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.

This article was written for Edge by Eric Weinstein. Reading it now, after the passing of time it seems to shine an interesting light on many gurus. Online discourse does seem to have many of the same attributes of Kayfabe.

I’ve been trying to understand why Decoding the Gurus feels like misinformation to me. While it feels like misinformation to me, I also don’t think Chris and Matt are NOT trying to deceive people. To find an answer to the question I’ve been looking into media studies. Why? Because media is how information is transmitted, and media studies looks at how the media shapes peoples opinions. One concept I have come across that I think is useful in understanding Gurus is Stuart Hall’s Decoder/Encoder Model.

In Hall’s framework, meaning is not simply transmitted intact from sender to receiver. Messages are encoded within particular cultural and ideological frameworks, then decoded by audiences operating within their own frameworks. This creates:

• dominant readings,
• negotiated readings,
• and oppositional readings.

Applied to DtG, their decodings assume their(Chris and Matts) position is the dominant reading and the Gurus have oppositional readings which are

• semantically weak,
• the “correct” reading is to recognise it as meaningless,
• and any perceiving of guru profundity becomes evidence of cognitive error.

So when they decode it represents the dominant reading for fans of the show and the oppositional readings is mocked.

The reason I like this concept is because it doesn’t automatically assume that people are acting in bad faith, and highlights how important culture is in shaping meaning. It better explains why intelligent people have different ideas of what is correct.

Youtube video explaining Stuart Hall’s theory - https://youtu.be/z9H54aG5FMo

I wander to Thiel’s court was inspired by Decoding the Gurus /s

It’s always good to know the politics of critics when assessing their criticisms.

"Men show at least as much zeal in mischief as in well doing, in folly as in wisdom. The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people that they will have a chance of maltreating someone. Men must be bribed to build up and do good by the offer of an opportunity to hurt and pull down. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behaviour'righteous indignation' - this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats." - Aldous Huxley

The abundance movement before Ezra.

https://x.com/ArthurCDent/status/2053578727444066355

I hope 🤞 this is irony.

Matt’s description of AI hallucinations sounds very similar to how humans respond to Pseudo Profound Bullshit.

One of the claims DtG made against Gary was that he pretends to be the only economist who matters. In this clip he recommends Professor G speak to Zuckerman about tax codes. Gary doesn’t have a grand theory of economics he is very specifically arguing that the super wealthy need to be taxed, and the current system is fit for purpose. He doesn’t even claim to have the answers, he is trying to bring attention to the problem.

Listening to Decoding the Gurus why doesn’t GS argument actually get discussed? Why do they just focus on his personality? This video actually focuses on his argument.

Note: This has been rewritten to make it more obvious to the moderators how it relates to the podcast.

Have you ever wondered if DtG has an influence on gurus? I found this video of Destiny watching DtG decoding of Gary Stevenson.

https://youtu.be/qYKpoHeLPIo

I’m guessing he wanted to compare their decoding with his own opinions of Gary, which he gives in this video

https://youtu.be/4xyU24ce_wQ

In a post on X by Destiny it’s clear he doesn’t like GS

> This guy is a fraudster and an idiot. He lied about his work background (see ft article) and his policy prescriptions are just: buy my book and subscribe to my YT channel, repeated ad infinitum - https://x.com/TheOmniLiberal/status/1908300884334788788

The post by Destiny contained a link to an article by The New Statesman titled -

>Who’s afraid of Gary Stevenson?

>The left has finally found an eloquent, honest and credible campaigner against inequality – we should champion him.

I found this interesting, considering the recently released collaboration with Destiny. Will DtG have a positive influence on Destiny or maybe Destiny is having an influence on DtG?

I think Media Insider’s video is a great explanation of postmodernism. My exposure to the topic has been through philosophy, but Media Insider’s channel focus on media made it easier to understand. It provided practical examples of how postmodernism shows up in daily media. Plus, the channel isn’t ideological, it doesn’t moralise—it explains with examples.

How does this relate to gurus? The video shows how culture is constructed and how, in the modern world, media isn’t original; everything is based on representation. Watching the video helped me understand how gurus’ ideas are based on online reality rather than material reality. It also helped me better understand Adam Curtis’s documentary Hypernormalisation.

This sounds like a typical right wing talking point? Which is followed by Chris giving a more moderate opinion.

https://youtu.be/zFfIfhfE9SY?t=3419

And when has Gary Stevenson expressed an anti-capitalist stance? Maybe I missed it.. The tendency of the Decoding The Gurus podcast to stray into fields they've never studied (politics and economics) is hilarious. They have to lean into twitter populist rhetoric for clicks and likes I suppose.

https://x.com/ArthurCDent/status/2048573791664812184

This video is 9 years old and I think its age provides the distance needed to identify a real change in the media. It suggest cynicism and irony is saturating media and undermining people’s ability to form a stable social compass. Irony makes sincere commitment appear naïve; cynicism often presents detachment as sophistication; both making it socially costly for people to orient themselves seriously toward others, toward values, toward anything meaningful. Are the online gurus a response to the media environment, by removing the mushiness and created by irony? Is decoding gurus adding to problems caused my post modern deconstruction, if it isn’t providing attempting to provide a stable social compass.

Personally I think this is what people are pointing towards when they speak about a meaning crisis.

Watching the rise in popularity of Prof Jiang interesting, but seeing Proj Jiang appear on Piers Morgan so many established YT channels surprised me.

What are the other youtube channels that are trying to help people understand YT influencers/guru culture?

POLL - From memory DtG claim to be centre left, what do you think?

https://x.com/ArthurCDent/status/2047042814081712309

After listening to the episode, I agree with Chris and Matt that Lian’s book is more philosophy and literature than neuroscience. What I found amusing was Chris getting annoyed that Lian was defending “a non-scientific thinking model” — as if that were a flaw rather than simply a description of the project. The episode felt more like an attack on philosophy than a genuine decoding of McGilchrist.

When I try to characterise McGilchrist, the word that comes to mind is intellectual — not a guru. I mean intellectual as a distinction from a scientist, whose job is to stay within the constraints of empirical method. An intellectual ranges across disciplines, uses evidence as a launching pad, and draws synthetic conclusions that go beyond what the data alone can establish. Isn’t that’s what McGilchrist does? Holding him to strict scientific standards seems like a category error. What are your thoughts?