SIO328: Making Sense of Sensemaking with Aaron Rabinowitz

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:11 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. This is episode 328. I'm Thomas and joining me for the first time in way too long is one Aaron Rabinowitz. How are you doing, Aaron? Oh man, that would be an easy rebrand if I want to jump on this.

0:00:25 Aaron: I'd say it's been a while if we didn't, you know, hadn't spent all, a lot of time together all the time forever on Philosophers in Space, but also at American Atheist Convention and whatnot, so. But

0:00:34 Thomas: I don't know what you're talking about. I've just been here. I have been here, locked in this podcast feed for these listeners.

0:00:38 Aaron: No, you've just been here the whole time. You've been watching Severance, are you just the part of Thomas that is, uh, I'm

0:00:45 Thomas: I haven't I haven', but shoot, I want to don't spoils, no, I guess that's the basic premise, yeah, oh man, I've been hearing about the sense makers, and I don't know what it is. I've reached a point look I often think I'm too online relative to my audience, and so I try to Explain things from that perspective, imagining people who don't know what I'm talking about, you know, and then now I've read, like, with this, whatever the sense making bullshit is, I, that's past me, I've got to go to the next up, you know, like the guru of, oh, online guru, Aaron, explain to me, as I would do to my audience, what the fuck is a sense maker? What is this?

0:00:49 Aaron: Not spoils. Yeah, it's the basic premise, but no spoils else.

0:01:04 Aaron: Uh -huh.

0:01:27 Aaron: Person

0:01:28 Thomas: Should I care about this do I need to, yeah, do I needs to just tell me if I need to care about or if it's good or bad or what is it, huh?

0:01:28 Aaron: Who's way, way too online. Yeah. Okay. So the short answer is it's not the best thing in the world. It's not the worst thing in the world. It could be bad. It could get better. It is a part of things that are generally bad, but it may be the sort of less bad wing of those things. So what is sense-making? There is a sort of classic psychology meaning, and then there is the sort of current internet usage meaning, and they are related but not identical.

So the classic psychology version is the process by which individuals understand what's going on around them, right? Like they make sense of of their world. And that can involve a bunch of different processes of, you know, forming causal explanations, all sorts of stuff like that. It's connected to other things, but it's not necessarily equivalent to things like decision making and meaning making.

It was popularized as a way to move away from an overemphasis on decision making in certain approaches to a sort of more socially oriented broader kind of analysis of of how communities, rather than individuals, understand and then form decisions or beliefs about things. I think would be sort of a sort of quick and dirty way to understand it. Um, it talks about things like, you know, key to sense making is identity, is people interacting in environments, social activity. It's an ongoing process. It involves cues and social things like that in particular. So yeah,

0:02:50 Thomas: I've completely misread this, or are you you saying that's the like benevolent or benign version

0:03:25 Aaron: That's the classic version. Right. And that's that's The thing that like, everybody does and can't live without doing.

0:03:27 Thomas: Okay yeah it just sounds like normal

0:03:31 Aaron: And right, it's like a basic, it is one of the basic things that is studied by psychology. You You know, everybody does it.

0:03:32 Thomas: Life

0:03:39 Aaron: You know, people do it differently in different ways in different groups and stuff like that. And it's an important part of life, like meaning making and all the other things that we do to try to cognize the world around us, try to understand. So that's the original idea. And then you have the online version, which I think the best way to explain this simply. I think folks probably understand that there is things like heterodox communities and the intellectual dark web. So these are communities centered around the idea that quote-unquote mainstream, which generally means left mainstream more than right, media is unreliable and we need a new system of media or infotainment and education, whatever, in order to counteract this.

In order to write the narrative and stuff like that. These folks are part of that sphere. And I think the best way to understand it is if you have on one side the hyper -rationalist version of the heterodox folks, the ones who are like debate bro, no emotions, only pure arguments, no discussion of the sources of those arguments, that kind of thing. These folk are on the other end. They're like the mystics, almost, of this world. So, and a classic example would be Jordan Peterson. Jordan Peterson is, so,

0:03:39 Thomas: Okay yeah, yeah so a classic example

0:05:06 Aaron: You know, in a specific kind of way, right? I don't know if you've checked out Decoding the Gurus, but they do, they're probably the go -to people to listen to to understand the sense -making world primarily.

0:05:07 Thomas: Of a sense maker is someone who doesn't make any fucking sense, that's what you're saying, interesting they make sense of the sense makers, yeah

0:05:22 Aaron: Right, right, to sense -make the sense makers, sensemakers, um, who watches the sensemakers? They, partly because they're original, I don't know, they do a lot of people but, like, they have focused pretty heavily on the Weinsteins and that group who are, um, core to the original sensemaking. So who are the people involved in sensemaking, right? People somewhat know the kind of folks in the IDW, like Sam Harris and stuff. I would say not

0:05:36 Thomas: Yeah that's what I thought, I thought this was just the next name for the IDW, like when my exposure to this term was some but I saw some viral tweet, or maybe I could have been just something you favored it or retweeted, or who knows, but it was like, if I had to pick, you know, my top X number of people for sense making, it would be, and it was, you know, just the fucking who's who of assholes and it was I thought Elon was in that, I thought Elon Musk was in Netlist maybe I'm wrong, yeah Sam Harris yeah and it was just like, okay, so intellectual dork web, you know, centristy kind of stuff, is it is it different than is it distinct from that, or is it just a rebrand of

0:05:52 Aaron: Exactly yeah right yeah yeah and that person is not good, I know exactly the tweet you're talking about, he was and James Lindsey was on there too, yeah, um yeah

0:06:28 Thomas: That, yeah

0:06:29 Aaron: It's it's that with a heavy emphasis on, and, and again, you know, like, there, there are some people, and we'll talk about the people in this community, some, I think there are some folks in this community who are earnest people trying to cope with the existential crises of the current world that we're all living in, and so, like, my desire is not to punch down at those particular people, um, but I also want to sort of be very critical of the way this community has a problem around, like, civility porn and a inability to be critical of certain kinds of ideas. So, like, the most charitable reading of these folks is they want to, you know, in the, like, balancing between seeking truth and shunning error, they feel like the cancel-y culture world that we're living in doesn't allow people to make mistakes. And so there isn't, there's too much of an emphasis on shunning terror, essentially. And so they lean towards the, like, truth-seeking side of that equation.

And these folks in particular, what makes them unique is they do it in a way that focuses on symbolism and meaning, and, like, specifically doing, like, we're going to take this issue, but people are seeing it at this level, and we're gonna abstract it up to this high symbolic level. Again, the Jordan Peterson is the kind of classic model of this.

Another person, the platform that is most commonly associated with this subculture would be Rebel Wisdom, which is run by David Fuller and some other folks, and has been a place where there has been consistent platforming, unfortunately, of people who range from, you know, the Sokol Hoax Squared folks, folks, there's a video of them mostly being promoted. And there's an interesting part in that one that we should talk about because of our love of Jane Lindsay. But there's that one. And then he had folks like Weinstein's on at various points.

