NOMAD-SOUL :: STEEMIT DISPATCH :: 05-JUN-2018
Sophisticated Snake Oil
— or: How Stupid Do You Think The Internet Is?
by @your-nomad-soul · posted to Steemit /comedy · June 5 2018
Terms in gold are decoders. Green underlines open deeper explainers.

This is what the 21st Century has brought us — People being People. People convincing People to believe Unbelievable Bullshit.

I hereby present:

MY THOUGHTS While Clicking on What
>_Platform / AlgorithmYouTube Recommendation EngineBy 2018, YouTube's watch-time-optimised algorithm had become the dominant pipeline for pseudoscientific and politically extreme content. The system surfaced videos based on what kept users watching — not accuracy, not credibility. If woo performed well, the algorithm promoted woo.→ Wikipedia: YouTube radicalisation
Or: A RESPONSE TO ALL THE
>_NeologismFucknuggets of InternetThe author's affectionate-hostile taxonomy for content creators who deploy the aesthetics of intellectual rigour — complex graphics, expert guests, dramatic music — without any of its substance. Earnest grifters. Confident idiots. Believers in their own baloney.

At least these folks did us the courtesy of joking about the fact that they're lying, whilst trying to distract us from the awful
>_CritiqueMath-SorceryThe technique of invoking mathematics or physics as authority — not to explain, but to intimidate. The audience cannot follow the equations, which is the point. The conclusion is presented as flowing inevitably from the math, bypassing the viewer's critical faculties entirely. See also: the Gish gallop..

Don't promise me the ol'
>_ReferencePewDiePie / YouTube Thumbnail Trope"Johnny-Pie-Face" reads as a mangled version of PewDiePie (Felix Kjellberg), but the author's point is broader: the open-mouthed, wide-eyed thumbnail face that YouTube creators use to signal shock, revelation, or outrage. A visual promise of delivered drama — which pseudoscience videos routinely fail to honour for anyone paying attention.→ Wikipedia: PewDiePie and then not deliver as if you were lying when you promised. That hurt my feelings. Also, if mathematics is the backbone of your argument, you seem to shoot and cut all the 'technical' sections like... well... like you don't actually want us to engage with the logic. You're counting on people who listen for the conclusion, not the argument.

"Here is Math. You won't understand it. Look at the Man Looking Bored With These Pages."

"According to the Math, There is Thing. Thing is Important."

"Here is Physics. It does things. We don't understand. Look at how pretty the patterns are."

"According to Physics, Things happen. Things are important."

"Don't Worry, here is a Man. He is Grey, coz Brain. He Will Say Some Stuff about the Thing and Things. Things That Seem... As Good As Any Other Greek I Suppose. Look... You don't need to understand it, just wait for the bit where we cue the "Mind Blown" bit. You'll know how to feel about all this then. Man has got you covered. It's his face in the video."

Thing from the Math, and Things in the Physics
Keep Doing Things We Don't Understand
Until We Do, Then It's Oh Soooooo Grand!!!

But until Then, we have to suffer these kinds of fools.

If the research is legitimate (and it could be) then tell the people who produced this video to get
>_Platform / Communityr/explainlikeimfiveA Reddit subreddit (community) where users request simple explanations of complex topics, as if explaining to a five-year-old. The author's point is sharp: if your research is real, a skilled explainer can make it accessible. The refusal to explain accessibly is itself a red flag — real scientists typically want to be understood.→ reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive to write you some explainer clips based on your findings and whatever else is published. Good research may be tedious to do, but that does not mean it should be impossible to engage with.

It seems to me that your film is about how
>_Video SubjectSimulation Hypothesis / Simulation TheoryThe philosophical proposition that reality is a computer simulation — associated academically with Nick Bostrom's 2003 paper. By 2018 it had become YouTube woo staple, backed by misread quantum physics and celebrity endorsements (Elon Musk, Neil deGrasse Tyson). The author's "God exists" framing catches the genre's theological sleight of hand: simulation theory is often creationism in a lab coat.→ Wikipedia: Simulation hypothesis.

Whether it's true or not needs to be subject to

Scrutiny.
Then you can kill it with fire, (or poison. or radiation — but not too little radiation, because that will give it cancer — can you imagine having to deal with cancer that has cancer?) or cut it out with a laser coz Mr. Man is from the future of the past, with his Stuff about Thing and Things.

