Based Camp: Garden Gnomes are Destroying Academia

In this enlightening conversation, Malcolm and Simone critically dissect the nature of intelligence and the hierarchy of knowledge. Drawing on historical anecdotes and personal experiences, they lay bare the institutional bias, gatekeeping, and hurdles that prevent truly novel ideas from taking root within academia and society. From the stifling of innovation to the ironic role of performative intelligence, they bring to light some hard truths about our education system and the ways in which it determines who is seen as smart. As they navigate through academic consensus and fashionable ideas, join them for an honest exploration of how we shape, share, and value knowledge.

Transcript:

Malcolm: [00:00:00] when somebody comes up with a genuinely novel idea, .

Malcolm: Their idea is often treated like an insane cult. Wow. And, and you see this within academia today. The difference we have today is that ironically the academic system has more a monopoly on what's considered truth than the church ever had. And so it is very hard for new ideas to form. And when a new idea does form, people are punished.

Malcolm: Severely

Would you like to know more?

Simone: Hello,

Malcolm: gorgeous. Hello, Simone. I am excited to be chatting today. What are we talking about? Well, you're

Simone: being like Professor Malcolm because we have a quote to discuss. This is like homeworky. It sounds like.

Simone: It reminds me of my honors classes in college

Malcolm: the article was called The Mid Wit Menace, on a sub stack by somebody called Millennial Woes. And I don't think it's that much of a red sub either.

Simone: All right.

Simone: Because he has convinced himself by embracing fashionable ideas that he's very wise, he will not accept that [00:01:00] anybody is wiser than him unless they also embrace those fashionable ideas. In his mind, that is the only thing that could prove the person to be as wise as him, let alone even wiser.

Simone: But a person wiser than him would never adopt those b******t, fashionable ideas. So they would never appear in the mid wit's perception as wiser than him. Thus, the mid midwife is trapped in his midwifery.

Malcolm: I think this quote is describing a very real phenomenon in our society.

Malcolm: Hmm. With how people judge what intelligence is. Yeah. When they are creating this organically formed hierarchy that determines truth within our society. Okay. So if you say something that is very antithetical to the accepted truth of society. People will look at you as an idiot, right? Mm-hmm.

Malcolm: Mm-hmm. So it is very hard to say something that is genuinely innovative or [00:02:00] move things forwards without being looked at as an idiot. It actually can become dangerous to say things that move things forwards. Mm-hmm. And this mindset is particularly true in academia. I've worked in academia for a while, and

Malcolm: The hierarchy in intelligence is determined by an individual's ability to memorize, obscure things that other people who are widely agreed upon as smart have written or said determines a person's position was in this local hierarchy. Not their ability to override those things or come up with new ideas that counter those things.

Malcolm: Makes a lot of sense because the people at the top of this hierarchy, they're the people who everyone else is quoting, right? And so they have a vested interest in ensuring that you are not just disrupting the hierarchy. This is something even famously like Einstein got into when he got older, where he would.

Malcolm: Sort of snipe [00:03:00] at people's careers if they disagreed with his ideas. Yeah. Especially where it turned out that they were right later. Now they were right. Yeah. Oh, wow. And you see this across academic fields, and then when somebody comes up with a genuinely novel idea, you know, all La Darwin. They're basically crazy.

Malcolm: Their idea is often treated like an insane cult. Wow. And, and you see this within academia today. The difference we have today is that ironically the academic system has more a monopoly on what's considered truth than the church ever had. And so it is very hard for new ideas to form. And when a new idea does form, people are punished.

Malcolm: Severely if it goes against either the consensus or things that are of interest to the academic consensus. Mm-hmm. And I think it's one of the reasons why Acade has been so slow at advancing, but I think we also see this within the comments on our videos sometimes, you know, you know, I've looked at some people who say negative things about our videos [00:04:00] and.

Malcolm: Cause I try to determine like, what position are they coming for? Cause I never know, is somebody mad at us because they're a far leftist, are they mad at us because they're a far rightist? , so I can never really tell, you know, and so I try to go into it and one guy who repeatedly comment sort of negative things on our videos, it seems that he's predominantly, he's just like, A generic philosopher, academic philosopher.

