Ericisms

Eric often uses terms or turns-of-phrase that some people may not immediately understand. This page is a reference source for those only. This should not be confused with more general topic areas that may at first cause confusion such as the DISC, EGOs, Load-Bearing Fictions, etc.

See also:

• A Modern Contradictionary: New Words for our New World – a Twitter Moment by Eric with a vocabulary adapted to our changing world.
• Eric Weinstein Quotes

A/B Testing

A/B testing (also known as bucket testing or split-run testing) is a user experience research methodology. A/B tests consist of a randomized experiment with two variants, A and B. It includes application of statistical hypothesis testing or "two-sample hypothesis testing" as used in the field of statistics. A/B testing is a way to compare two versions of a single variable, typically by testing a subject's response to variant A against variant B, and determining which of the two variants is more effective. (Source)

Reference: [1] Discussed in the context of adding “differential diagnosis” to our educators’ toolkit so that teaching disabled educators can learn how to add to better instruct students rather than externalizations the blame for their inadequate methods onto into the students.

Adaptive Landscape

• Sewall Wright's theory of adaptive landscapes of fitness

Adaptive Valley

• Sewall Wright's theory of adaptive landscapes of fitness

Adjective, Occupation, Name

https://twitter.com/ericrweinstein/status/955117591378329606?lang=en

Anthropic Capitalism

Anthropic Capitalism & the New Gimmick Economy

Anti-Expert

"Anti-Expert, n: 1. A person with expert training & credentials, yet who rejects consensus/institutional positions that cannot bear scrutiny."

• (https://twitter.com/EricRWeinstein/status/831025834215354368?s=20)

Artificial Outelligence

"Artificial Outelligence, n: An unintelligent computer system that evolves by hijacking the minds it dupes & outwits."

Example:

The Bass designs false fish used by the mussels to better parasitize the bass.

It’s one thing to think & talk about the risks of unintelligent agents using *our* brains to outsmart ourselves. Another to see such examples in nature:

References

https://twitter.com/ericrweinstein/status/867050623174295552?s=21

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wu8s0tp9yzY

https://twitter.com/ericrweinstein/status/1116065653847285760?s=21

https://www.youtube.com/embed/0j9dxbB4Z1o

Audio Samizdat

The clandestine copying and distribution of literature banned by the state, especially formerly in the communist countries of eastern Europe.

• https://twitter.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1246652218377302022
• https://twitter.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1179531933476249600
• https://twitter.com/EricRWeinstein/status/29689057860653056

References:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samizdat

The Big 5 Personality Traits

Eric has referred to the Big 5 Personality Traits as a person's hedonic composition.

Church and Pike Commissions

Were two parallel committees run in the US House and Senate investigating illegal activities by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the National Security Agency (NSA). In the 1970's

References and Links:

Church Committee

Wikipedia Church Committee

Brookings institute on the Church Committee

Pike Committee

Wikipedia on the Pike Committee

The CIA themselves on the Pike Committee

Consensus

There’s no arithmetic consensus because it doesn’t require a consensus. But there is a Washington consensus. There is a climate consensus. “Consensus” is how we bully people into pretending that there’s nothing to see, move along, everyone. And so I think that in part, you should start to learn that people don’t naturally come to high levels of agreement unless something is either absolutely clear, in which case consensus isn’t present, or there’s an implied threat of violence to livelihood or self.

- (https://tim.blog/2016/01/13/eric-weinstein/)

The Cosmic Spelling Bee

Bret Weinstein's term for the existential position humanity faces.

Critical Feeling

"You're over-feeling this."

Similar to critical thinking, but with emotional content. "Most of our emotions are susceptible to becoming maladaptive and because the content is not analytic thoughts they are harder to access and harder to influence." According to Jocko's philosophy, the Dichotomy of Leadership, we must remain aware of emotional balance and when to engage.

