Source
r/DecodingTheGurus•
CannotIntoGender

Is it worth listening? This podcast seems kind of biased.

I listened to the Sam Harris episode and the Contrapoints episode and I was struck by how different they were. A lot of the takes in the Harris episode seemed like they were nit picky and taking Harris in the most critical way possible, while the Contrapoints episode was fawning and gave Contra the benefit of the doubt when she made simplistic points, used irony as an excuse to avoid engaging with criticisms, and most of all they completely avoided the topic of how Contra uses irony and her dress up schtick as a way to push some really egregiously stupid straw man arguments under the guise of parody. I was really hoping to hear some analysis of this because it’s something that had stuck out to me since I first encountered this YouTuber but most people seem to ignore it. I don’t really see the point in listening if they are only going to actually critique “controversial” figures.

I thought the Harris episode was interesting when I listened to it even though I didn’t agree with certain points but after listening to the Contra episode it just seemed extremely biased and the podcast seemed inconsistent overall.

Posted Apr 21, 2021, 7:05 PM UTC

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sacrificialsandwich•

Is it biased or is Sam Harris just not putting any effort into costumes?

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CannotIntoGenderOP•

lol, true. If Harris really wanted to get people to listen he'd dress up as his face before he was born.

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sacrificialsandwich•

I mean a little pizzaz goes a long way...

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c_o_r_b_a•

We need a Decoding the Guru Decoders podcast.

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CannotIntoGenderOP•

haha

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Keown14•

If you disagree with their analysis, it would be better that you provide details of which specific things you disagree with.

You’re being very vague which is what people tend to do when their beliefs are challenged and they feel angry because they have a subconscious feeling that they might be wrong.

Not saying that this is the case with you, but you’d have to provide a detailed response to what you disagreed with or found biased.

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CannotIntoGenderOP•

I thought I did provide an overview. I didn’t take meticulous notes but I noticed that they often sort of glided past it when Contrapoint made assertions and didn’t back them up. They also kind of just ignored a lot of instances where contra was saying things that were pretty simplistic and treated it as much more intellectual and valuable than it really warranted. Like I said, they also completely ignored the nasty pattern Contrapoints has of using the dress up shtick as a way to make stupid straw man arguments, excuse it as “fun, ironic parody,” and then use that strawman as a basis for their arguments and position. I’ve noticed this since I first encountered Contra and found it particularly discouraging since Contra acts like they are providing educational content but uses the entertainment aspect to cover up glaring flaws in their positions and then uses the excuse that it’s just entertainment. Especially since this rhetorical sleight of hand seems to be very effective at tricking people. Further, Contra’s videos are often treated as if they are good at explaining other view points when as far as I can tell the only alternative view point contra is actually able to give an in depth insight into is that of the edgelord 4chan alt right troll.

As for the Harris episode, I actually went and listened to Harris’s episode and I really didn’t get the impression Harris thinks that if you meditate you will automatically agree with him. It seemed like he was saying that people wouldn’t understand why he has the particular perspectives he has unless they understand his ideas about the nature of the mind and the self and how he came to that. Which is really not that crazy of a claim, I don’t think. I also don’t think that saying most people don’t understand meditation that well is an extraordinary claim. I also thought that some of the discussion about eastern and Buddhist meditation and it’s cultural context versus secular western meditation practices got lost in the weeds and wasn’t really relevant to Harris’s claims.

Like I said, the episodes wouldn’t have stood out to me so much if there wasn’t such a clear difference in attitude between them.

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proteinbasedConspiracy Hypothesizer•

I agree with you - there is bias. (and this is normal and expected from a psychology standpoint) The Kendi episode is the clearest example of this - they seem really focused not to step on any toes - to the degree where a bit of the charm is lost, with stretches feeling like a ritual to get over with rather than them wanting to get to the bottom of the claims. Also Chris uses strategic ignorance ("we only consider the material we listened to in preparation") whereas he gladly uses twitter anecdotes (irrelevant to the subject matter) when it comes to others. [there is some discussion here in the relevant thread]

That said, it's simply something to keep in mind while listening. I would answer your question with a resounding 'yes, it's worth listening to', the analyses are of good quality, even in the ContraPoints and Kendi episodes - because even though they do not thrash them like the others, most if not all relevant points are covered, even if just in passing and potentially not in accord with their overall importance.

