippery with his logic sometimes yeah i remember he can be very convincing if you don't think about things too much and he compels like a huge amount of um like affection and loyalty even even now

years after he's dead he does so so he's a bit more than just like a pundit yeah you know he's he inspires people you know including me at various times yeah in a way like steven pinker doesn't yeah exactly in a way that steven pinker doesn't there's no pinker slap right there's a hitch slap and yeah i'll put him on the spectrum despite the fact that i don't mind him on balance um c c oh I would have linked D because I feel like he sort of qualified positions, but maybe not. Maybe I've just got like a rosy image of that.

Yeah, no, maybe D. No, actually, I think C might be a bit harsh. He's there beside Dave Rubin. Sorry. That's his natural home. Sorry, mate. You're much, much smarter than Dave than dave rubin much much smarter oh this guy this guy might you'd call it yudkowsky aliaser ai doomer federer wearing

incredible analogy spewing yeah to individual to remember the story of the of the aliens and the people in the box and the time what a journey that was um yeah okay I I think he's a tier really like he's well because the whole Cassandra yeah complex and I mean one thing we didn't touch on so that's when we covered him he has also written uh harry potter fan fiction and i think it's like harry potter and the rationalist approach or something and you remember helen lewis was reading some extracts from his erotic fiction he's a man of many talents the thing about him that i kind of admire that he's incredibly cringe but he sort of absorbed it and made it part of his yeah personality in a way that's almost endearing. But don't you remember, I think this is the thing that cinches it for him to be eight here,

is do you remember he said, in the space of learning about AI, I've essentially mastered like 12 disciplines. And there were like, you know, computational neuroscience and blah, blah, blah. So again, with Yudkowsky, i don't think he's particularly pernicious i think he's quite benign just an ai doomer yeah um but but he does score highly on on our garometer so yeah up he goes god damn james lindsey uh james lindsey james lindsey i think james lindsey is scoring highly in all of the elements of the garometer. All of them. I think so.

He's a, he's a, he's a terrible, terrible person. Terrible person. Yeah. And, but he's so,

he wants to be so more significant than he is that I want to put him in a tier rather than. I know. I was going to say that i know i was gonna say that i was gonna say that i was i know the way you think and i know that you'd be thinking he would like to be he would like to be in the st and you're not going to want to put him there because that would somehow make him happy on some on some level if you ever became aware of this and that's why you don't want to i i actually don't want to put him in the st on purely logical reasons chris because because even though he does score highly across all of those things he's not the alpha and the omega of it he's quite clumsy and bullheaded the way he goes about it

oh yeah yeah he's got monomania and is staying a kind of polemicist punditly now. Yeah. Like in some ways he's like that orange-haired guy. He's quite simplistic. Like he doesn't really have much going on. Like remember how he's memorized like half a dozen words from the critical theory, and he just keeps rattling them off again and again

because he doesn't really think that much. Oh, the goddamn feminist sociology people people that's right yeah he's like a little duckling that's imprinted on one research paper and then he's following it around forever okay so a okay okay we've we've decided a trb or do you want to put him no no? No, he does hit it across the board. Okay. Daniel Danner. Yeah, he's fine and I like him for academic with a public profile. Yeah, that's so no.

Ibram X. Kendi. No, I yeah, Ibram X. Kendi, this caused us never-ending hassles initially because we essentially were saying we didn't agree with his binary anti-racist or racist point of view or find him a particularly fascinating person. like when we looked at his content it was you know just fairly bog standard a particular academic perspective right and for that reason he wasn't engaged in like most of the things that we see amongst the secular gurus but people did point out at the time if you look at his twitter behavior and if you look at like the implosion of

his center yes there's a lot of claims about him being unfairly persecuted and so if you take his stuff in full context he probably would have scored higher than we gave him in that episode although he scored like middling so yeah i i think he's like c tier oh really c that high i thought you'd put him at either d or not a guru no i i think he is up there when you take the social media stuff in the account properly but it's it's just he's he's i'm not saying he's doing all of the things but he's doing some of them quite a lot all right all right i haven't really paid attention so i'll let i'll let you like the call i mean i haven't heard anything about him in recent times earlier but that was just a lot and when i saw those explanations about

how any criticism of him was essentially a targeted campaign i was like ah yeah it just it's like it's yeah it's like roma dAngelo, right? It's an interesting kind of similar dynamics. Anyway, I like the way it looks like a triangle. I'm liking the distribution. Yeah. You see where I'm hollering? This is Francis Ross. This is Francis Ross.

