Supplementary Material 52: Under-Optimized Academics, Tired Economists, and Bailiwick Clarifications

2026-07-09 21:30:00 • 22:34

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Hello and welcome to the Cooting the Girls supplementary

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material with the devilishly handsome professor from Dynonder the silver fox of the podcast

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Matthew Bryan and his co-host partner in crime me Chris Kavanaugh, not a Irish

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gingerpan today. Hello, Matt. It's a good day. Good day. Good week. Happy Monday to you, sir.

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How was your week last week? I didn't see you. I was off to a beautiful new show.

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Just hanging out. Having a holiday and you're going to recover from your holiday by picking

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another holiday. The last holiday. You need to take a dollar. The life of academics, people say

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my 11 ivory towers. It's not all fun and games. Sometimes it's like days of work

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in but during the whole day. Yeah, like today. I know, frantically dealing with all my students who

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have missed me and will miss me in the coming week where I'm going to be off on Fraser Island.

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Doing some walks. Walks in the first. Is Fraser Island a good thing? Is it a nice place?

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It's a nice place. Yeah, it's a nice place. Yeah. Yeah. Just tired, Chris. Just so weary.

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Sleepy all the time. I think I'm either low iron or low tea or both. Not sure what it is.

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I'm not going to lie on Jesus. You need to. You're going to have to get a stuff like that.

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The optimizers, they've got things that they could recommend. That's right. That's what it is.

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I'm insufficiently optimized. I think they take it too far. I think they're overly optimized.

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I, however, could be under optimized. That's the issue. I've came across as a fantastic article.

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I'm going to recommend for people called. It's by someone I don't know them. I'm not

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endorsing their broader eye photo. Okay. It's always a good newspaper to put in. By them.

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On Substack, there's somebody called Elliot Peasley and they wrote a review of Chris Williams'

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live tour. It's called Chris Williams is a sleeve. It's about a week of routine. It's quite

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ashramic. Let me give you a piece of it. They're talking about coffee and he says,

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no coffee for the first 90 minutes. Why not? You're adenous in the system that caffeine acts on it

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isn't active for the first 90 minutes a day. So having a more mean coffee is literally pointless.

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And this is the guy's response. Literally pointless, you say. Here's just one point,

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Christopher Williams. And it's nice. It's nice to have a coffee in the morning. I like

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disobeying my adenous in system and Corey Dunstair is a big hit at coffee and drinking it without

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once looking at my stopwatch. My adenous in system is not the boss of me. The adenous in system

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is my employee. He does not decide when I have a coffee. If he doesn't like it, he can quit.

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Lamentally his pal doesn't agree with me. I destroy you in the afternoon. Correct. Oh, is that

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it? Is that correct? I was wondering why every day after lunch I developed the symptoms of

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leprosy. Why I suddenly come down with a bad case of bone failure and my brain fills with

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malignant tumors that all play the kazoo and none of them very well. Sorry, Mr. AS.

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Won't happen again. Also, who says correct as an answer in real life to an actual human being?

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So it goes on. It goes on. Right? The part that follows it says, Christopher, he's detailing this

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morning routine. And he says, I then have salt and water. And the guy wrote, he's a mollusk.

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We're listening to your partner. I'm drinking electric ice from a weld.

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I'm so shocked. It's pretty good. To Chris, I would say, credit in the comments after

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that it's quite a long piece, you know, kind of brutally barking him. He wrote, always nice to

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meet a fan at the bottom. That's a good response. That's fine. That's fine. But yeah, Chris is,

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I mean, he's symptomatic. There is any of this broader trend where people are, I mean,

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like, I stereotyped Californians, not all Californians, but in my mind, this all comes from California.

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It's like, it's like, it's like a Eisen Garde from which the stuff spreads throughout

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medical. It's a pure form. It's a pure form. It's like, yeah, it's a pure form. That's

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the pure form of wellness is California. That's right. And like routines and an incredible number

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of supplements and just just, yeah, like little rituals and little things you must do or can't do.