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Parteyafterpartey•

This is my exact position! Maybe I wrote this. I do have sleep apnia

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death_by_caffeine•

I completely agree, I'm probably on the slightly right of center spectrum myself (even though I find the left/right scale in large parts very flawed, if not completely useless) so of course have biases of my own. Still find the podcast very valuable and has shifted my position on some issues and made me realize that had some clearly misplaced confidence in some of the featured gurus. Especially during the ContraPoints, Kendi and Rutger Bregman episodes (perhaps not that surprising given my own biases) I felt this bias was felt the most. I realize that for any criticism on this to be taken seriously I really should provide some concrete examples, sadly not in possession of galaxy brain would require me to review these episodes again which would take some time, but my general impression was that many arguments which I felt could be picked apart more thoroughly was given a little bit too charitable treatment given that the hosts felt that the heart of the person presenting the claim was more or less in the right place.

Regardless the existence of serious bias or not, just the fact that apparently much smarter people than myself hosts might at times fall victim to their own biases has been helpful in realizing that my own biases are probably showing just as much, probably more, thus undermining the confidence of many of my strong hold convictions. So I would like to believe has been helpful in realizing my own naivete and generally be more cautious before jumping on the bandwagon of appealing grand narratives that intuitively just feel right but on closer inspection turns out to be optimized for providing that feeling of profound insight rather than having much explanatory power at all.

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proteinbasedConspiracy Hypothesizer•

It sounds as if engaging with the podcast helped with your introspection, nice :)

I find the left/right scale in large parts very flawed, if not completely useless

this is an accepted view in modern social psychology.

my general impression was that many arguments which I felt could be picked apart more thoroughly

I agree, yet have come around to seeing this as a good thing. This is a project by M&C and they should not have to do gurus they do not want to go in depth with. They should probably have never done Kendi, or invested way more time in research.

My situation is peculiar, since I would describe myself like Chris does here (center-left), yet sometimes it feels we are worlds apart, mostly in how skeptical we are of the farther reaches of the left. I am, through my education, immediately triggered when someone denies (!) a biological fact, whereas a humanities scholar might not see this as a big deal, which i guess is normal.
How did you find the podcast if I may ask?

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CannotIntoGenderOP•

That's disappointing, but I might still check out some other episodes. I have seen some questionable stuff from Kendi so I would've hoped they would do a deep dive on something like that but I am getting the impression that they aren't actually willing to go in depth into anyone who mainstream twitter likes.

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CKava•

A lot of this reads as if you just don't agree with our assessment. I disagree with you that Contrapoints just uses costumes to present stupid straw man arguments, she has a reputation for being relatively fair for a reason. That doesn't mean she has no editorial line, she obviously does but I think her ironic asides are cast more frequently towards 'her side' than most other people. Similarly, you might find her content superficial and misleading... but to me it seemed unobjectionable and genuinely informative. She isn't teaching a graduate level course just making YouTube videos that combine philosophy with cultural commentary (shrugs shoulders).

As for Harris, you are welcome to your interpretation but I think it's contradicted by what he has said here and elsewhere. He clearly believes that people who engage in an introspective practice will come to appreciate how he is right about the self and free will. It's the whole premise of the episode.

We've been pretty up front about our politics and biases so I don't know how these are hidden or unacknowledged but just in case you have missed them:

I'm a moderate liberal who agrees with European style social welfare systems and doesn't like the reactionary conspiratorial right. I'm not a fan of wokism either but I find the complaints filed in that domain to often be extremely hyperbolic. So you can expect someone like Alex Jones to be treated more harshly than Ezra Klein but I think that's ok.