I'm going to put him in the green. I think he's done with the green. He's not cut out. he's not cut out for this he's not cut out for it he's been dragged along by Constantine and it's to his credit that he is not the same kind of animal

I mean I think he tries I think he tries sometimes he's an anti-world comic, you know, full centrist person. But yeah, he's not, nobody is ascribing to Francis's philosophy. He's not slippery enough. He's not slippery enough. He's just too straightforward, I'm afraid. Okay.

Heller. Heather Haying. My heart says S without thinking about it without rationalizing it just just gut feeling i think yes i think yes as well i think she's the dark horse she is the dark horse because people think she's not as bad as brett and maybe once upon a time she wasn't but if you just let her go. Yeah, she's something. Her and Brett are simpatico. They are 50-50 at the Dark Horse podcast. I think more and more that they are actually like a hive mind. Like they've spent too much time in that oak panel room together

or pine panel room out there outside of Portland or wherever it is they live in. Too much time in each other's company. And they've basically done a mind meld okay what about a counterpoint though matt like when you compare her level of self-aggrandizement and like cultish dynamics cultivation and stuff she's not at the same tier as brett is she that's kind of true actually now i think about it like in terms of the conspiratorial thinking certainly the anti yeah she's up she's up there 100 and the dodgy logical non-secretaries she's there but we won't talk about brett now we'll wait for until he comes up the ace of spades

um yeah you know what we should have done instead know what we should have done instead of this tier maker thing is you know how the Americans had like a deck of cards for all the people that were trying to get tiered? No, no, Matt, no. Don't go down that road. You're going to get a second. That's true. Making a head list.

That's true. That's not the implication. We're not advocating that. We're not advocating that. We're not advocating that. None of these people are. Just, yeah, just to be clear. So I moved her down to A. Yeah, yeah.

No, I agree with that. I'd like to see her in A. Gwyneth Paltrow. She, I mean, it's such a shame, you know what I mean? Because I enjoyed watching her acting in movies. And listening to her opinions is just disappointing i'm sorry she's a foolish woman but is she a guru so i mean she has a whole self-help line and she's got a whole you know spiritual outlook

and all that kind of thing but i would say she's like much more in the realm of a you know marketing specialist with an interest in pseudoscience and that kind of thing so but she the one counterpoint is you remember matt we listened to your podcast and she was like she's kind of a conduit in a way rogan is for an absolute gallery of pseudoscientists and pseudoprofound people. So I think she is on the spectrum of modern gurus, but she's not really in line with the kind of gurosity that we're talking about. So I wouldn't say not a modern guru, but I would say D tier in terms of like,

oh, it's not in terms of success, but in terms of like fitting the template for what we are talking about. Yeah. If we were doing complementary alternative medicine scoring, should blow the lid off, but we're not.

So yeah. Yeah. Secular guru D she is. Who's that? Rutger Bregman. Rutger Yeah. Yeah. Secular guru Dishi is. Who's that? Rutger Bregman. Rutger Bregman. You remember that annoyed Tucker Carlson and that had various. Ted.

A Ted talkie guy. Oh. A Ted talkie guy. He's not the guy that's like. He's that guy who's like the climate change skeptic. Oh, Bjorn Lomberg. Bjorn Lomberg. Yeah.