0:07:03 Thomas: Like

0:08:28 Aaron: At the same time, I think, I'm curious to see, but he has, David Fuller in particular, has been sort of fairly critical of this area and these group of people, and sometimes specifically, specifically, individuals in a way that somewhat signals, I think, that he's trying to make it a more responsible space. But I think it's very fair to say he's currently continued to have folks on recently who I think are particularly not good in the, like, promoting anti-vaxxer misinformation domain. And he's having conversations with them about, like, how do you analyze the matrix. And I think that's a problem.

0:09:12 Aaron: Again, these guys are really into metaphors. So they spend a lot of time talking about symbolism from movies. And there's also a separate conversation to be had about whether there's good and bad symbolic analysis. I think there are people who are better and worse at doing symbolic analysis, we can debate that as much as But I think, in my opinion, they're not particularly strong on that, which is the thing that they are focusing on. I would point to some specific examples of things like analyzing Lebowski as a hero's journey when it is very explicitly a not hero's journey and is meant to deconstruct the hero's journey, stuff like that.

0:09:10 Thomas: The movie, The Matrix? Uh, I thought

0:09:55 Aaron: So, you know, what we can say is in some ways they're They're not the, like, worst part of this pool of people, especially, I think, because it mostly centered around Rebel Wisdom, and Fuller has had falling outs with a lot of the, like, most conspiratorial of the IDWs, um, and, and so, you know, we'll see what happens in terms of the folks that he's continuing to platform, who again have not had falling out with folks like James Lindsey and make videos with them where they talk about how we need christian based culture that doesn't require vaccines and things, um, yeah, I'm not, I'm totally a video you can look it up not

0:10:37 Thomas: He just the latest quote was that Christianity wasn't like badass enough for him wasn't that yeah, Christianty needs to take a sword and make a shitty video, or what was was it an axe? I don't remember. What is that?

0:10:41 Aaron: Badass enough yep yeah, right Right. So I think what we can say is these folks are more harmless when they just are spending their time doing the like sense making, meaning making. You can say like at its best, it is fairly harmless, freeform poetry. Right. Same thing again, like when you listen to Jordan Peterson. Right, like it's yeah, but in a way that's kind of vaguely pleasant and like maybe helps some people. Like I I don't want to be totally like there's never any it's one of the situations where sometimes they say things

0:11:07 Thomas: Yeah. At its best, it's nonsense that you can ignore, basically.

0:11:17 Thomas: Okay. Oh, Russell Brand. Is Russell Brand a sense maker? Definitely. Okay, I'm getting a sense of it now.

0:11:23 Aaron: Yes uh yeah I don'T KNOW THAT HE'S BEEN ON REBEL WISDOM BUT CERTAINLY I WOULD PUT HIM BECAUSE IT OVERLAPS WITH SORT OF THE LIKE MORE LEFTISH MYSTICAL UM I DON'T KNOW YOU KNOW WOOEY RIGHT LIKE SPIRITUALITY KIND OF STUFF UM IT TIES INTO to that. I would also say it has a specifically somewhat Christian element to it. Like a lot of the symbolic analysis, not all of it, but I think it's partly because of the people involved like Peterson.

0:11:39 Thomas: Yeah. Really?

0:11:56 Thomas: I was going to say, is the kind of thing where the old, you know, comic of Scooby -Doo unmasking any sort of centrist that's like, like both sides are bad is just the right saying that, you know, and therefore, because it's people in the right that they tend to be Christian.

0:11:57 Aaron: And yeah, right.

0:12:11 Aaron: Yeah, I don't think everybody in there is on the right necessarily. I do think they, like all the heterodox communities, are more susceptible to conspiracism coming from the right because they perceive the mainstream as being left. And so, but like, yeah.

0:12:21 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, well, this is okay. So let me tie this all together because Originally I was going to come on here and yell about Elon Musk. And then I saw here's the story of this episode kind of, and then I saw Elon Musk, or because of this like fucking meme he shared, this comic he shared, which is ridiculous. And the fact that this This idiot, this guy with just a total amateur understanding of free speech and politics and all these issues is now going to own, possibly, listen to opening arguments, but might own this entire media apparatus, this entire, you know, social media company in Twitter. Her. And just the pure, I don't even know what the word for it. It's just like the way we are subject to these idiot whims of billionaires.

0:12:31 Aaron: Okay. Right.

0:13:15 Thomas: There's something about this existence that is just begging to be satirized in a way. It is amazing how we are just at the whims of these billionaires, and also I saw that you did some delightful editing of that cartoon, I think, right, or you shared it, I wasn't sure if

0:13:35 Aaron: Tweaking. I, you know, evolve the meme, which is apparently, you know how that works.

0:13:37 Thomas: Yep yep and also there was some sense-making tied into that, with that guy I saw that said Elon Musk was a sense maker, and I'm, and basically the overall theme I'm gathering from a lot of this is, is you already kind of said it, but I'm just getting the sense of like this feeling that the mainstream whatever, like whatever the, not the, the common conception of knowledge is, that is usually read as what the left, people on the left, think, because all these institutions miraculously are dominated by people on the left for reasons we can get into, you know, universities, uh, places where science is done, you know, like, isn't it weird that they're all dominated by people on the left? Um, and then you think about a little more and you're like, well, not really, because the alternative is people don't believe in science and don't believe in school, you, you know, like, who want to, so like, it's not a mystery that they're, they're dominated by people on the left, but it's, it's this, I'm getting this feeling that the biggest, there's two major forces going on in our, in our politics.

There's a million of them, but like one I'm getting, that that's related to this, is this anti, A, it's an anti -wokeness, like everything, fucking everybody now, including the whole center, it feels like, is just taken away, way, just overwhelmed, just constantly, um, being subject to this anti-woke agenda all the time, they're just, that it's like their number one concern.

And it's, it blows my mind that this culture war, this, the basically fake culture war made up by the right by blasting videos, going back, since you and I were, you know, barely even into this whole thing, like going back to even my early day, like I started in 2010 podcasting, and shortly after that, you know, not too long after that, is when these videos start propping up and getting circulated by everybody.

If wouldn't, you know, what the college kids are doing this, the college kids are yelling about this, they're yelling about that. And just this constant barrage of that, I think has just given way to this monster, just built this monster, in the form of like, well, the woke left just saw, you know, obviously they're out of control. They're out of control. And that has led to so many things like this, where the Elon Musk just assumes, assumes that

0:14:11 Aaron: Right? Yeah. Yeah.

0:15:52 Thomas: He just knows better about free speech and politics just by virtue of not being quote-unquote woke, you know, like, like Sam Harris led into a lot of this too, fed into this too which is, you know, well, these institutions have been captured by the woke left, and that allows you to believe really stupid things, like if you believe that major institutions like the CDC, you know, are captured by the woke left, then you can believe that you're the one true sense maker or whatever, and, and nobody else knows anything, you know, it's amazing, yeah.

0:16:03 Aaron: Oh, yeah? Yeah? Yeah, so this is the conspiracism problem, right, sense making, like heterodox views, because it begins from that place of distrust. And it's hard, because there's not, there's no criticism to be had of the mainstream media, right, we can always go through the litany of sins by which they have undermined their own authority, on top of, you know, the systemic attack on them by places like Fox News, which are also mainstream media, but, but like, you know, there is a mindset that folks can get into.

