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Joe Rogan

dauerbach

New Blood
D
Joined
Sep 4, 2003
Messages
1
I enjoyed listening to the Dunning/Rogan podcast. I was very impressed by Rogan, and will start listening to his podcasts as well.

Just a couple of factual comments.

Ted Kazynski was never given LSD at Harvard. He was the victim of Henry Murray, who performed stress interview experiments at Harvard as part of MKULTRA. While both Murray and Timothy Leary were at Harvard simultaneously, it was Leary who was doing the LSD experiments.

There is not plausible way that glutathione could affect intoxication. As Brian pointed out, it is used in acetaldehyde metabolism which is a first step in ethanol metabolism. The alcohol is changed into acetaldehyde which is very important in hangovers (see Antabuse) but not psychoactive itself.
 
I listen to Joe fairly often, and he's an entertaining guy. He's also mal-informed much of the time. For instance, I know people have repeatedly given him the information about why marijuana was made illegal, but he's happy to continue promoting the idea that William Randolph Hearst was behind it. It took him 10 years to come around on the Moon landing.

He's hard to figure out though. After being shown the evidence about chemtrails, he now regularly argues with the people who believe they are anything more than contrails. He's also finally admitted that he doesn't believe in Bigfoot, but just REALLY loves the idea of Bigfoot (nothing wrong with that.)
 
His Alex Jones impresonation is spot on. That's about the only nice thing I can say about the guy.

DuvalHMFIC said:
He's hard to figure out though.
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He's a conspiracy theorist at heart who tries desperately to sound open minded, and his "aw shucks, I don't know, I'm just the guy asking questions" shtick gets tiresome real fast.

Why is this in the skeptical podcast section?
 
Snarf said:
His Alex Jones impresonation is spot on. That's about the only nice thing I can say about the guy.



He's a conspiracy theorist at heart who tries desperately to sound open minded, and his "aw shucks, I don't know, I'm just the guy asking questions" shtick gets tiresome real fast.

Why is this in the skeptical podcast section?
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That's because:

1. Joe Rogan is on a list of woomeisters made by Brian Dunning,
2. Brian Dunning was on Rogan's show,
3. Brian blogged about it, saying that the apearance on Rogan's show affirmed for him that Rogan should remain on the list.
 
I can only speak about what I've seen of Joe Rogan and that is simply this: he is the very same character he portrayed on "News Radio" minus the inventiveness.
 
I like Joe Rogan.

His commentary on UFC events is engaging and real in the sense that you feel he's saying what he thinks and not just talking for the sake of talking (maybe he's just good at talking, but I prefer him to other colour commentary guys). When it comes to MMA, and particularly jiu jitsu, he knows what he's talking about and it's nice to have that aspect of the fight game well broken down.

I listen to his podcast sometimes and I enjoy when he gets MMA fighters or other martial artists on and talks about martial arts and fighting. He recently had Kron Gracie on, which was very cool to see.

He's a total woo sometimes, but I don't blame him that much. He actually seems to have more curiosity about the world and about science than most people. He just isn't a skeptic, and thus doesn't have the tools necessary to tell the difference between what's true and what just sounds true, or even just what he'd like to be true because it sounds cool. But he's got a seed of skepticism in him in so much as he actually does try to research things. He just isn't all that good at it, and ends up with the wrong conclusion.

I thought Brian Dunning did a poor job on his show. Not because what he was saying was wrong, but because he didn't explain the viewpoint of skepticism particularly well, he didn't explain the mistakes Joe was making and really only took issue with particular mistakes of fact that he felt he made. That is not the real issue. The real issue is the methodology of arriving at the truth. Personally if I were talking to Rogan about skepticism I'd make the analogy to martial arts. How do you tell what works in martial arts? Experiment, not wishful thinking. How do you tell what's true in other aspects of the world and in science? Experiment, not wishful thinking. A kick might "look like" it would knock someone out, but would it? Try it against a resisting opponent and see. "looks like" isn't a good gage of reality.

At one point he had Neil DeGrasse Tyson on, and every time he started talking conspiracy theories Neil shot him down in a way that he took well. It was a show (I recommend listening to it), because his actual curiosity came out and Neil had a lot of time talk about the amazing things that actually exist in the world. We don't need to just imagine them.

He still gets on my nerves sometimes. Particularly when he and his guests both know nothing about a topic and start going off into lala land, but he's just a normal guy talking about things that interest him, and generally I find him interesting. Just make sure you take everything he says with a grain of salt.
 
Can be entertaining for the guests that he talks to but when it is just him rambling not worth it as he is so stupid.
 
Brian Dunning set back skepticism about 12-15 thousand years after his appearance on Rogan's podcast.

He came off like a tool and he didn't even have his facts together. I like Joe Rogan but it's sad when he can make you seem like the woo in the room.
 
I thought I had helped a friend get past a lot of his issues but he's very into Joe Rogan, who I've started listening to a lot when bored even though I find his critical thinking polluted by his ego. He knows this though, but he's not careful enough to avoid what he wants to think. My friend just "admitted" to me he still has trouble with believing the moon landing. He cited a few things Rogan talked about, but as far as I know Rogan has declared his skepticism on the moon landing over. My friend is big on authority figures dictating what he thinks, but I'm not happy reasoning alone won't sway him.

These people typically but not exclusively seem to want to live in a world where they have a romantic position which makes them able to see a truth the rest of us accept through dogmatic faith and arrogance while they are the open minded.

I just remember when I was all about being "open minded" through childhood and my teens and how hopelessly tangled up I was in the desire for something more exciting in the universe. I wish I could share the grasp of correlations necessary to understand something comparable to their shallow and romantic world of sinister villains and secret truths but it takes time. Sam Harris was another person I thought Joe benefited from talking with next to Tyson.

Rogan get's a star for trying but he's got to be harder on himself. He could be a great potential vehicle for spreading a healthier standard for critical thinking in our youth. I would love an hour or two to discuss and challenge each other with him.
 
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Halfcentaur said:
Sam Harris was another person I thought Joe benefited from talking with next to Tyson.
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I remember that episode. Some three years back, yeah? That was good pod, but it felt like (as it always does) Joe wasn't absorbing anything that Sam said that ran counter to his beliefs.
 
dauerbach said:
As Brian pointed out, it [glutathione] is used in acetaldehyde metabolism which is a first step in ethanol metabolism.
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Huh - no way !

If you mean metabolism (as in fermentation) then acetaldehyde is the next-to-last step. The only reason yeast and other fermentative organisms convert acetaldehyde to ethanol (of an energetic loss) is to maintain electron balance.

This step requires alcohol dehydrogenase enzymes as catalyst and NADH/NAD as the energy/electron source - no glutathione


If instead you mean CATABOLISM (the breakdown of ethanol as in inebriated humans), this involves the conversion of ethanol to acetaldehyde and then to lactate which is used by smooth muscle tissue for energy and has several other destinations. The conversion to acetaldehyde ni the liver is just the energetically favored inverse of the fermentation step and takes place in the liver. The increased NADH/NAD ration in the liver shifts the lactate dehydrogenase enzyme toward lactate production, again no glutathione.




The alcohol is changed into acetaldehyde which is very important in hangovers (see Antabuse) but not psychoactive itself.
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To clarify, acetaldehyde is just one factor, and a modest one, in hangovers. congeners appear to be the most highly related variable. Yes, high level of acetaldehyde caused by Antabuse/Disulfram has SOME symptoms in common w/ a hangover, but it is not a typical hangover.

Actually it's hard to believe Antabuse/Disulfram are permitted to be used. You may as well beat the person with a stick - it would cause less damage.
 
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