Comment by davidmyr
1 day ago
This reminds me also of the Andrew Huberman <-> Jordan Peterson discussion where doing sth you do not like actually physically lets a specific region in your brain grow and if you do not do it, it shrinks (sorry for the simplification - not a neuro scientist haha)
Huberman grossly misrepresents the science on these issues. Not a good source. Yes I am aware of his credentials. He is notoriously bad at extrapolating from studies and confidently mapping it to life advice.
If believing it helps you establish better routines then there’s no harm in that. Just be careful about where you repeat this stuff because everyone who has studied even a little neuroscience groans when Huberman comes up.
I haven't really listened to him much, didn't really like his style, just one or two of his sleep science episodes but I thought it was well-balanced and at each topic he added caveats etc. and always made sure to tell people to not just blindly trust the science but see what works for you. Can you point to any examples of him grossly misrepresenting the science on these issues. My personal hunch is most people don't watch the long-form stuff and only hear this second-hand in a short-form context where a lot of the details are stripped out.
He is the type of faux-balanced where he confidently says something and then tries to balance it with some caveats.
Almost everything he says about dopamine is flawed, as one example. It’s hard to explain how bad his statements about “dopamine detox” and low dopamine levels really are if you’ve only understood the concept of dopamine through his lens.
He’s a story teller with a lot of confidence and charisma. He will tell you any story that makes him sound smart and makes the listener feel impressed.
> My personal hunch is most people don't watch the long-form stuff and only hear this second-hand in a short-form context where a lot of the details are stripped out.
Nope! I tried to listen. It’s really bad. He uses the long form to ramble and project a sense that his knowledge is infinitely deep.
There are a lot of Huberman debunkings on the internet if you want to go look. You might also be interested to learn about his past lies to different researchers and his exaggerations about his lab affiliation (he doesn’t even live near the “Huberman lab”). He’s also not a great person by all accounts. He’s kind of the prototypical whole-package grifter podcaster.
Interesting did not know about this, just liked his videos :D Here is also an article that talks about him cherry-picking publications: https://neuroscienceandpsy.substack.com/p/breaking-up-with-b...