Spiral Dynamics Stage Yellow Examples Mega-Thread

[Joel3102]

48 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

I removed a lot of names from the list of Yellow examples.

I was too liberal in classifying people as Yellow. It's quite hard to find pure examples of Yellow.

Dunno if you’ve been following Ezra Klein lately but I get a lot of yellow vibes from him. Progressive but has matured into a more meta and analytical progressive 

[Leo Gura]

On 3/30/2025 at 8:51 AM, Joel3102 said:

Dunno if you’ve been following Ezra Klein lately but I get a lot of yellow vibes from him. Progressive but has matured into a more meta and analytical progressive 

I know of him. Is he Yellow or just a smart neoliberal? Hard to say.

The problem is that a smart healthy balanced Orange/Green can seem like Yellow.

Edited April 1 by Leo Gura

[Leo Gura]

On 3/30/2025 at 8:32 AM, Daniel Balan said:

@Leo Gura Elon Musk having been on that list for so long was a real disgrace to your work. Now to rectify that you should place him on the stage red list of examples  

Well, to be fair to me, Musk really has fallen. He was never this bad.

But also hard times reveal one's true character in a way that soft times do not.

But yes, I did misjudge a handful of people as Yellow when they really aren't. It's hard to judge famous people from a distince without direct contact. Especially if we are talking about higher stages.

The lesson is that you must be very careful in labeling anyone as Yellow or Turquoise. Almost no one is.

Edited April 1 by Leo Gura

[Raze]

40 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Well, to be fair to me, Musk really has fallen. He was never this bad.

But also hard times reveal one's true character in a way that soft times do not.

But yes, I did misjudge a handful of people as Yellow when they really aren't. It's hard to judge famous people from a distince without direct contact. Especially if we are talking about higher stages.

The lesson is that you must be very careful in labeling anyone as Yellow or Turquoise. Almost no one is.

Why don’t you think Shinzen Young is yellow? 

[Leo Gura]

7 minutes ago, Raze said:

Why don’t you think Shinzen Young is yellow? 

I don't know what he is.

[Husseinisdoingfine]

According to the SDi founders, a brief history of time by Stephan Hawking is an example of Yellow.

[samijiben]

@Husseinisdoingfine funny you mention it

I had just come across a rusty copy on a shelf

After some perusing, I concluded that Stephen Hawking did not have a fucking clue what he was talking about...

[OBEler]

4 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

I don't know what he is.

What about actual Peter Ralston, what do you think?

[Joel3102]

5 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

I know of him. Is he Yellow or just a smart neoliberal? Hard to say.

The problem is that a smart healthy balanced Orange/Green can seem like Yellow.

I’d lean yellow but hard to say. He seemed full blown green during his Vox days, so maybe he’s evolved upwards. 
His recent interview on Lex was pretty good

[nerdspeak]

On 3/30/2025 at 5:51 PM, Joel3102 said:

Dunno if you’ve been following Ezra Klein lately but I get a lot of yellow vibes from him. Progressive but has matured into a more meta and analytical progressive 

Ezra Klein wants to make soft neoliberalism work better by adding some Keynesian elements. It’s still the same shill. 

[Daniel Balan]

On 01/04/2025 at 5:25 AM, Leo Gura said:

The problem is that a smart healthy balanced Orange/Green can seem like Yellow.

You know when someone is Yellow when you get Daniel Smachtenberger, or Leo Gura type of vibes. When I encounter Yellow something in my brain immediately notices the sheer novelty and complexity of one's speech. Yellow feels novel, like finding something extremely unique, feels like shifting into a completely new gear when it comes to the complexity and profoundity of one's discourse.

[Carl-Richard]

 

 

[SwiftQuill]

 

This entry is going to be strange, but I suspect Matpat (The Game Theorists) is stage Yellow. It's hard to find a video which demonstrates this. Most of his videos are long and focus a lot on videogames, so it's hard to find one where he's talking and you can see his Yellow. 

Here's why I believe he is Yellow:

• He has clearly mastered stage Orange: He worked very hard building a successful career on Youtube over many years, gained a lot of popularity, has demonstrated he has a strong work ethic (working many hours a week, putting out content like crazy, managing a business with many projects and selling all sorts of products). He also takes good care of his looks and is in shape. Materially (looks + wife + business) he reached a lot of success.
• He is a healthy progressive: Over the years he has subtly showed he supports progressive and liberal ideas (support for LGBTQ, women's rights, the environment). Yet, I've never considered him woke. Not once have I heard of him calling someone else racist or attacking some other content creator, or even speaking about politics in a self righteous way as Destiny The Cuck does. Matpat supports ethnic and LGBTQ representation in videogames and shows and all of that stuff, but in a good, non preachy, non super aggressive way. He has also supported many charities like the Wish foundation, and from the way he conducted his business, it seemed to me like an almost stage Green way (not outrageously greedy, more focused on creating a strong gaming community and less on profiting super hard).
• He is multiperspectival: Matpat is an extremely intelligent man. He studied Theater Arts, but when went on to start a youtube channel that analyses videogames using History, Maths, Science, even other topics like Sociology at times, many of his videos contain a variety of topics. And it's not that he performs these analises from one perspective alone. The way he created his game theories adopted multiple perspectives at once. But really, the best way to notice this side of him is through the livestreams. In many livestreams where he played videogames, he would commentate on the game from various points of view. The artistic side of the game (the graphics), the meaning, the philosophy, even mentioning obscure theories and terms that many people don't know. One game he mentions the philosophy of nihilism and existentialism. In another game he starts talking about psychology and the concept of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Matpat is an incredibly smart, and wise guy. I've been impressed many times not only from how many interesting facts he knows from different fields, but also from how he mixes them together while talking about a videogame.

Edit: His wife Stephanie is also super smart. Also stage Yellow, for the exact same reasons.

I might actually bother to edit a compilation of this stage Yellow side in Matpat and Stephanie. It's going to take a long ass time though because it's a lot of content to rewatch and piece together.

Edited May 13 by SwiftQuill