Based Camp - July 11, 2023


Based Camp： Garden Gnomes are Destroying Academia


Episode Stats

Length

27 minutes

Words per Minute

188.86234

Word Count

5,138

Sentence Count

287

Misogynist Sentences

7

Hate Speech Sentences

6


Summary

In this episode, Simone and I discuss the concept of the "Midwit's Hypothesis" and how it relates to our society and how we judge what is and is not smart. We discuss the role of the midwit in our society, and why it is so important that we have a hierarchy that determines who is and isn't smart.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 When somebody comes up with a genuinely novel idea, their idea is often treated like an insane
00:00:05.160 cult. And you see this with an academia today. The difference we have today is that ironically,
00:00:12.320 the academic system has more monopoly on what's considered truth than the church ever had.
00:00:19.360 And so it is very hard for new ideas to form. And when a new idea does form,
00:00:24.700 people are punished severely. Would you like to know more?
00:00:28.860 Hello, gorgeous.
00:00:30.620 Hello, Simone. I am excited to be chatting today. What are we talking about?
00:00:34.900 Well, you're being like Professor Malcolm, because we have a quote to discuss. This is like homeworky.
00:00:40.800 It reminds me of my honors classes in college.
00:00:44.800 The article was called The Midwit Minus on a sub stack by somebody called Millennial Woes.
00:00:50.220 And I don't think it's that much of a red sub stack either.
00:00:52.080 All right. Because he has convinced himself by embracing fashionable ideas that he is very wise,
00:00:58.360 he will not accept that anybody is wiser than him, unless they also embrace those fashionable ideas.
00:01:05.360 In his mind, that is the only thing that could prove the person to be as wise as him, let alone even wiser.
00:01:12.520 But a person wiser than him would never adopt those bullshit fashionable ideas.
00:01:17.420 So they would never appear in the midwit's perception is wiser than him.
00:01:22.580 Thus, the midwit is trapped in his midwittery.
00:01:26.060 I think this quote is describing a very real phenomenon in our society,
00:01:31.060 with how people judge what intelligence is, when they are creating this organically formed hierarchy
00:01:39.080 that determines truth within our society.
00:01:42.120 Okay.
00:01:42.920 So if you say something that is very antithetical to the accepted truth of society,
00:01:51.580 people will look at you as an idiot, right?
00:01:54.980 So it is very hard to say something that is genuinely innovative or moves things forward
00:02:00.980 without being looked at as an idiot.
00:02:04.080 It actually can become dangerous to say things that move things forward.
00:02:10.040 And this mindset is particularly true in academia.
00:02:14.620 I've worked in academia for a while,
00:02:16.700 and the hierarchy in intelligence is determined by an individual's ability to memorize obscure things
00:02:25.760 that other people who are widely agreed upon as smart have written or said,
00:02:31.240 determines a person's position within this local hierarchy,
00:02:34.460 not their ability to override those things or come up with new ideas that counter those things,
00:02:40.680 makes a lot of sense.
00:02:42.260 Because the people at the top of this hierarchy,
00:02:44.720 they're the people who everyone else is quoting.
00:02:46.700 And so they have a vested interest in ensuring that you are not disrupting the hierarchy.
00:02:55.040 This is something even famously, like Einstein got into when he got older,
00:02:57.980 where he would sort of snipe at people's careers if they disagreed with his ideas,
00:03:03.760 especially where it turned out that they were right later.
00:03:06.500 No, they were right.
00:03:07.620 Yeah.
00:03:08.760 And you see this across academic fields.
00:03:10.760 And then when somebody comes up with a genuinely novel idea,
00:03:12.880 a la Darwin, they're basically crazy.
00:03:16.140 Their idea is often treated like an insane cult.
00:03:20.540 And you see this within academia today.
00:03:23.000 The difference we have today is that, ironically,
00:03:27.360 the academic system has more monopoly on what's considered truth than the church ever had.
00:03:33.800 And so it is very hard for new ideas to form.
00:03:36.980 And when a new idea does form, people are punished severely if it goes against either the consensus
00:03:45.260 or things that are of interest to the academic consensus.
00:03:49.040 And I think it's one of the reasons why academia has been so slow at advancing.
00:03:53.340 But I think we also see this within the comments on our videos sometimes, you know.
