One of GritCult's podcast guest appearances. For the full list, see Podcast appearances.
| High Agency Podcast | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Episode | |
| Show | High Agency Podcast |
| Host | Noah Revoy (@NoahRevoy) |
| Released | March 2021 |
| Length | 58:35 |
| Watch | YouTube |
Human Programming With GritCult is an episode of High Agency Podcast, hosted by Noah Revoy, with GritCult as the guest (March 2021). Introduced as an expert in human programming, GritCult explains memetics, argues that ideas change the minds they pass through, and prescribes the fixes: a friendship audit, a rebuilt environment and death kept in view.
Summary
An early appearance on a show about agency and self-mastery. Asked about his name, GritCult says the cult half was deliberate, born of a fascination with how cults differ from other forms of culture, which he describes as a tribal collection of people or a cybernetic organism. His model of programming comes from memetics: brains are nodes that ideas pass through, and each idea changes the brain as it goes. Because people tire of normal stimuli, the hedonic treadmill lets someone meme themselves into a radical fringe ideology, a pathway he compares to addiction.
He rejects the picture of humans as purely rational animals. Biases are cooked into our hardware, so the task is to make good choices cheaper, measured in what he calls entropy, the mental cost of a change. Life, he says, is all about choices, and he dismisses Sam Harris on free will as too binary. His alternative to pure rationalism is a revival of aesthetics as a guide to living: does it look right, is this the life and the man you want to be. Memento mori imagery on his account keeps death in front of him, along with the question of what he would be proud of on his deathbed.
Agreeing with the host that beauty tracks health, he cites Nick Land's idea that everything which exists is hell baked, shaped by what it cost to survive evolution. He reads YOLO hedonism as escapism from the absurdity of life and says the harder option is to build something and live a noble life. His practical programme starts with auditing one's friends and taking long solitary walks in nature, then slowly engineering one's surroundings until they produce positive feedback loops.
The last stretch turns to teams. Borrowing David Goggins's idea of taking souls, he describes friendly competition in which members of a group push one another, which he calls positive radicalisation. Leaders set the pace, build loyalty by providing value and give people a human reason to care, which he says is also how Twitter works: people follow those who provide value.
Key moments
Timestamps link to that point in the episode.
- 1:33 The cult was deliberate
the cult aspect was definitely conscious
- 3:36 Memes change the host
as a meme passes through your brain it effectively changes your brain
- 5:18 Meming yourself to the fringe
you can basically meme yourself into a new ideology a new radicalized fringe ideology
- 20:22 A civilisation without aesthetics
we've kind of abandoned the aesthetics and developing our aesthetic sense as a civilization
- 21:04 A believer in memento mori
one thing that i like to do is i'm a big believer of memento mori
- 25:11 Everything is hell baked
everything that exists now is to an extent hell baked
- 36:13 Audit your friends
do an audit of all your friends
- 40:00 Push and be pushed
essentially what you do is you push others and they'll push you
Themes
- memes as mental programming
- environment over willpower
- aesthetics as a guide to living
- memento mori
- auditing your friends
- teams that push each other
See also
External links
- Human Programming With GritCult on YouTube