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Sensemaking about Sensemaking with Alexander Beiner (Patreon)

Published:
2025-11-02 08:17:26
Imported:
2025-11
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Content

We’re joined by Alexander Beiner, current founder of Kainos and former co-founder of Rebel Wisdom, to grapple with that eternally slippery concept: sensemaking. Naturally, this leads us through interdisciplinary adventurism, reflections on the (il)legitimacy of academia, and the recurring “meaning crisis” that haunts our times. Sense will be made, unmade, and possibly reinvented along the way.

Links

Alexander's Substack: Kainos

Alexander's recent documentary: Leviathan

Comments

Kelly 🇮🇪 🇦🇺

I actually followed that whole conversation! And I'm so glad Alexander said where he was from because I was trying to figure out his accent the whole time 😬 Chris and Matt, can you both school me on carl jung? His thoughts made more sense when he said he's into his him/his work. Which is basically all religion based yeah? I'm listening to haunted demon world at the moment (I tried reading it but audio seems to be my best way of absorbing things) and he even mentioned jung! I was kina shocked but I know alot of his whackier ideas came out years after he died? Red book ect.

Nina Davies

They are psychedelic exceptionalists, aren't they? I have just realised. They believe they have higher insights because they have had psychedelic experiences in contexts where they are told their wisdom will increase.

Ryan Booker

His opening reply/comment make me fearful of what is to come…

Dexter King Williams

Physics and dance should go together!! This episode is wild.....should bouldering and physics go together? How about baseball and physics?

Alex H

The part where Matt and Chris discuss Panpsychism was hilarious. Matt is such a troll! And, yes, get Kevin Mitchell back on.

Roland Weber

Interesting discussion, thanks for that! It made me realize how much my world view has changed. I came across Rebel Wisdom just before they shut down, so three years ago. At the time, I wouldn't have ruled out panpsychism in one form or another. How am I supposed to know? By now, I've firmly adopted Sean Carroll's materialist viewpoint.

Brice F

Question: what new ideas/concepts have the past 10 years of sensemaking produced? It may have been transformative for individuals involved to develop their own beliefs, but is there any sort of framework being used? It doesn’t even have to be a “real” thing. Example: I don’t think psychoanalysis is “real” but it has produced concepts and ideas that can be (mis)applied.

Scott Walkers Ghost

He puts effort into his aesthetic to sound convincing. To me it sounds like he is using diaphragm breathing, he can take a deep breath quickly and talk for a long time. When someone does this I think it makes them sound more relaxed and in control. But the way he elongates some words sounds pretensions to me. When I was younger I couldn't listen to Veritasium's videos because his voice was so nasally. I think science communicators in general would be more convincing it they took an acting or singing class to improve and have more control over their voice, I'm not suggesting Matt or Chris sound bad.

Maytree

Really nice job guys!

Saladus

How can any sense be made in less than 3 hours smh my head

David Robinson

I just felt he didn’t have anything substantive to say and was just on the defensive because he felt his way of thinking had been attacked. Lots of wishy washy arguments along the lines of, “I’m really very clever but you’re too stuck in your quantitative, scientific methods of thoughts to get it”.

Michael Braverman

The real sensemaking are the friends we made along the way.

jss

Can anyone point me to the SM where the documentary was mentioned? Or add it to the notes

Barn

James P.

Kudos to Alexander for coming on. He didn't convince me but I don't think he came off horribly. Also, I just want to say that it was really nice to hear matt dig in. He has a lot of gravitas and an economy of speech when he relates his areas of expertise to the relevant topics, which he doesn't do very often. I enjoyed this quite a bit.

Dan

Without really knowing much about the world Alex inhabits and his ideas, I've got say it was really hard to work out what he was actually arguing for. They way he characterises science and academia just sounds like someone who has never really been involved but thinks he knows it because he's read a New Scientist or two. Also, does anyone else think he sounds like Lloyd Grossman?

Joe Euro

Really interesting conversation. I loved Chris' point about humanity being one long meaning crisis. Also Chris and Matt have given themselves an additional meaning crisis as they consume hours of guru content and try to work out what the hell they could possibly mean

Linda Sears

I agreed almost 💯 with Matt and Chris. A minor disagreement with Matt is that people do go into academia to listen to jazz (potential music historians, musicians, or critics) or to paint. Otherwise, it was nice to hear a sensemaker who was willing to talk.

Jordan

Credit to Alex. I think he genuinely wanted to have a good conversation across a challenging cultural divide here. But after starting with the boring old 'silo nature of academia', I didn't expect him to have anything remotely challenging to bring, and I was right. I think you both responded very patiently and firmly in your push back. Once again, credit to him, I think he was actually wanting to search for some clarity with his stances.

Kurt Ressler

You guys did awesome! Especially, Matt 😃 This was essentially an argument between science and faith.

Lexer Daniel

As a lawyer, I found the guest’s rhetoric irritating. His disagreements were banal and immaterial, like his repeated complaints about academia (despite not being an academic) being unable to “adequately explain” the current moment. Nevertheless, I was impressed with your patience and treatment of the guest and attempt to understand his critique.

Unvacuous 1

The sensemakers seem to ignore that for a process to be reliable epistemically, there needs to be some sort of standards and consistency of methods.

Peter

My ears perked up hearing Ken Wilber’s name. I’ve been personally affected by a coaching company that built an entire “Integral Leadership” program around his framework, treating the four quadrants as a catch-all explanation for everything. Wilber’s work might sound profound, but in practice it’s a pseudoscientific maze that attracts followers looking for totalising systems. He never met a cult he couldn’t rationalise, and his habit of spiritualising every concept only amplified the guru dynamic around him. The result is a philosophy that looks intellectual but functions like theology.

