Why I don't trust Andrew Huberman

I'll indulge in a bit of petty gossip for the edifying purpose of illustrating some pragmatic points about personal antifragility philosophy.

Dr. Andrew Huberman gets a lot of things right when it comes to applying antifragility philosophy but he got at least one thing very wrong.

Huberman rose meteorically as a health guru/influencer/podcaster a few years ago. He became very popular, very quickly which baffled me a bit because he's not particularly charismatic. His content - which is not bad but also not particularly original, clickbaity, or innovative - you can find in the recommended or trending section of nearly every major social media content platform. Every episode he introduces his show as "zero-cost to the public education" on health and science which is a clever way of framing up the century-old, listeners-time-wasting, interruptive mid-roll ad-supported business model which I'm sure has made him very rich in the last couple of years.
He's certainly a knowledgable polymath Biohacker, who does a decent job of communicating science, but there are a lot of good health podcasters out there, I wasn't sure why he became an overnight celebrity in my field.

To get to the promised petty gossip...

Recently, a +8000-word article was published in New York Magazine exposing Huberman as a philandering cheater; allegedly (do you need to use allegedly, when talking about something that's not actually a crime?) he was sleeping with SIX different women at the same time. And he went to some lengths to make sure they didn't know about each other.
Of the six it sounds like one, Sarah, was his main chick - she thought she was in a normal, monogamous relationship with Huberman. Then he got caught cheating the same stupid way nearly every cheater does - she went through his going through his phone while he was going to the bathroom and discovered messages from the other women. At the time she was going through IVF and they were having unprotected sex. Sarah was upset but his cheating wasn't a dealbreaker, they had an on-again-off-again it's complicated thing while he was more casually sleeping with at least five other women (he was having unprotected sex with at least a few of them). Eventually, these women all found each other via social media, got into a group chat together, and conspired to exact some sweet vengeance on the not-so-good doctor.

Sarah tested positive for HPV after dating him, Huberman's PR agent said they could neither confirm nor deny that she got it from him because there is "no FDA-approved test for men" - this part made me laugh out loud because I know that there are very reliable male HPV tests (that's how I confirmed that my wife got HPV from me; I went through a very promiscuous phase in my 20s while my wife had very little experience before me - and then in a moment of karmic justice I got warts burned off my cock by a laser, but that's a story for another time). An elite Biohacker like Huberman would certainly know how to get himself tested for HPV if he wanted to prove that he didn't have it. But Sarah doesn't sound like a nun herself, so who knows...

What are the antifragility philosophy takeaways from this sordid affair?

Pitifully low standards predictably result in messy relationships. Might it surprise you to learn that Sarah was in her 40s and a single mother of two - an odd choice of girlfriend for a wealthy, globe-trotting, internet celebrity, no? According to the New York Magazine piece, Huberman wasn't real happy with his choice - he would fixate on her sexual history resulting in sleepless nights and days spent arguing. In my book for men, I make an airtight case against dating single mothers - it's rare that this works out well, especially if the man doesn't have children himself. I seduced, courted, and married a beautiful, classy, childless young Bulgarian lady at a time when I had LESS than 1% of Huberman's internet celebrity.
Are you also baffled by rich successful men who date women who seem far from the best they could get? Let me explain what I think is going on here; there's a certain kind of person that likes to go dumpster diving when it comes to their romantic relationships, they prefer to date down because their partner might be so desperate to keep them that they would put up with anything (example; Sarah not breaking up Huberman after the first sign of infidelity).

The impression one gets from New York Magazine's piece is that these were all very modern, liberal women. The kind of women most apt to buy the feminist lie that they have the same value in the sexual marketplace in their early 40s, after a divorce, with a couple of bratty broken home kids as they did at 22 years old in a black cocktail dress at a New Year's Eve party at the Four Seasons. These women thought they were still such hot stuff that a rich, handsome celebrity would be as loyal to them as grandpa to grandma on their 50th wedding anniversary. Vanity and naivete are a bad combination, ladies!

Even the most elite men end up screwing the pooch when they try for a harem. Let's be honest, Huberman is an impressive specimen of a man, physiologically, hormonally, and cognitively. Yet, he ended up epically embarrassing himself before the entire world because he couldn't impose limits on his urges. It's a great reminder that spinning plates or polyamorous relationships are an internet marketing pipedream that makes men weak, petty, jealous, and slaves to their lust. Wiser men aim for an edifying antifragile monogamous relationship. You're not an Ottoman Sultan or Saudi Prince.