Malcolm: Yeah. I be a philosophy parrot. That parrots, what everyone considers like smart philosophers have said, and that is how he determines, that he's smart, and so he thinks that we are crazy because I would never do that. I find that to be very disinteresting to, I say this parroting some random sub stacker, but keep in mind I'm parroting a suber that doesn't have a big fan base.

Malcolm: So, I, I am recognizing that this concept here potentially has a lot of merit. So I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, Simone, this idea of determining intelligence and how people determine who is intelligent around them.

Simone: Well, I think a lot of this actually has to come with something that, that [00:05:00] really blew my mind when I was first researching the careers of artists.

Simone: When, like back in 2012 when we first met and a bunch of the artists that I interviewed, Essentially said, well, I have to like, play up the extent to which I'm eccentric and weird and crazy and unstable seeming, because if I don't do that, if I don't have like paints like splattered on my face and my hair's all messed up, and I'm kind of like, oh, hi.

Simone: You know, like, like really crazy that people, you like their art cells for less, you know, they, they just aren't really, you know, succeeding as artists. They're not taken. Oddly, they're not taken seriously, so to speak. So I think what's really interesting is that there's this performative image of smartness that people are looking for instead of really like validating.

Simone: Is this idea interesting? It's more, does this person look like someone who's intellectual? Do they look like a philosopher? Do they look like a mathematician? In fact, we've even we've met people recently on a very different end of the spectrum. More like, on the technical or like data end of the [00:06:00] spectrum.

Simone: Who, who look very. Like analytical engineering and they just always get hired for these positions because they're seen as looking like a trustworthy, reliable engineer, even if actually their track record is abysmal and they don't work at all.

Simone: When I, what I think of when I see this quote is I think of the people who style themselves as intellectuals and also use really gatekeeper terms, , like very advanced vocabulary. They will grow beards. They will wear like very professorial looking clothes or weird clothes.

Simone: And it even makes me think we, we, we joke about this all the time About ornamental hermits or garden noms. Yeah, so during like around like regency era in, in England, one fashionable thing for a while, and actually this comes very back down to fashion, right? Fashionable ideas. One fashionable thing to do.

Simone: If you were a a, a Lord with a house, like a manor house, like a lot of [00:07:00] property, you would set up this kind of weird like, Refuge or shack on your property, and you would bring out an intellectual to live in the shack. And they often like in their, I guess like employment contracts, they were not allowed to cut their facial hair, so they would have these beards.

Simone: In some cases they weren't allowed to cut their nails, so they'd have these like gnarled nails and they were supposed to come out when you were entertaining house guests for like, hunting trips and, and, and house parties to Pontificate and be smart and impress people. And of course like they weren't supposed to drink.

Simone: They would be caught like at the local pub all the time. They were just supposed to like be alone with their books and you know, provide intellectual inspiration. And what I also think is really interesting is that people like that still do exist and that when like there are, we put them in our circles

Malcolm: and it's one of the worst things about being in these intellectual circles is if you are like known as being smart.

Malcolm: There's like this whole class of people that's like known as being smart, but it's [00:08:00] like actively really not smart. We call them anti geniuses. It's where this before I get too far into the concept of anti-genius, there's two other things I want to discuss on this subject that I think are really important.

Malcolm: Okay. One is the judgment of Paris, which I thought really related to what you were talking about in the art world, which is you don't just see this in the world of intellectualism. So the judgment of Paris was this famous competition where in, in Paris, where they did a blind tasting and it was thought gonna be a nothing burger that we knew the outcome of, of French wines against American wines.

Malcolm: Yes. And what could go wrong? The American wines cleaned up. And what it turned out is all these people who'd been claiming to be experts and stuff like that, they couldn't even tell the difference between the two wines. Mm-hmm. And you have this whole hierarchy of like wine tasting. And there was that one experiment, which I love where they, with sommelier.

Malcolm: Yeah, sommelier, they couldn't even tell the difference between white and red wine when it was blindfold. My gosh, it's so, and I was like, oh my God, that so many of these fields, not, not [00:09:00] everyone, like some of them were, were still pretty good. But the idea being is that the hierarchy of knowledge within a field can be almost entirely fabricated, yet it can still be seen as a really high knowledge field.