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And in their defense, like, there was like my entire adult life, there has been this whole phenomena

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of, I guess, lazy lifestyle articles, which is, you know, science is found. You know, remember,

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you had to drink a glass of red wine, then you can't drink a glass wine or a kill you, then

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you should eat chocolate, and you shouldn't eat chocolate. You know what I mean? There was this,

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there's a whole category of lazy lifestyle articles that I think that has metamorphized into an

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entire prescription for life based on whatever random thing people have read somewhere in the

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academic literature. And actually, this goes towards another unpopular opinion I've got, Chris.

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I think they, they should have never allowed anyone without a PNC to read any of the peer reviewed

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research. They should not endorse, not endorse, kept it under lock-in key. It's done more harm than

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good. No, it shouldn't be reading any of that stuff. Oh, dear. Whenever you get your pitchfork side

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to come for out of touch elites, remember it's my, that is giving this day to play. I just want

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to sign post this for the critics who you're inevitably bringing it up in the future. Matt said that,

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okay, and I said, no, Matt, I just agree. So when you're attributing that that's somewhat on this

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podcast, that was Matt, okay. All right, it just has done somehow the popular consciousness,

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that's all, that's all I'm saying. Well, transparency, transparency, it's done more good than harm.

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That's the way I, I don't think you have to necessarily have a PhD. I just think you have to

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see, there should be some board, an international board where you have to be able to do one decent

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literature review to show that you can critically evaluate the literature. And then you get access

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to it. They can get access to all the other content. Here's a catch-tority-two with my plan,

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because you need access to the literature in order to do the literature review. So it's

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complicated. I haven't figured it all out yet. You haven't got all the details. Yeah,

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no, but it's a working project. I get that. I just saw out of the corner of my eye and the

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lower line from this piece out. I'm going to have to read you. I know people reading

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stuff of an article is not that pleasant, but you've got to appreciate this. So he's got the

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quote from Chris Williamsson. As soon as I'm up, I'm making a B-line for daylight. And the writer says,

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what an abyss of a line. What a profoundly unremotive view of life. He doesn't

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ambulate into the sunshine. He makes a B-line for daylight. Not when he's ready, but the second

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he's up. The symbol with his eyes both open. Chris Williamsson navigates the most direct and

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energy-efficient route to the few sky radiation to him. It's not the nourishing glow of a

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paternal star. Something our ancestors danced and feasted in celebration of. They live just a

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source of vitamin D, something that turns the ignition in his metabolic system. It doesn't even

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exist until it makes contact with his boring face. It is a flash. It is a bit harsh.

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It's a nice couple of lines. I recommend people take a look at that. And partly he's also covered

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Stephen Bartlett in an article the previous week. Stephen Bartlett deserves to be covered by

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a Serbian venegrine article like that. Yeah, that speaks to my soul. On that subject,

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you know, I felt when we covered Eric Weinstein trying to convince people that he's more connected

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to Jeffrey Epstein than they could possibly imagine. We'd hit Pete Eric. That's just an encapsulation

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of how much he did's attention. That he's willing to demand the people. Even inventing

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you know, Ludicrous Kim's that Epstein wanted him to be his number two and all this kind of thing.

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I thought that was Pete Eric. And then I saw a poster review on Twitter. I think you've seen

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this too, but I'm going to remind you of that. Yeah, you have to read it out for everybody.

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Yeah, I'm not going to read the entire thing because it's long, right? But as well for everything

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Eric produces. But here we go. The talk was about a mystery. It costs five to fifteen million

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dollars to endow a chaired professorship. Say in demography, immigration, verology,

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virus origins, public health, vaccine safety, nudge, nobilize, evolutionary theory, brackets,

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gender and political science, brackets, color revolution, technology, near eastern studies,

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brackets, Islamist colonial empire, economics, bracket, asset taxes, etc. Yet our anti-woke

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billionaires have not figured out that they alone can reward the academics like Martin Kuldorf

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or Jordan B. Peterson, Brett Weinstein, heller Hayne, Peter Bogosian, James Lindsay,

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by reinserting them with no teaching duties and gorgeous housing, slash vacation homes,

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and discretionary funds. Imagine 25 academics with giant travels reinserted back in the Oxford

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Harvard Cambridge Princeton, present in every faculty meeting, empowered to blow up the woke mind

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virus word breeds. Imagine if every university learned the lesson that heroic behavior was actually

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admirable and rewarded. God, this is so dumb. Similar for journalists and editors at newspapers.