Perhaps you're thinking at this point...

I don't care about what someone like this does in their personal life, it doesn't affect the quality of his professional body of work.

This makes some sense, I'm generally libertarian on these kinds of questions. But the integrity that a man brings to his romantic and sexual relationships will tell you a lot about that man. Jungian psychology suggests that the way a man treats women has everything to do with how well-integrated his "shadow" is - how well-wrangled his internal demons are. 
For similar reasons, looking at their personal lives, I don't trust Dr. Michael Greger, nor do I put much stock in pseudo-conservatives like Jordan Peterson and Donald Trump.

Also, Huberman is 48 years old, isn't this kind of behavior a bit pathetic at that age? Lying to your main chick to keep her around while sneaking around on the weekends hoping not to get caught - I don't know about you but I was over this kind of behavior by my mid-20s.

Huberman has a Master's degree in psychology and is a big fan of talk therapy; interviewing numerous therapists on his podcast. Apparently, he's been going to therapy for 20 years. To me, this says a lot about the value of therapy itself. Two decades of therapy failing to teach this man that lying and cheating are bad furthers my suspicion that talk therapy is a bullshit industrial complex unto itself!

To clarify, I don't care that much about Huberman. I don't think he should or will be "canceled" for giving these six modern women what they signed up for casual dating internet celebrity, but...

This is a great example of how you can make a quickslice judgment of a man's integrity.

In Malcolm Gladwell's book, Blink, he talks about quickslicing; the capacity of the unconscious mind to make highly accurate judgments in mere milliseconds. The more life experience you get while staying intellectually curious the better you'll get at quickslicing. This sordid affair and some further listening I did this week have confirmed my initial quickslice of Huberman.

When I first encountered him a few years ago, I knew he was what I call an "Owned Man" within the first 30 seconds of one of his podcasts. If you're a straight white male with tenure in elite academia (in California) there's no way you're NOT someone's bitch. You don't get into that kind of position without being an acquiescent, servile conformist. I've also learned the hard way that big tech will pull out from under you the audience you've built if you're a dissident thinker or dare to discuss certain science publicly. You don't get from zero to five million subscribers in a few short years without doing some sort of deal with the devil, and it's not hard to figure that out...

In the early 2020s Big Tech, the US government, and Big Pharma had a BIG problem, nearly every honest public intellectual was highly skeptical of the warp-speed, rush-job COVID vaccine. While the government, mainstream media, and Big Tech demonized, demonetized, censored, and threatened there were more vaccine skeptical than ever. This was largely because so many podcasters, YouTubers, and influencers pointed out the serious concerns with the COVID vaccine. It was hard to find a pro-vaccine Biohacker. Then Huberman became very popular, very quickly and said almost nothing about the COVID vaccine, although he did admit to getting the COVID vaccine (a requirement of his continued employment at Stanford University).

He did a really softball interview with "Public Health" human herd manager Dr. Vivek Murthy, anybody in this or previous presidential administration is worthy of fire and brimstone for the colossal tyrannical mismanagement of our pandemic response.

He spent 2 hours and 53 minutes discussing autism with Dr. Karen Parker (another academic elite), and they spent a grand total of about 10 minutes hand-waving away the vaccination-autism connection when in fact there's a strong argument to be made for a causal link.

I listened to his interview with (a cleavage-teasing) Dr. Sara Gottfried about women's hormones to do some research for my wife and Dr. Gottfried brought some knowledge about hormonal hacking along with a lot of ideology. Apparently, the cause of women's health problems is "the patriarchy" a notion which went totally unchallenged by Huberman.

Huberman is big enough as an influencer at this point, that he could have joined the fight for health freedom

He could have called Dr. Vivek Murthy the traitor that he is. He could have asked Dr. Karen Parker why Big Pharma, Big Government, and Big Accademia all refuse to do a vaxxed/unvaxxed study to finally settle whether vaccines cause autism. He could have told Stanford to shove their vaccine mandate where the sun doesn't shine.  The kind of man who chooses institutional status over truth and challenging the status quo is precisely the kind of man who needs to lie to his girlfriends to maintain a harem fantasy.

The historian Nial Fergusen has this fascinating documentary series about how the World Wars and the Cold War were really all the same war. He opens the documentary by saying something like...

Cowardice is the most powerful force in history.

That should give you a hint as to why Huberman became so popular, so quickly and why I don't trust him.