#6 Jocko @ ~25:00

De-Potemkin

Depotemkin, verb: To create the missing reality that a façade was originally constructed to suggest was present.

Twitter

Dining a la Carte Philosophically/Politically/Ideologically

The concept that you can take parts of different ideologies that you find beneficial without swallowing the whole group of other ideas that typically come along with that ideology.

Eric's go-to for this a "Xenophilic Restrictionist".

A xenophile is a person with intense interest/love for other cultures, this is normally paired with an open borders policy.

Restrictionist in this context is an immigration restrictionist, that is derided as a Xenophobic perspective.

Thus a "Xenophilic Restrictionist" would be viewed as an oxymoron/contradiction in terms without decoupling them from their typically associated ideologies.

Other Commentary and Links

Medium article: Some thoughts on Xenophile-Restrictionism

Don't screw yourself out of magic

• https://twitter.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1169339966477852673
• https://nilesjohnson.net/seven-manifolds.html
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Milnor

The Educational Complex

A system of selective political, economic, and memetic pressures resulting in a cult of the teaching profession which prioritizes the careerist desires of the educators over the learning needs of the students.

Efficient Frontier

The efficient frontier is the blending of all possible components into portfolios with the highest possible return and the lowest possible volatility.

References:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient_frontier

Escher's Hands Drawing Hands

Eric uses this drawing as a metaphor when beginning his discussion of our Source Code.

Wiki's article will hopefully be growing with this community's influence.

Game B

Humankind has lived in Game A since we have escaped the Dunbar limit. Humankind has never seen or fully imagined Game B. People like Daniel Schmachtenberger, Jamie Wheal, and Jordan Hall speak about this process of dialogue and its risks on Rebel Wisdom. A fundamental shift from adversarial processing to opponent processing.

Gene Drive

A genetic engineering technology that propagates a particular suite of genes throughout a population by altering that a specific allele will be transmitted to offspring from the natural 50% probability.

High Agency

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 MacGyverish sort of a way. And that’s your approach to the world.

- (https://tim.blog/2016/01/13/eric-weinstein/)

Irrationality

Irrationality is a feature not a bug. It gives us the ability to Camp and decamp.

It's a beautiful thing

This originates from New York City.

Meaning: You can extract money from people with no say in the matter.

Kayfabe

"A 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"." (E Weinstein 2011)

Erics Original Edge.org Response relating to Kayfabe

Litella

"Litella, v: to become politically & publicly outraged by one's own misinterpretation of the opinions of others."

References:

• https://twitter.com/EricRWeinstein/status/901853610274807809?s=20
• https://hulu.com/watch/4256

The Looting Party

Episode 27, 1:46:00:

when Bill Clinton decided that he couldn't take yet another loss to the Republican party, he was going to start experimenting with republicanism inside of the democratic party. By that point, we had two parties that more or less were two flavors of the same thing. I refer to that collective as the looting party.

Meaning

"The meaning of my life is the progressing struggle to impart meaning to meaning." [2]

Message Violence

The analysis of message violence: "that there is certain violence that is committed theatrically as an instrument of transmission to induce preference falsification."

"The idea is to create something so horrific, beyond what is necessary to silence someone through murder and death, to communicate to others the instant necessity of beginning to falsify their preferences."

"A leveraging effect where a small amount of violence results in the maximum amount of preference falsification."

#4 Timur Kuran @ 28:50 Eric describes Saddam's Ba'ath party meetings. @ 31:45 Eric puts forth his theory.

"The point of the violence is to be so picturesque that it works its way into your mind and it won't let you go because somebody did something that was unnecessarily unthinkable; just for the purpose of torturing your brain with knowing that is what is on the other side."

#6 Jocko @ 55:03

Middle Finger

It's the US’s Competitive Advantage. 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’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 really do things.

- (https://tim.blog/2016/01/13/eric-weinstein/)

Minus Epsilon

This originates from the epsilon-delta definition of a limit in mathematics.

