Gauge Theory

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On X

2009

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

Me: Marginal economics is a gauge theory.
Economist X: Do the experts agree?
Me: What experts? How do you live like that?

1:53 PM · Nov 13, 2009

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

Lee Smolin: Eric Weinstein and Pia Malaney say Economics is a Gauge theory.
Economist Y: Lee Smolin says Economics is a gauge theory.

1:59 PM · Nov 13, 2009

2021

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

Gauge Theory: A version of the differential calculus in which the Rise in “Rise over Run” is measured from a reference level that must be determined endogenously within the theory.

And yet, supposedly, I am super confusing?

Ok. Compare anyone else’s definition. I’ll wait.

3:56 PM · Mar 13, 2021

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

CPI is broken. Why?

Think of CPI as a gauge like a thermometer. You can’t have politically motivated folks making your thermometers or they can change the design to cover up climate change. Likewise you can’t have economists changing the gauge to disguise the effect of printing.

6:52 AM · Jun 15, 2021

sam.frax

@samkazemian

A crypto native CPI governed on the blockchain to create a decentralized stablecoin people can rely on to keep their standard of living the same across time. A true alternative to fiat rather than a speculative investment asset like most other coins.

6:52 AM · Jun 15, 2021

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

The economists can’t yet compute a dynamic Cost-Of-Living-Adjustment or COLA or “Chained Changing Preference Ordinal Welfare Konus Index” to be perfectly pedantic. Not because it doesn’t exist. But because they don’t have the math and don’t want to lose their finger on the scale.

6:52 AM · Jun 15, 2021

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

We must take CPI away from those who wish to back out a political agenda of printing money, raising our taxes by indexed tax brackets and slashing our indexed social security & Medicare.

Economics can’t construct dynamic economic gauges like CPI/GDP until it learns gauge thy.

6:52 AM · Jun 15, 2021

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

But more importantly, we have a culture that economics literally trumpets (and I swear I am not making this up) “Economic Imperialism”. It is “we know math and you don’t”-culture.

No. They don’t know their own math. I will debate any high ranking economist on this point.

6:52 AM · Jun 15, 2021

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

It’s time to reveal that economics, far from embracing math or having physics envy, is deliberately avoiding solutions to old problems so that it can make up new gauges for CPI/GDP at will while telling the rest of the soft sciences “We know your field better because we do math.”

6:52 AM · Jun 15, 2021

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

No. Economics is an avoiding gauge theory, connections, Lie Groups, etc so it can retain its political relevance as an expert consultancy. I’m with the crypto folks on this. Our economy must be protected from Seigniorage (printing money) and CPI tampering (e.g. Boskin Commission).

6:52 AM · Jun 15, 2021

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

CPI should not…MUST NOT…be adjustable to disguise inflation. It needs to be protected from the FED diluting the power of money and the BLS being free to disguise the effects by changing the method of construction.

6:52 AM · Jun 15, 2021

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

End the forced wealth transfers of central bankers covering up their own failures with “Relief”, “Easing”, “Stimulous”, “Rescues”, “Toxic Asset Purchases”, and other bailouts of our incompetent financial overlords.

We must protect CPI from economists disguising wealth dilution.

6:52 AM · Jun 15, 2021

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

P.S. before you remind me how arrogant this sounds, keep in mind, that I am willing to debate this publicly with any leading economist eager to defend the central bankers and triumphalist theorists openly bragging about their math. Read this, and be sick:

https://nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w7300/w7300.pdf

6:52 AM · Jun 15, 2021

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

Moral: Gauge Theory fixes this intellectual corruption problem of economic imperialism, and #btc, blockchains and Crytpo can help.

6:59 AM · Jun 15, 2021

2024

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

This is what is blocking progress in my opinion for physics to go beyond Einstein and General Relativity.

40 years ago, the leaders of physics started claiming that gravity had to be quantized to be compatible with the Standard Model.

But the incompatibility is *not* Quantum vs Classical field theory. The *classical* field theory of the Standard Model is already not compatible with classical General Relativity.

General Relativity, at least as it is now, simply cannot be gauged so as to make it a true gauge theory, because Gauge transformation does *not* commute with the Ricci Contractions used in the field equations, and within the Einstein Hilbert action.

8:58 PM · Sep 13, 2024

Jonathan Oppenheim

@postquantum

I wish I deserved the heretic moniker, but isn’t asking whether spacetime is quantum or classical just common sense? After all, general relativity (GR) - our theory of gravity and spacetime - is special. It isn’t a gauge theory, and gravity isn’t a force. 1/

10:57 AM · Sep 12, 2024

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

For some reasons that have never been explained or justified leaders in physics started making the claim that GR *was* also a gauge theory. This was done by claiming that general coordinate invariance in the form of the diffeomorphism group is a kind of Gauge Transformation. Which it clearly is not.