I've talked about this a lot when I do conspiracy stuff, where once you start to feel like there is someone who's suppressing information, you can start to believe pretty much everything. That's a premise on which to build any kind of concern. And I do think that the sensemaking folks are sort of susceptible to that kind of spiral, and that Elon is also susceptible to it. Now, I also think there's an interestingly deeper cause here, I think, going on, that I've been trying to do work on recently. I've actually been talking to Lindsay Osterman about this. We'll probably do some episodes about it later on with y'all.

But I think the reason that we're seeing a lot of this happening is because everybody's really miserable, and I think they're particularly miserable about meritocracy, and they don't know it, basically. And there's a lot of good arguments by this in like Meritocracy Trap and Tyranny of Merit, where basically what they're, what they say is, you know, a lot of people are miserable because they think that they're living in a fair system.

Poor white people in particular think they're moving in a just system, but they're not succeeding. And so they think they have shame. They feel guilt economically, but the can't blame it on the system by saying that the system is unjust because of,

0:16:31 Thomas: Yeah yeah totally

0:18:14 Aaron: You You know, well, so what happens is they end up sublimating that, and I think it comes back out as populism, as racial animus, and as anti -elitism. But, like, there's a weird problem with their anti - elitism where they're like, you can't trust the elites except Elon Musk, right? Like, he's elite enough that, like, you can trust him or something, thing. They don't see that the system that they hate is also the one creating these folks who they tend to obsess over and prop up. Now, the other side of this wheel is the horror that is is Elon Musk's ability at sense making. He's not good at any of this, he's just lucky in other ways.

But for example, he has been sharing out a bunch of trash from, like, the worst ends, the like, badder ends of the spectrum of the people that we're talking about here, I would say, right?

So I don't think, you know, David Fuller is perfect, I have many criticisms of stuff he's done, and I hope that he's going to sort of put his money where his mouth is in terms of the like stuff he's been saying about, like, his area of things needing to grow the fuck up.

But I'm really worried about the fact that Elon Musk is sharing out stuff that is like Joe Rogan mixed with Tim Pool, and is like responding to Steven Crowder's talk about misinformation governance boards, and Ben Shapiro, and like Mike Cernovich, like, he's responding to people like Mike fucking Cernovich.

0:18:14 Thomas: Because that's what the woke lef is yelling about yeah yeah

0:19:46 Aaron: So he's deep into the bad end of the spectrum

0:19:46 Thomas: Oh that's right, yeah he retweeted like oh, this doesn't look good about, yeah was that what you're talking about, oh my god, yeah

0:19:50 Aaron: Yeah yeah yeah but a Twitter lawyer, uh, when general counsel for the FBI personally arranged a meeting with the Fvi and Michael Sussman, and involve some fabricated evidence or something like that. So the people are putting these things forward to try to position, I think, Elon to be more open to right-wing conspiracism, and less open to tamping down on that kind of stuff, which could mean a return of, like, widespread QAnon conspiracy, or other kinds of things. I think, you know, the chance of Trump coming back or something is fairly significant. So, yeah, that's, that's where sort of the situation is.

0:20:36 Thomas: It's I I interesting about the meritocracy part of it, I, I think I would probably need to learn more about that, because I sure

0:20:43 Aaron: Yeah, obviously, I have to explain moral luck a bunch and unpack all of it. Right. But yeah.

0:20:45 Thomas: We can, yeah we can, we can talk about that, leave that for another time, as where I'm sitting right now, I, I tend to believe it's, it's far more about masculinity and this anti-woke, you know, sort of moral panic because it's this feeling that the masculinity part, I think, is big because people like Joe Rogan, people like Elon Musk. And I think the sort of, I don't know if macho is the right word, but the sort OF billionaire Doesn't need to give a fuck about anybody's views. Views that, that I think that is a part of that masculinity is a part of their

0:20:51 Aaron: Mm hmm. Mm hmm, yeah. There's something to that for sure. Mm -hmm. Mm hm. Uh

0:21:27 Thomas: View of masculinity. James Lindsey is this too, like, not like just trying to show this machismo online of manspreading and not needing to care about what anybody else thinks, and those are very terrible qualities in my opinion, and they lead to stuff like this, they lead, if you feel like you don't need to give a shit about what anyone else thinks, I think you should give some amount of of shit about what other people think. Yeah.

0:21:28 Aaron: -huh. Yeah. Yeah.

0:21:45 Aaron: Well, yeah. So I agree with you. And I also think it's a little complicated. So I would argue that the masculinity stuff sits much better with the rationalist end of the heterodox world than the sensemaking end. And you can, oh

0:22:04 Thomas: I think I've moved on from the sense-making portion, but yeah, okay.

0:22:06 Aaron: Yeah, but yeah, I want to talk some more about the sense-making because I think it is interesting to understand why there is tension within these communities and conflict, besides the fact that some of them are raging narcissists who like have meltdowns. Um, in the sense-making world, I would say there's more of a premium put on not just civility but vulnerability, and that, like, the use of the symbolic improv poetry event, the sorts of responses is, um, connected to it, is connected to a kind of masculinity that is trying, trying to get back in touch with, I think, a sense of alienated masculinity.

And again, I'll use Jordan Peterson as the textbook example here, right? Peterson does some of the, like, weird, I'll fight you bro, shit sometimes on Twitter and stuff. He absolutely has that to himself. And it sits in a weird tension with his, like. Weepy, you know. I see the face of God in nature stuff. You know. And it's, I would say, to varying degrees, you see versions of that tension in sensemaking folks, but I think a lot of them lean a little bit more even further towards the, like, we're just about talking about symbols and meaning and not about punching, you know, Antifa or something, right?

0:22:09 Thomas: Yeah oh okay, yeah, I don't know anything about that, that's yeah, I guess I was back more toward this kind of centristy anti -woke, uh, part, you know, because I, and I think the, the Jordan Peterson thing is interesting because I've noticed that same thing as well. Another thing is you get somebody like Tucker Carlson trying to be the poster boy for like masculinity, and you're like, really?

0:23:30 Aaron: Yeah. Yeah. Mm -hmm. Sure, right.

0:23:50 Thomas: You're gonna be okay for the classic, like, macho masculine, you're going to, you're going to defend, you're to be okay, yeah, sure, you're the prime example of that, you know, because, and and I think that's somewhat necessary because it, I think the people, the the men who perhaps might be more susceptible to this kind of thing, are men who fall short of that and like, like, you know, for whatever reason, there's a weird psychological dynamic there. Like, uh, you Know, Chris, uh... Hemsworth is not, like, out there posting Joe Rogan shit and, you know, defending the whatever of man, because he's just that, like... You know, he's just a hunk of a man or something. I don't know. That's just, uh… Me speculating, but...

0:24:11 Aaron: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, and right.

0:24:31 Aaron: Well, I do think you're onto the sense in why Joe Rogan is particularly successful in this area. Like, I think Joe Rogin plays the character plausibly compared to the other people that we've been talking about. Like if you put Joe Rogon next to James Lindsay and have them both try to perform masculinity, Joe Rogans actually not terrible at it, right? Right. He has a martial arts background that isn't sort of really silly looking.