Malcolm: Yes. And that is true. It was art. Well, we often say it was art. Like if one of our kids comes to us and says, daddy, I, I really wanna be an artist. I'm like, oh, well then you're really gonna need to practice and learn a lot about sales and marketing cause art, 100%. You don't need to know s**t about art to be a famous artist.

Malcolm: Yeah. You have to have

Simone: a killer network. Yeah. You have to have the right look. Yeah, the, those

Malcolm: sales. Well, and this is, there was actually that study that was done on artists to find out who was paid the most and it was completely determinant on their network. It was not determinant on how good they were as artists.

Malcolm: That it's, it's, it's a completely a, a yeah. It's, it's, it's wild. But anyway, back to the concept of an anti-geniusn and where this relates. To garden nos as we

Simone: call them, our nos ornamental [00:10:00] hermits,

Malcolm: ornamental hermits in our communities. But we, we, we've come to calling them the shorthand noms, right?

Malcolm: They're and, and, and these are people who are just like professionally smart people, but they are more people who are like word cells that got known as smart when they were really young because like they do seem to have a genuine competence in wording.

Malcolm: However, I. None of their ideas ever turn out to have any real world applicability, and they don't seem to relate to any ability to change the world in any sort of a better way. They're just theorizing ideas. Mm-hmm. And it grinds my teeth when I, you know, someone who's built successful businesses, who's made multiple calls about, oh, the politics are moving in this way and this is gonna change about society.

Malcolm: And then they come true. And, and, and that they're, and I'll be. Br, you know, brandied about by rich people when they're bringing out the, their smart people. And then there's this other group that's just like, Always been wrong about everything, but really good at sounding smart. Oh, but

Simone: again, like keep in [00:11:00] mind, even for example, in the startup world, there are like successful entrepreneurs over here doing their thing, and then there are people who are really, really good at raising funds.

Simone: And they just raise funds and then they, they have a failed startup, and then they like raise funds again. So I think that there's this world of fashionable ideas, performative signaling of legitimacy in whatever realm you're trying to play in. And then there's the real thing. And the question is, how, how can people know what the real thing is and why?

Simone: Why are people not? Necessarily judging what the real thing is, we're

Malcolm: underselling how damaging this concept of an anti-geniusn is or anti-genius are. Mm. So the way that we judge intelligence, meaningful intelligence is it's a person's ability to look at a set of information about the environment or the world today, and use that information to accurately predict.

Malcolm: And or shape future outcomes. Applicable intelligence. We had that guy David Rainey [00:12:00] who wrote the book on Changing Minds, and he came to stay with us. And, and we were talking about like, how do you create geniuses? And we're like, everything when we're trying to create a genius is based around real world applicability, real world ability to succeed in real world environments and this definition of intelligence.

Malcolm: But then you have these other people who. Sometimes they even know that, that their, the type of intelligence they have doesn't have this sort of real world applicability, but their identity. Is based around being intelligent . Mm-hmm.

Malcolm: And their value within, in their social circles is based around being intelligent. Mm-hmm. And, and people can get into this really early, like they get good grades on tests and stuff like that in high school. Mm-hmm. And then it turns out they're just not good at actually performing in, in, in real world environments as though now they have this identity as an intelligent person.

Malcolm: Well, and

Simone: actually let's, let's point out like related to this is one of the top things parents are told not to tell their kids. Never tell your kid they're smart. Always praise them for working hard because if someone is told they're smart, they will then stop taking risks. Cuz they never wanna do something where they can be proven not smart because it's part of their identity.

Simone: This is the problem is and exact well [00:13:00] they feed in, right? This is a cumulative effect is when people grow up. With this reputation of being this wonder kind, it actually affects their outcomes because now they're not taking risks. Now they're not. They're really expressing that much intellectual humility or being willing to fail in a way where they can learn real things because they can't let go of that identity.

Simone: They can't

Malcolm: risk it, but they also need the people around them to constantly fail. For sure. That's another thing, to maintain their position. They need to talk down to people who may have like genuine, measurable success in the real world, and they need projects that are, that are happening around them in their ecosystem to constantly fail.