The N^2 Revolution

This idea was shared with Eric on Dec, 07, 2017. The No Name Revolution, or N^2 Revolution, is the name Eric has given crisis we are currently facing. He proposes that our current cultural predicament was caused by our loss of Semi-Reliable Communal Sense-making. This is the sum total of the DISC, EGOs, and Load-Bearing Fictions being realized.

"...there was enough complex for us to function as a country and I think that has gone away. So I think that this (our loss of Semi-Reliable Communal Sense-making) is the parent of the crisis which I increasingly think of as, what I call it is: The No Name Revolution or the N squared revolution. We are in some sort of new regime which doesn't look like revolution we have seen before. It's much physically violent, so far. It is digitally extremely violent. And it has to do with the fact that we cannot make sense of things communally at some semi-reliable level."

- (https://youtu.be/M2F__2-NdAg)

New Gimmick Economy

Anthropic Capitalism & the New Gimmick Economy

Overton Window

The Overton Window doesn't describe everything about how politics works, but it does describe one key thing: Politicians will not support whatever policy they choose whenever they choose; rather, they will only espouse policies that they believe do not hurt their electoral chances. And the range of policy options available to a politician are shaped by ideas, social movements and shared norms and values within society.

References:

• https://www.mackinac.org/OvertonWindow

Perfectly Legal

"It's perfectly legal" – something ethically dubious may be going on.

"Perfectly Legal, adj.: Of a case where the letter of the law has been arbitraged against its spirit (see Pettifog)."

References:

• https://twitter.com/EricRWeinstein/status/915649019388428288?s=20

Potemkin Village

In politics and economics, a Potemkin village is any construction (literal or figurative) whose sole purpose is to provide an external façade to a country which is faring poorly, making people believe that the country is faring better.

References:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potemkin_village

Preference Falsification

Timur Kuran's theory brought forth in his book Private Truths, Public Lies.

Eric contests that the theory of Preference Falsification is Intellectual Kryptonite. "Because your theory can be accommodated within the standard theory... the problem is that it is a ready made upgrade to the existing theory in which nothing is lost but new degrees of freedom are gained; and that could have an absolutely unpredictable effect on the entire field because it is at the level of the substrate." #4 Prof. Timur Kuran @ 1:07:03

Rough Space

"Rough Space, n: A place to think, joke & observe that is neither safe nor tolerant of abuse."

We now need rough spaces to replace safe ones.

Speaking Fee

"Speaking Fee, n: 1) Asynchronous Baksheesh received once a politician has left office. 2) (Archaic) A modest honorarium for giving a speech."

References:

• https://twitter.com/EricRWeinstein/status/858342790161244160?s=20

Split Level Argument

Related to the "Motte-and-Bailey Doctrine".

Steady Hands

This originates from Washington D.C.

"He has steady hands." You can count on him to do the wrong thing during an emergency to keep everyone on the inside okay Everyone on the inside is super dependent to burn all of their credibility in public

• https://twitter.com/EricRWeinstein/status/508994608185880576

Steel-manning

The steel man argument (or steelmanning) is the exact opposite of the straw man argument. The idea is to find the best form of the opponent's argument to test opposing opinions.

Steelmanning

Teaching Disabilities

Not Learning Disabilities Differential diagnosis

• https://twitter.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1169484481369010181
• https://twitter.com/EricRWeinstein/status/592049989334863872

Terms of Service

References:

• https://twitter.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1071092543536848896
• https://twitter.com/ericrweinstein/status/1071216823742291968

The Twin Nuclei Problem

• https://twitter.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1117085693883273218

There is no secret ingredient

This is a line from Eric's favorite movie, Kung Fu Panda.

Umwelt

(in ethology) The world as it is experienced by a particular organism.

Vampire syndrome

"Sensible people who live on the internet and are saying dangerous things cannot be reflected inside of institutional media because it's an official structure." [3]