0:24:58 Thomas: Yeah, he… I mean, he is the best MMA commentator. He's the best UFC commentator ever, in my opinion. I… If he only did that, I would be a Joe Rogin fan.

0:24:59 Aaron: Right. Sure. And there's also the like smoking, eating meat, all that kind of stuff. And so, like, I think he's successful and because he pulls in a lot of people and not just like people who don't live up to that, but also people who think they do live up to it and see him as kind of their their guru for living that kind kind of lifestyle so I do think there is a center of that in the world in the same world that is sort of a little far you know, um

0:25:08 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Let me clarify. I think I maybe just had a thought of what I was meaning. Okay. Think what I see going on in some part of this is there are men, I think, and not just men, men, but often men who want to bring back or to maintain classic gender bullshit, classic gender roles, because Those classic gender roles give them a bunch of unearned things, a bunch of unearthed deference, a punch of the ability to just like not give a shit, you know, like it's let's, let's be real. If we were teleported back to the fifties and, and we were just selfishly choosing like, like, well, okay, who do you want to be in a society in the fifties? You want to be a white dude.

Like that's just, you know, like if you were just selfishly choosing who is getting the best in this society, like who's got the most unearned privileges, it's going to be a White dude in the 50s.

And I think a lot of like Jordan Peterson, like Tucker Carlson, they are desperately clinging to these old timey or even, and Christian is part of it too, like gender roles because of those benefits and I tend to see and I think a big part of that masculinity that those people revere is like Joe Rogan with the masking, you know, like Joel Rogan, have you seen that Joel Rogan and Bill Burr I think it was, you know, clip that made the rounds, I

0:25:52 Aaron: Right. Oh.

0:26:54 Thomas: Don't know, it's probably been a year by now year two about the masking and and it's just like he's, you could see that look that Joe Rogan is giving. If you're a dude and you've been a part of these kind of dudes trying to out-dude you or to be, you know what I mean? And that sneer of, oh, you're going to wear a mask, you little whatever, so-and-so, like that kind of attitude. And when I saw that, I just thought like, what is that? It's this desire to not have to do anything for another person. And isn't that a huge indictment on the long history of like maleness, you know, it's this, I think that's what those people like about it, I think they like, if I'm just again pop psychologizing them in my own personal opinion, I think there's a big appeal for shitty men to be a part of the system and to um uphold the system of like, yeah, no, I don't have to give a fuck about what people say, I get to not do things for other people, it's great, it's an awesome system, them, high benefit of

0:26:54 Aaron: I think I did yeah Yeah, I do think there's some of that, I think there's other things connected there as well on the masculine side, and we also want to be clear, not everyone in these communities is necessarily necessarily a guy, there are it's like a 60-40 split or something according to um Rebel Wisdom folks, well so what I mean is like for their uh yeah for their um subscription service stuff, um it was more I think male, probably because of folks like Peterson initially, I don't, I think they're trying to diversify on that front, sure

0:28:06 Thomas: Course yeah so in what move now, what specifically are we talking about here in the sense makers ah I I I'm very skeptical of that claim honestly, that it's 60-40 yeah

0:28:32 Aaron: I understand, I just wanted to I just want to put that on the table as what they will, what they would say is their situation. Now why is it attracting men? I think there are various reasons, I think some of them are, so there's like one guy who's been involved with this stuff named um Jonathan Pagua or something like that, he's basically James Lindsey crossed with Jordan Peterson, um, he is anti-vax, anti-woke, Christian symbolism analysis and metaphor and stuff, very much sort of in that vein. And he'll talk very softly, but I think if you press him, what you're getting is a kind of white Christian nationalism or white Christian anarchist tribalism that allows for the pursuit of traditional gender roles or something like that. I don't know if that's exactly what he wants, because again, part of the challenge with these folks is they tend to stay in the symbolic level and not come back down to applied principles

0:28:34 Thomas: Sure oh my god yeah or yeah they're always being satirical or not, or you know, it's hard to know with some of these things

0:29:33 Aaron: Right and they don't like to have arguments a lot of the time, it's hard to, they're very into the idea of hard conversations, and I know it's a cliche, but like not all of them, but some of them um are not interested in having conversations with people who they think of as being in bad faith, which means people who will argue with them more severely than they're used used to, I think.

0:29:36 Thomas: Yeah well the masculinity thing for me was like kind of a tie it wasn't meant to be so for this conversation I again, I the the sense makers part of it, I I take your word for it, I don't know that community as much, and I and I I see what you're saying that the mystical side of it, I think that is a different thing, but I think it bleeds in, the masculinity is another um I think driving force in attracting people to this anti-woke uh ideology, you know, because okay good

0:29:56 Aaron: So yeah. Uh -huh. Uh huh. Right. Well, yeah, for sure. And I was going to add to that. I wanted to say, because I think the other parts of the masculinity side of it are things like anti -safetyism. You get this from folks like Ruben, or probably Ruben too, but there's a a civil um civility porn version of this where it's like anti-safetyism about speech and debate and stuff, and then there's like the more beefed up version of that, which is the no masks, you know, stop coddling people, everything's fine, you're, you're freaking everybody out kind of thing, right, and then they're still, like the highest level version is that I'm not taking vaccines, I'm taking ivermectin, and like you know, right

0:30:25 Thomas: Yeah why ivermectin then I don't get it, that's

0:31:03 Aaron: Why not just brazen it out with a hot shower

0:31:03 Thomas: Funny yeah I know if wait you're you're so tough yeah exactly like what does the ivermectin not, why are you implying that it doesn't work then, that you know it doesn't work

0:31:06 Aaron: Yeah Yeah. And that, again, is an intersection of the conspiratorial, conspirituality, alternative health and medicine stuff where it's like, oh, conspicuality is actually a podcast. They're a good group, they often talk about the way that like left-wing alternative medicine stuff is a precursor for people into various forms of conspiracism, and can often bring people around to right-wing conspiracists. I'm sure they might frame it slightly differently. So for example, the Weinsteins are not on the right, I would say. They have some weird progressive views for sure, but like they're lefty conspiracy theorists, you

0:31:12 Thomas: Oh conspirituality I don't think I've heard that one, that's good oh okay yeah I bet, right

0:31:58 Aaron: Know. They they're they're yeah and of course these binaries are complicated, but yeah I think I think it would be fair to say

0:31:59 Thomas: Well okay here's where I sorry this is go ahead yes Yes. That's the point I'm going to make is it doesn't exist anymore. The main political divide isn't what we think of it anymore. It is essentially anti-woke versus people who are not anti -wolf. Like, honestly, I know I'm casting everything through that frame, but that's because all our politics is actually that now. Like if you look at any, there's

0:32:05 Aaron: Right Right. Because There was a there was an active realignment towards that for sure

0:32:25 Thomas: A realignment and there's a realization on the right that they can just, that stuff works for them. So, you know, that's that's all they're doing now. And the Florida don't say gay bills, the, you know, like there is some level of right-wing politics in the old timey sense. They still want to ban abortion everywhere. That's, that's still tried and true. Like, yeah.