This is absurd. Gauge transformations move the fibers and are defined not to move space time where as diffeomorphisms move space time directly.

So: why claim that GR is a kind of gauge theory? The only payoff I see is that this allows us to pretend that the SM vs GR incompatibility is classical vs quantum where it is staring us in the face that it is instead contraction-based (GR) vs Gauge Transformed (SM).

The only reason this is at all controversial is that the people saying it were thought to be the leaders 40 years ago.

That didn’t work out. We have 40 years lost as a result.

But the truth is anyone can see the incompatibility between gravity and gauge theory if they are not being told that gravity is a special kind of gauge theory. Which it absolutely is not as formulated by Grossman, Einstein and Hilbert.

Moral: The problem holding us back from a Theory of everything is **Classical**, and not Quantum. The quantum comes as desert after classical compatibility. It’s not the main issue. A red hearing that throws us off following the scent. It’s a distraction that should have fooled almost no one who was thinking for his or her self.

9:14 PM · Sep 13, 2024

2025

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

Geometric Unity predicted that there’s no cosmological constant by replacing the frought term w/ a natural geometric varying field, invariant under symmetries.

I’ve given several talks on this recently in different physics depts. This was filmed at one in the U.S. in April.

12:34 PM · May 23, 2025

Prof. Brian Keating

@DrBrianKeating

A Universe without a cosmological constant? @EricRWeinstein presents a technical lecture @UCSanDiego on the future of Einstein’s “Biggest Blunder” in light of Geometric Unity & DESI’s newest results.

Watch:

12:34 PM · May 23, 2025

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

To define this term, Geometric Unity constructs an Inhomogeneous Gauge Group as the source for the terms in the difference, and then replaces the Einstein field equations, term by term, with a new equation on a space of fields, far better behaved than Einstein’s space of metrics.

12:42 PM · May 23, 2025

Heath

@HeathHimself

@EricRWeinstein Caught your debate with Sean Carroll on Piers. Why do you think he was spouting off so much misinformation about GU? "There's no Lagrangian!" I'm looking at the paper right now. There's literally 3 pages worth of Lagrangians like wtf.

6:03 AM · May 25, 2025

Neon

@Neon__Genesis_

The whole debate was very odd, Carroll didn't offer a single criticism of any substance, not a single concept or equation. We need to remember Sean at heart is a philosophy and astronomy major, not a mathematician or physicist despite their self-styling

8:56 PM · May 28, 2025

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

Not that you said anything wrong, but let me advance a different perspective. Sean’s work is a an undisclosed *direct* competitor to GU. Attached in a screenshot are the first three lines of his 1990 abstract.

Let me put them in the language of GU.

“The Chern-Simons Lagrangian has been studied previously in (2+1)-dimensional spacetime, where it is both gauge and Lorentz invariant. We the authors believe that outside of this special dimension, there is a fundamental trade off where we must either violate Ehresmannian Bundle Geometry (Gauge Theory of Particle Theory) or the pointwise Lorentz Invariance of Riemannian Geometry (Einstein’s General theory of Relativity). It appears to the authors that the right way to construct an analogous term in 3+1 dimensions is to create a Chern Simons-like term which couples the dual electromagnetic tensor to an artificial external four-vector which has no supporting evidence or motivation and violates both Einstein’s Special and General theories of Relativity. If we take this four-vector to be fixed, the term is gauge invariant but not Lorentz invariant throwing out one of the two pillars of modern physics. We do it anyway, because we believe the above mentioned tradeoff precludes any other approach.”

I personally knew Sean’s co-author Roman Jackiw decently well on this topic as he was at MIT. This was his perspective.

Why is Geometric Unity called Geometric Unity? Because we believe you can sacrifice neither geometry or the field will come to a standstill. It’s right there in the name. You need to have both Riemannian and Ehressmanian geometry to combine Gravity and Particle theory respectively.

Sean’s work is the DIRECT competitor of this GU theory. And GU sacrificed neither.

1:47 PM · May 29, 2025

UniServEnt

@uniservent

Given info on this link, why do you need Riemannian geometry in the first place if it is a subset of Ehressman?

https://chatgpt.com/share/68386b13-93e0-8013-a47d-75b2769f464d

2:17 PM · May 29, 2025

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

Ah. It has two features that general Ehressmanian geometry generally lacks:

I) A distinguished Choice of Connection (The Levi Civita connection and the connections induced from it on associated bundles).

II) Tensor Decomposition coming from the lack of structure groups auxiliary to those of the tangent bundles.