Richard DV

Alex was nowhere near as annoying as Jamie W, but am no closer to getting his point ? Maybe it’s so woo and fluid and ‘that which a cannot be grasped’ for a simpleton like me to ‘embody’

Hereforcranks

Sensemakers almost by definition don’t research. They do pseudo deductions maybe. Which makes Matt’s question of “did you do opposition research?” even more funny. Sensemakers 1. don’t even need to know who they’re talking to or 2. what they’re about… so long as they have their trusty tired metaphors and inflated egos, they’re the open minded experts that society sooo desperately needs. 🤮

Kyle Wilson

Nice to hear Matt flex a bit - almost thought we were gonna get the h-index dropped in there.

Dries T.

All hail Matt for the correct diagnosis: we are just in fundamental disagreement on the premises. There is no meaning crisis, Academia is not broken, just get the f* over yourself already.

Colin

So what this continuously comes down to across the guru spectrum is vibes vs evidence and evidence is generally bad faith for vibes based arguments

Sigitas Trečiokas

Just one insignificant remark. I'm a simple man trying to make sense of colors in my free time. And if you mixe all the colors together you get BLACK! To get muddy you go for red and blue for ducks sake! (I'm gonna let that autocorrect mistake be there)

Nancy Hale

Thanks so much for explaining that, yes, fields of academic study are often interdisciplinary. That assertion about academic silos from Beiner really bugged me. Another example of an interdisciplinary field that immediately came to my mind is the study of interpersonal violence and abuse, which integrates findings from sociology, psychology, criminology, public health, social work, nursing, etc.

Grignard Girlie

Guys I’ve been listening to this podcast for YEARS now and I gotta come clean: I have no idea wtf the meaning crisis is?? And as a result I have no idea what we are trying to make sense of :/ Sure I could google it but it’s more fun to just assume it’s a bunch of insecure men who go on podcasts instead of to therapy

Martin Birch

I think the disagreement is more than different premises though that’s very important. The disagreement really comes down to someone who just doesn’t know what he’s talking about. How can you critique a “rational metaphysics” when you don’t understand what that even means. How can you talk about teleology in evolution, even saying we just don’t know, when evolution by natural selection is about adaptation to local environments, thus teleology isn’t really possible within the theory. Alex has no deep understanding of anything that he would consider important. It’s like he’s navel gazing without eyes.

Nancy Hale

I’ve been trying to pull out a takeaway from Beiner’s position. I’m probably off by a mile, but it seems he & the sensemaker crowd would like intuitive routes to knowledge to be as valued and implemented as much as empirical/positivist approaches. And vibes-based knowledge might solve certain problems as effectively or better than the positivist approach? And I’m also probably taking him too seriously, lol.

Matthew Zingarella

Maybe we can’t quantitatively express whether Matt or Chris’s love is bigger - but I think we all know the answer.

Joe Euro

One thing that struck me in this conversation (and others) is that academic and academia is often used to refer almost exclusively to science or other disciplines such as economics and sociology but never arts or humanities. I guess it makes sense because we see science (rightly) having a huge influence on the world but I think it's telling that the anti-woke mob are equally vociferous in targeting humanities in universities because they have such a huge impact on the way we think and culture at large.

A sluggish titan’s brisk

Matt was really great in this episode. It felt like a really clear presentation of ideas next to the guest’s somewhat vague discussion around science. I’m not sure I understand their broader thesis, but the understanding I came away with feels like there are fundamental gaps in their understanding of science/academia generally.

Martin 🇧🇻

Is Kainos really trying to make a "theory of everything" for the "soft" sciences? Are they doing their own version of Eric Weinstein's theory of everything in physics? I feel like there has been some sort of conference and Alexander wasn't invited!

Salex

My dude, there is this AMAZING thing called the internet, where you can find all kinds of public policy reports, commissioned by governments or ngos or peak bodies in all sorts of sectors. It takes seconds. At least in my discipline - public health policy - it's so common place for us to use quant and qual evidence in decision-making it would be seen as a huge limitation if there was consideration of one without the other. Problematic even. ITS NOT HARD. We even publish this kind of thing in Easy Read format these days!

Matt Dear

I really don't think humans will ever arrive at a shared truth or consensus. Any attempt to do so has just resulted in a weird cult.

Matt Dear

"Yes, you've done the science, but I have done shitloads of DMT" It's always bloody psychedelics with these guys.

Colin

Can it be "empirically flawed" to "use quantitative methods". That seems like saying "empirical methods are empirically flawed". Food for thought there from this deep thinker.

Shambles

What a tedious prick.

Gearóid

Wow! This was really interesting. I never realised Matt has an area of expertise in gambling addiction. I'll have to look up his publications.

Trees

Interesting conversation. He comes off much more honest and self-aware than most in the JP orbit. Hope he has some luck doing something with all these sense maker intuitions. For all their talk of experiential knowing it seems they mainly spend their time talking about concepts. Go drum circle!

driver3

I don't quite understand whether this episode fell under "right of reply". Also, while I wasn't sure whether I agreed with the guest's positions, I did enjoy hearing some attempt at pushing back on assumptions of the two decoders.

Steve Edge

I really enjoyed this. Hope you have Alex back on. I struggled at the beginning but that will be due to my intellect or lack of. I got alot from this. Thanks again.👍👌

Portimex

By the end of the conversation, I felt that it was largely a waste of time. Not enough time was spent agonising over decisions that led to highly abstracted frameworks of common ideas that reminded another speaker of what a famous personage once said about something completely different and which all goes back to someone's pet topic that all others find interesting and slot into their broader and therefore more encompassing viewpoints, culminating in an agreed-upon miscommunication and a promise for another podcast at an unspecified date.