Malcolm: Mm-hmm. And so, a, a great historical example, if you're talking about like a historical example of an anti-geniusn, one of these people who's known as being smart but has never been successful at anything and makes their living off of, of, of parasitizing wealthy people would be repu. I think he's the classic example of this, and they constantly, well, they damage the communities that they're in because, once you get one of [00:14:00] these the sort of parasitic anti-geniusniueses is attached to you as like a wealthy person. They will siphon your money and your reputation to increase their public image or how far they can broadcast their ideas and reputation because that is the commodity in which they trade in a way that can be very damaging to you as an individual. So. There's some famous, modern examples of anti-geniusn. I don't know. I wanna make beef. Who's the one who I can talk about or I won't make a beef?

Malcolm: Greta Thornberg. Greta Thornberg's, the classic anti, obviously she's the child, she's not smart. Um, Like she's an actual,

Simone: hey, they're, they're really smart children out there. I think the bigger issue is she's towing the line. She doesn't have any unique ideas. She's saying exactly what, which first thing famous.

Malcolm: Yeah. But people would bandy her about like, oh, you have ideas. And so what anti-genius often do within a modern ecosystem is they make their entire career. Around tearing down a specific field. That is what they will do. And since we are associated with things like the, ea don't

Simone: name names.

Simone: [00:15:00] Don't name names, yeah. I

Malcolm: won't name names, but I would say good sign of an anti-geniusn is they've made their career around tearing down. Other fields around sensationalism., but they've never actually accomplished anything of their own within the field of any real merit. So that's one type of anti-geniusn you'll see. The second type of anti-geniusn you'll see is the mystical anti-geniusn. So these individuals hide that their ideas are really bad by covering them in forms of mysticism that can't be proven.

Malcolm: , absolutely right or wrong, but that can sound really smart. Mysticism,

Simone: Like the pseudo profound b******t thing.

Malcolm: Yeah. But some people are so good at pseudo profound b******t that you're just not gonna be able to catch them on it.

Malcolm: Yeah. Um, They, well, it's, it's, and, and us saying all this, this is actually one of our more dangerous videos because I, I am afraid that somebody who is one of these anti-genius will see this and recognize how threatening we are to their income streams. If, if we spread. [00:16:00] This just like, I think obvious.

Simone: But here's the thing is I, I genuinely don't believe people who fall for, performative geniuses are going to stop falling for them. Like you've spent decades trying to convince people to stop listening. To either like scam artists, like on, and then like, I'm not saying these people are scam artists, but like you've tried to convince people for yours to stop listening to scam artists or stop listening to people who are just performative, who, who are misleading.

Malcolm: We do financial advising for some, you know, elderly people. Exactly. And, and like, nothing, nothing. You say scams is just like a constant. No matter how many times I'm like, this is a scam. This is exactly like the scam you got hit was last time. Here's how you can recognize these scams in the future.

Malcolm: And it's the same thing with with, with these groups, you know, we're like, okay, you know, this is another anti-geniusn, but no. Yeah.

Simone: But no one ever. Ever, no matter what you say, has changed their views. So I don't actually think anything you're, you're you're saying,

Malcolm: well, I think if I reach young people [00:17:00] early enough, they'll begin to build up pattern recognition around that.

Malcolm: And so that's why I hope our, our channel and our podcast does reach. I mean, I like that we have older fans, but I think that, , if you can catch someone with some of these pattern recognition things when they're younger, before they build ideas like, this is what a smart person looks like, this is what a.

Malcolm: And they'll think, oh, they, they do this, they talk like this. They have these degrees. Like none of those things are actual signs of a smart person. A smart person is their ability to predict or affect future outcomes with knowledge of the current world.

Simone: Right. Well, so that's actually what I wanted to ask you.

Simone: Like, so what are your tips to people on like, Should you actually consider this person an expert in a field or someone who has like really interesting ideas or someone that you should turn to for wisdom? And how do you determine whether someone is maybe acting like a genius in their field, but not actually someone who's going to give you advice that will get you where you wanna be?

Malcolm: Yeah, so I, I think that there's a few core things here. One if when they're coming to you, their primary [00:18:00] recommendation is other people. Say they're smart. Or other people who are generally thought of as smart, say they're smart, but they don't seem to have ever actually accomplished anything concrete then that's a really big red flag.