So actually the specific sub geometry of (pseudo)-Riemannian geometry is an exchange of Gauge Symmetry and field content freedom for these two attributes.

Except in totally exotic cases. Like the one in which we oddly happen to live…but I digress.

2:27 PM · May 29, 2025

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

I am excited to use AI to destroy Peer Capture in Peer Review.

The people who don’t understand their own fields (like many economists) have captured the ability to keep out new ideas. Why would I accept their review?

Economics IS a full blown gauge theory. That’s a fact discovered by myself and a collaborator.

If you don’t get that @florianederer you have less than a year left to be a raging bully. Enjoy your time. Tempus fugit.

It’s going to be bitter. Learn something from this interaction and you will be better for it. Times change.

As of now, you just don’t get it. And it’s your field. Supposedly. I’ll just wait. Wont be long either.

Econ Conversation starts here. Collegial. Interdisciplinary. Good faith.

5:25 PM · Oct 15, 2025

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

There is a tell when listening to physics folks as to whether they’re captured by the 1984 Quantum Gravity virus.

They either say:

A) “General Relativity has to be reconciled with the Standard Model.”

or

B) “General Relativity has to be reconciled with Quantum Theory.”

1:06 PM · Oct 30, 2025

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

So, what is the difference?

In the latter case of B), the diagnosis has already been definitively made. The problem is thus at the level of frameworks, not the level of theoretical models of the actual world. The issue has been made into “*THE* problem is that the classical theory of Gravity must be quantized.” That is, the classical framework of gravity must be dragged into our general quantum framework as the top priority. Seen this way, it is more of a technical math problem rather than something hyperspecific about our two theories of our physical world.

OPINION: There is absolutely no basis for this B) being an absolute whatsoever. This is a madness which started appearing as a String Theory mantra around 1984 and has led to a crisis.

In the case of A) that definitive diagnosis has *not* been made. The case is still Open. The issue is thus that “We have two specific physical theories that don’t quite fit together for multiple reasons. We need to figure out a physical framework to accommodate them both. That may be a third framework that harmonizes them rather than forcing one into the framework of the other. We need to consider all clues before reaching a definitive diagnosis.”

OPINION: It made absolutely no sense to have closed the case in 1984…and after 40 years of continuous failure, the issue is the leadership of the field. Opening the case and saying “GR and the SM have multiple issues. Not just quantization. Why are we not considering that the strong leadership forced THE WRONG DIAGNOSIS on the entire community??”

This is like saying “Maybe COVID came from NIAID/NIH/DTRA/EcoHealth/Daszak/Fauci/Collins/Baric…can we consider that??”

And the answer is “No”.

But that is why we are stuck in my opinion. We are stuck because we can’t question physics leadership without being thrown out of the community.

The dogmatic zealous leadership of physics totally failed. That is what happened. That cost us 41 years.

We can’t get to COVID origins for the same reason we can’t get to String Theory origins as “the only game in town.”

The imposed absolutist central narrative is simply a lie.

One man’s opinion.

1:06 PM · Oct 30, 2025

Matt Seaton

@TheMattSeaton

I don't see the difference. Seems to me one could interpret B the same way you are interpreting A.

1:13 PM · Oct 30, 2025

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

“The top priority is that the Standard Model has Internal Symmetry while General Relativity does not.”

“The top priority is that the Standard Model is a full Gauge Theory while General Relativity has no gauge invariance.”

“The top priority is that GR allows contraction across the tensor product of bundles while the Standard Model does not.”

“The top priority is that GR has well defined Contorsion tensors while the Standard Model does not.”

Those are all possibile research programs within A. Not within B.

1:22 PM · Oct 30, 2025

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

The position of most news organizations explaining their low interest in Epstein has been that this is mostly a non story. An Internet-meme spun out of control.

I’ve maintained for ~20 yrs that this was about a lot more than sex. This was a major operation of some kind.

9:34 AM · Oct 31, 2025

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

The stripping of Former Prince Andrew’s titles shows to our news organizations that this story is real: mere internet meme’s don’t bring down princes.

We are going to find a collection of different major sub-operations. And one of them is going to be about gravitational physics.

9:34 AM · Oct 31, 2025

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

At some point this story is going to stop being principally about sex.

And it is going to stop being principally about Jeffrey Epstein.

It’s going to be about “sources & methods” of an extremely large transnational covert operations hub protected by “State Secrets Privilege”.

9:34 AM · Oct 31, 2025

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

Do I know this for sure? No.

Am I idly speculating? No. I’m lodging a crisp prediction with high conviction.

The story appears to be moving backward from deniability rather than forward from evidence.