0:32:35 Aaron: Right right but there's all there's no positive principle or goals beyond yeah, stopping wokeness.

0:32:46 Thomas: And so if you are, if you ask the Weinsteins, if they want, you know, okay, are you okay with them banning abortion? I'm sure they would say no. And that would be like one issue maybe where they might be not on the right, but everything else, like I I laugh at how Dave Rubin used to do this, you know, I'm not, oh I'm a big, yeah, right wing, I am pro gay marriage and pro uh legalizing weed, and that was like the two things they would say, as though that has any fucking relevance to like the main political divide now, and I'm tired of people trying to get away with that blurring of lines, like if you are firmly pounding on anti-woke crap all day every day, you are on the right, you are helping the right right, ban abortion.

I would say I don't really care about what the Weinstein, this isn't directed at you per se, it's just something that's been on my mind. I don'T much care if the Weinsteins think they're on the left or the center or whatever. What they are doing, what anybody is doing when they're hammering on anti-woke talking points all the time is enabling the right to do stuff like ban abortion, to overturn Roe, to do all this horrible shit.

0:33:02 Aaron: Right. Yeah, I don't think you're wrong. And I think the challenge with these communities is they will often have, you know, this, you see this for everything, right, where they have the kind of a portion of their content, which is not like a bad talking about the matrix and stuff like that. Right. And, you know, if that was all it was, it wouldn't be a big deal. Right, but it's then it's that plus platforming people who are conspiracy theorists, plus promoting sort of mild versions of anti, you know, mainstream media conspiracy theories. And that that makes, you know, a dangerous place for people to then slide into the more James Lindsay kind of world, even if, you know, there's a there's a funny, really funny fucking story, like I said, where they did this episode with Lindsay Pluckrose and Boghossian about the, you know, the Sokol hoax stuff.

0:34:51 Thomas: Speaking of people clinging to masculinity and failing, and no, sorry, and

0:34:56 Aaron: Yeah, no, for sure. And they and they did this video and I would argue there was no pushback on the content side, right? There was no you're wrong about wokeness or mainstream media for the most part. It was very supportive of all that. But towards the end, this was on Rebel Wisdom.

0:35:10 Thomas: Sorry, what what was this on, who had these people okay

0:35:14 Aaron: This was, yeah, David Fuller did this one. And, you know, this was a couple years ago now, I guess, at this point, when the whole thing was revealed, basically. And and towards the end of it, he is pushing on James Lindsay a little bit about decorum online, essentially that like, you know, you're the you know um you're the Impossible Conversations guy, why do you act this way on Twitter? And like, giving him a little bit of pushback there.

0:35:14 Thomas: Gotcha yeah good luck with that even the thing that I tweeted at him and goes in for like two years straight, every time they would do this, yeah yeah

0:35:46 Aaron: Yeah so he asked him that, you know, I would argue very nicely, right? Like very generously, and you, you know, Lindsay gave his standard, "It's Twitter, it's not real life, I do whatever I want" kind of response. And then afterwards, publicly cut off contact, like disavowed Rebel Wisdom. So like, again, this is not to say, you know, amazing job for holding their feet to the fire, because I don't think that's what actually happened. It's more evidence of like the level of civility porn born demanded in these communities is such that you can be 100% on board with someone's concept, but because you don't like the way that they, you know, say your mom to everyone on Twitter, like, that's enough. That's enough to break the bond of community. And I think that's indicative

0:35:51 Thomas: Sure yeah well yeah

0:36:37 Aaron: Of sort of very fragile community in that way.

0:36:39 Thomas: Lindsey is, I think, I don't know about, I'm trying to come up with a word, James Lindsay is pretty singular. I think Lindsay is Trump-esque. He's either doing an incredible impression of Trump or he's that way because he can just tolerate zero disagreement. Like he cannot handle any disagreement with him on any level. You want to butt in? Go ahead.

0:36:46 Aaron: Uh -huh. Yes and no. Right. Well, no, no. I hear hear what you're saying. And at the same time, I do think it's important to note that he's not an outlier in this area, right? I think to highlight that my concern that I think these folks are at a higher degree of susceptibility here, because they want to understand things at meta levels and like galaxy brain take levels, they are at higher risk, I think, to kind of malignant narcissists who are in that kind of Peterson, Weinstein, you know, way of understanding things and they get sort of sucked in, I think, at a personal level to some extent and it's a challenge to like then get yourself back out when those folks really heavily spiral and in the meantime you've promoted their content for a while in a way that gives the impression that these are, you know, reasonable sense makers, so that's

0:37:32 Thomas: Yeah. Well, I think that should be assigned to these sensemakers. Like that interaction you're talking about should be assigned to the sense makers that these people like James Lindsay are taking advantage of them. Like they're taking advantage of this civility for their purposes.

0:37:58 Aaron: Yeah. Right. The Civility porn. Yeah.

0:38:13 Thomas: Yes. And then the minute it's slightly, you know, challenged at all, they're done with it.

0:38:13 Aaron: But also I think, yeah. Yeah, and I also think at an epistemic level it's indicative of being, you should be concerned that your epistemology is lagging. If, like, if you're not catching on with folks like that fast enough, there's, it's not just, I think oh you were friends with this person and they were different in person and something like that. I do think it's Also, the focus on too high a level and not enough applied and not enough critical analysis of the arguments. It's a lot of yes anding, you know, that goes around in these communities. And I think that that makes it like it makes it a sort of breeding ground for varying levels of misinformation.

0:38:58 Thomas: I know I keep bringing it back to my own hobby horse, but I do think it's a yes and with their community. You know, like if they, if there's somebody, I think the important thing that matters to a lot of these characters, characters, um, and again, I may be more talking about this kind of IDW crowd than the sense-making crowd, is, are you with me on this key issue, in that we hate the same people?

0:39:19 Thomas: If you are, I can, yes and you, if not, we're enemies. And that seems to be a lot of what I witness. But I do think that James Lindsey is actually pretty, I think he is an outlier in a, a lot of ways, not in not in every way

0:39:00 Aaron: Mm hmm. Mm hmm, mm hmm, yeah, yeah.

0:39:32 Aaron: Yeah, I think he's I think he's the worst of the worst, right?

0:39:33 Thomas: Yeah I think he's gotten, I think he's genuinely, could be having, like, some sort of mental breakdown or something, like, he, he I saw a video of him with a debate with the Destiny or something, did you see that one? He just cannot even handle any yeah he cannot, he's gotten to the point, he's built up his weird conspiracy world so much, he's got so much tinfoil over everything, and, and written on the tinfoils fascism and Marxism and what are those fucking buzzwords that he thinks everything is, that the minute anyone tries to say, even if they like agree with him on a lot of stuff, they try to say anything of, like, well, okay, but you put tinfoil with fascism on it over this thing, like, that's not right, he cannot fucking handle it, because the whole tinfoI, you know, house of tinfoil cards will just come crumbling down. And he

0:39:39 Aaron: Mm hmm. Right. Yes. Yeah. And he's just falling apart. Yeah. Right. Right.

0:40:23 Aaron: Right.

