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Eric Weinstein
Eric Weinstein is a dad, mathematician, Managing Director of Thiel Capital, and host of The Portal Podcast. His speaking on a breadth of topics ranging from physics and economics to culture and society form the basis of this wiki.
Eric is also developing Geometric Unity, a unifying theory of physics.
The Portal Podcast
The Portal Community
We are a project-driven community spread over many interest areas and a variety of backgrounds. We are dreamers and doers who use the tension between these two states. If you are too, then find something that interests you and contribute what you can.
Community Projects
Graph, Wall, Tome
Fundamental physics seems unreachable for many. This project and its subprojects aim to map and convey the information necessary to understand the most vibrant realm of human knowledge. (On Discord)
Slipping the DISC
In almost any field of human activity, mechanisms emerge to suppress or downregulate low-quality ideas in order to maintain an institution's functions. These mechanisms become pathological when they are repurposed to suppress truth, research, and innovation that may upset or drastically alter the institution's structure, ultimately in betrayal of its purpose.
Meta Projects
Tracking the Portal's many ideas can be difficult. These projects organize and reconvey those ideas, or develop technology to convey them.
- 3D Printing for the Portal - On Discord
- Eric’s Most Important Set of Books
- Eric's Nightmare Species
- Ericisms
- Eric Weinstein Quotes - On Discord
- Episode Highlights
- The Portal Clips - On Discord
- Portal Mobile App - On Discord
- Portal VR
- Portal Player - On Discord
- The Portal Essay Club
- The Portal Wiki - On Discord
- Predictions Eric Got Right - On Discord
- Riffs to Animate - On Discord
- The Portal Transcripts - On Discord
- Tribal Drinking Songs - On Discord
Quest Board
Helpful Tasks
This is the spot for those who don't have expertise in STEM, or are busy with life, but still want to help us. Whether you have only 5 minutes or unlimited time and energy, you can help us and the community.
Explore and Catalog
- Eric has a lot in his mind. Help us find and collect riffs, references, concepts, and neologisms that Eric creates, or that come up in relation to The Portal.
Transcript Editing
- Some Portal episodes and many Eric Appearances are still in need of a transcript, or have transcripts that need further editing.
- Have a look at our Portal Media spreadsheet to find the current status of any transcript.
- Let Brooke or Aardvark know which you'd like to work on. They will provide you with the necessary materials.
- Follow our Transcript Style Guide.
Wiki Editing
- Write a strong, one-sentence description of ideas on their wiki pages
- Rewrite disorganized pages on the wiki
- Build out pages that are stubs (underdeveloped).
Praxis
Help to retell the story of our sciences to new generations of students
Mathematics
- Request visualizations of principles or constructions
- Outline sequences of thought to reach a particular idea
Physics
- Write pages on hard physical problems independent of mathematics
Engineering
- Onboarding to CAD for mechanical engineering (elasticity and fluid sims)
- Affordable projects/kit concepts to understand physics principles in engineering
- Contribute to realizable engineering challenge ideas to improve our world
Computing Science
- Foundations of computing for physics, Numerical Analysis
- Geometric Complexity Theory
Programming
Build a useful piece of software.
Data Visualization (d3-js, chart-js, p5-js)
Discord Bots (JavaScript)
- Discord Pin Archive + Management Bot
- Bot that cross posts from Eric's Instagram to the server
- Bot that relays messages across servers
Instragram Bots
- Bot that cross posts from Eric's Instagram to the server
Three-js
- Make our Portal Map work similar to the "Follow Dragon" section on SpaceX's website.
Twitter Bots
- Twitter Archival Bot
- Twitter Bot that responds to tweets from Eric containing keywords with wiki articles.
Be Creative
Show us what you got!
Music
- Learn a silly or fun drinking song, and record yourself playing or singing it, preferably with friends from The Portal
- Make a song that incorporates the podcast's music
Visual Art
- Are you an artist inspired by The Portal? Show us what you've made!
- Help us make visualizations and animations to go along with Eric's riffs and mathematical concepts of interest
- See what others have created on our Featured Artists page
Writing
- Write an essay, blog post, or twitter thread on a topic covered on The Portal.
Portal Ideas
Distributed Idea Suppression Complex (DISC)
Gauge Theory of Economics and the Square Root of Capitalism
Riffs
- Artificial Outelligence
- Deaths of Accountability
- Don't screw yourself out of magic
- Don't wait for the bread to rise
- Ericisms
- Faster Than Light Travel
- Intellectual Dark Web
- The Invisible World is First Detected by the Visible World's Failure to Close
- Kayfabe
- Maladaptive strategies
- The Optics are the Substance
- Physics Dollars
- Rulers and Protractors Become General Relativity
- Sharp Minds vs Sharp Elbows
- Snap to Grid Intellectualism
- Theory of Death
- The United States of Absolutely Nothing
- The Universal Trade
- White Suit
Discourse
- Argument as the Frame
- Checksum Theory of Politics
- Chess-Opening Problem
- Critical Feeling
- Dawkins' Power of an Idea
- Different Vehicles with Common Payload
- Double Island Rules
- Ideological Dining a la Carte
- Litella
- Long-Form Podcasting
- Long/short positions (nuanced positions)
- Minus Epsilon
- Reflexive Contrarianism
- Regulated Expression
- Responsible Conspiracy Theorizing
- Rough Space
- Russell Conjugation
- Split Level Argument
- Steel-Manning
- Streisand Squeeze
- Superposition
- Type I & