Don't Like - Andrew Huberman
There’s a recent essay in New York Magazine about one Dr. Andrew Huberman, the Stanford Neuroscientist and celebrity podcaster who has built an astonishing career and reputation as a hardworking, earnest, and thoughtful popular academic. He has a loyal legion of fans and is supposed to be one of the good guys. It’s an amazing story. Too bad it isn’t all true. He’s the subject of a recent article in New York Magazine, which divides its attention between Andrew Huberman the man, Andrew Huberman the scientist, and Andrew Huberman the businessman. The primary idea is that Huberman is a controlling person with dark triad tendencies who gets what he wants at the expense of others in every facet of his life, particularly in the way that he controls and manipulates his romantic partners (of whom he had six at once). It’s a compelling article, albeit one that his supporters will say is overly focused on his personal life. That might seem like a fair retort but the article also shows that he is a lying and manipulative person who runs a nonexistent lab, promotes dubious science, and shills shady supplements.1 That may not be enough by today’s standards of what it takes to fall from grace, but the article doesn’t reflect well on him either. However, it’s a bit confusing to me why he’s so well thought of in the first place. Anyone who lives their life by a series of “protocols,” and encourages others to do the same, is self-evidently a nutty control freak no matter how calmly and knowledgeably they speak. In this way, he isn’t so different from Jordan Peterson. He wants to offer the illusion of total control in the face of a chaotic world. That isn’t to say that helping build healthy habits is a bad thing, but it won’t surprise me if many of the habits he promotes prove unhealthy in the long run.
My favorite small instance of him being loony in the article is his insistence on using the phrase “Zero-Cost” instead of free. That might seem small and innocuous but that kind of overly self-serious language screams being ok with bullshit.