0:40:23 Thomas: Is unable to even tolerate any sort of dissent in his weird conspiracist, you know, view. And I do think that there are other kinds of people that are doing the same thing he's doing, but not in that way. You know, like there are people who are more cynically doing it. There are people Who, you Know, he's, he is, he Is unique, I think, man.

0:40:32 Aaron: Mm hmm, mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah, I think he's unique also in the way that he clearly like fully absorbed all of the like Michael O'Fallon white Christian nationalism stuff. And like it just took him over in a way that other people like Jordan Peterson, I think, was always sort of in the same weird conservative symbolism space. And he just like did that, but at scale and with like increasingly degrading mental state. You know what I mean, though?

0:41:14 Thomas: You know what's another? Yeah, totally. Totally. You know, I'm realizing another kind of, and I think this does tie into the masculinity thing. Another reason why, and these are, again, I am glad we are doing this kind of conversation. This is like a lot of things have been floating around in my head and I have not had a place to put them. I think another thing that happened all through the, I do not know, 2010s roughly, roughly, is a lot of these narcissistic types or people who are, you know, tend to be men who like being at the head of every conversation and cannot...

0:41:15 Aaron: Yeah. Mm hmm. Mm hm.

0:41:48 Thomas: James Lindsay, in all my dealings with him, could never even feign the notion that someone could be telling him something he didn't know or could be could could be coming from a perspective that he can't and so when this like, you know, when social justice see stuff started building up more and more online and a lot of the you know, a lot the message of that was hey, white dudes, like maybe you can't, don't lead every conversation, like you know, you can lead conversations but don't leave every single one, like here's some things where you shouldn't be the leader of the conversation. And there are were people like James Lindsay and Peter Boghossian who

0:41:56 Aaron: Mm hum. Yeah. Yeah, right. For sure.

0:42:19 Aaron: Mm-hmm. Uh

0:42:30 Thomas: Could not fucking handle that whatsoever and like took it so personally that it drove them over to this anti-woke side hard. And I think that's just another like commonality. This is not a 100% causal, you know, whatever, but like it's another kind of force that has led certain types of people to these IDW centristy type um stances that has now just turned anti-woke full-time and it's a fucking hellscape that's ruining our politics, I think, but yeah

0:42:30 Aaron: -huh. Right. Mm -hm. Right? Yeah, and let me say a little bit about why, even though I agree that Lindsay is a particularly bad case, I also feel the need to, like, qualify that as because I think there's a world now where a couple of these folks have distanced themselves from Lindsay as, like—well, clearly not doing that, right? He's bad. We're separate from that now. Now. But the line between them and Lindsay is still tiny, right? So, for example, James Lindsay and a guy named Benjamin Boyce, for the very, very online will recognize that name, for others. He's another in the sense -making heterodox area, also does weird symbolic analysis stuff and is really hard to try to pin down to have a conversation.

He and the guy Jonathan and Pagawa, who I was talking about before, who's a Canadian peterson lindsey hybrid, had a like multi -hour conversation that I did a way to in -depth breakdown of online where it was a mix of, you know, the two of them pulling James Lindsay towards admitting that like Christianity has an essential feature that we need for fighting off the wokeness while also bonding over how neither either Pagawa nor Lindsay are vaccinated and like how it's good to resist the tyranny of, of, you know,

0:43:23 Thomas: Yeah right

0:44:26 Aaron: Trudeau and shit like that. And then like, but Pagaw is on Rebel Wisdom a lot recently. He's done a lot of episodes where they talk about, like I've said, you know, the Matrix and Lebowski and stuff like that, but also, you know, other kinds of symbolic analysis that I think has political import, even if they don't lay it out as fully. And I just think it's not good to be like, oh, well, I'm no longer working with James Lindsay, but I'm working with this clone of him that also is an anti -vaxxer and a conspiracy theorist, but hasn't been outed as such yet. So it's Not a Big Deal.

0:44:56 Thomas: Oh totally yeah, I I didn't, I don't think I meant to say or said that he's singularly harmful, yeah it's it's more personal sure, yeah, it's more, it's more personality thing, I think, where he he will, he will spin further and further out, he can't not like he, there is no limiting factor on James Lindsey, none like he will keep going and keep going until God knows what, I don't know what he'll be, Alex Jones somewhere he already is, like he, he will just keep going, keep going because he can't, he has no governing mechanism whatsoever, he has no sense in which someone could tell him a thing that he doesn't know because

0:45:00 Aaron: Yeah. Mm -hmm. Oh, no, I just was trying to explain my, yeah. Uh -huh. Right. Mm -hm.

0:45:37 Aaron: Right.

0:45:37 Thomas: He's so fucking full of himself and in that way I

0:45:39 Aaron: Except for Michael O 'Fallon, apparently. Apparently Michael O 'Fallon can tell him a bunch of things that he doesn't know and he can pretend that he's.

0:45:44 Thomas: I don't think so, I think, I think from his perspective he already knew all that. And he's just found an ally who will give him money for his, you know, like help him pay for his things. I don't know. I could be wrong, but that's my, yeah.

0:45:54 Aaron: I mean, he talks about how O'Fallon gave him Marcuse to read. But, like, I agree with you that, like for the vast majority, I think he just plays as unwilling to acknowledge that anyone else might have a correct, different perspective.

0:46:07 Thomas: God, I'm just blown away by this video. I saw that debate. Like, it's just, we'll see where that goes, but yes, no, totally point taken that it's, there are plenty of people who are indeed, they might be more harmful because they don't look so obviously fucking nuts, you Know, like being able to, right.

0:46:11 Aaron: Yeah. Right. It's the Trump -DeSantis distinction, right?

0:46:24 Thomas: Right. Yeah. Being able to be like covertly horrible is more of a superpower for evil. I think that's certainly true. Yeah, while we're getting toward the end of our hour here, I had all this Elon Musk stuff saved up like we didn't get really get to. But like, for example, he is tweeting stuff like, again, 11 hours ago, "The far left hates everyone, themselves included." Included and then and then he tags on I'm no fan of the far right either, but let's have, let's have less hate, more love. Like, unbelievable.

And going along, we didn't describe what that comic was, and I think it's important for people who haven't seen it, you know, it's the, it's the, you know, the year is 2008, and it's a, like, a, what would you call it, a line of whatever, politics, like the left is yeah, whatever it is, yeah, left, right, kind of thing, uh, sort of of a spectrum type thing. And he's a, there's fellow liberal on the left, and it says, "Me, that's center left," and then right is conservative. And then this comic is the, the "My Fellow Liberal?" Question mark in 2012, like, the the leftist is running as far to the left as possible. And then, wouldn't you know it, by 2021 the conservative is in the same place, and

0:46:28 Aaron: Mm -hmm. Yep.

0:46:51 Aaron: Yep. And then he followed up with the right is also bad. Yeah. Yeah. Well done.

0:47:05 Aaron: Oh, right.

0:47:14 Aaron: Chronology. Right. The left, right, yeah, right Mm -hmm.

0:47:43 Thomas: He is in this, and Elon, we take it to be Elon, the the main character of this, you know, comic, is in the same place, but now that's become the center left because the woke progressive is so far to the left that he's shouting, yeah, shouting big at everybody, which is just, it's so hilariously wrong that I can't cope with somebody like Elon Musk believing this.

