Conspirarists Part Drei

Alternative educator 1: Thrown to the Lions.

The old establishment ™ is outdated.

Recently, on the fringes of the world wide web, thoughts have been stirring: dark, radical thoughts.

They are thought by radical, alternative thinkers.

One of them is a dude that will teach you how to use this alternative knowledge to make sense of the world.

Since nothing is created in a vacuum, let’s see this dude’s credentials. Where does he get his inspiration from? Who has influenced his ideas? Why should I be persuaded by his argument?

According to his website he has an eclectic educational background, mostly from outside of academia, in sciences and philosophy i.e. self-taught, with no scholarly training. Now, we are not education snobs here, so hey, let’s take a look at the books he learned from and now recommends to us:

  Pop science, pop science, weird esoterics, another book by the same author (what’s a “social architect” anyway?), Chinese philosophy, more Indian philosophy, Feynman lectures (oh hey, actual science, but hardcore physics), Dawkins (obviously), Markus Aurelius’s Meditations (obviously), Art of War (double obviously)[1], more pop science, literally one book by a woman (out of 48 other recommendations), metaphysics, metaphysics, one book on stat related economics… Some of this is pretty heavy stuff. The man can certainly read, at least.

  But can he write? Well, he has written 4 long essays on “economics”, and my academic senses tingled in excitement because, dear reader, I have had the pleasure of studying econ up to my second year of uni, and I know a difference between words such ‘neo-Keynesian’ and ‘neo-classical’, innit.

  That didn’t really seem to matter, as I read on through very verbose text and got really annoyed as all of these essays require a massive “citation needed” stamp across each. And why the hell is he referring to a very common term of “zero sum game” as “win-lose system”? And why is he simplifying systems of trade done in the ‘ancient times’? Why is his picture of the ‘current economic system’ doesn’t talk about economic things like cycles? Why doesn’t he refer to real-life examples of change to support his propositions? He keeps saying that we need to build a new model of economics that’s a win for everybody but doesn’t offer solutions. Aren’t these essays supposed to explore that? I could go on.

  After finishing reading all this new & revolutionary thought what struck me, is how much of this comes across as trying to re-invent the wheel, based on never having seen the wheel but hearing about it from someone who has seen it couple of times. I must stress, the intention of these essays is to… I am heavily assuming, because I am not very clear, is to present the idea that the world is kind of shitty right now[2], but could be made better. That is a very decent idea.

But… is it worth to pay a £250 to listen to that idea?

Well, the thing is, you could already listen to a lot of his ideas for free. The comments on his youtube podcasts are very enthusiastic along the lines of “this is pure knowledge gold” and “everybody needs to listen to this man”. I have also listened to a couple of the casts, but the thing is…I don’t remember much about what he said. I remember that he sounded very clever at the time, but I couldn’t tell you what was his point. Like his writing, it’s a lot of unsupported statements that lasted hours, and provided little to no solutions to proposed problems, if it acknowledged any. History that led to these problems is unscrutinised or presented so out of context in “in the olden days there was” format, as if the olden days are completely unrelated to the current day. 

The general idea of that things ‘could be made better’ is sort of good in itself, isn’t it though? Do you know what, I might be unfairly tough on the guy. If he wants to make the world better, maybe he has practically done more than just Edu-tament pieces on a bro platform for bros. Let’s check out his LinkedIn. What has he done to advance economics and reduce capitalism?

Oh, he founded an expensive nootropics company. Oh. 

[1] Yeah, I have read it as well, at this point who hasn’t (and if you didn’t, don’t bother).

[2] I also love how he defends himself at one point “I’m critising capitalism because it’s what’s on rn, I am not a dirty commie, I promise” – I am heavily paraphrasing, but like, that’s so indicative of the audience he is expecting.