My 2020 Rabbit Hole — The Intellectual Dark Web and Everything That Came With It

Well this has to be the major chunk of my 2020. Trapped in the house, getting used to podcasting and long form conversations; I suddenly came across the name Joe Rogan. I loved how he would talk to so many people and have 4 hour conversations like the two were meeting at a bar for dinner.

I went through a lot of guests, probably 15 odd and one in particular caught my complete attention — Eric Weinstein. I must admit, there must be about 14 hours of Eric Weinstein on the JRE podcast but I only understand at the max about 40% of what he says. He was at least someone who sounded like an open minded person, a contrarian with often interesting insights about everyday issues.

I started listening to him more and more. The first podcast I ever subscribed to was his “portal”. Apart from some episodes of physics and core mathematics, the overall manner, his demeanor, the articulate and elegant way he often structured ideas seemed magnetic. This let me into following more of his “friends” in a group termed as the “Intellectual Dark Web”.

Within weeks, I got acquainted with Eric’s brother, Bret Weinstein, Sam Harris, Jordan Peterson, Majid Nawaz, Ben Shapiro and sadly, as a product of my search recommendations, Dave Rubin. I went from liking these people to a point of blind adulation. Some of their thoughts were extremely profound, yet some of what they said were borderline absurd. Sadly, I was hooked and impressionable, thus falling for the intricate manner in which they dressed some of their quite radical opinions.

It took me a long 7 months to see through the facade or at least limitations of the articulate, voluble and laconic manner in which the ‘IDW’ framed their view points. Now there are certain caveats to this. Both the stories of Ayan Hirsi Ali and Majid Nawaz are riveting and inspiring. I learnt a great deal from them. This, nevertheless, does not imply that I agree with Sam Harris’ position on the measures to tackle extremism in middle east or as they put it, the imminent threat of Islamists.

I tried to read critiques of them, well at least the ones that weren’t simply scornful and snide. I came across people like David Packman and the late Michael Brooks whose work made me realize that just like the threat of white supremacists, maybe this group was a bit too involved into thinking that the world was taking a turn for a radical leftist, anarchistic regime.

I’m still reading more about them, and I still agree with quite a few of their founding ideas. But the fact that there might be differences in races doesn’t help anyone. Neither does a position that a law mandates a form of ‘compelled speech’ especially when no convictions of such violations have ever been documented.

This is a start. But I’m happy that I’m not exalting anyone anymore. By trying to understand different viewpoints, I think I may have over corrected myself these past few months and changed more to the right than I would care to admit.

I wanted to thank Unnati, a dear friend for bursting my bubble — convincing me how a law about equal rights does not equate to ‘compelled speech’, along with the late book by Michael Brooks, in which he argues how the IDW are smart but often misinformed about a lot of issues.