He does look a bit like him. Does look a bit. Yeah. I thought that's who it was for a second. I was going to have a go. But think i i think i kind of liked him didn't i i can't remember i liked him too but i i still think he's a little bit you know a big guy like i feel like ted talk people almost automatically are somewhere on the spectrum you, I didn't find him objectionable even when I don't strongly endorse his point of view and stuff.

Yeah, but then again, height is there. So I guess he probably is not in the same way that height is not. Okay. I would have put, well, unless you demand that he goes D tier. No, no, I'm fine with that. Leave him there. Destiny. Destiny, destiny, destiny.

He's a streamer. I mean, that's the thing. He's like, in streamer, he's S tier. He's the alpha and omega of the political streamer pundit class. And he does, like, one of the things that people argue about in terms of him being a guru is he has a huge devoted parasocial following right and he likes drama he is the main character very often on social media especially recently he's definitely in the guru's fear in terms of his bouncing about

and, you know, interacting with people. Maybe less now that he went on this post-assassination rant. But yeah, so where to put him? Where to put him? It kind of feels like he's naturally should be here beside his son yeah actually that is that is where he naturally belongs like i you know not that it matters i think he's a lot smarter than his son and i think he he is correct about things more often than his son but that's this is my opinion i think in terms of the guru in terms of the guru features him and hasan are brothers yeah there's i think there's different areas that they're kind of like i i think that hasan's approach to research is different than destiny for example that's a separate thing yeah but in terms of the kind of parasocial devotion yeah and whatnot that

is cultivated it's it is similar and they're not the he's not the tier so yeah c yeah i'd say c oh the king peterson not a modern kid not a modern guru just a very smart academic he's fine he's a professor okay so next is chomsky no he's st the man yeah the man is marvel he he broke the mold he forged a path for most of these other people to follow along i take my cap off to him wow yeah yeah Now, this is a little bit of a... Well, look, so Chomsky, I would put him, if it was just down to his output, I think I would say not a modern guru,

more like a political commentator and academic, right? Because that's what he is. But in the same grounds that we just justified destiny, being there, I feel that he does attract a large motivated following. And he has been someone, you know, that just has opinions across a broad sphere and stuff. But in other ways, he is, you know, very academic about it.

So, yeah, I think because of his role, he's somewhere on that spectrum. But I would be tempted to put him like not a modern guru, but yeah. Like maybe Hitchens, right? He's essentially like a Hitchens character in a way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's a left-wing Hitchens. No, no, I think he belongs there at D with Hitchens character in a way. Yeah. Yeah. He's a left-wing Hitchens. No, no. I think he belongs there on D, at D with Hitchens.

That makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. Sean Carroll. You know what? We can even organize them from left to right according to how much, you know, according to flavor or according to how much we like them.

Yeah. Or despise them. Don't add a complex to it. But we can always do this later um okay sean carroll executive decision him to not like he he issued far too many caveats he was self-deprecating and whatnot no no no also mcquest i'm a yeah i feared not he's here because he was in an episode with eric but he scored the lowest i never had the gravity yeah i like not he's here because he was in an episode with eric but he's going to lewis i never had the gravity yeah i like that we have these characters those two characters in particular

on there but we should get more which is like i like to show that the you know the null like it's very possible not to be yeah a secular guru very possible um you can have a podcast you could be a be a public opinion editor you can create content you could be even wanting to get income from youtube or patreon or substack or whatever it is and you don't you don't have to do the things that most of them do anyway let's go on yeah robert malone str str yeah the doors are fair Yeah. He's worse than McCulloch because he claimed more conspiracies and being more central to completely unrelated things to COVID vaccines. And I mean, he also claims to be the inventor of the mRNA vaccines,

which he's not. I think the thing which struck me about him is that, do you remember in that initial interview, he was on that discussion panel with Brett? In hindsight or retrospect, he was paying such attention to his presentation, wasn't he? Like it subsequently came to pass. It became very clear just how extreme he was, right? And how fallacious his claims about himself were but during that interview you could tell that he was playing a role yeah yeah very uh you know so that

