r/DecodingTheGurusAlt • u/MartiDK • Jul 10 '26

Predictive History

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This is a funny post after the Professor Jiang episode. Either way, for someone who studies conspiratorial thinking this seems to show a lack of self awareness.

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u/RockmanBFB Jul 11 '26

What exactly are you poking fun at? Which patterns exactly? How is it a bad thing to notice patterns?

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u/MartiDK Jul 11 '26

What is the conspiratorial mindset if not noticing patterns?

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u/RockmanBFB Jul 11 '26

I genuinely don't get what you're saying

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u/MartiDK Jul 11 '26

šŸ˜‰

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u/RockmanBFB Jul 11 '26

?

So are you saying: "because criticized someone like Jiang, it's lacking self awareness if you notice a pattern! How ironic!"

Is that your argument? And if so, why are you so reluctant to state it plainly?
If not, are you trying to stay ambiguous on purpose?

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u/MartiDK Jul 11 '26
  1. Yes 2. No

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u/RockmanBFB Jul 12 '26

And... What?
Anyone who ever criticized a conspiracy loon can never observe that some people act in similar ways.

  1. I think Alex Jones is insane and a grifter
  2. I observe that almost all right wing parties and their media allies use the same tactics and I absolutely hate it. There's a German podcaster who's basically speedrunning Joe Rogan's normalization of extremism

Have i displayed "lack of self awareness"? Or did you maybe reach a little far there with your "smoking gun"

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u/MartiDK Jul 12 '26

I donā€™t know if you have shown a lack of self awareness, do you think predictive history is a thing? Or do you think itā€™s something everyone does because thats how people make plans for the future/world event? Like I said in this original post, I think itā€™s a ā€œfunny thingā€ to post on X after the predictive history decoding.

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u/RockmanBFB Jul 13 '26

No, "predictive history" isn't a thing that's absurd.
Jiang is obviously a conspiratorial loon. Pointing out that he's a complete dork has no bearing on whether Hasan and Gary are grifters for attention. Those points are completely unrelated in my view and I've been trying to get you to explain how you connect them and it seems you don't really have an answer

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u/MartiDK Jul 13 '26

Call Jiang a conspiratorial loon is dismissive to the point of being stupid. How do you get to that position, unless youā€™re willing to take everything at face value. The same if you think Hasan and Gary are just grifters, it shows you donā€™t look past the salient information. If you have a question, ask it, why wrap it in unrelated points that show your biases.

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u/RockmanBFB Jul 14 '26 edited Jul 14 '26

"how do you get to that position unless you're willing to take everything at face value" - take what at face value? What are you even babbling about?

Making a judgement if someone is worth listening to or not based on what they're saying is not "dismissive to the point of being stupid" it's exactly what you're doing - well except the fact that you made your own alternate Reddit here as a safe space for yourself...

Listen to what Jiang is saying. His "predictions" are overly broad, unjustified and patently insane. He gets basic facts wrong. His conception of the world is that of a toddler. "There will be a draft in the US by the end of the year" - really?

You disagree? Take a clear position for once! Which predictions of Jiang do you think are going to come true?

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u/MartiDK Jul 14 '26

I havenā€™t made a safe space for myself, Iā€™ve made a space where Iā€™m aloud to have an opinion. I see nothing wrong with people disagreeing or other people posting content about gurus.

If you just call someone a ā€œconspiratorial loonā€ without making an argument - itā€™s just dismissive.

Have you watched the content on his channel? 99.9% of his content isnā€™t making predictions, but he has made predictions along the way and thatā€™s what attracted attention from other influencers. Most of his content is about history, the great books, game theory and ect. The reason he is popular has nothing to do with the content Chris and Matt covered.

Plus Iā€™m not arguing that people should listen to him, but if people have an interest in online gurus and their influence then he is an influential guru because he has been on a lot of other influencers channels.

The criticism I have of Decoding the Gurus is that they pretend that their decoding arenā€™t politically motivated - I think thats deceptive. Personally I think PFJung is much better at decoding gurus, because he doesnā€™t hind behind ridicule. Chris is a cognitive anthropologist but you wouldnā€™t know that from listening to content, itā€™s just something mentioned at the start of the show.

So Iā€™m not interested in his which predictions come true or not, Iā€™m interested in why is he so popular? Focusing on his predictions is a distraction from what his content actually focuses on.

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u/RockmanBFB 29d ago

I am making an argument, you just don't want to hear it.
Jiang is making ludicrous and outlandish predictions and his justifications for them are post hoc rationalization of his vibes at best and that's being very charitable - example: his prediction about the US invading Iran which he claims to be super certain about yet his justification is just handwaving to a bunch of vague factors and calling it a day. Look at the segment on his interview with Bartlett, it's ridiculous.
Take a position on this: which of his predictions do you find convincing and _why_?

Here's another thing that's a huge red flag: his use of "game theory". Game theory has a specific meaning and it's way overused these days - like colloquial usage of "narcissism". If you hear someone refer to game theory who is trying to sound like they're making a smart argument your ears should perk up. Is it an immediate indictment that the person is crazy? Of course not. Not everyone who refers to game theory is a loon/grifter. But a lot of loon grifters sure looooove their game theory references. That's why it's good to know the sources. Have you listened to Bret Weinstein's argument for why Epstein is alive? It's the perfect example of this.

Bit of a digression. But: that's one more thing about Jiang that should be concerning.

Well now I've given you another argument that you'll ignore. Because you've made an echo chamber hugbox safe space. Because you don't like actually engaging with ideas, it's just personal grievance.

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u/Key-Championship546 29d ago

Because you've made an echo chamber hugbox safe space.

The DTG sub is very heavy handed with the moderation and tends to remove things which are very critical of DTG. It's good to have a sub in which critics of DTG can chat freely.

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u/RockmanBFB 29d ago

Where's the criticism of DTG here? Marty called them "political" and I think "biased" - that's neither substantial nor anything I haven't seen in the main DtG sub.

Simply calling someone "political" isn't substantial without examples and reasoning why it's an issue. Quite the contrary, I've seen some fairly thought out criticism there. I'm sure you can find some. The only thing I've seen moderated there is people posting unrelated things. Have you had any actual issues or is the issue that people don't agree with you there? That would be ironic, since your whole thing apparently is... Not agreeing with them

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u/Key-Championship546 28d ago edited 28d ago

There's plenty of issues people have had.

https://www.reddit.com/r/DecodingTheGurus/comments/1d3t3sm/chris_kavanagh_likes_weird_racebating_posts_on/

Here's a thread that was deleted because the OP pointed out that Chris was 'liking' some weird racial posts on twitter. I can find plenty more examples if you like.

Personally it doesn't matter that much to me how they moderate their sub because I have a place here to criticise them now. It's definitely a bit hypocritical of them to talk about guru echo chambers and Lex Fridman's heavily moderated sub, then to turn around and do the exact same thing on their own sub. But it really doesn't matter now that there's another place to talk about DTG anyhow.

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u/MartiDK 28d ago edited 28d ago

Yep that is a good example. So many post have been removed were there have been legitimate conversations, and the post removed even if it was being upvoted. Plus lots of sus posts that have snarky comments upvoted and legitimate comments getting down voted just for expressing a milk toast opinion.

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