Or don't make cancer jokes. They're not cool. Neither is the way we treat homeless people, but we can still Rag on a Bum from Time to Time. It's fine. They're homeless. It doesn't matter.

Oh, I met a Homeless Guy —
>_Character"Once" — The Homeless OracleThe narrator's phonetic rendering of a name they couldn't catch cleanly — "that was what his name sounding like in my delicate, colonial ears." A throwaway character who turns out to deliver the essay's moral punchline: his unverifiable cosmic pronouncements were experientially indistinguishable from the YouTube woo video. The joke lands harder because it's almost certainly true. (That was what his name sounding like in my delicate,
>_Self-DescriptionColonial EarsThe author's self-aware acknowledgment of their background — "colonial ears" suggests a listener shaped by British or post-colonial linguistic norms, potentially mishearing a name from another language or accent. It's a moment of self-implication inside a comedy piece: the narrator's own perception is also unreliable. Nomad, but with a particular kind of hearing. ears), and he told me Stuff about Thing and Things too. It was a very similar experience to watching that there video.

Which leads me to the following conclusion, based on my evidence presented.

Either this video is lying to me, or Once was Jesus, and I'm going to Hell for Putting a Receipt from a
>_SymbolStarbucks ReceiptThe punchline prop. A Starbucks receipt — a relic of late-capitalist consumer culture — stuffed into the cup of a potential messiah. The author's cowardice is specific, identifiable, and embarrassingly contemporary. The joke collapses cosmic and mundane into a single moment of guilty flight. inside his Coffee Cup, keeping him talking while I slowly backed up far enough to start running the fuck away.

(No sign-off. The nomad just ran.)

What makes pseudoscience content on YouTube tick — and why it works.
The Woo Playbook

The essay's verse parody nails a specific rhetorical move: invoking a field (mathematics, physics, neuroscience) not to explain but to silence. The math appears on screen. The narrator acknowledges it's beyond most viewers. The conclusion is then presented as flowing necessarily from that math — but the step connecting equation to conclusion is never shown.

This is a cousin of the appeal to authority but cleverer: the authority is not a person but a discipline. You can't check the expert's credentials or look up their publication history. You can only feel your own inadequacy in the face of the equations, and accept the presenter's summary.

The grey-haired expert who appears briefly is playing a related role — lending credibility by association. The viewer doesn't need to evaluate what the expert said; they need only register that an expert was present.

Simulation theory has everything an algorithm-friendly YouTube video needs: it's unfalsifiable (so it can't be disproved on camera), it's cosmic in implication (which triggers wonder, a high-engagement emotion), it references real physics (quantum mechanics is genuinely strange, and that strangeness is invokable without explanation), and it flatters the viewer's intelligence while asking nothing of it.

Nick Bostrom's original 2003 simulation argument is a rigorous philosophical paper — a trilemma with specific conditions. YouTube simulation content typically discards the rigour and retains the vibes. The conclusion ("we might be in a simulation") gets extracted from the careful conditional logic that generates it and presented as a standalone revelation.

Celebrity endorsement accelerated this: Elon Musk's 2016 claim that "the odds we're in base reality is one in billions" became a meme that circulated independently of any argument. The author is watching this cycle in motion — and unimpressed.

The author's ELI5 suggestion is not philistinism — it's a diagnostic. Real science can be made accessible. The constraint is difficulty of communication, not difficulty of content. Carl Sagan, Richard Feynman, and more recently channels like 3Blue1Brown demonstrate that genuine scientific complexity can be rendered understandable without losing its substance.

Pseudoscience cannot afford ELI5 treatment because the clarity would expose the gap. When you strip away the production values and the technical-sounding language, what remains either does not say what the presenter claims, or says something trivial, or is simply not supported by the evidence shown.

The tell is in the editing. As the essay notes: "you seem to shoot and cut all the 'technical' sections like you don't actually want us to engage with the logic." Legitimate science communication lingers on the mechanism. Woo cuts away from it.

