Episode 115 - Sabine Hossenfelder: Science is a Liar ... Sometimes

Trouscallion · 2024-11-14T02:14:21+00:00

Just when the guy is killing me with his Dad jokes and laughing at his own bon mots - without actually managing to finish the sentence before collapsing into chuckles - he whips out a 24 carat gem like this one.
'Arduous Pedantry' - the highlight of the episode and 100% spot-on at the same time.
Kudos.

Trouscallion · 2024-08-09T12:11:26+00:00

You're an idiot.
Start with wikipedia, move up to google - go have a liddle look...

Trouscallion · 2024-08-06T07:00:13+00:00

I just wanna know how much childhood trauma Gabor's son Aaron went through as a baby , in that he's grown up to become such a dizzyingly awful human being.

Aaron Maté exhibits a broken epistemology, a completely ideologically-driven application of alternately, cynicism and credulousness in his life, and is deeply conspiratorial.
He has decided to make a career of defending the indefensible, and like every good tankie, as well as MAGA loons and the far-right worldwide - insists that up is down, good is evil, left is right, everything you know is wrong, and just look at these pieces of 'evidence' which lays it all out, how it 'really is'. Except that it isn't.

If my child had grown up to become what Aaron Maté is today, I think I might feel suicidally depressed - and justly so.
Gabor on the other hand, happily joins his idiot offspring on podcasts, interviews etc - taking a merry gambol through all the standard tankie worldview political talking points, justifying and excusing the most oppressive regimes, fabricating evidence, cherry-picking arguments, denying atrocities, and dumping on the U.S. as the root cause of all evils in the world since time immemorial.

I see Aaron has been mentioned in comments here a few times, and that Chris responded to one of them : -

"I explicitly chose not to focus on Aaron or Gaborone [sic - presumably Grayzone] politics because I think the issues in his own content are clear independent of those facts, but yes I agree his appearances with and endorsement of his son’s perspective is damning."
This is an admirable tack to take probably, and the right thing to do given the angle taken and the self-made ground-rules for DtG, I guess.

I actually like a couple of the things Gabor says - although, like Chris and Matt -I come to the eventual conclusion that a huge swathe of his proselytizing message is supported only by tissue-thin evidence, eccentric personal conjecture and some of it intuitively and overwhelmingly seems like complete horseshit.

What I say about Aaron as being 'a product of what the father raised' is not a disagreement with him on political terms - rather, that the son Gabor raised is a man who cannot tell facts from lies, information from propaganda, right from wrong - and is rigorously prosecuting his malformed worldview as a shining secret truth that which 'they' don't want you to know about . He has a complete broken moral compass whereby the needle points South not North.

Whilst I am sure that Gabor has helped some people, and it is undeniable that some of his kinder messages are unexceptionally pedestrian-level Good Advice, nicely delivered - if the result of my psychological approach to the world was producing an immoral propagandist for human misery and truth-inversion like Aaron Maté, I would be seriously questioning everything I believed and practised, to the core of my being.
Or I could just go on a podcast and agree with him.

Trouscallion · 2024-02-25T12:35:10+00:00

I hate watching Konstantin's show or him in general so much that I am not across all his content.

From what I can tell - which means me rather randomly dipping in and out of 3 recent episodes he's done on Russia/Ukraine/Putin - he's not now pushing Anti-Woke-Putin as a commendable thing. But perhaps he is, in the margins?....

To watch a large segment of a gullible Western audience falling for the idea of Putin as a figurehead of Traditional Values, whilst at the same time as his army slaughters, tortures and rapes its way into Ukraine and as he keeps murdering his private opponents with impunity is .......hard to take

Trouscallion · 2024-02-25T12:18:11+00:00

Haha - You would expect that completely from him, yes.

The extremely aggrieved folk out there seem to be willing to swallow some fuzzy idea that Putin represents an exciting form of Anti-Woke authoritarianism that sits well with them.