0:47:56 Aaron: Pulled everybody really far left, yep Yep.

0:48:07 Thomas: Like I cannot cope with someone having that amount of resources and And obviously some intelligence, like he's obviously a smart guy in many ways. I don't think he's a complete idiot. I think he got blind spots. And when you're a billionaire, I think you fall prey to that, like, everything I do is right kind of disease, you know? And for anybody short of a Fox News viewer to believe that this comic accurately represents anything is amazing. I mean, there's been so many good remixes of these comics, which yours was

0:48:07 Aaron: Mm -hm. Mmh.

0:48:25 Aaron: Right, for sure Mm

0:48:41 Thomas: One of them too. I'm sure we could talk about where like somebody did followed it up with, Oh, weird. Because, you know, 2008, uh, was Joe Biden was vice president, 2022, Joe Biden is president. And then like the difference was, you Know, Ron or, uh. It wasn't Romney. It was, uh You know, what's his name? Who died? Cheney. No, sorry. Not CheneY. Um, you Now, Arizona, a fucking, uh

0:48:41 Aaron: -huh. Uh -huh Bush, Cheney, Trump, or something like that. McCain, yeah

0:49:03 Thomas: Um, no, uh you know uh, McCain. So it was at the 2008 because McCain was the candidate. It. And then in 2022, it just had a picture of the gallows that said, hang Mike Pence. It's like, that's what's happened to the right in that time. You've gone from, you know, you've gone for McCain to a gallows. That says, hang, Mike Pence and the left, at least in power has gone from. You know, uh, Biden to Biden, like honestly, It's, it's the fact that anybody could, could post this with a straight face. It's unbelievable. Oh,

0:49:08 Aaron: Uh -uh. Right Right. Right Right. Yeah. And I'd swapped it out. Right. It was conservatives and then Quillet and then QAnon. For folks who aren't familiar, the person who wrote this one is Colin Wright, one of the lead editors on Quillette, who also has been like dipping his toe in the queer cult, you know, queer moral panic groomery stuff without saying he's like he does that. I won't say the word groomer, but I do think they're being indoctrinated into gender ideology. And he posted a thing about how the Trevor Project is suspect because they have a mechanism by which, you know, people who are talking to a counselor can immediately delete their history so their abusive parents can't find it. And he's pointing that out as like this is suspicious and harmful and you shouldn't have this kind of option. Um, so I think it is fair to say that like there is a portion of this community that was just complete, like zero immune system when it came to like the spread of QAnon and other kinds of moral panic stuff themselves.

0:49:57 Thomas: Great. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and and it goes along with Elon Musk's, you know, this comic and this thing, I love far left hates everyone, themselves included, and then an hour later realizing that you also should post something about the far right because you're doing this both sidesy thing. But like, the it's so funny, like in the worst way, it's depressing, but it's also funny that you, you could be sitting here in 2022, 2022, and think, man, you know, who really hates everybody is the far left. Not the side that did Charlottesville, not the side, you Know, like not the site that is banning, you Know, gay teachers from being able to mention their partners, not The side that is Banning abortions.

No, it's the far Left. They hate everybody, but I'm no fan of the far right either. It's It's just, it just really tips your hand as to where you're, like, dialed. He has no specifics about what the far right is doing. It's juste that the far left hates everybody, including themselves. And his naive view of free speech, which is, well, you know, among other things, well, if the 10% % of the far, whatever he says, the furthest 10% % of the left and the furthers 10% % of the right, if they both hate you, then that's where you want to be. And

0:51:04 Aaron: Most and yeah, right.

0:51:23 Aaron: Right.

0:51:51 Aaron: Several

0:51:51 Thomas: Like, how many fallacies is that? You're the philosopher, like there's like several hundred fallacies.

0:51:55 Aaron: It's quite a few it's

0:51:57 Thomas: You know, yeah.

0:51:58 Aaron: A whole, is a whole list of fallacies, right? I think it's worth talking about the "themselves included" part there to bring it back to our heterodox folks. Jokes like that's, that to me rings of a Jordan Peterson talking point. That's very much in the vein of the, like, the reason the left are so angry is because they hate God for the crime of existing kind of thing, yeah.

0:52:11 Thomas: Oh, Yeah, even my atheist dad thought that like he bought into that Fox News because it's a very, it's an idea that's not real, it's critical component to the right's ideology because it is the only explanation in their eyes for why the left does all this obviously insane crap that they, you know, that's not real, that they've convinced themselves of. They have to come up with this like whole belief system about what we are and why we do the insane things they think we do. Oh,

0:52:21 Aaron: It's yeah, and it comes back to the meaning-making side of things too, a big theme within that, like the sense-making part of the heterodox world is the current modern crisis is a meaning crisis. And this is not something I don't totally disagree with them about. I actually do think a lot of people are currently suffering from a kind of existential crisis from a lack of felt meaning, on top of the existential crisis of capitalism and things killing all of us. But I do think people feel alienated from meaningful activities in various ways. And I think what these folks would argue is part of the reason the left hates themselves is because, because they've successfully created the, you know, liberal nightmare that they wanted, and now they're unhappy that they're isolated, and that, you know, we need to come back to community, and

0:53:29 Thomas: Yeah, because if I look around at America, it's successfully the liberal, uh, utopia that I envision, definitely.

0:53:36 Aaron: Yeah, right, I understand, you get the idea, though, right? Like, they feel like we are mad at our own success, or something like that, right. Yep, so that's, I do think there are important connections here, and I think, you know, especially folks like Musk are unfortunately very likely to listen to the worst elements of these spheres, folks like Eric Weinstein, who is extremely narcissistic. Like, he's not as weird

0:53:38 Thomas: Yeah, no, I know, I'm just making a joke. Yeah, yeah, Oh, Eric

0:54:09 Aaron: Or damaged in some ways.

0:54:09 Thomas: More than Brett, which, do you think? Yeah, I think I've always, I've agreed with that read, actually. I've always found Eric to be more narcissistic than Brett by a little bit.

0:54:10 Aaron: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Everything that I gather is that he's really, really out there on that spectrum. And again, you know, we can debate diagnosing at a distance, but I really, people who are not at a difference have have seen the same problem.

0:54:28 Thomas: Look, yeah, I'm just, the narcissistic characteristics, I don't, you know, who knows? Yeah.

0:54:31 Aaron: Right. Sure. Sure, so I think those folks, A, are the ones who are going to be the most pushy about getting their stuff in front of Musk, and he doesn't have good protection from that, and then, like, B, they're going to have the most galaxy brain takes, and he's the sort of sense-making kind of individual who loves those, like big, disrupt sense-making galaxy brain, you know, flip everything on its head, what if, kinds of stuff, and then it's gonna like fall apart because, you know, there's nothing behind any of that, but in the process, like, what's gonna happen is probably, you know, he's gonna overcorrect in his mind from the overly censorious previous period by letting who knows what back onto Twitter, right.

0:55:19 Thomas: Yeah. The problem with Twitter is not enough censorship, definitely. Yeah. Or sorry, the problem with, with Twitter's too much censorship as opposed to not enough. I also wonder, yeah.