Malcolm: Mm. Because people who are actually that smart generally don't have that hard of time accomplishing things. Mm-hmm. Like whether it's starting a company and making it successful or coming up with a new scientific theory or. And a sign of a true genius. I think like the highest level of genius that we would say is somebody who has been independently smart in multiple fields where their intelligence was in one field, didn't contribute or contributed only minorly to their ability to be successful within another field.

Malcolm: Mm. So if it, if they can consistently come at multiple fields and be successful in them, I'm like, wow, that's like the opposite of an anti genius. That's like a. Super genius. I, I would call that because a person could be successful in a field accidentally sometimes, for sure. It's really hard to be accidentally [00:19:00] successful in multiple fields in, in, in different areas.

Malcolm: Then you like

Simone: that and of, of course shock calling. Like if, if someone said, I'm going to do this, especially if people doubt them and then they do it, that, that's a big thing. And yeah, cross disciplinary accomplishment I think is, is also super huge and, and hard to replicate if you. If you haven't if you haven't really mastered like life and wisdom, well, we don't

Malcolm: have a genuine understanding of the world, you know?

Malcolm: Yeah, yeah. If you're understanding, if you're under, if whatever special access to knowledge you have doesn't have real world applicability, you don't have special access to knowledge. What you have is an ability to convince people you have a special access to knowledge. And for you to say it's not a, it is a scam if, if your knowledge has no way to measure it and no real world applicability it, it's just that you're good at convincing people of that.

Malcolm: That's not knowledge. That's. And this is what, well, I think Minta is a great way to sort for [00:20:00] anti-genius. I know. Because if somebody was a real genius, they wouldn't be in Mesa. They'd be out there making a lot of money. They'd be out there doing something. Their, their special access to information about the world would give them some competitive edge if it had, if it's given them so little competitive edge that the way they prove that they're smart is through Mensa.

Malcolm: Then they're likely not smart. And this is why a lot of Mensa, it's funny, a lot of Mensa has become, they say like a big problem with Mensa. It's become like a board game and like crime solving society, right? Or like no crime nights and stuff like that. Like just like nerdy

Simone: things. I guess if you have time to waste on joining and participating in Mensa, you are not really succeeding in the real world.

Malcolm: Well, yeah, that seems like an obvious truism to me. Hmm. Do you disagree

Simone: or No? I don't disagree. I, I think that that's a, that's a good identifier. I think what you also pointed to earlier, which is that a really common thing among these people, like, you know, c CEOs of startups who constantly raise money, then like blow up their startups and then just do it again.

Simone: Or like, people who say that they're experts in a [00:21:00] field but just aren't, they don't really know what they're talking about is they're really, really, really good with words and they're very convincing. They're charismatic. And I think that's another thing is I even just saw someone. Like tweet about this today that that it's, it's really hard to, like a lot of people just assume if someone is eloquent, if someone is well spoken, they're really good writer, that, that, that means that they must be generally very smart.

Malcolm: It's the word sell version of autism. So if somebody's like that sort of. Autistic, really good at engineering and you can talk to them and you can immediately know, oh, this person might be good at engineering, but I'm not gonna like let them impart me with their life philosophy or let them impart me with like, a certain type of tax advice that I know they know nothing about.

Malcolm: But if you happen to have that level of intelligence, but it's really narrowly focused at word selling, then you can become actually very dangerous. Because people improperly judge your level of competence and entrust you with [00:22:00] things they shouldn't trust you with. And a point I wanna make to something Simone kept saying, so if somebody fails at a startup, even multiple startups, that doesn't mean they're dumb.

Malcolm: It's how they failed at those multiple startups, which is a sign as to whether or not they're actually dumb. That is not to say that people with this sort of ability can't multiple times raise money for something and have people. I've actually noticed most of the people who I thought were anti-genius in the startup world have washed out.

Malcolm: Because I, I can think of some off the top of my head who I thought were absolutely anti geniuses. I was like, I. Okay. Right now everyone thinks this person is smarter than me, but I can tell they're not actually that smart. Yeah. Yeah.

Simone: Like we just raised for something and you're just like, I'm, this is going to

Malcolm: crash and burn.