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CannotIntoGenderOP•

she has a reputation for being relatively fair for a reason

Sorry but that reason is that people are confining themselves to their echo chambers and taking Contra's word for it rather than actually reading opinions they disagree with because it's easier for us to listen to things we want to hear.

Contra has personal insight into being a very online edgelord on 4chan because she apparently used to be one, but acts like this extends to groups she clearly does not get. I have encountered a few different topics on which Contra has done a really bad job. Like I said in a different comment, the video on autogynephilia made several basic and fundamental factual errors about the theory around it, Blanchardianism, and what sexologists who support this theory actually claim, according to people who themselves actually do believe in this theory. It made up a bunch of inflammatory stuff about it designed to make people who hold that position look nefarious, basically. The video on "sex negative feminism" is another example. At no point in the video Contra actually say anything about what second waves or sex critical feminists or prostitution abolitionists actually believe (beyond "actually some people think porn is bad haha"). The entire performance and "irony" in the video could basically be summed up as a sort of joke about these kinds of feminists being frigid and repressed and needing the bad feminism fucked out of them. Which I am sure you could call irony but mostly just came across as a frat bro joke from 1985 dressed up in fancy costumes.

He clearly believes that people who engage in an introspective practice will come to appreciate how he is right about the self and free will

I think he stated this, but not that people will come to agree with him about all his political stances, which seems like a pretty important difference to me. Making specific claims about certain topics isn't the same thing as saying everyone will agree with you about everything.

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CKava•

You might be right that she does not completely steel man some position she disagrees with, that would not surprise me. It's worthy of criticism but I don't think that it's fair to intuit that is her intent. It sounds like you have very specific issues with the way she presents some very specific arguments. You may well be right about those issues but I'm not sure I agree that extends to her whole output. The subjects with which I am familiar and have seen her discuss do seem to be relatively decent attempts to grapple with arguments. She is tilting things in her favour though because well everybody does. This doesn't invalidate your point but I think you also said you didn't take much issue with the content in the episode we covered?

On Sam, in the same episode he argues rather clearly that his political stances are all directly tied to his insights from meditation/introspection, insights that you can share if you practice as he recommends. The inference that you would agree with his takes if you did introspection properly seems obvious to me and has been spelt out clearer elsewhere, like his recent discussions on Clubhouse.

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[deleted]•

[deleted]

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CKava•

Considering you were just warning me about our impending cancellation for our album art, I'm not inclined to take your advice about where the dial of concern should be set *in the real world*.

That said, I am sorry about your friend but at the risk of repeating myself: I've never denied there is a censorious and excessive wing of the social justice front. There clearly is and neither I nor Matt are a fan.

But what I take exception with is that anyone remotely like James Lindsay is providing an effective countermeasure. They aren't. They are just linking criticism to a right wing reactionary ideology that entirely ignores the existence of right wing media/reactionary politics.

Similarly, despite the 'totally pervasive' cultural domination, you must be heartened that in both the US and the UK the current political leaders are from the more moderate wing? Corbyn is gone, Bernie isn't the president... you can chose to focus on Kendi getting $10 million from Dorsey or the latest cancellation outrage but I think it does no good to catastrophize about such events.

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Keown14•

An overview by definition is not detailed.

Anyway, I’ve seen some of the novels you’ve written pedantically defending Sam Harris on other subs.

If you can’t see why the man is seen as a grifter by many at this point, then you’re having to overlook a mountain of evidence.

I have not interest in having a discussion with you.

As for contrapoints, she doesn’t interest me at all.

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CannotIntoGenderOP•

It sounds like you are just interested in reinforcing your own opinions and are being vague because you feel like you might not be right.