The essay's moral logic is precise and a little brutal: the YouTube video and the homeless man's street prophecy were experientially identical to the author. Both delivered unfalsifiable claims about the nature of reality through a fog of references the listener couldn't verify. Both required faith in the presenter's authority rather than engagement with evidence.

This is not a put-down of the homeless man — it is a deflation of the video. The production budget, the dramatic score, the physics citations: none of these make the claim more true. The narrator is equally unable to evaluate either one. The fancy wrapper is irrelevant to the epistemic situation.

The joke also implicates the narrator: they ran away from possible Jesus. They are not above this. The comedy is self-directed as much as outward — which is what saves the essay from being mere smugness.

// TIMESTAMP June 2018. The YouTube woo economy was at peak velocity. Simulation theory had gone mainstream via Musk (2016), Rogan podcast circuits, and a cluster of high-production "mind-expanding" channels. The author, watching from outside through an algorithm-curated feed on
>_PlatformSteemitBlockchain-based blogging platform launched 2016. Users earned STEEM cryptocurrency based on upvotes. Attracted writers sceptical of centralised platforms — and the surveillance capitalism model that incentivises the algorithm-driven content the essay mocks. The choice to publish critique of YouTube woo on a decentralised platform is itself a small act of cypherpunk dissent.→ Wikipedia: Steemit, is writing a comedy rant that doubles as media criticism.
YouTube's Woo Economy

By 2018, a specific genre of YouTube content had crystallised: high-production-value videos promising to reveal the hidden nature of reality. Common formats included "The Science of Consciousness," "Is Reality an Illusion?", "We Are Living in a Simulation — Here's the Proof." Production quality was professional; intellectual standards were not.

The genre owed something to legitimate science communication (Nova documentaries, Carl Sagan's Cosmos), something to Joe Rogan-style "what if?" speculation, and something to the long tradition of metaphysical grift. It monetised intellectual insecurity: the pleasure of feeling like you now understand something important, without the discomfort of actually having to learn anything.

Channels in this space attracted millions of subscribers. The algorithm loved them: high completion rates (the drama kept people watching), high share rates (revelations feel worth sharing), and reliable re-watch behaviour (people come back for the feeling).

The genre did not decline — it evolved. Post-2020, pseudoscientific YouTube merged with COVID misinformation, anti-vaccine content, and a broader epistemological crisis in which the audience for "alternative explanations" grew rapidly. The production values increased; the evidentiary standards did not.

The introduction of generative AI (2022–present) added a new layer: videos can now be produced at scale with synthetic voiceovers, AI-generated visuals, and algorithmically optimised scripts. The "Grey Man Who Knows Things" can now be entirely fabricated. The math-sorcery sequences can be generated in seconds.

Ironically, the author's prescription — take the research to ELI5, subject it to peer review — has also found its expression: science communication on YouTube has become genuinely excellent in the years since 2018. Channels like Veritasium, Kurzgesagt, and 3Blue1Brown demonstrate that the author's ask was reasonable. The woo channels and the legitimate ones co-exist; the algorithm does not reliably distinguish between them.

Cypherpunk — a movement that emerged in the late 1980s and crystallised in the 1990s — advocated for strong cryptography and privacy technologies as tools of individual liberation from state and corporate surveillance. Its manifesto tradition (Eric Hughes, Tim May) held that code was speech, that privacy was political, and that decentralised systems were inherently more honest than centralised ones.

Publishing this essay on Steemit — a blockchain platform — places it structurally within that tradition, even if the content is a comedy rant about pseudoscience. The author is using a decentralised, censorship-resistant platform to mock the content promoted by a centralised algorithmic one. The form is the argument.

The essay also enacts a cypherpunk epistemology: verify, don't trust. Peer review is the scientific community's version of cryptographic verification. The author's demand that the video subject its claims to scrutiny is the same demand that cypherpunks make of any system that asks for trust: show your work. Open your source. Let me check the math myself.