00:03:57.260 You know, I've looked at some people who say negative things about our videos.
00:04:00.280 And I try to determine, like, what position are they coming from?
00:04:02.800 Because I never know.
00:04:03.580 Is somebody mad at us because they're a far leftist?
00:04:05.440 Are they mad at us because they're a far rightist?
00:04:07.680 So I can never really tell, you know.
00:04:09.240 And so I try to go into it.
00:04:10.200 And one guy who repeatedly comments sort of negative things on our videos,
00:04:14.860 it seems that he's predominantly, he's just like a generic philosopher, academic philosopher,
00:04:21.280 i.e. a philosophy parrot.
00:04:23.400 That parrots, what everyone considers, like, smart philosophers have said.
00:04:28.080 And that is how he determines that he's smart.
00:04:31.680 And so he thinks that we are crazy because I would never do that.
00:04:35.460 I find that to be very disinteresting.
00:04:36.840 Like, to, I say this parroting some random substacker.
00:04:41.140 But keep in mind, I'm parroting a substacker that doesn't have a big fan base.
00:04:44.040 So I am recognizing that this concept here potentially has a lot of merit.
00:04:49.180 So I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, Simone.
00:04:51.100 This idea of determining intelligence and how people determine who is intelligent around them.
00:04:56.680 Well, I think a lot of this actually has to come with something that really blew my mind
00:05:00.860 when I was first researching the careers of artists, like, back in 2012 when we first met.
00:05:06.840 And a bunch of the artists that I interviewed essentially said,
00:05:10.500 well, I have to, like, play up the extent to which I am eccentric and weird and crazy and unstable-seeming.
00:05:15.760 Because if I don't do that, if I don't have, like, paints, like, splattered on my face and my hair is all messed up
00:05:20.580 and I'm kind of like, oh, hi, you know, like, really crazy,
00:05:24.400 that people, like, their art sells for less, you know, they just aren't really, you know, succeeding as artists.
00:05:30.200 They're not taken oddly.
00:05:31.740 They're not taken seriously, so to speak.
00:05:33.920 So I think what's really interesting is that there's this performative image of smartness that people are looking for.
00:05:41.360 Instead of really, like, validating, is this idea interesting?
00:05:44.780 It's more, does this person look like someone who's intellectual?
00:05:50.080 Do they look like a philosopher?
00:05:51.560 Do they look like a mathematician?
00:05:52.740 In fact, we've even, we've met people recently on a very different end of the spectrum,
00:05:57.280 more like on the technical or, like, data end of the spectrum,
00:05:59.960 who look very, like, analytical, engineering, and they just always get hired for these positions
00:06:08.120 because they're seen as looking like a trustworthy, reliable engineer,
00:06:13.360 even if actually their track record is abysmal and they don't work at all.
00:06:16.900 What I think of, when I see this quote, is I think of the people who style themselves as intellectuals
00:06:23.360 and also use really gatekeep-y terms, like, very advanced vocabulary.
00:06:30.080 They will grow beards.
00:06:31.340 They will wear, like, very professorial-looking clothes or weird clothes.
00:06:36.220 And it even makes me think, and we joke about this all the time,
00:06:39.520 about ornamental hermits or garden gnomes.
00:06:42.220 So during, like, around, like, Regency era in England, one fashionable thing for a while,
00:06:48.760 and actually this comes very back down to fashion, right?
00:06:51.480 Fashionable ideas.
00:06:52.680 One fashionable thing to do, if you were a lord with a house, like a manor house,
00:06:59.120 like a lot of property, you would set up this kind of weird, like, refuge or shack on your property,
00:07:05.080 and you would bring out an intellectual to live in the shack.
00:07:09.280 Like, and they often, like, in their, I guess, like, employment contracts,
00:07:12.640 they were not allowed to cut their facial hair, so they would have these beards.
00:07:16.760 In some cases, they weren't allowed to cut their nails, so they'd have these, like, gnarled nails.
00:07:21.160 And they were supposed to come out when you were entertaining house guests for, like, hunting trips
00:07:24.920 and house parties to pontificate and be smart and impress people.
00:07:29.860 And, of course, like, they weren't supposed to drink.
00:07:31.600 They would be caught, like, at the local pub all the time.
00:07:33.920 They were just supposed to, like, be alone with their books and, you know, provide intellectual inspiration.