As for me, I'm not really familiar with Sam Harris and I am neutral on him and open to hearing arguments against them. I ended up listening to this podcast because someone linked a really stupid blog post about him on another sub. I ended up listening to the Sam Harris episode. It was the second Sam Harris episode I have ever listened to. It reinforced my opinion that the terrible blog post the weird guy with the hate on for Harris was spamming all over all sorts of unrelated subs was stupid and dishonest. And then I listened to this podcast because I was interested a critical perspective that wasn't so dumb and I enjoy similar podcasts. I actually liked the Sam Harris episode at first even though I disagreed with certain points. The Contrapoints episode was so fawning that it was not only bad alone but made the Sam Harris episode worse by putting it in a context where the hosts give people they like a pass on pretty much everything and don't actually get into any analysis or criticism of their bad or problematic practices while being hypercritical and nit picky over people they don't like. It unveils an agenda that isn't immediately clear from one episode alone.

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ScoopAway2021•

Oh, you're passive-aggressively talking about me being "dishonest" because I ate your arguments for lunch. Well, go ahead and keep listening to Sam Harris if you're immune to reason (you probably had already listened to him before you met me.) But he is a hack intellectual who makes idiotic takes on a weekly basis to the degree that r/philosophy would laugh at you if you didn't agree he was an idiot, and most of his political and philosophical claims have been debunked by experts from within their relevant fields. Like when experts advised him against increasing police funding in response to BLM, or racially profiling Muslims, and he shrugged them off because he meditates too much to be wrong. He uses meditation and his deep face to rope people into listening to his facile and reactionary ideas.

Contrapoints is a lot better at exploring different angles of an issues and does so while not wasting a lot less time or putting you to sleep, or misrepresenting views she doesn't agree with to win smug points.

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[deleted]•

[removed]

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Parteyafterpartey•

Why even bother asking for details if you're going to pull the 'Sam Harris fan boy' card?

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servicestud•

A large part of the discussion rests heavily on men of the purest straw or a deliberate misreading or on omissions of fact. If the rest of the episodes are like this, they might accidentally make some real odious people seem less so.

EDIT: In reference to the Harris ep

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CannotIntoGenderOP•

Yeah. Agreed.

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[deleted]•

I missed the part where they said they didn’t have a bias. They DO however run a lot of disclaimers throughout that they have biases. I am totally fine with their opinions. There is no such thing as an opinion free product.

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lasym21•

I like the pod overall, but the framework of the show doesn't necessarily take even aim at everything.

While the hosts says there is a gurumeter, as though it's a sliding scale, there are really two classes of guru: archetypal gurus, and filler gurus.

Archetypal gurus are those who commit one of the "five deadly sins," which come in the following forms (in no particular order): 1) libertarianism/individualism 2) claims to epistemic privilege 3) disagreement with a mainstream scientific institution 4) concern with woke philosophy 5) challenge to stories as presented by mainstream news

Because the hosts never really come out and say their worldviews, I've gathered it's pretty much whatever the opposite is of each of these things. Broadly they support/believe in welfare programs, communitarian identity, knowledge as a systemic outgrowth of community collaboration, sympathy with the woke, and the integrity of "official" storylines (whatever that means). The more you take up a position which is adverse to any of these things, the more heat you will catch for being an archetypal guru. If you just seem to like online attention, but your conflict with these things is soft, you will be treated with the measured instruments reserved for filler gurus.

As I said, I like the pod, but it's coy about the worldview from which it argues, and because of that has the pretense that it doesn't have one - i.e. a bias - at all. That can certainly lead to some eye-rolls in moments the hosts claim their subject seems unaware of their own biases. I offer the hosts a level of charity in these moments it would be relieving for them to offer their subjects. But I guess that would ruin the pod.

I think it's important to remember the hosts had a select group of people in mind when they named the pod, and after covering them have tried to apply it to others. The definition never really fit any of the follow-up subjects for them like it did their original targets.

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CannotIntoGenderOP•

Yeah I think that's a good point. It appeared when comparing the two episodes that the hosts were trying to present themselves as more neutral than they were, since there was such a contrast in what they challenged.

I was also just disappointed how much they missed when it came to Contra, since this particular creator seems to have so many followers who accept their worldview uncritically and doesn't seem to get much criticism at all. They did choose a video that seemed to be mostly Contra presenting pretty simple, basic concepts as if they were more deep or meaningful than they are (eg explaining people judge people they care about or perceive as the ingroup differently from the outgroup: this is obvious and almost everyone could tell you that, but it's presented as something very wise coming from Contra).