It would be too easy to break this story. The participation of editors at all leading news organizations is way too high.

Too many reporters have started reporting on this story, only to be shut down *quite* late in their investigations. Trust me on this.

The level of personal credibility being lost in pretending “nobody cares” cannot be explained without an even larger incentive to play dumb.

This is going to be partially about state interest in Gravity/Physics/Science and National Security. And for the life of me I can’t figure out the specifics.

If I had to guess…and this is much lower conviction than the preceding …the US government will eventually at some point be forced to switch strategies and pivot to openly invoking SSP to stop the bleeding. Ghislaine will be pardoned. There will be some vague mentions of internal closed door hearings and investigations. There might be an executive order that minors can never be used in covert operations.

But the absurdity of:

1) Trafficking girls to no one.

2) A non-story that brings down princes.

3) Near zero news interest in a story that obsesses an entire planet with claims of “no one cares, we all moved on.”

4) Claims that we have mountains of evidence that somehow also don’t exist.

This is going to collapse under self contradiction. The credibility loss alone is already unfathomable.

9:34 AM · Oct 31, 2025

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

Lastly, this was just a bad operation.

It caught ordinary people in its web. I believe Epstein’s masters wanted to fund me. But using a bank to funnel a mathematician into a bizarre alternate reality to indirectly fund him via book deals or hedge fund allocations is f*****g stupid.

Epstein didn’t know low dimensional gauge theory. I promise you that. But someone in this operation did. And whoever that was knew that “Self-Dual Yang-Mills theory” was, despite the name, a LOT closer to General Relativity and gravity than it is to Yang-Mills Theory and the Standard Model. That was *exceedingly* rare knowledge to have for a dilettante. Still is. Even for an expert. A *huge* clue.

This isn’t principally about sex or Epstein. It’s about a large bad covert operation hub that may have been well built for secrecy but couldn’t survive the modern internet age.

And, I believe, it is about state interest in *Gravity* among many other things.

9:50 AM · Oct 31, 2025

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

Any thoughts @grok? Care to explain SSP, Covert vs Clandestine, and SDYM?

9:51 AM · Oct 31, 2025

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

Thanks @grok.

Would you agree that in 2005, most all experts would have seen Euclidean signature SDYM as much closer to the Standard model than GR?

Or do I have that wrong?

Be honest. I have my own impression and will not take offense if you have another that disagrees.

Take your time. This is a rather important and pivotal clue as I see it.

9:59 AM · Oct 31, 2025

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

@grok Back to sleep. Thanks for that. Appreciated.

10:00 AM · Oct 31, 2025

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

I believe Epstein is referring implicitly to the “Stigler Commission” of 1959-1961.

This comes from a phone conversation around 2004.

9:18 PM · Nov 17, 2025

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

In a telephone conversation around 2004, he somehow was already well aware of the 1996 Boskin Commission and Harvard Economics department burying our work on Gauge Theory in economics called “Geometric Marginalism”. That seemed pretty weird at the time.

With the benefit of hindsight and scrutiny, I now understand that he was connected to AT LEAST two of my colleagues from my time as an Economist in the @HarvardEcon department and @nber. To say nothing of the fact that he was connected to AT LEAST two more of colleagues from my time as an math graduate student in the @HarvardMath department. He was evidently in the background of *everywhere* I was over three and a half decades from 1985-2019. It’s astounding.

I believe from memory what he means is the following:

In the 1950s inflation was not yet the tool of policy that it became after the “Price Statistics Review Committee” around 1960, and the indexing of Social Security to CPI in the mid 1970s. It was a simple gauge.

After that time, it became a quiet tool. And a weapon. You could use it to transfer not billions…but trillions. Why? Because a GIANT amount of all U.S. Federal receipts are indexed.

He thought it was funny that we expected our work to be heard given that trillions were being stolen.

I hope that there is a transcript of this conversation as well as the gravity phone calls about GU. If so, it will likely point back to Litauer and Rosovsky, Jorgenson and Summers.

9:18 PM · Nov 17, 2025

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

So to sum it up: he is not wrong.

I think what I said to him is that after the 1950s, inflation became a modern tool/weapon rather than a measurement starting with the Stigler Commisson. I explained my view that the @BLS_gov is a quiet version of the @federalreserve. An insanely powerful “Statistics” organization where economists actually implement policy by simply chosing how to compute economic numbers.

Numbers that just so happen to automatically transfer trillions and touch every aspect of our lives.

He already knew a lot of the Boskin/GaugeTheory story from Harvard. Less about Stigler if I remember correctly.

I’d love to ask Larry about all this now.

9:38 PM · Nov 17, 2025

Related Pages

• What is Gauge Theory (intuitively)?