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Yet something is wildly wrong with our billionaire slash trillionaire class. This is one of the most

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effective ways to destroy the revolutionary mental illness by rewarding the academics who,

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along with their families, paid with livelihoods, pensions, their names, academic access. So to translate

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that, he is basically saying that all the rich people, people like say Peter Teele or Elon Musk and so on,

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like they're always going on about all these things we need to do to reform academia to solve

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the meaning crisis, whatever the case might be. But the answer is staring them in the face, and it's

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if they just established in-died chairs in universities and give the academics that they hand

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picked to occupy those chairs, massive indictments, big houses, unlimited funds, just say 15 to 25,

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you could blow up the whole academic system with revolutionary thinkers, Peter Burgossi,

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Jim Slandzi and stuff, install their mark and just imagine what is going to happen if you have

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those guys in the department meetings at Harvard. What wonders?

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It's quite a list of revolutionary thinkers he's got there. He doesn't put his own name in there,

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I thought, which is admirable. Very rare. Very rare, very rare, he will often make these

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kinds of statements and name everyone when he's clearly talking about himself, but he's naming

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his brother, his sister in law. It's the small circle of people who are incredibly

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eric adjacent, so the implication is clear, but the mind boggles Chris, what would happen if we

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gave James Lindsay a massive fucking house? What a world we could be living in. I know. You talk

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to me today. I'm watching Jim Slandzi blow-beating at some departmental meeting in Harvard. What

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world-altering outcomes would come from that if James could go on about critical theory at

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a department meeting? I mean, it's hard to find them. What kind of changes could come from that?

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I can't even imagine. I'm imagining some sort of post-gear city utopia. That's what we now have.

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Yeah, it's certainly not gay space communism or whatever, because he's not a big fan of communism.

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No, something against those things. Yeah, something.

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It speaks to this very childish perspective that Eric and his friends have, that academia is not

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a massive worldwide network of hundreds of thousands of people working in disparate disciplines,

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and largely the majority of work going undiscussed in tabloid newspapers or by Elon Musk. No,

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they think it's like 20 people, and all they need to do is have the kind of right outlook,

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and you'll get like warped technology and... That's what. It doesn't matter that they have...

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It doesn't matter that they have no research track record. That's irrelevant. They just still deserve

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the Professor of Real Endowment. Absolutely. It doesn't matter that their main job is just tweeting

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or going on podcasts. That doesn't matter. That's who we need. That's who we need to...

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At the very tip-it-top, $15 million endowments, no teaching, big houses, just clean slate,

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totally free. I mean, I don't think they do anything as... Even if they have that, I don't think they...

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Oh, they're doing something so mundane as research. Well, first of all, they don't know how.

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They just haven't done it. That's a problem, first of all. They haven't done it.

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They haven't done it. There's a couple of like...

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Well, he mentioned Martin Kuldorf, who I believe is at least a medic.

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Is he an antivacs type person? Yeah, well, he's a COVID-19 resident, shall we say, Martin?

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Yeah. Yeah. But then what do you call that guy that fell out of fever that had a position?

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Oh, not Pierre Corey. Not Pierre Corey, not Peter McCulloch, the yellow hanger wrong guy.

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Oh, what was it? The Embarry Wies. Love them. Vine Prasad. Well, anyway.

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Anyway, you get the idea, but that's interesting thing too. And it mirrors

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Jordan Peterson's thing, which is what we need is more incredibly politically motivated

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partisan people doing... Well, not research, because I don't think they're imagining they're

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going to do research. They're just going to whatever give their opinions about things,

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blovieate. That's what we need. Work is bad, because it's too... It's a typical political agenda.

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What we need to do is inject in our anti-work agenda and do the same thing.