yeah anyway yeah yeah so he he's asked here up he goes anna from red scare i think just beside dasha right like they're simpatico and similar in all aspects so yeah like i've heard her opinionating recently on the republican convention but she's essentially you know like a political commentator but about on the same point of the spectrum as anna it's mainly other people that are kind of elevating her to that position sure contra points yeah i remember we going for a pretty low lane bill of health i think part of the reason though is that especially in the earlier episodes we're a little bit more restrictive about this but we only considered the material that we covered and we covered a relatively uncontroversial thing she

did about justice because there was supposed to be a justice part two which we thought would be the more controversial one but she never released it i think so i think that although she is in many respects a lot more restrained and a lot more focused on a specific topic, you know, philosophical takes around modern culture or philosophical concepts or whatever, and with a leftist twang to it. She has the same Destiny Hassan thing about the level of parasocial attachment to her yeah um yeah so and does and does do the rhetorical thing a little bit like a hitchens in a way and you may like it just like we don't mind hitchens but you know it is it is rhetoric right when when you're putting together this these making all these connections to sort of craft this great thesis so that everybody agrees yeah interesting an interesting one d yeah maybe i wouldn't say she's exactly the same yeah i kind of think a little bit below hassan and destiny yeah in that respect i think so too might be just my no thing but

no i feel like she should be there with with hitchens and chomsky that makes sense all right with Hitchens and Chomsky. That makes sense. All right. Jerome Larnier. I want to put him next to the neckbeard guy, next to Yudkowsky, just because they just seem to belong together.

Yeah. You know, the thing is that I think he, I feel like he isn't on that level in some respect because he's a little bit more restrained. But then whenever I think about the interviews of him, like playing the flute and wandering around barefoot, you know, as he talks about the internet and, or his alternative about how we should run you know currencies and all these kind of things like yeah yeah he is he is pretty he is pretty guru-esque i mean but he's i also like yurkowski i sort of put him in the category of benign like yeah yeah he is i mean like he's not he's in no way is he like on michael fallon no level but i that's i can't that's why i feel like i want these sorted i want the i want the ones the pernicious ones on

one side and the benign ones on the other side um just live with the chaos matt so where does he go a or b uh b kind of thing i kind of think b b yeah i want to put it next to get kowski but it's can't really justify it i like i i like this i like the good photo now now now we like zizek right for the record yeah i i i like zizek and oh zizek sorry i enjoyed even though we're not agreeing with him about a ton of stuff of his interpretation not agreeing about the shark fun not agreeing with the shark he's just fun that's right and he's he's a he's a force for he's a force for good i think um so yeah but he is a guru he is a modern he is a guru yeah he's a philosophy guru yeah i think, they're next to each other. I feel Bob putting him beside this fellow.

You've got to sort them, Chris. You've got to put them together. That's a thing for another episode. We'll sort them. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe we'll do an update. If you can save this to your ranking, we'll get a few more gurus.

Oh, I can see that. Yeah, we'll get a few more gurus in the bag and then we'll sort it then. I'll mention now as well, Matt, that I made this template public. a few more girls yeah we'll get a few more gurus in the bag and then we'll we'll sort it then um i'll mention now as well matt that i made this template public so like other people can go search for it and can like sort their own tier list after so elon yeah nasim talib uh he's he's pretty guru-esque and again he's a he's a substantial guy i think yeah he's a substantial guy so this is a heavier heavy hitter yeah i think um so it's not really a negative comment on him. But, man, like the cultish dynamics and just the sweeping, broad kind of, I'm smarter than everyone else. You know, the statisticians don't know anything.

He's figured it all out. He's revolutionized so many things. Yeah, I think even higher. Like he's not bad not he's not be a bad he's not bad he's just very secular guru-esque so b he is but he well i guess yeah i guess because i was gonna say but he doesn't have the conspiratorial tendencies and he doesn't have other bits other things in spades yeah he does yeah i think he's he's b, like, if you look at our reading, he doesn't score particularly highly, I think.

