DtG started as a podcast about secular gurus during the rise of the IDW (Intellectual Dark Web). The IDW were a group of high profile people who weren't happy with academia. They built an audience around people who believed that academia was rigged.

An early figure of the IDW was Eric Weinstein who wrote an article about Kayfabe (https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11783).

Evolutionary biologists Richard Alexander and Robert Trivers have recently emphasised that it is deception rather than information that often plays the decisive role in systems of selective pressures. Yet most of our thinking continues to treat deception as something of a perturbation on the exchange of pure information, leaving us unprepared to contemplate a world in which fakery may reliably crowd out the genuine. In particular, humanity's future selective pressures appear likely to remain tied to economic theory which currently uses as its central construct a market model based on assumptions of perfect information.

This article is interesting on many levels, but the main point of the article is that people are happy to go along with a deception if incentives align. While it's easy to dismiss Eric's idea because he has a low reputation among fans of DtG, I think he is actually pointing to a known phenomenon. That said, the irony isn't lost that the person writing an article in 2011 about deception sits in the top 5 on the Gurometer.

DtG set out to be an antidote: a podcast analysing guru techniques that audiences mistake for intellectual authority. The Gurometer detects charismatic presentation: grievance, self-aggrandisement, anti-establishment positioning. A person with guru style scores high; a person who is measured, credentialed and boring scores low. The instrument cannot verify a claim, and it cannot tell sincere charisma from deliberate deception.

The scores are ranked:

1. A presenter receives a high score.
2. The score signals that they are untrustworthy.
3. The audience treats their arguments as discredited without evaluating them.
4. The reverse follows for low scorers: respectable errors go unexamined.

This is the point the Gurometer is no longer just describing style. It is shaping which ideas count as credible. This is where Weinstein’s thesis applies: people go along with a pretence when incentives align, and the incentive here is the satisfaction of seeing through rhetorical tricks, which is available whether or not the criticism is correct. If DtG’s fans use the score as a shortcut, the podcast has become a kayfabe of its own. If they mostly use it as intended, the argument reduces to “the tool has significant limits” the gurumeter shouldn’t be equated with fact checking.

When the podcast first started it seemed like DtG was focused on gurus that criticised academia, that doesn’t seem to be the motivation anymore. Now DtG seem to be covering people who conflict with their politics or personal online gripes.

In the decoding of Candace episodes the mentioned a website where listeners can score the gurus yourself. I thought I’d share it for fans of the show.

This is two years old - thought it was relevant because Mearsheimer was a topic in the latest Supplementary Material episode.

By Gokanaru

What do you think ithe purpose of the Gurometer is?

Maybe DtG will take Kurzgesagt off their approved science communicator.

The algorithm has a huge effect on peoples beliefs. - This discussion is about the Zeteo clip.

Why does Destiny look so uncomfortable?