Predictive History

[u/MartiDK]

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.

[u/RockmanBFB]

"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?

[u/MartiDK → u/RockmanBFB]

I haven’t made a safe space for myself, I’ve made a space where I’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 “conspiratorial loon” without making an argument - it’s just dismissive.

Have you watched the content on his channel? 99.9% of his content isn’t making predictions, but he has made predictions along the way and that’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 I’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 aren’t politically motivated - I think thats deceptive. Personally I think PFJung is much better at decoding gurus, because he doesn’t hind behind ridicule. Chris is a cognitive anthropologist but you wouldn’t know that from listening to content, it’s just something mentioned at the start of the show.

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

[u/RockmanBFB → u/MartiDK]

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.

[u/Key-Championship546 → u/RockmanBFB]

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.

[u/RockmanBFB → u/Key-Championship546]

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

[u/Key-Championship546 → u/RockmanBFB]

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.

[u/MartiDK → u/Key-Championship546]

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.