Load-Bearing Fictions

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I think there’s some contradictions that we legitimately—even lies. I talk about load-bearing fictions. We have to have some number of load-bearing fictions in any society because you can’t actually just do everything in broad daylight and hope that everything that we want can be harmonized. Some people are gonna have to accept that there are trade-offs who can’t intellectually accept that there are trade-offs, and they will require load-bearing fictions. For example, we do convict innocent people using our system of justice. And there’s nothing magical about 12 people on a jury being able to decide what actually happened. But if we don’t have some kind of mysticism around the wisdom of a jury of our peers, we won’t be able to mete out almost any justice at all. So I don’t think that we can hope for a sort of child’s vision of an honest society. But what I find really impressive is the rent-seeking aspect of keeping it so expensive to investigate something that it’s impossible. So you talked about a system of selective pressures where if you raise certain questions, you won’t be employed and therefore through directed survivor bias, there’s nobody at the top of a profession who will speak about something openly and in public.

- Eric Weinstein on The Portal Ep. 4

There was, once upon a time, a heuristic that said the best way to have a multicultural society is that you have to have some load-bearing fictions. Like "all religions are equally problematic in all ways"—there's no way that's true. Jains are not equally problematic as Jews, Jews are more problematic than Jains—and I'm able to say that because I'm Jewish.

As a result, those sharistics hardened into dogmas because they were necessary to keep our society operating. We have to believe at the moment that a jury of 12 people knows how to convict somebody based on guilt, even though the DNA evidence shows that that's not a real rubric. I mean, it's a heuristic. Maybe it works some of the time, right? So as these sort of heuristics have been breaking down, and these heuristics of the left are on top of the ones that are necessary for civil society—they, the desire to maintain this complex of ideas like, "trade is always good"—no, trade is not always good for all people. That's, it's beyond moronic!

- Eric Weinstein on The Portal Ep. 7

I have to admit that I have a couple of odd theories about this. And I was curious how you might find them, one of which is that in some sense, the normal world which I understand you call the civilian world, the civilian world is almost hypocritical and in denial by design, that is, we aren't supposed to have an accurate picture of human sexuality. Because our society is based on what I call load-bearing fictions that people are supposed to present as relatively asexual. Their default assumption that they go around with is that they are not sexual beings and you're supposed to hide this aspect. And then there are contradictory expectations. So for example, you might be expected to wear cosmetics in a workplace environment as a sign of professionalism, but the cosmetics, in fact, may be sexualizing. But then you're not supposed to admit that the cosmetics may in fact be sexualizing. So in some sense, the civilian world is a mess by design, because we're not supposed to see ourselves accurately, and that the world of sex workers is bizarrely a truth telling world, a world in which people are far more honest. And there's another one of these, which I think is the world of evolutionary theorists.

- Eric Weinstein on The Portal Ep. 21

On X

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

Some ask why I support “load bearing” & “adult-level” fictions over the truth & request examples. Here’s one: it’s likely structurally important that Supreme Court Justices continue performing in costume to suggest they’re spiritually superior druids of unfathomable legal genius.

3:35 AM · Jul 30, 2018

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

I respectfully disagree. The immigration tale of US is an essential load-bearing national mythology lIke "1 man 1 vote." This is our story. https://x.com/martyrmade/status/826493460786008066

6:17 PM · Jan 31, 2017

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

What makes America great *is* in large part our mythology. If we tear all load-bearing myths to shreds (e.g. a 'Free Press') we undo the US.

1:22 AM · Feb 18, 2017

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

The U.S. President today didn’t ‘recognize’ Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Rather we finally stood up to those who insist that we pretend it isn’t.

12:02 AM · Dec 6, 2017

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

My problem is that we are not honest about the cost of these fictions. Further the cost of destroying these fictions may be immense. Do not discount the structural reality of a “load bearing fiction.”

12:10 AM · Dec 6, 2017

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

This is a point I have also made in a different form. “We hold these truths to be SELF-EVIDENT...ALL men...are endowed by their CREATOR with certain UNALIENABLE Rights,”

You can complain all you want but those words are load bearing. That’s partly why this atheist says prayers.

3:19 PM · Feb 6, 2021

Dave Rubin

@RubinReport

Thread: I’ve come to the conclusion that the collapse we’re in now is the inevitable end of what purely secular liberalism looks like. (A sad reality as someone who wrote a book defending liberalism.) The tolerance baked into liberalism is what let Wokeism into the system

3:19 PM · Feb 6, 2021

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

If one worships at the altar of pure reason one may also lead a noble life. In fact it is wholly possible that one may lead a better and more moral life than the pious hypocrite down the street. That’s not the problem. The problem is secular humanism coordinating and scaling.

3:27 PM · Feb 6, 2021

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

When you hit the “why questions” over & over you have no last line of defense when a sociopath or crazy person openly tells you “What’s wrong with my redefinition of human flourishing? Why are you right and I’m wrong? Who died and made you the arbiter of truth? Why these rules?”

3:27 PM · Feb 6, 2021

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

That’s bad enough. But the real danger is breakaway factionalism. What if entire groups of citizens find incompatible ideologies irresistible? What unifies them? How do you hold citizens together when multiple groups say “different people have different rights.” You need bedrock.

3:50 PM · Feb 6, 2021

See Also

• 4: Timur Kuran - The Economics of Revolution and Mass Deception
• 7: Bret Easton Ellis - The Dark Laureate of Generation X
• 21: Ashley Mathews (aka Riley Reid) - The mogul and brains behind America's Sweetheart
• 37: Surfing the Wake of The Woke
• Can’t vs Mustn’t
• Oral Torah vs Written Torah
• Free Speech