0:55:23 Aaron: I'm curious to see you how far he goes. Like, I think Trump will be a low-hanging fruit for him. I'm curious if Alex Jones, I think Alex Jones will probably be kept off, but I think that's probably the like the the edge of people actually being kept off. Probably there

0:55:37 Thomas: I just don't know. I think, again, listen to opening arguments, but I think there's a good chance this doesn't actually happen the more I think about it. Um, yeah, but if it does, if it does, there's also a lot, there're also a lot of practical stuff that has to happen. You know, like there's a lot of employees that are, you know, behind all this. There's a lot of like, he thinks, another reason he's an idiot is he on this, is he talked about how like, oh, well, we could publicize the algorithm, like, you put it on that fucking whatever, uh, open source type website.

I can't remember the name of, you know, so people can see what it's doing. It's like, no, you can't, that doesn't make any sense, like, it's, it's, it would be so massive that it would be unintelligible. And the idea that, like, he's going to just quickly make all these tweaks. Now I guess unbanning someone is a pretty, that's probably a pretty obviously like top level decision that he could do real quickly. But I think it would take probably time and perhaps even a lot of worker turnover to

0:55:48 Aaron: Is also that I think there is a solid chance that like this all falls apart for sure for sure

0:56:41 Thomas: Do some of the other broader behind the scenes stuff possibly, but that could all happen. Could very much all happen.

0:56:45 Aaron: No I do agree with you that, like, I think the larger concern if it actually goes through would be things like Trump being allowed loud back on and him just being horrible again and maybe impacting his like running for president again, who knows, right. Like that could be

0:56:57 Thomas: Yeah. Well, and as if, if he cares about the money, which I don't know how much he does, but he must a little bit, I mean, it's billions of dollars. If he cares About the money.

0:57:02 Aaron: It's not his main reason, for sure.

0:57:09 Thomas: Right. But if he Cares about protecting this asset that will now be a privatized thing, that's, you know, this 46, but whatever, a billion dollar asset, letting Trump on is probably the most profitable thing, one of the most profitable things you could do for Twitter, for sure.

0:57:13 Aaron: Right. Right. It's both. It looks good to shareholders, it looks good for shareholders, it's good to free speechers.

0:57:27 Thomas: Well, there's no shareholders anymore. It'd be private. But in terms of getting people engagement and being able to like, you know, it makes everybody pay attention to it, you Know, and that's what you want. The last thing I was going to say real quick, we're out of time, but when you were talking about the people he was listening to, types of people he's listening to. One thing that occurred to me recently was I wonder how many many people we don't know about who are big influences in this way like I just, because who is Elon Musk hanging out with?

He is not hanging out với you or I or someone who makes minimum wage somewhere, who whatever, you know, he's going to be hanging out with fucking billionaires on yachts and shit, and like, who knows, those people are obviously going to be overwhelmingly conservative for tax reasons. And who knows what untold influence people like that have? Because I guess the reason I say it is I've been trying to come up with an explanation for why so many of these prominent people like that could be so in the rabbit hole of anti -wokeness, because it is kind

0:57:27 Aaron: Right. Right. Right. I'm sorry. You're right. Yeah. Mm hmm.

0:57:54 Aaron: Mm hm. Uh huh.

0:58:34 Thomas: Of a specific thing. You either have to watch Fox News or... In the same same way, I still wonder how it happened to Sam Harris exactly. I feel like, you know, he was friends with like Douglas Murray. I feels like that could be an influence that got him.

0:58:47 Aaron: The getting canceled as well, I think, pushed him in that direction. And but also I think yeah, he was inclined. Yeah, yeah.

0:58:51 Thomas: Oh, I think it was before that, right? Yeah, I

0:58:54 Aaron: No, I think you're not wrong.

0:58:54 Thomas: Think you had to get in, you had to start feeding this stuff into your veins a while ago, I think, you know, like a slow drip. And who knows, like, I don't know, who knows what nameless rich assholes have been feeding this drip line into people's brain, you a thought I had

0:58:59 Aaron: Uh -huh.

0:59:08 Aaron: Well, so we know for we know, for sure, for example, that Joe Rogan and Musk are friends. I have been for a while. So like, that's an opening to Thiel and Weinstein's

0:59:09 Thomas: Right yep that's a big one yeah sure oh Peter Thiel, there's a good actually Teal is a very good candidate for who that is, for who dat very person, you know, Thiel sponsored Ruben

0:59:21 Aaron: And, you know, and Thiel has put a lot of money towards the sensemaking world or the broader heterodox world in various ways. Again, as a conspiracy theory, you now, critic debunker, I want to say I don't, I try to avoid conversations about which wealthy billionaires are throwing money at which particular things because a lot lot of those are really dangerous harmful conspiracies, and so that, that being said, Thiel is like, I think, um, Eric's, you know, Eric works for Thiel as like his something as a high level like

0:59:28 Thomas: Yeah yes yes yeah yeah exactly it's

1:00:02 Aaron: Thiel is heavily invested in a lot of this con stuff so like yeah I, you know, I just wanted to highlight that as a, it is a concern when you're talking about this kind of thing, um, because there is, there is to some degree a kind of, um, easy move that some folks will make where it's like, oh, oh, this person works at a place that gets Coke money, and therefore they're completely, you know, bought and sold or something like that, which is not always correct. But you can look at someone like James Lindsay and O'Fallon or, you know. Thiel and Weinstein and have a reasonable implication that, like, these people are connecting people to other people in ways that are not ideal. One other thing I just wanted to mention real quick, if it's all right, is transhumanism

1:00:02 Thomas: Not really a conspiracy theory yeah sure yeah sure all

1:00:44 Aaron: Is is something that I've talked about in the conspiracism realm. Specifically, it pops up in gender-critical communities, but it pops off across the spectrum. Alex Jones is freaked out about transhumanism. It ties in with QAnon, and it sort of is kind of a universal fear that I think you see across these different communities, and the sensemakers are no different in this. You see, of course, not surprisingly, the traditionalist kind of Christian bent going towards a like, these people are trying to make people unnatural with transhumanist augmentation or something like that. It's not as necessarily pronounced, but I definitely think that is a strain there as well. And again, this is a weird contrast because these folks are into people like Elon Musk, who are trying to put chips in people's brains. Like, Elon Musk is a transhumanist. But they're also worried about the loss of meaning that comes with the transhumanists stuff. So, just to give you a sense of a bit of the complexity of where these people are in terms of their fear about the future.

1:01:51 Thomas: Right, right, well, this was, this was fun, this was enlightening for me, and thanks for coming on, Aaron, and as always, people can find you on Embrace the Void and Philosophers in Space and on Twitter on Twitter at ETV Pod, right? Yeah.

1:02:01 Aaron: I knew there was another one. That

1:02:09 Thomas: And that's where they can find all your remixed, uh, memes being way more online than I could even fathom, you know and I and that, that's a lot lot.

1:02:09 Aaron: Is correct. Yep, that's where you can find me doing nothing useful, I'm sure. Being very online. Line yep I got nothing to say about it it's you know it's a thing it's the thing we do cheers

1:02:27 Thomas: It's a passion. All right. Thanks so much for coming on.

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