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Revision as of 05:22, 17 June 2025
Tim Ferriss: Have you come to any conclusions or beliefs outside of that essay that related to how autodidacts or Newtons can leave Newton's when they travel on from this world?
Eric Weinstein: I think so. I can't prove it, but I think where I'm headed with this is that most of us who wind up using these sort of strange high agency hacks to negotiate the world, have some kind of a traumatic birth. We may flatter ourselves that were in touch with reality, but in fact, reality is a second best strategy. If you're lucky, your family works pretty well and you never leave social reality. It's only when something goes wrong that you discover, okay, the world doesn't work in any way the way I was told. Here's the underlying structure. What you then have to realize is, if you want to do this at scale, you've got to stop relying on these traumatic births it's like you're waiting for somebody to get bit by a spider to become spider-man. No you have to do this in a more controlled fashion.
Tim Ferriss: You have to harvest spiders.
Eric Weinstein: That's right, you've got it you've got to regularize it. So I think what we need to do is we need to create a completely secondary parallel educational structure for people who are going to be in the high agency creativity discovery idiom and realize that we know how to impart expertise, but we don't know how to impart creativity in genius.
Tim Ferriss: Could you define high agency? or just explain what you mean by it.
Eric Weinstein: Sure. High agency is ... well, are you constantly... when you're told that something is impossible, is that the end of the conversation, or does that start a second dialogue in your mind how to get around whoever it is that's just told you that you can't do something. So, how am I gonna get past this bouncer who told me that I can't come into this nightclub? How am I going to start a business when my credit is terrible and I have no experience. You're constantly looking for what is possible in a kind of MacGyver-ish sort of a way, and that's your approach to the world.
Tim Ferriss: Iâm not gonna take us off the rails here - have you seen the Martian?
Eric Weinstein: Yes, the ultimate high agency code!
Tim Ferriss: Did you love it? I just saw it last night, man, it was just like two hours of MacGyver on steroids I loved it.
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, and it I'm glad you brought it up. I think it heralds a return, at least among Americans, to our previous way of being. I think there was some terrible thing that happened starting around 1970 and that is just cracking now. So, really, about 45 years of a low agency super-safe, timid, frightened kind of societal aspiration. If you just stay on track can we keep the American prosperity machine going. I think we now realize that you can't do it without a bunch of really marginal charactersâpeople who have might be described as disruptive and have bad attitudesâthese are my people. They're tough to deal with and I don't always and enjoy them but I do think that without them it's not much of a football team.
Tim Ferriss: What can someone do who's listening to this let's say and they're they live in a community that is clearly low agency and they want to train themselves to be able to look at option C D and F when people say âDo you want a or B?â or if they're given let's say, the know, from the bouncer from the admissions officer from the âfill in the blankâ. They look for a way around it instead of just being stopped in their tracks. Are there any recommendations or tools or resources exercises that they could use to cultivate that higher agency?
Eric Weinstein: Well, there's I don't think there's a community on earth where somebody isn't modifying their car beyond what's street legal. I don't think that there's any community in which nobody is cooking something up in the basement that probably isnât prescribed by law. I don't think that there's a community on earth where somebody isn't trying to break into their own computer in order to see how it works from the inside. There are high agency people everywhere. What there isn't necessarily is critical mass. Sometimes I refer to the Bay Area as the innovation ghettoâ so you have all of the people who are too high agency to behave properly and wait their turn and the rest of the country. So they've been given like the nicest piece of real estate an un-Godly amount of cash and you know the pleasure of each other's company. But they've been told âOkay, you have to stay at the terms of your probation, so you have to stay within the Bay areaâ So what I'd love to see is, I'd love to see more of us violating our parole and going into the rest of the country and trying to bring that irreverent spirit, because I think one of the things that the US still has over, let's say, a competitor like China, is that we tolerate the middle finger. It is perfectly acceptable to be disruptive here in San Francisco, where you and I are conducting this interview, whereas if I'm told that my child is disruptive in Kansas or South Carolina I'm probably being told that he's being sent home for bad behavior. So I think it's really important to start respecting our marginal citizens of greatest ability and looking for the unusual personality types that are irreverent and committed enough to making things happen and to really do things.
- Eric Weinstein on Tim Ferriss
On X
Without Burning Man, there would be no proof of the vast scale of the genius, decency, creativity & agency that the default world suppresses
Aug 24, 2016
Also, the public that is HIGH agency is looking for alternate non-institutional experts: @nntaleb, @BretWeinstein, @jordanbpeterson, @CHSommers, @SamHarrisOrg, @HeatherEHeying, @PiaMalaney, @peterthiel, @DouglasKMurray, @Raheelraza, @tristanharris, @sparker, etc....