00:07:39.780 And what I also think is really interesting is that people like that still do exist.
00:07:45.660 And that when, like, there are-
00:07:47.200 We see them in our circles.
00:07:48.000 And it's one of the worst things about being in these intellectual circles is if you are, like, known as being smart,
00:07:55.420 there's, like, this whole class of people that's, like, known as being smart,
00:07:58.780 but it's, like, actively really not smart, we call them anti-geniuses, is where this-
00:08:05.140 Before I get too far into the concept of anti-genius, there's two other things I want to discuss on this subject
00:08:09.340 that I think are really important.
00:08:10.700 Okay.
00:08:11.880 One is the Judgment of Paris, which I thought really related to what you were talking about in the art world,
00:08:16.520 which is you don't just see this in the world of intellectualism.
00:08:19.560 So the Judgment of Paris was this famous competition where, in Paris, where they did a blind tasting
00:08:25.160 and it was going to be a nothing burger, because they knew the outcome of French wines against American wines.
00:08:31.360 Yes.
00:08:32.080 What could go wrong?
00:08:34.700 The American wines cleaned up.
00:08:37.960 And what it turned out is all these people who had been claiming to be experts and stuff like that,
00:08:42.020 they couldn't even tell the difference between the two wines.
00:08:44.380 And you have this whole hierarchy of, like, wine tasting, and there was that one experiment, which I love.
00:08:49.320 With sommeliers.
00:08:50.540 Yeah, sommeliers, where they couldn't even tell the difference between white and red wine.
00:08:53.800 Oh my gosh, it's so bad.
00:08:55.880 And I was like, oh my God.
00:08:57.740 So many of these fields, not everyone, like, some of them were still pretty good,
00:09:01.660 but the idea being is that the hierarchy of knowledge within a field can be almost entirely fabricated,
00:09:10.000 yet it can still be seen as a really high-knowledge field.
00:09:13.560 Yes.
00:09:13.860 And that is true with art.
00:09:15.740 Well, we often say it was art.
00:09:17.020 Like, if one of our kids comes to us and says, Daddy, I really want to be an artist.
00:09:20.780 I'm like, oh, well, then you're really going to need to practice and learn a lot about sales and marketing.
00:09:25.240 Because art, you don't need to know shit about art to be a famous artist.
00:09:30.220 Yeah, you have to have a killer network.
00:09:32.120 Yeah.
00:09:32.400 You have to have the right look.
00:09:34.620 Yeah.
00:09:35.340 Well, and this is, there was actually that study that was done on artists to find out who was paid the most,
00:09:39.380 and it was completely determinate on their network.
00:09:41.900 It was not determinate on how good they were as artists.
00:09:44.800 That, it's a completely, a, a, yeah, it's wild.
00:09:49.200 But anyway, back to the concept of an anti-genius and where this relates to garden gnomes, as we call them.
00:09:58.920 Ornamental hermits.
00:10:00.320 Ornamental hermits in our communities.
00:10:01.900 But we've come to calling them the shorthand gnomes, right?
00:10:04.740 And these are people who are just like professionally smart people,
00:10:08.840 but they are more people who are like word cells that got known as smart when they were really young,
00:10:14.760 because, like, they do seem to have a genuine competence in wording.
00:10:19.380 However, none of their ideas ever turn out to have any real world applicability,
00:10:25.480 and they don't seem to relate to any ability to change the world in any sort of a better way.
00:10:31.980 They're just theorizing ideas.
00:10:33.980 And it grinds my teeth when I, you know, someone who's built successful businesses,
00:10:38.720 who's made multiple calls about, oh, the politics are moving in this way,
00:10:42.640 and this is going to change about society, and then they come true.
00:10:45.100 And I'll be, you know, bandied about by rich people when they're bringing out their smart people.
00:10:52.620 And then there's this other group that's just like, always been wrong about everything,
00:10:56.620 but really good at sounding smart.
00:10:58.180 Well, but again, like, keep in mind, even, for example, in the startup world,
00:11:02.700 there are, like, successful entrepreneurs over here doing their thing,
00:11:05.880 and then there are people who are really, really good at raising funds.
00:11:09.640 And they just raise funds, and then they have a failed startup,
00:11:12.440 and then they, like, raise funds again.
00:11:14.460 So I think that there's this world of fashionable ideas,
00:11:18.300 performative signaling of legitimacy in whatever realm you're trying to play in,