Malcolm: Oh. And I always grinded my teeth when they were like a higher status than me and intelligence. They're like, well, we gotta ask a really smart person. And then they have crash and burned and now they're just generally known as like smart people who go to parties with smart people. But like, oh no. VCs quickly learned not to give them money.

Simone: One other point, and I think this is also important and related to what we're talking about, is sometimes you can be a true genuine [00:23:00] genius in one field, and then another common fallacy I see people demonstrate is that they assume that they're just a genius. So like, oh, like, maybe they're like a world class physicist and then they start giving people health advice and no one really questions it.

Simone: Cause they're like, oh yeah, Nobel laureate. Like, no, let's. Let's hear what this guy has to say, and like, they really have, they don't really understand what they're talking about, but they're so used to being super, super good in their own field, and they actually have the experience and credentials and research and, you know, like life in their field to actually be really smart that they, they don't know what it's like.

Simone: To be dumb. Like they, they can't understand that they're ignorant in another field, and then they, they start basically Yeah. Misleading a lot of people. Well,

Malcolm: and I need to also make clear that this is a cultural perspective we have. Yes. It is not a truism. Mm. So different cultures, because I have defined how our culture defines intelligence.

Malcolm: And by this definition of intelligence, these people are not intelligent. Different cultures relate to reality in different ways, and they may believe that there's like [00:24:00] some underlying. Metaphysical ness to reality, and that these people swim really well within those environments. Mm-hmm. And that they're not actually as damaging within those environments because they're able to focus all of their ideas instead of on like, tearing other people down on advancing this weird sort of word celly art.

Malcolm: And so that's really fine. And also it changes the way that we, you and I have interacted with the world. We've written a number of bestselling books now. Our podcast is growing. You know, I'd love that. Grew faster, but it's growing. Right? And a lot of people are like, you guys seem like really like cogent intellectuals with a hard view of the world that you really thought through within a lot of different domains.

Malcolm: Like, why are you just now entering the intellectual space? And the answer is twofold. One is, we wanted to make sure we had income streams before we entered the intellectual space so we would never be determinant on our audience. For what we said, because we never wanna get audience captured. We never wanna enter a space where I'm afraid to say something because I know I'll lose some audience.

Malcolm: Like when we did that [00:25:00] Proje episode, we lost a number of subscribers and I was like, whatever. But the other thing is, is from our cultural perspective, it would feel immoral to go out and start acting like, I had any special access to knowledge had I not first applied that knowledge to the world and had it allow me to outcompete other people in multiple domains, whether it's the academic domain or the domain of the business world.

Malcolm: So like I started my career in psychology and I had a bunch of weird ideas about how humans thought. And when I brought those ideas to, my supervisor, I they were just like, this is just like a completely different framework for how the human mind works.

Malcolm: Like, yeah, why don't you just pick one thing and work on that? And I had this, this sort of epiphany where I was like, you know what? If I actually do have a better understanding of how humans think than the existing dogma of the psychiatry community. Then I shouldn't go into psychology. I should go into business school.[00:26:00]

Malcolm: And that's, that's why I ended up going to get an mba. Cause I was like, let's apply these ideas in real world environments and see if they allow me to outcompete other people. And they did. Mm. And now I am fairly confident that most of my ideas are pretty accurate. And, and not just within business, within my relationships, I'd say we have a pretty healthy relationship.

Malcolm: Like I wouldn't be going out there giving people relationship advice or advice on how to structure their lives. If I didn't have my own life together, like for example, if I was a, hypothetically, if I was a drug addict who like had like a room, that was a disaster. I wouldn't be going out there telling people to make their beds or that stoicism is the answer to all of life.

Malcolm: Oh, sick

Simone: burn, Malcolm. Um, I would just, and with that, hold on. There are some people who are much smarter than us who are waiting at daycare. Oh my

Malcolm: gosh. Our little toddlers. Get them home. We gotta make them better than us.

Simone: Yes. So, sorry we've to end this conversation, but I love talking

Malcolm: about this. I, I, [00:27:00] I love talking about it too.

Malcolm: And this one might have been too spicy. I don't know. I'm gonna have to, I'm gonna have to edit out a lot of parts where I might allude to specific individuals. No. Yeah.

Simone: I love you. I love you too. Malcolm Tally ho.

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