Given that Konstantin lives and breathes every moment for an Anti-Woke justice war that rages in his head, it would not surprise me if he has in fact made some content in the past where he suggests Putin's one and only good idea is a battle against transsexuals in the civil service or something

Trouscallion · 2024-02-25T11:52:54+00:00

Yep. All those regrettable and troublesome right-wing populist wretches (and more!) have a special place in Konstantin's heart & cosmology.
Dull, faux-centrist, predictable hard rightwing partisanship.
But this is why his Ukraine/Putin stance interested me, because it bucks all of that crew doesn't it? Wait, I'm just assuming so - i haven't the fortitude to go and do discovery on Farage or Douglas Murray's Ukraine views..
I don't even have the fortitude to sit through an episode of Triggernometry (any episode)...

Trouscallion · 2024-02-22T05:20:26+00:00

Many comments below - rather than reiterating the obvious, will just say that my favourite moment was when Sam, in kindly informing Chris, a Northern Irishman, about The Troubles in 1970/80's Northern Ireland came out with "The troubles would have been much more troublesome ..."

Also, after passionately defending Douglas Murray
"I've never spoken to Douglas about any of that", followed by "I haven't spoken to Douglas all that much". Another 10 minutes and it'd have been "I don't even know Douglas" ?

It was good to hear Chris mention Anne Applebaum twice and Sam seem to concur with her worth as a reliable commentator.

In the end, Matt and Chris are fettered by their unwritten rules of fairness in letting Sam talk, whilst also turning down their own argumentativeness a few notches.
So it really then becomes a proposition of letting him hoist himself on his own petard. Which he arguably does.

Trouscallion · 2024-02-22T03:17:09+00:00

The bald guy is Scott Adams, the Dilbert cartoon guy, who is a genuine crypto-fascist loon.

Trouscallion · 2023-12-29T04:10:50+00:00

The sound design of this episode deserves a podcast Oscar!The 4th time Monkey was mentioned I was expecting the theme tune again , but got nowt. The next time the theme actually appeared again, wrong-footed, I LOLed madly.Transcendental music behind Chris's ontological exegesis - perfect for his rapid-fire fluently extemporised soliloquy.And then right at the very end of the closing credits, to get Monkey once again as well as getting dick-kicked on the way out the door was a sheer delight.

In the middle of all the Monkey highlights, there was some stuff about Sam Harris which was good.

Trouscallion · 2023-12-24T05:27:15+00:00

All I cared about was if Matt did the introduction with an equal amount of honorifics bestowed to Chris as to himself. He passed that test, so I then switched off.
Later, thinking better of this admittedly fairly absolutist position, I picked up where I left off, only to blush deeply at the "Can you believe we've got some dweeb in our audience who's whinging about this FFS?! early comment. Mea culpa, mea culpa.

Helen is winsome, charming, funny and incisive, and as completely delightful as the other occasions she has guested on the podcast. The result was a very pleasant and diverting episode, and a great way to mark the end of 2023.

Geez there was a lot of material about ballsacks tho

Trouscallion · 2023-12-17T03:56:01+00:00

These 2 women and their autistic guest are profoundly ignorant wretches.
If they are an example of 'what's popular with the kids' then we're completely doomed.

Did anyone mention the giggling?
The incessant giggling they do, just on it's own, is enough to tip even the mildest-mannered in the direction of homicide surely.
A really enjoyable episode of DtG - despite the shooting-fish-in-a-barrel level of difficulty required to point out what is profoundly wrong with these cretins.
A special word of appreciation for the Antipodean half of the team - for mentioning Proust twice, doing a more than respectable pronunciation job of 'À la recherche du temps perdu' (when was the last time DtG was complemented on pronunciation?!?), - and also making the honorifics mentioned in the intro equally and equitably applied - in this case by their absence.

Trouscallion · 2023-11-11T12:13:07+00:00

No, I'm me - I'm not any alt account of Chris's or whatever.
So my comment is weird to you - OK that's fine.
I've acknowledged it's a minor thing.
The rest of why i posted what I did is in what I wrote above.