00:11:23.440 and then there's the real thing.
00:11:24.740 And the question is, how can people know what the real thing is?
00:11:28.220 And why are people not necessarily judging what the real thing is?
00:11:32.860 We're underselling how damaging this concept of an anti-genius is, or anti-geniuses are.
00:11:38.760 So the way that we judge intelligence, meaningful intelligence,
00:11:42.780 is it's a person's ability to look at a set of information about the environment or the world today,
00:11:50.960 and use that information to accurately predict and or shape future outcomes.
00:11:57.620 Applicable intelligence.
00:11:58.700 We had the guy, David Rainey, who wrote the book on changing minds,
00:12:01.440 and he came to stay with us, and we were talking about, like, how do you create geniuses?
00:12:04.740 And we're like, everything, when we're trying to create a genius,
00:12:06.540 it's based around real-world applicability, real-world ability to succeed in real-world environments,
00:12:10.820 and this definition of intelligence.
00:12:12.680 But then you have these other people who,
00:12:15.700 sometimes they even know that the type of intelligence they have
00:12:18.520 doesn't have this sort of real-world applicability,
00:12:20.880 but their identity is based around being intelligent,
00:12:24.840 and their value within their social circles is based around being intelligent.
00:12:28.060 And people can get into this really early.
00:12:30.160 Like, they get good grades on tests and stuff like that in high school,
00:12:32.760 and then it turns out they're just not good at actually performing in real-world environments.
00:12:37.300 So now they have this identity as an intelligent person.
00:12:40.120 Well, and actually, let's point out, like, related to this,
00:12:42.740 is one of the top things parents are told not to tell their kids.
00:12:46.200 Never tell your kid they're smart.
00:12:47.420 Always praise them for working hard.
00:12:49.780 Because if someone is told they're smart,
00:12:51.960 they will then stop taking risks,
00:12:53.780 because they never want to do something where they can be proven not smart,
00:12:56.940 because it's part of their identity.
00:12:58.040 This is a good problem with it.
00:12:59.480 Well, they feed in, right?
00:13:00.800 This is a cumulative effect,
00:13:02.180 is when people grow up with this reputation of being this wunderkind,
00:13:06.040 it actually affects their outcomes,
00:13:08.000 because now they're not taking risks,
00:13:09.540 now they're not really expressing that much intellectual humility,
00:13:12.380 or being willing to fail in a way where they can learn real things,
00:13:15.600 because they can't let go of that identity.
00:13:18.360 They can't risk it.
00:13:19.360 But they also need the people around them to constantly fail.
00:13:22.780 That's another thing.
00:13:23.760 To maintain their position,
00:13:25.560 they need to talk down to people who may have, like,
00:13:29.780 genuine measurable success in the real world,
00:13:31.440 and they need projects that are happening around them in their ecosystem to constantly fail.
00:13:36.820 And so, a great historical example,
00:13:41.660 if you're talking about, like, a historical example of an anti-genius,
00:13:43.980 one of these people who's known as being smart,
00:13:45.820 but has never been successful at anything,
00:13:47.680 and makes their living off of parasitizing wealthy people,
00:13:51.100 would be Resputin.
00:13:52.440 I think he's the classic example of this.
00:13:55.180 And they constantly,
00:13:56.400 well, they damage the communities that they're in,
00:13:58.240 because once you get one of these sort of parasitic anti-geniuses attached to you,
00:14:02.960 as, like, a wealthy person,
00:14:03.820 they will siphon your money and your reputation
00:14:06.680 to increase their public image,
00:14:10.060 or how far they can broadcast their ideas and reputation,
00:14:13.880 because that is the commodity in which they trade
00:14:17.080 in a way that can be very damaging to you as an individual.
00:14:20.960 There's some famous modern examples of anti-genius.
00:14:23.420 I don't know if I want to make beefs.
00:14:25.140 Who's the one who I can talk about where I won't make a beef?
00:14:27.340 Greta Thornburg.
00:14:28.300 Greta Thornburg's a classic anti-genius.
00:14:30.000 Obviously, she's a child.
00:14:31.500 She's not smart.
00:14:32.380 Like, she's an actual...
00:14:34.460 Hey, there are really smart children out there.
00:14:36.500 I think the bigger issue is she's towing the line.
00:14:38.400 She doesn't have any unique ideas.
00:14:39.980 She's saying exactly what...
00:14:41.000 Yeah, but people would bandy her about,
