Kayfabe

Kayfabe is a term from professional wrestling that refers to the portrayal of scripted events as real, maintaining the illusion that the competition, rivalries, and personas are genuine. Wrestlers traditionally adhered to their in-ring characters both during performances and in public to preserve this illusion. The term kayfabe has evolved to also become a code word of sorts for maintaining this "reality" within the direct or indirect presence of the general public.

Eric Weinstein's Perspective on Kayfabe

In 2011, Eric Weinstein expanded the concept of kayfabe beyond wrestling. He suggested that kayfabe could describe situations where the public is aware of being deceived but accepts the deception because it serves a purpose or provides entertainment. Weinstein proposed that recognizing the presence of kayfabe in various aspects of life could enhance our understanding of societal dynamics.

Weinstein's insights have influenced discussions about the blurred lines between reality and performance in various domains, including politics and media.

Kayfabe as a Scientific Concept

The sophisticated "scientific concept" with the greatest potential to enhance human understanding may be argued to come not from the halls of academe, but rather from the unlikely research environment of professional wrestling.

Evolutionary biologists Richard Alexander and Robert Trivers have recently emphasized that it is deception rather than information that often plays the decisive role in systems of selective pressures. Yet most of our thinking continues to treat deception as something of a perturbation on the exchange of pure information, leaving us unprepared to contemplate a world in which fakery may reliably crowd out the genuine. In particular, humanity's future selective pressures appear likely to remain tied to economic theory which currently uses as its central construct a market model based on assumptions of perfect information.

If we are to take selection more seriously within humans, we may fairly ask what rigorous system would be capable of tying together an altered reality of layered falsehoods in which absolutely nothing can be assumed to be as it appears. Such a system, in continuous development for more than a century, is known to exist and now supports an intricate multi-billion dollar business empire of pure hokum. It is known to wrestling's insiders as "Kayfabe".

Source: Eric's Edge essay on Kayfabe

Community Contributions

In 2021, Portal Community contributor and media producer Jake Orthwein released Part 1 and 2 of a high quality informative miniseries tying together Eric's ideas about politics, Kayfabe, Embedded Growth Obligations and #whathappenedin1971.

On X

2017

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

About to interview @HulkHogan. It's odd to me that the US doesn't recognize one of our own deepest "post-truth" thinkers as a leading mind.

1:38 PM · May 1, 2017

Related Concepts

• Kayfabrication
• Embedded Growth Obligations
• Gated Institutional Narrative

Additional Resources

Science Since Babylon