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Well, I'm just realizing, no, haven't they already done this? Didn't they set up a bunch of anti-work

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quasi-universities and Peterson Academy and stuff? So they literally have what they want,

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which is these people giving the types of courses, which by and large are not research-based

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courses at all. They're not empirical courses. They're just extended YouTube channels,

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basically. And they have students taking them when it doesn't seem to be doing. And if they accept

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generating another income stream for the relevant person, so when you look at the anti-work

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universities and hyphen the representation of science or engineering or law or any of the

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disciplines which they hold up as the desirable, better way that everybody should be focusing on.

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But not at their university. They've got a lot of...

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And you found these like the waizuru. That's right. Like the so-called uncontaminated disciplines.

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I suppose in their mind all the disciplines that contaminated you're like, like an astronomy,

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because some astronomy somewhere has written some sort of maybe work-dependent piece. Like,

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that's it, astronomy is fallen. They probably feel the same way about mathematics. Well, we know what

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Eric thinks about physics. So it's all corrupted, isn't it? So...

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Yeah, yeah. But it's very true. You say, like, I don't think Jordan Peterson's university or any of

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those anti-work things. Like, do they have like a proper mathematics department, for instance?

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Would they have such a thing? I highly...

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No, they definitely don't. They definitely don't.

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They would not. At best they have a course on on maps and it's not the kind of course where you're

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actually expected to do. Wow. I think... Okay, it's just talk. I'm like,

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Bob, sort of this kind of thing. But also, this tweet from Eric was in relation to like

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somebody asking of his speech at ARC, you know, the kind of like Jordan Peterson

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ask conference that they set up for right-wing populists that they argue, I think, annually.

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And I think it's the association for responsible citizenship or something like that, right?

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Anyway, he gave a lecture there, the usual kind of stuff. And somebody who was saying,

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there's going to be released publicly. And that's when Eric went off on this, you know, Tyread.

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And at the end of it, he sees in Mark Andreessen, Elon Musk and Bill Lackman. So he's just like,

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I think he's a bit salty, the Peter Teekels stuff, providing him with a stipend.

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Yeah, that's right. I guess from his point of view,

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he's obviously noticed that the Silicon Valley moguls are all very weird. And yeah, more than

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anti-work, there's some sort of paleo con weirdos. So why aren't they giving mouthpieces like him

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while money? That makes sense. And I understand why he's salty. They give him for like a decade,

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at least Peter Teekel did. So, you know, like what happened? Well, that's Eric. He's gonna

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Eric. You'll never stop American. And a, another similar figure that we've

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covered and there's having a little moment in the sun is,

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old Gary, Gary Stevenson. You know, Gary? I think one area in which you and Gary are

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similar is that you're both very tired. Yes, we don't need long holidays. I sympathize with Gary

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about that. Yeah, well, so Gary had a documentary come out on Channel 4. I have not watched it yet,

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but it's around 90 minutes long and it's about, you know, his kind of campaign to get a wealth tax

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introduced. And also, it does include voices from critics. And apparently, it's a Louis Ferruz

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production company that were involved with it. But yeah, so there's a new

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rind of media coverage of Gary coming on the back of that. And I'd also Gary has

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provided a little video encouraging people to watch the documentary, which I have a couple of

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clips of. But I did read the times I did go where they interviewed him and it was called Gary

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Stevenson. I want a wealth tax on the super rich like me. And this this article, Ma, it's

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quite something. There's there's a number of lines that, you know, just struck me. The headline

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one that was getting repeated a rind was, this is called Trump Gary. I'll be totally honest with

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you. I think I'm one of the best, if not the best, inequality economists in the world. So,

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you know, there's been questions if Gary is an economist, but apparently he's not just

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the economist. Much like we're trading, he's possibly the best economist in the world.

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It's really that Gary's done that he's not the best at. That's the question. I don't think so.

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It's funny he mentioned that because there we often mentioned that we're Gary's interview.

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There's a couple of topics that are reliably going to come up and elite universities.

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Yes. Yeah. Elite University and, uh, often surprisingly, his performance in,

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