00:14:43.540 like, oh, you have ideas.
00:14:44.860 And so what anti-geniuses often do within a modern ecosystem
00:14:47.520 is they make their entire career
00:14:49.280 around tearing down a specific field.
00:14:52.380 That is what they will do.
00:14:54.260 And since we are associated with things like the EA...
00:14:59.300 Don't name names.
00:14:59.920 Don't name names.
00:15:00.500 I won't name names.
00:15:01.640 But I would say a good sign of an anti-genius
00:15:03.500 is they've made their career around tearing down
00:15:06.620 other fields around sensationalism,
00:15:09.620 but they've never actually accomplished anything of their own
00:15:12.260 within the field of any real merit.
00:15:14.180 So that's one type of anti-genius you'll see.
00:15:16.760 The second type of anti-genius you'll see
00:15:18.700 is the mystical anti-genius.
00:15:20.640 So these individuals hide that their ideas are really bad
00:15:24.960 by covering them in forms of mysticism
00:15:29.140 that can't be proven absolutely right or wrong,
00:15:32.580 but that can sound really smart.
00:15:35.220 Oh, like the pseudo-profound bullshit thing?
00:15:38.400 Yeah.
00:15:38.840 But some people are so good at pseudo-profound bullshit
00:15:41.060 that you're just not going to be able to catch them on it.
00:15:43.660 Yeah.
00:15:43.980 And us saying all this,
00:15:47.960 this is actually one of our more dangerous videos
00:15:49.880 because I'm afraid that somebody who is
00:15:53.240 one of these anti-geniuses will see this
00:15:55.280 and recognize how threatening we are to their income streams
00:15:57.560 if we spread this just like, I think, obvious...
00:16:00.980 But here's the thing is I genuinely don't believe people
00:16:04.560 who fall for performative geniuses
00:16:08.080 are going to stop falling for them.
00:16:11.000 Like you've spent decades trying to convince people
00:16:15.180 to stop listening to either like scam artists,
00:16:19.640 like I'm not saying these people are scam artists,
00:16:22.160 but like you've tried to convince people for years
00:16:24.580 to stop listening to scam artists
00:16:25.960 or stop listening to people who are just performative
00:16:28.240 We do financial advising for some, you know, elderly people.
00:16:33.120 Exactly.
00:16:33.760 And like nothing you say.
00:16:35.820 Scams is just like a constant,
00:16:37.580 no matter how many times I'm like, this is a scam.
00:16:39.520 This is exactly like the scam you got hit with last time.
00:16:42.260 Here's how you can recognize these scams in the future.
00:16:45.000 And it's the same thing with these groups.
00:16:47.660 You know, we're like, okay, you know,
00:16:48.940 this is another anti-genius.
00:16:50.440 But no, yeah, but no one ever, ever,
00:16:54.100 no matter what you say, has changed their views.
00:16:56.460 So I don't actually think anything you're saying.
00:16:58.500 Well, I think if I reach young people early enough,
00:17:00.660 they'll begin to build up pattern recognition around that.
00:17:02.980 And so that's why I hope our channel
00:17:04.260 and our podcast does reach.
00:17:05.880 I mean, I like that we have older fans,
00:17:07.320 but I think that if you can catch someone
00:17:09.420 with some of these pattern recognition things
00:17:11.020 when they're younger, before they build ideas,
00:17:13.360 like this is what a smart person looks like.
00:17:15.420 This is what I, and they'll think,
00:17:17.160 oh, they do this.
00:17:18.180 They talk like this.
00:17:19.100 They have these degrees.
00:17:20.120 Like none of those things are actual signs
00:17:21.460 of a smart person.
00:17:22.200 A smart person is their ability to predict
00:17:25.000 or affect future outcomes
00:17:26.400 with knowledge of the current world.
00:17:28.320 Right, well, so that's actually
00:17:29.020 what I wanted to ask you.
00:17:29.940 Like, so what are your tips to people
00:17:31.780 on like, should you actually consider this person
00:17:36.700 an expert in a field
00:17:38.280 or someone who has like really interesting ideas
00:17:40.820 or someone that you should turn to for wisdom?
00:17:42.940 And how do you determine whether someone is
00:17:45.180 maybe acting like a genius in their field,
00:17:48.820 but not actually someone who's going to give you advice
00:17:51.300 that will get you where you want to be?
00:17:52.520 Yeah, so I think that there's a few core things here.
00:17:56.120 One, if when they're coming to you,
00:17:58.640 their primary recommendation is other people
00:18:01.160 say they're smart or other people
00:18:04.000 who are generally thought of as smart say they're smart,
00:18:06.120 but they don't seem to have ever
00:18:08.460 actually accomplished anything concrete,