// On Simulation Theory & Its Discontents
Are You Living in a Computer Simulation? — Nick Bostrom (2003)
PaperThe actual academic source. A rigorous philosophical trilemma — read this to see how far the YouTube genre strays from the original argument.
Are We Living in a Computer Simulation? — Scientific American
ArticleAccessible overview of the serious philosophical debate — and why physicists are generally unimpressed by the popular version.
Simulation Hypothesis — Wikipedia
ReferenceCovers the full landscape from Descartes to Bostrom to Musk. Maps what the essay is reacting against.
// On Science Communication & Woo
The Demon-Haunted World — Carl Sagan (1995)
BookSagan's defence of science against pseudoscience. Introduces the "baloney detection kit" — a set of critical thinking tools the author implicitly applies throughout the rant.
Gish Gallop — Wikipedia
ReferenceThe rhetorical technique of overwhelming an opponent with many weak arguments. Related to the math-sorcery critique: volume of claims substitutes for quality of evidence.
3Blue1Brown — YouTube Channel
ChannelWhat good mathematics communication looks like. Proof that ELI5 and intellectual rigour are compatible.
// On Peer Review & Scientific Method
Peer Review — Wikipedia
ReferenceThe process the author insists on. Imperfect, slow, and bureaucratic — and still the best epistemic technology humans have invented for filtering bullshit from knowledge.
Replication Crisis — Wikipedia
ReferenceThe uncomfortable follow-up: peer review is necessary but not sufficient. Many peer-reviewed findings fail to replicate. The author's faith in the system is well-placed but not unlimited.
// On the Cypherpunk Tradition
A Cypherpunk's Manifesto — Eric Hughes (1993)
Manifesto"Privacy is necessary for an open society in the electronic age." The foundational text. The author is publishing critique of centralised algorithmic power on a decentralised blockchain — living the argument.
Steemit — Wikipedia
ReferenceThe platform this essay was published on. Blockchain-based, cryptocurrency-rewarded, decentralised. Context for the publishing choice.
Peer Review

### What Peer Review Actually Is

Peer review is the process by which a scientific paper, before publication, is evaluated by independent experts in the same field. Reviewers assess the methodology, the evidence, the statistical analysis, and the conclusions. They can reject the paper, request revisions, or recommend acceptance.

It is famously imperfect. Reviewers have biases. Prestigious journals have rejected papers that later won Nobel Prizes. The system is slow, opaque, and sometimes captured by dominant paradigms. The author's "it's a bitch" is not wrong.

### Why It Still Matters

The alternative to peer review is not no review — it is self-certification. The YouTube video the author is watching has been reviewed by exactly no one independent of the people who made it. The production team decided the claims were valid. That is not a check; it is a mirror.

Peer review, even badly executed, introduces friction between a claim and its publication. That friction has costs — good ideas get delayed, bad ideas sometimes survive — but it catches a lot of bullshit that would otherwise circulate freely. The replication crisis (many peer-reviewed findings fail to replicate) shows the system's limits. The YouTube woo economy shows what happens without it.

### What the Author Is Really Asking

The request is not that the video be boring or credentialed. It is that the claims be testable — that the methodology be stated clearly enough that an independent party could run the same experiment and see if they get the same result. Science is not a set of conclusions; it is a method. The method requires that anyone, in principle, could check your work. That is what "peer review" is asking for, at root.

Scrutiny as Method

### The Colonoscopy Metaphor

It is, objectively, one of the better extended metaphors for the scientific method in recent comedy writing. A colonoscopy is unpleasant, invasive, and expensive. Most people would prefer not to have one. But when something is wrong, it finds it — and finding it is the precondition for fixing it.

The author's point is that scrutiny has the same structure: it is uncomfortable for everyone involved, including the scrutiniser, and most people prefer ideas that feel good to ideas that have been tested. But the discomfort is the mechanism. You cannot find the cancer without looking where you would rather not look.

### What Pseudoscience Avoids

Pseudoscientific content is, structurally, anti-colonoscopy. It presents conclusions that feel revelatory and pleasant (we are special, consciousness is fundamental, the universe has meaning) while systematically avoiding the procedures that would test whether those conclusions hold. The editing choices the author notices — cutting away from the technical sections, not dwelling on the math — are exactly this avoidance in practice.

### The Comedy as Critical Method

The cancer-that-has-cancer tangent is not just a joke. The author is demonstrating the same recursive scepticism they're advocating: even the cure (radiation) can become the disease if applied wrong. Even peer review can be gamed. Even scrutiny has limits. The method is not perfect — but unlike the video, it at least knows it isn't.