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Presentation and Q&A on the Gurometer at The Stoa (Patreon)

Published:
2022-02-27 07:45:44
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

Content

Hi everyone,

Some of you might be interested in this presentation I (Chris) gave at The Stoa earlier in the week. The Stoa is a channel that has featured a number of our gurus and has quite a strong connection to the sense-maker world.

I was slightly wary about the talk due to the audience and the topic but thought it would be good outreach and I was pleasantly surprised. Nice questions and I think (at least amongst some) a receptivity to the points I was making.

Not under any illusion that I was fundamentally winning hearts and minds but I think I did make a good case for the need to be more critical of heterodox/alternative voices.

In any case, interested to hear what any of you think. Slides were finished very shortly before the presentation so a bit of a shaky start but I think things went smoother as time progressed.

Hope you are all having a good weekend!

-Chris

Files

The Gurometer w/ Christopher Kavanagh

February 23rd, 2022 Christopher Kavanagh from the Decoding The Gurus podcast visits The Stoa to present on “the gurometer.” “In the below we discuss a few themes and characteristics that seem to be common among gurus. Some are more common than others, and not all will be characteristic of every guru. Nevertheless, they are often found in gurus to a heightened level, not seen in the general population of pundits, commentators, and ‘public intellectuals’. Taken together, they help us in the task of spotting gurus in the wild. The most concise definition of a guru is “someone who spouts pseudo-profound bullshit”, with bullshit being speech that is persuasive without any regard for the truth. Thus, all these properties relate to people who produce ersatz wisdom: a corrupt epistemics that creates the appearance of useful knowledge, but has none of the substance.” https://docs.google.com/document/d/19PKXFn3qrzWr6nx622g9cEzyNBow0svQs_dN4fP3hjY/edit thestoa.ca patreon.com/the_stoa thestoa.substack.com

Comments

Jason Trock

Chris only need to pucker a bit more for a perfect “blue steel” 👍

Lilydale

Those slides were great! One made me laugh out loud—Catholic Guilt!

Lilydale

The questions were very good, very earnest I thought, and just the questions I would have wanted to ask too. Good answers, so thoughtful and useful. I liked the bit in the beginning, the little mention of the Mode Theory of Religion—never heard of that before. Great discussion altogether!

Jennydiver

I thought it was brilliant and a great idea to travel into dark waters.

Anthony Pino

I like how Elon musks photo is up during the Narcissism slide

Tom Allison

Wow, Chris, this was really good. I think you tweeted about whether it makes sense to do this sort of thing -- I'd have to say, in retrospect, HELLS YEAH :). (Liked and am still curious about the dysphoric ritual aspect of doctoral studies that got mentioned at the end. I know those being initiated in academia often see it as a "weeding out" process -- but if it's function is social/cognitive binding that isn't really the aim, is it? They're not trying to "weed you out" as much as "scare you in" and make you willing to continue to sacrifice a lot for membership, right?)

Tom Allison

Regarding your main purpose, I think you did a great job being the voice of reason-not-forgoing-criticism. In general, I think letting your fundamentally sound parsing of issues shine through your genuine willingness to grapple with counter-points inside single sentences was on full and ultimately quite persuasive - or at least, "hmm, that's not the usual tripe I can readily dismiss" -display. Good stuff.

Tom Allison

Oh, and for what is worth, I thought your interlocutors here acquitted themselves quite handsomely, as well -- the result I think will be useful for many who hover on the periphery of thoroughgoing reflexive anti-establishmentarianism.

Christie McCormick

I thought to give this just a quick nibble, but ended up staying for the full-meal deal. Interesting and thoughtful conversations. I especially appreciated Dr. K's response to Evan's questions and concerns. A fixation on the timing of WHO recommendations vis-a-vis earlier research identifying coronavirus as exclusively airborne seems unhelpful. Whom did we harm by washing our hands (and other surfaces) more often? I like the well-reasoned, rational answer to what appears to be Evan's "gotcha."

Christie McCormick

Also enjoyed the strange visuals created by the green screen (?) hiding what I assume was a messy background on Chris's screen. Am I the only one who saw a sort of penis mirage popping up at the bottom of his screen? Maybe it was a microphone? Have I said too much?

Astrolabium

As a new patron I listened to several gurometer episodes in a row, so great to review the definitions. Here's an idea that you might find useful - in many of those episodes you keep going back to the Weinsteins for calibration, and often the score results from a comparison (worse than Harris but better than Saad etc.), so why not try non-parametric statistics? I know it's not supposed to be truly scientific, but did you try to rank-order the gurus? Use Spearman's rho for example, look for Condorcet paradoxes in your ranking perhaps? Instead of 1 to 5, use Sagan to Weinstein scale ;) And if you don't feel like it, is the up-to-date spreadsheet available?