00:18:10.840 then that's a really big red flag
00:18:14.200 because people who are actually that smart
00:18:16.600 generally don't have that hard of time
00:18:19.060 accomplishing things.
00:18:19.820 Like whether it's starting a company
00:18:21.980 and making it successful
00:18:22.880 or coming up with a new scientific theory
00:18:24.560 or, and a sign of a true genius,
00:18:27.420 I think like the highest level of genius
00:18:29.200 that we would say
00:18:29.880 is somebody who has been independently smart
00:18:32.740 in multiple fields
00:18:33.920 where their intelligence was in one field,
00:18:37.160 didn't contribute or contributed only minorly
00:18:40.440 to their ability to be successful
00:18:42.140 within another field.
00:18:43.520 So if they can consistently come at multiple fields
00:18:47.060 and be successful in them, I'm like, wow,
00:18:48.840 that's like the opposite of an anti-genius.
00:18:50.540 That's like a super genius.
00:18:52.120 I would call that because a person can be successful
00:18:54.500 in a field accidentally sometimes.
00:18:56.500 For sure.
00:18:57.320 It's really hard to be accidentally successful
00:18:59.720 in multiple fields in, in, in different areas.
00:19:02.920 Then you like that.
00:19:03.660 And of course, shock calling.
00:19:05.280 Like if, if someone said, I'm going to do this,
00:19:08.260 especially if people doubt them
00:19:09.600 and then they do it, that that's a big thing.
00:19:12.440 And yeah, cross-disciplinary accomplishment,
00:19:14.280 I think is, is also super huge
00:19:16.140 and, and hard to replicate if you, if you haven't,
00:19:21.360 if you haven't really mastered like life and wisdom.
00:19:25.640 Well, if you don't have a genuine understanding
00:19:26.920 of the world, you know, if you're understanding,
00:19:29.400 if you're under, if whatever special access
00:19:31.660 to knowledge you have doesn't have real world applicability,
00:19:35.120 you don't have special access to knowledge.
00:19:37.800 What you have is an ability to convince people
00:19:39.700 you have a special access to knowledge.
00:19:41.100 And for you to say, it's not a, it is a scam.
00:19:44.200 If your knowledge has no way to measure it
00:19:47.520 in no real world applicability,
00:19:49.280 it's just that you're good at convincing people of that.
00:19:53.080 That's not knowledge.
00:19:54.760 That's, and this is what, well,
00:19:57.060 I think Mensa is a great way to sort for anti-geniuses.
00:20:00.020 I know.
00:20:01.040 Because if somebody was a real genius,
00:20:02.900 they wouldn't be in Mensa.
00:20:04.220 They'd be out there making a lot of money.
00:20:05.700 They'd be out there doing something.
00:20:07.500 Their, their special access to information
00:20:09.580 about the world would give them some competitive edge.
00:20:12.200 If it has, if it's given them so little competitive edge
00:20:15.060 that the way they prove that they're smart
00:20:17.900 is through Mensa, then they're likely not smart.
00:20:21.040 And this is why a lot of Mensa, it's funny.
00:20:22.740 A lot of Mensa has become, they say like a big problem
00:20:25.100 with Mensa is it's become like a board game
00:20:26.560 and like crime solving society.
00:20:28.260 What?
00:20:28.540 Or like no crime nights and stuff like that.
00:20:30.320 Like just like nerdy things.
00:20:32.380 I guess if you have time to waste on joining
00:20:34.600 and participating in Mensa,
00:20:36.040 you are not really succeeding in the real world.
00:20:39.040 Well, yeah, that seems like an obvious truism to me.
00:20:43.280 Do you disagree or?
00:20:44.840 No, I don't disagree.
00:20:45.680 I think that that's a, that's a good identifier.
00:20:47.660 I think what you also pointed to earlier,
00:20:49.320 which is that a really common thing among these people,
00:20:52.000 like, you know, CEOs of startups
00:20:54.100 who constantly raise money,
00:20:55.260 then like blow up their startups
00:20:56.900 and then just do it again.
00:20:57.860 Or like people who say that they're experts in a field,
00:20:59.980 but just aren't,
00:21:01.340 they don't really know what they're talking about.
00:21:02.620 Is they're really, really, really good with words
00:21:05.160 and they're very convincing.
00:21:06.940 They're charismatic.
00:21:08.340 And I think that's another thing is
00:21:09.760 I even just saw someone like tweet about this today,
00:21:12.220 that, that it's, it's really hard to like,
00:21:15.800 a lot of people just assume if someone is eloquent,
00:21:18.120 if someone is well-spoken,
00:21:19.460 they're really good writer,
00:21:20.520 that that, that means that they must be
00:21:23.320 generally very smart.