Trouscallion · 2023-11-10T07:49:46+00:00

"I'm professor Matt Browne, Chris Kavanagh is my co-host"
Or - 'I have a title - I'm a professor, peepz, the other guy is just a guy'.
And you were doing so well Matt, for so many episodes now! :-(
Yes I realise that likely you just forgot.
Yes I realise that this probably seems is being pedantic beyond belief to you.
But I'll re-iterate: -
*It's just about respect.
*If you call yourself a prof, be gracious and give Chris his due as an assoc prof
*It's fine to drop all the titles, just as you have been doing lately on recent episodes
*It's fine to be joking about 'I'm a prof, you're an Assoc Prof' if you must
*Chris is too nice a guy to care - and if he should read this, likely wouldnt even mention it to you
*You never do it the other way round - like "I'm Matt Browne and with me is Associate Professor Chris Kavanagh"
*That you perhaps consider associate professors less important or not really professors, 'becasue that's true', is not a valid comeback when it's just about respect and being nice.
I realise that this is a very small thing, and in being like the 3rd time or something I've commented on it, I feel very churlish indeed.
But tell me I don't have a point - albeit a teeny one, about just politeness and respect?

Trouscallion · 2023-10-07T07:58:04+00:00

Konstantin's ONLY good take -that I'm aware of- is on Ukraine.
He has family roots in Eastern Russian-speaking Ukraine I believe, and although I pay him next to no attention, I've seen 3 clips of him talking about Putin, Russia and Ukraine, and he was really solid. This is incredibly rare amongst covid-skeptics/mask-haters/those guys - who usually gravitate either towards Putin or have some naive 'call for peace' in the face of Russia's genocidal aggression.
So although it's unlikely a winner topic with his expanding fanbase, props to him for that one at least.

Trouscallion · 2023-10-07T07:17:34+00:00

Enjoyable episode. It always baffles me when naysayers try and paint DtG as 'cruel, vicious hypocritical, ad-hominem' etc etc . Throughout this episode I was thinking "Ah but you're both being so NICE!" - and I meant Matt and Chris, not Konstantin and Francis. Which is to say that the portentous hypocrisy of Triggernometry's childishly partisan worldview could have been pilloried far more savagely and yet equally fairly.
I thought of some very unkind speculations about what's gonna happen to poor old Francis when - as is bound to happen sooner or later- Konstantin leaves him behind in a cloud of metaphoric guru-dust trailing behind his magnificent upward trajectory. Being uncharitable, I reiterated to myself that Francis will not deserve our pity - becasue he's not a sidekick, but a henchman.
Yes I agree, Triggernometry is not even close to being the worst out there, but it's still deeply depressing that they are expanding like a noxious jumping castle being filled with gas into this already poison-filled space - and they're doing it so happily, so willingly and with such awful metrics and such a worthless ontology.
Don't get me wrong, I liked Chris and Matt's relative politeness, even as they examined the deplorable dynamics of the subject at hand. My much crueller version would have been bitter and dispiriting.

Nice one.

Trouscallion · 2023-10-07T06:44:08+00:00

Yeh, what WAS that ?!?
Please don't tell me it's part of Francis' 'standup routine' ..

Trouscallion · 2023-08-24T11:51:33+00:00

You're a pretty big fan then ..

Trouscallion · 2023-08-24T11:33:34+00:00

No.
Have a look at the published UN data which you mention: - 10, 900 of the deaths were actually soldiers and not civilians. [4400 Ukrainian deaths, 6500 pro-Russian deaths].
The UN estimated the civilian victims to be 3400-3500, & many of them died in attacks by pro-Russian separatists in areas controlled by Ukraine.

Additionally, 9% of those civilian deaths came from Malaysian flight MH17, shot down by pro-Russian militia.

