Jim talks with Brian Chau about seeing the world as it is, not as we wish it to be. They discuss the firehose of bullshit, how modern-day propaganda works, QAnon & Pizzagate, the idea of egregores, adapting our biases against a drastically increased sample size, paranoia about child safety & kidnapping, why the vast majority of Americans are populist, the perception that our institutions are bankrupt, the golden rule of institutions, the CDC's banning of Covid tests, status as the ability to efficiently align with power, mainstream media as status engine, why populism is growing & where it might lead, the Edelman Trust Barometer, the difficulty of converting public sentiment into actual policy, and much more.

Episode Transcript
From the New World (Substack)
"All Hail the Firehose of Bullshit" by Brian Chau
"Playing Both Sides: Russian State-Backed Media Coverage of the #BlackLivesMatter Movement" - Stanford Internet Observatory
JRS Currents 024: BJ Campell on the Woke Religion
JRS EP 161 Greg Thomas on Untangling the Gordian Knot of Race
The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure, by Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff
JRS Currents 050: Greg Lukianoff on Free Speech
"'SADLY, PORN': Propaganda for a Future that Forgot History," by Brian Chau

Brian Chau is a mathematician by training and is tied for the youngest Canadian to win a gold medal at the International Olympiad in Informatics. He writes software for a living while posting on his spare time. He writes independently on American bureaucracy and political theory and has contributed to Tablet Magazine. His political philosophy can be summed up as “see the world as it is, not as you wish it to be.” Everything else is application.