That's all right. That's all right. This is the vibes, right? We're not constrained by the restrictive shackles. That's right. Straight jacket on the garometer. We get to go with our hearts. We're down to four figures, which I think are going to be interesting.

Eric is S. Up to the top. Up you go. Up you go. Up you go, Eric. If Douglas Murray is the archetype of the intellectual dark web, Eric Weinstein is the archetype of the modern secular guru. So he's in there. I would put him higher.

I would put him higher than Jordan Peterson. Yeah. He's. He is. I would put him higher than Jordan Peterson. Yeah. Yeah. He's. He is. And I think we can spoil just, we may as well since they're siblings. Like Brett is there as well. Right.

They're up there. Now we've got Joe. Joe. I know you were hinting, Matt, that you want to put him a bit lower because of his lack of depth and that he's mainly a conduit but i also think his role as the great can of podcasting and this conspiratorial tendencies like it's not just about vaccines he's an anti-vaccine guy but he's also a conspiracy he's also anti-institutional institutions yeah um no no i don't want to put him why i i didn't mean to imply that yeah i put him at i put him at i can't put him i can't put him as he because he doesn't have no any of the pseudo-intellectual pretensions so i mean he does not convincingly i mean not even to some you know he's no i mean i

know he thinks he's smarter than everyone he's you know he could work it out you know but come on he's not a pseudo-intellectual um and last one just a topic okay this is dr k dr k yeah now again he's got us particularly in the self-help you know optimizing your mental health youtube influencer kind of sphere but as we saw you know big proponent of ayurvedic medicine i know a lot of where i'm putting him i've worked i've worked it out where well you tell me where you want to put him first. Trust me, it's in my head. B. Yes, I was going to say.

B or C. B. B. Okay. B. Yeah. There we go. He belongs there with Huberman. Okay.

I'm quite happy with this. Me too. I think it's, you know, this is an interesting little presentation. Now, the thing is, the people listening, Matt, they can't see it, so they can't see this, but it will be somewhere. It will be available. It'll be on Twitter. Go look on Twitter.

We'll post it up there so you can see our tier list if you want to be reminded of where they are. And if you want to do it yourself, there'll be a little link with a podcast where you can do that. You can play at home. That's right. We can all decode. Decoding is for everyone.

The other thing I like about this chris is that we've got all of those t is pretty well populated it's become more of a uniform distribution than the gaussian and uh but this speaks to the dimensionality of the garometer it speaks to the spectrum and this is something we've emphasized right from the very beginning it is not a blanket category. We're not putting people into gurus or not. We're saying there's a spectrum of guru-city. And look, man, we see it right here. Clean as day.

That's it. That's it. Well, there we did it, Matt. We've ranked them all. I'm happy with how that's ended up. And people can agree or disagree. The beauty of the internet is you can go, you know, do these things for yourself and it's, it's just our opinion, man. Okay.

That's all. And no, we're not calling for the people that are in S tier to be censored. We're not saying remove them from the internet. We're just saying if you're taking your life advice from them, you know, God bless you. Good luck out there. I hope you don't bump into too many used car salesmen in your time. But yeah, that's it.

And good job, Carl Sagan. And just to make one thing absolutely clear. So in the category that we made that was like not a modern guru, Francis Foster plus Carl S sagan we're not saying we we love them both equally i think they're a substantial we're just saying they don't really fit onto the this yeah this is this is not a ranking of how much we like or dislike people if people want we can we can make it different to your ranking. Yeah, we could do that. Just purely on how much we like them if anyone cares. But, you know,

Konstantin would... Would not fare well. He would not be in the middle of that distribution. But, all right. So, there we go. There we go. I'm going to stop it here.

I'm going to wish people goodbye. There's a podcast. Go listen to it or you're listening to it now and congratulations. And if not, we'll be back soon enough with the coding, supplementary all the usual it's just a bit of fun bye bye Thank you.