00:21:25.420 It's the word cell version of autism.
00:21:28.100 So if somebody is like that sort of autistic,
00:21:30.700 really good at engineering,
00:21:31.700 and you can talk to them
00:21:33.060 and you can immediately know,
00:21:33.860 oh, this person might be good at engineering,
00:21:35.320 but I'm not going to like,
00:21:36.540 let them impart me with their life philosophy
00:21:39.060 or let them impart me with like,
00:21:42.020 a certain type of tax advice
00:21:43.080 that I know they know nothing about.
00:21:44.540 But if you happen to have that level of intelligence,
00:21:47.840 but it's really narrowly focused at word selling,
00:21:52.000 then you can become actually very dangerous
00:21:54.800 because people improperly judge your level of competence
00:21:58.780 and entrust you with things they shouldn't trust you with.
00:22:01.520 And a point I want to make to something Simone kept saying,
00:22:03.680 so if somebody fails at a startup,
00:22:05.580 even multiple startups,
00:22:06.840 that doesn't mean they're dumb.
00:22:08.320 It's how they failed at those multiple startups,
00:22:10.760 which is a sign as to whether or not
00:22:12.160 they're actually dumb.
00:22:13.140 That is not to say that people with this sort of ability
00:22:15.780 can't multiple times raise money for something
00:22:18.160 and have people.
00:22:19.160 I've actually noticed most of the people
00:22:21.400 who I thought were anti-geniuses
00:22:22.920 in the startup world have washed out.
00:22:24.560 Because I can think of some off the top of my head
00:22:27.220 who I thought were absolutely anti-geniuses.
00:22:29.720 I was like, okay, right now,
00:22:31.560 everyone thinks this person is smarter than me,
00:22:33.200 but I can tell they're not actually that smart.
00:22:35.280 Yeah, yeah.
00:22:35.640 Like they just raised for something
00:22:36.880 and you're just like,
00:22:37.820 I'm, this is going to crash and burn.
00:22:39.580 Oh, and I always grinded my teeth
00:22:41.460 when they were like a higher status than me
00:22:43.400 in intelligence.
00:22:43.880 They're like, well, we got to ask
00:22:44.680 a really smart person.
00:22:46.100 And then they have crashed and burned
00:22:47.180 and now they're just generally known
00:22:48.540 as like smart people
00:22:49.540 who go to parties as smart people.
00:22:51.260 But like VCs quickly learn
00:22:52.940 not to give them money.
00:22:53.740 One other point,
00:22:54.840 and I think this is also important
00:22:56.040 and related to what we're talking about
00:22:57.460 is sometimes you can be a true,
00:22:59.360 genuine genius in one field.
00:23:01.120 And then another common fallacy
00:23:02.880 I see people demonstrate
00:23:04.820 is that they assume
00:23:06.220 that they're just a genius.
00:23:07.820 So like, oh,
00:23:08.900 like maybe they're like
00:23:09.860 a world-class physicist
00:23:11.100 and then they start giving people health advice
00:23:13.280 and no one really questions it
00:23:15.160 because they're like,
00:23:15.480 oh yeah, Nobel laureate.
00:23:16.620 Like, no, let's hear what this guy has to say.
00:23:18.820 And like, they really have,
00:23:20.260 they don't really understand
00:23:21.100 what they're talking about,
00:23:21.860 but they're so used to being super,
00:23:24.380 super good in their own field.
00:23:25.620 And they actually have the experience
00:23:28.080 and credentials and research
00:23:29.560 and, you know, like life in their field
00:23:32.580 to actually be really smart
00:23:33.740 that they don't know what it's like to be dumb.
00:23:36.620 Like they can't understand
00:23:37.620 that they're ignorant in another field.
00:23:39.060 And then they start basically
00:23:40.640 misleading a lot of people.
00:23:42.780 Well, and I need to also make clear
00:23:43.880 that this is a cultural perspective we have.
00:23:46.320 It is not a truism.
00:23:47.960 So different cultures,
00:23:49.820 because I have defined
00:23:50.620 how our culture defines intelligence.
00:23:52.380 And by this definition of intelligence,
00:23:53.880 these people are not intelligent.
00:23:55.800 Different cultures relate to reality
00:23:57.520 in different ways.
00:23:58.360 And they may believe
00:23:59.300 that there's like some underlying
00:24:00.740 metaphysicalness to reality
00:24:02.860 and that these people swim really well
00:24:04.960 within those environments.
00:24:06.300 And that they're not actually
00:24:07.980 as damaging within those environments
00:24:09.460 because they're able to focus
00:24:11.000 all of their ideas
00:24:12.300 instead of on like tearing other people down
00:24:14.940 on advancing this weird
00:24:17.380 sort of word-sell-y art.
