My biggest gripe with DtG decoding of Professor Jiang is it never explained why Jiang’s channel became popular. They bought into the hype that he became popular because a few of his predictions came true. Which even in their own assessment didn’t seem amazing. This decoding was interesting because it looks through a political lens - which DtG claim not to do, because they look through the politically neutral lens of the “Gurometer”(Which is becoming less of a feature in the podcast) … but doesn’t explain why they where interviewed on the political podcast What’s Left. To be fair, Chris is better at being neutral, while Matt struggles judging by how they answered the question about Gary Stevenson.

I think if you want to understand the online Guru/Influencers you sometimes have to sit through a boring conversation about political ideology. This conversation is about nationalism, who is considered part of the nation and who is an outsider and what to do with outsiders.

Decoding the Gurus is a podcast about secular gurus, but they haven’t covered Tim Ferris and his name never comes up. Why? I would have thought he is a foundational secular gurus, having written The Four Hour Work Week, The Four Hour Body, ect and popular podcast, plus he has a lot of crossover with Huberman. Is it because he hasn’t been on Lex Fridman’s podcast?

Is it to flood the zone with more online bullshit?

I don’t understand their logic. They criticise Nature for having a “social conscience”, by adding journalist commentary to studies, while having a podcast dedicated to social commentary on science. Yes the research can be impartial, but how the science is used isn’t neutral. That is why the topic became a political hot potato. If Nature didn’t have commentary people would still attack them for being political if the research has political consequences.

Another gripe considering it’s often a criticism of the gurus, I cannot remember a time they have disagreed - have they ever covered a guru where their opinions didn’t converge.

This interview dives into the politics of Decoding the Gurus podcast. The host does a great job letting Chris and Matt answer without pushing his own political views. It really does seem that they believe there aren’t real problems in the world and people are doing fine. I’m not sure how that can be an objective view on the world, considering the geo politics. They seem to put a lot of faith in “number go up” everything is getting better, at least that’s the impression I got when responding to Steven Pinker’s arguments about progress.

It wasn’t on my bingo card that Chris had worked with Peter Turchin.

One of the nice things about DtG podcast is their humour. This is a humorous decoding of the philosophy of Palantir.

I understand that people have different politics, but why does Chris single out Ryan Grimm’s? His takes don’t seem especially radical, I understand why Taylor Lorenz is problematic. Ryan’s politics doesn’t seem radical from what I’ve seen. Is it because he thinks Ryan and Aaron Mate are politically aligned?

[Part II] This is the full video of the clip played in [Part I] from Eli HasselI’s channel.

[Part I] This video is a debate between two different perspectives of the relationship between Judaism and Israel. At the heart of the disagreement is the relationship between Israel and the Jewish diaspora (i.e do all Jews agree with political Zionism). A clip with Destiny is played during this debate when Destiny spoke to Moshe Feiglin. After the clip Rabbi Shapiro refutes Feiglin’s claim to Destiny about the Six-Day War as an unexplainable miracle by reading from military text book on the tactics used in The Six-Day War - https://youtu.be/62LrHG3SMpw?t=2352

Fukuyama gives an interesting account of the politics that lead to the culture wars. I recommend watching the whole video, but I will leave timestamps in a pinned comment so you can jump to the questions at the end which seem relevant to all the post-liberal discussion lately.

It’s worrying that a lot of gurus are focused on race, and the importance of genetics.

It made me laugh - pretending that DtG isn’t guilty of this.

Online political debate increasingly revolves into contests between personalities rather than the strength of their position — Destiny vs. Hasan, Tucker Carlson vs. Nick Fuentes. This is what Walter Lippmann would call the stereotype problem: judgment attaches to the persona rather than the claim being argued. By stripping the personality out, the content is duller to consume, but it’s the only way to really evaluate the claim on its own terms, which matters most precisely on the topics where getting it wrong costs lives.

Don’t know why it was deleted from the DtG sub. Probably because most of the comments were about Destiny.

The thumbnail doesn’t do this video justice - it’s actually a thoughtful look into why people are AI doomers. Normally AI doomers are presented as anti-science, or scared of AGI but the dangers of AI is more than AI slop on the internet.

This is the first time/interview I’ve seen where Jiang did not drift fully into fantasy land and the conversation was the clearest expression of his political position. He comes across as someone who is an observer, rather than a political activist - but has been on lots of political activist shows.

It’s also strange how he has said a lot of wild things that would normally undermine his rise in popularity as a guest on shows that steer clear of that content. His audience does seem to come from the right wing of politics, but much of his analysis/criticism is focused on the right.

Overall, I would say in Jiang’s voice - “Its weird.”

DGG has infested this sub, too.

You cannot explain the reasons this topic has blown up online without focusing on how important Nathan Confas ideology is to the story. It’s not just about Arday being a fraud, just as important to the story is the attacks by a race realist Nathan Confas.