A whole other problem I see with Contra's coverage of certain topics is that Contra tends to use implied or explicit claims of epistemic privilege on the basis of transitioning while not really having any background in feminism/related fields or a strong understanding of the ideas she's trying to discuss. For example, I'm not a Blanchardian but I've encountered some people who are who were really frustrated at Contra's coverage of that topic because Contra made claims about the idea that were completely false and/or betrayed a very basic lack of understanding of the topic. Even if one thinks this idea is bunk(I am pretty skeptical), it's a problem if someone who is claiming to be providing information about it is getting the basics wrong. I am left wondering if that's something the hosts of this podcast are just willing to sweep under the table if the "guru" in question has "the right" stance.

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WillzyxandOnandOn•

It seems to me, that this podcast if very purposeful, unlike more conversational podcasts in that for each episode they pick a few examples (for example Sam Harris's episode was an analysis of one example: Making Sense episode 241 'Final thoughts on Free Will'") of some guru and provide analysis. Some times the analysis becomes nitpicky because some gurus are less manipulative (they admit themselves that some of the gurus covered are not really bad or harmful) their comments are more just a close up look and critique specific media from a guru. I feel that some of the nitpickyness of the Sam Harris episode was due to the fact that compared to some other gurus, Sam Harris is not as bad or blatantly narcissistic. I have thoroughly enjoyed the other episodes in this podcast and generally their criticism of the gurus is fair and does not come across as biased rethoric.

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CKava•

With Sam, as we've mentioned on here and I think on the pod, we plan to take two pieces of content a 'good' one and a 'bad' one because I think it is helpful to look at why Harris attracts so much hate/devotion. Personally, I follow Sam's content pretty closely and find it a mixed bag; I enjoy a lot of his conversations but find that he has pretty consistent flaws/blindspots around a whole host of topics.

However, I really do think the specific mini-episode we covered was REALLY bad for all the reasons we outlined. I'm not saying there is nothing we nit-picked over but that wasn't done with ignorance of his broader content.

Finally, FWIW I do strongly agree that Sam is really nowhere near as bad/harmful or full of rhetoric as many of the other gurus we covered.

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CannotIntoGenderOP•

Yeah, that makes sense to me, I was just put off by the fact that they had a nit picky attitude to someone more "controversial" but not someone who is more likely to be popular with their target audience. I was also just disappointed because I see a lot of rhetorical tactics that Contra uses that are pretty dishonest and the cult following she has disturbs me in the way they treat her videos as some sort of great truth, and I haven't really seen many good pieces that actually tackle it.

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spicypiscesss•

This is very much a death of the author issue, they often and quite openly state their biases

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offisirplz•

Well I still think some of the critiques are interesting, sometimes. It's hard to get the perfect balance on anything, so whatever.

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CannotIntoGenderOP•

Yeah that's true, I found their episode on Harris interesting. I didn't really think the Contra episode was interesting because they mostly avoided engaging in criticism and basically fell into the pattern of claiming "but irony" when inconsistencies did come up.

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proteinbasedConspiracy Hypothesizer•

It might be a safety mechanism against nihilism as well. If the guru can be equated with "the other side", however that is defined, it's easier than to fully embrace that we are all shaped by our social networks to degrees we might not even be able to comprehend.
To do a broad spectrum decoding, you would probably need a network of people decoding from a variety of angles (none of them partisan or invested fans), and then synthesising these views. There is also the slippery slope of deconstructionism. You cannot do critique just for the sake of critique (without going insane at some point). It's good that some people come away positively. My take on the Sam Harris feature is that part of the harshness comes from the fact that it came as a surprise. Independent of your view of him, you have to admire Sam for seeking out actual scholars that are critical of him, in contrast to Eric Weinstein who reads a tweet saying 'you bad' and goes on to claim that all critique is insubstantial / low quality.

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CannotIntoGenderOP•

That makes sense.

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[deleted]•

[deleted]

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