00:24:20.460 And so that's really fine.
00:24:21.940 And it also, it changes the way
00:24:23.120 that we, you and I,
00:24:24.360 have interacted with the world.
00:24:25.660 We've written a number
00:24:26.320 of best-selling books now.
00:24:27.900 Our podcast is growing.
00:24:28.920 You know, I'd love that it grew faster,
00:24:30.160 but it's growing, right?
00:24:31.220 And a lot of people are like,
00:24:32.160 you guys seem like really like
00:24:33.740 cogent intellectuals
00:24:34.780 with a hard view of the world
00:24:36.600 that you really thought through
00:24:37.600 within a lot of different domains.
00:24:39.480 Like, why are you just now
00:24:41.140 entering the intellectual space?
00:24:43.060 And the answer is twofold.
00:24:44.760 One is we wanted to make sure
00:24:45.960 we had income streams
00:24:47.060 before we entered
00:24:47.760 the intellectual space
00:24:48.580 so we would never be determinate
00:24:50.480 on our audience for what we said
00:24:53.120 because we never want
00:24:54.520 to get audience captured.
00:24:55.360 We never want to enter a space
00:24:56.320 where I'm afraid to say something
00:24:57.660 because I know I'll lose some audience.
00:24:59.060 Like when we did that pro-Jewish episode,
00:25:00.660 we lost a number of subscribers.
00:25:02.620 And I was like, whatever.
00:25:05.060 But the other thing is,
00:25:06.300 is from our cultural perspective,
00:25:08.400 it would feel immoral
00:25:11.360 to go out and start acting like
00:25:13.940 I had any special access to knowledge
00:25:16.720 had I not first applied
00:25:18.540 that knowledge to the world
00:25:19.820 and had it allowed me
00:25:21.560 to out-compete other people
00:25:23.520 in multiple domains,
00:25:25.160 whether it's the academic domain
00:25:26.460 or the domain of the business world.
00:25:27.980 So like I started my career
00:25:29.560 in psychology
00:25:30.440 and I had a bunch of weird ideas
00:25:32.240 about how humans thought.
00:25:33.880 And when I brought those ideas
00:25:35.300 to my supervisor,
00:25:37.620 they were like,
00:25:38.040 this is just like a completely
00:25:39.040 different framework
00:25:40.240 for how the human mind works.
00:25:41.400 Like, why don't you just pick one thing
00:25:43.400 and work on that?
00:25:44.580 And I had this sort of epiphany
00:25:46.540 where I was like,
00:25:47.320 you know what?
00:25:48.380 If I actually do have
00:25:49.540 a better understanding
00:25:50.420 of how humans think
00:25:51.900 than the existing dogma
00:25:53.600 of the psychiatry community,
00:25:55.760 then I shouldn't go into psychology.
00:25:57.780 I should go into business school.
00:26:00.180 And that's why I ended up
00:26:01.920 going to get an MBA
00:26:02.960 because I was like,
00:26:03.700 let's apply these ideas
00:26:04.840 in real world environments
00:26:06.080 and see if they allow me
00:26:07.480 to out-compete other people.
00:26:08.820 And they did.
00:26:09.460 And now I am fairly confident
00:26:11.120 that most of my ideas
00:26:12.120 are pretty accurate.
00:26:13.220 And not just within business,
00:26:14.540 within my relationships.
00:26:15.360 I think we have
00:26:15.700 a pretty healthy relationship.
00:26:16.900 Like, I wouldn't be going out there
00:26:18.060 giving people relationship advice
00:26:19.600 or advice on how
00:26:20.760 to structure their lives
00:26:21.900 if I didn't have
00:26:23.280 my own life together.
00:26:24.520 Like, for example,
00:26:26.520 if I was a,
00:26:27.700 hypothetically,
00:26:29.080 if I was a drug addict
00:26:30.480 who like had like a room
00:26:31.820 that was a disaster,
00:26:32.860 I wouldn't be going out there
00:26:33.860 telling people to make their beds
00:26:35.160 or that stoicism
00:26:35.900 is the answer
00:26:36.580 to all of life's stories.
00:26:37.420 Oh, sick burn, Mel.
00:26:40.280 And with that,
00:26:41.440 hold on.
00:26:42.840 There are some people
00:26:43.620 who are much smarter than us
00:26:44.820 who are waiting at daycare.
00:26:46.800 Oh my gosh,
00:26:47.900 our little toddlers.
00:26:49.740 Cots, cots, cots.
00:26:50.940 Get them home.
00:26:52.320 We got to make them
00:26:53.500 better than us.
00:26:54.960 Yes.
00:26:55.520 So, sorry.
00:26:56.500 We have to end this conversation,
00:26:57.820 but I love talking about this.
00:26:59.660 I love talking about it too.
00:27:01.240 And this one might have been
00:27:02.000 too spicy.
00:27:02.660 I don't know.
00:27:03.180 I'm going to have to,
00:27:03.700 I'm going to have to edit out
00:27:04.840 a lot of parts
00:27:05.420 where I might allude
00:27:06.120 to specific individuals.
00:27:07.260 I love you.
00:27:10.120 I love you too, Malcolm.
00:27:11.760 Tally-ho.