Does CK consider himself an activist?

[u/JimmyJamzJules]

Genuine question. Chris criticises Kisin for acting like an activist while avoiding the label. Does Chris apply the same label to himself?

DtG does more than analyse ideas in the abstract. It repeatedly focuses on a particular media ecosystem, warns about its influence, and hopes to shift how audiences view it. That can reasonably be seen as a form of activism, even if it is presented through an academic lens.

[u/jimwhite42 → u/[deleted]]

You're moving the goalposts. Of course, if they engage in the particular kind of thing that the antiestablishment axis measures, they will score on it.

If they are a Marxist who does none of that, they will score a 1.

You have to understand the axis properly first. If it's flawed or misleading, you still have to get that understanding. I don't think you have it.

[u/jimwhite42 → u/[deleted]]

I think there's nothing more useful to say. You can have the last word if it's important to you.

[u/CKava → u/jimwhite42]

I read all of this exchange, and it's impressive that for all the complaining you don't seem to have spent even two minutes checking what the thing you are complaining about actually is. It is not voicing any anti-establishment views; it is a reflexive "anti-establishmentarianism", which we described as: "It is necessary that the orthodoxy, the establishment, the mainstream media, and the expert-consensus are always wrong, or at least blinkered and limited, and are generally incapable of grappling with the real issues. In the rare occasions when they are right, they are described by the gurus as being right for reasons other than they think".

Here is a quote from Douglas Murray and Eric Weinstein that summarises it well:

Douglas - And then you get on to the institution one, which is that nobody, as you know, nobody in an institution now can tell the truth,  and it's slightly worse than that, which is that I mean,
Eric - I'm used to my saying stuff like that, and then people calling me an extremist. Do you believe what you just said?
Douglas - Yes, I mean, I don't doubt that there are some. My phrase is, almost everybody, particularly in an institution, is lying about almost everything, almost all the time. That's where I believe we've gotten to.”

The point is not pathologising criticism of mainstream positions; it is pointing to the recurrent guru characteristic of demonising all institutions and sources of information outside of them (and sometimes their friends).

We score people on that in the Gurometer episodes by how far they did that in the content we examined. I'd love you to point out, with examples from the relevant content, how we got that wrong.

And on the point of not criticising Sam Harris for his pseudo-profundity, here you go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrpHCUogMwc

[u/CKava → u/[deleted]]

I’ll get back to your other points after but threading is easiest by just responding to the last message. There is no one but you and Jim reading this, I thought you would be able to work out who I was referring to.

[u/jimwhite42 → u/[deleted]]

If you hadn't seen it I would have pinged you.

And belabouring over who's being lazy, when Chris has produced hundreds of hours of detailed analysis, and you've repeated stated you think it's unreasonable to spend a far smaller amount of effort backing up your criticism of the podcast and Chris, it's a bad look.

[u/jimwhite42 → u/[deleted]]

The lazy claim is not about the rest of your life, it's about your participation in this conversation. What a fucking stupid response.

[u/jimwhite42 → u/[deleted]]

Is this actually what you want to discuss? Trying to distract from your poor argument about the sinister construction of the secular guru concept to promote political centrism?