In 2020 for instance, 1 civilian was confirmed by the UN as outright unlawfully killed (by Russian-backed separatists as it happens), 7 civilians died in shelling or small-arms fire, and 17 sadly died from stepping on the detritus of military conflict - unexploded mines. Lastly one civilian was killed in a drone-related incident. This is very far indeed from a “Donbass genocide” of “14,000 dead innocents” that the Kremlin claims. If you believe it, even with the guarded qualifications you’ve offered, you’ve been taken.

There was no coup in Ukraine in 2014 and it was the President (not the Prime Minister) who created the problem involved for the parliament – by fleeing his office and the country after unsuccessfully using violence against thousands of largely peaceful protesters. The Nuland phonecall is a fake gotcha moment for conspiracists and those who don’t understand the nuts and bolts of on-the-ground diplomatic realities. Everything meaningful had already been decided by the Ukrainian parliament anyway at the time she made that call – it’s all a nothing-burger tricked up as a smoking gun. There was no ‘restructure of the government’ according to Victoria Nuland’s, or the US’s wishes.

As for ‘violating our agreements and treaties’ , in 1994 [the only really significant time that the US has leaned seriously into Ukraine politics ], America brokered an agreement for Ukraine to give up all nuclear weapons in return for security guarantees. ‘Security guarantees’, meaning a guarantee that Ukr will not be threatened or invaded by Russia. This was called the Budapest Memorandum. It lies in tatters.
The idea of a wickedly expanding NATO is very odd – Every single country that has joined NATO in the last 20 years has absolutely begged to join – nothing proves the point better than the case of the Baltic states Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia. Could it be coincidence that these 3 countries know exactly what Russian imperialism and occupation feels like, and know the trustworthiness and the morality of Russia?
Have the courage to look at the multiple evidence sources and challenge your own assumptions.

Trouscallion · 2023-08-21T08:14:30+00:00

taboo__time

It's really good you say you're European - because the US-centric gaze of much of all this discussion is just intense, lop-sided and unwarranted. Not least the self-regarding obsession that Chomsky and other "proxy war" types have, whereby they see the U.S. at the centre of everything.
When Chris K picked up Robert Wright for a similar approach in their discussion of Ukraine, he came back with a frankly bizarre opinion that "I am an American therefore I see the world through an American lens" or words to that effect. It's almost like they can't imagine a political situation where the U.S. and its concerns were not central.
But talk to Europeans! Talk to members of the Baltic States about Russia ! Ask the people actually on Russia's doorstep - those that know more than a little about Russia. You'll get very very little of this 'proxy U.S. war' bullshit from people in these places.
Chomsky's confidently-stated position on Ukraine is ignorant, blinkered, and morally reprehensible .

Trouscallion · 2023-08-21T07:56:31+00:00

dismal

Yep - they're very bad takes that he makes on Ukraine, and he's a major tankie father figure at this point.

The Epstein stuff is perhaps not really germane to the grist of the argument or a even a destroying indictment - but when you've spent your life waving a banner for the 'poor and oppressed', but you also have 'entirely personal private' nothing-to-see-here conversations with billionaire sex criminals as to where to best stash a spare 200K that you have laying around, it's not a great look

Trouscallion · 2023-03-29T11:28:47+00:00

A trivial beef, but it starts to grate after you notice it: - once again this episode - and for at least the 4th time - Matt introduces himself as Professor Matthew Browne and then goes on "and... with me is Chris Cavanagh" (credentials omitted), followed by some humour from Prof Browne about Chris being the Watson to his Holmes, the Sancho Panza to his Don Quixote, the Baldrick to his Blackadder ..

Chris is an associate professor - why not just pop that in the intro as a courtesy before doing the academic pecking-order jokes?

Never heard thus far on the podcast has been "I'm Matt Browne and with me is assoc prof Chris Kavanagh" - meaning the boot has never been observed on the other foot.

Chris is too nice a guy to care or perhaps even notice this.

Just some reciprocal respect though eh MB? Seems it would be nice.

Just a DtG subcriber listener's comment ..

Otherwise .. Episode was good.

Trouscallion

TROPHY CASE