Dec 16, 2017
And, no I donât call something a conspiracy because I disagree w/ experts. I usually agree w/ them! What I disageee with is using expertise to transfer wealth & agency from the supposedly childlike voters who intuit something is rigged but canât name it in political 3 card Monty.
Dec 17, 2017
When we take manageable numbers of high agency people longing for opportunity from desperate nations & give them a gift of US citizenship from strength, a kind of magic happens. It rarely does taking them from advanced nations.
And you know it if youâve ever seen a swearing-in.
Jan 11, 2018
I smell dyslexia, ADHD, or some such âlearning disabilityâ all over this story. Super high agency. High creativity. Canât fit in. Some blood on his hands but unexpectedly little considering his âline of work.â Canât fit in to society.
This guy may need a prison STEM PhD program.
Jul 1, 2018
Give a man a fish and he eats for a day.
Teach him to fish, and he becomes dependent & clingy as a student who has to be shown everything new in a time draining & soul sucking infantilizing ritual that cannibalizes his agency.
Consider teaching a man to teach himself fishing..
Dec 20, 2018
Thought those of you who put up with me should know; I've been thinking about this for a long time and it's time to boost @jgreenhall's signal: high variance, high insight, and high agency. Just know, he's not your indoor cat.
End.
Feb 13, 2019
It's a great feeling seeing so many people letting this idea of "high agency" impact their lives for the better.
[Thanks @george__mack.]
May 13, 2019
Can we stop pretending that we care as a nation? Because clearly we donât. There can be 10 of these in a month and we donât do a thing. We donât try things. We donât experiment. We sit here like low agency idiots suffering from learned helplessness.
Aug 31, 2019
That thing we were told was an Internet panic is now a pandemic.
Is it possible that authoritative sources are now more the problem than the 1st hand videos & direct reports that were circulating?
I mean Jesus Christ: When do we overthrow this overclass of low agency âexpertsâ?
Mar 11, 2020
A herd of cats.
Here are a few names of higher variance high agency super independent people I think highly of and I would consult on any national problem:
@LauraDeming @patrickc @paulg @NAChristakis @DrJoonYun @peterthiel @pwang @tylercowen @nntaleb Liz Blackburn @SamHarrisOrg
Mar 11, 2020
We're panicking because we're being lied to and misinformed. Panic is stupid: our efforts should be to get rid of our impotent institutional expert/leadership class. We have low agency get-a-long social creatures where we need disagreeable tough minded creative folks in the room.
Mar 15, 2020
Protest political people with dazzling agency, beauty, technical rigor and grace. That class canât do these things.
They donât code. They donât weld. They donât compose. They donât crowdsource. They donât understand crypto. They donât believe in standing alone.
Now use that.
Apr 28, 2020
âHey! Administrator! Leave those kids alone.â
The K-12 version of what Iâve been talking about in universities. Administration-heavy schools destroy our minds of greatest promise and agency.
Itâs the administrators stupid.
With apologies to Pink Floyd, but the times changed...
Oct 13, 2020
You arenât getting it. I actually have TWO sets of business cards: the oneâs I run out are the ones *without* PhD printed on them.
Thatâs not how it should be. But overproduction of low agency PhD drones for jobs that donât exist has degraded my credential as a signaling device.
Nov 17, 2020
You donât have a consistent plan. And you donât communicate scientifically. And youâre not honest about what this is doing to our kids in terms of risks and costs.
Iâll wear a mask and follow the law if you bring us a high agency science based plan. Or Is that asking too much?
Dec 7, 2020
A remarkable high tech system has just been unveiled to screen out low agency humans.
Once locked SmartGate2000 uses a proprietary algorithm to convince low agency humans to turn around while higher agency people willing to take responsibility for themselves easily pass through.
Dec 14, 2020
Well executed Vaccines are miracles in *relative* risk reduction. You exchange some risk in receiving vaccine for a larger reduction of risk against a disease.
Overselling vaccines takes away public agency. Then when inevitable issues crop up, Public Health credibility crumbles.
Apr 13, 2021
We are reduced to hoping this doesnât go critical instantaneously. All the brilliant high-agency people on earth, reduced to hoping, crossing their fingers and mumbling prayers.
I cannot believe all of human history brought us to this. Yet, here we are.
Oct 9, 2022
I have had the feeling that @AsraNomani is talking about the tip of a *FAR* larger iceberg: merit-privilege, success-privilege, initiative-privilege, agency-privilege, talent-privilege.
What if woke Educator/Administrators are regularly & *BROADLY* doing what is alleged here?
Dec 23, 2022
I do not believe a persistent slow moving âdroneâ situation in New Jersey is just a head scratcher & a big shrug.
There are too many smart high agency technical people in the US with tons of equipment, kit and sensors.
As if CalTech, Lockheed, IAS and MIT donât exist. Bullshit.
Dec 12, 2024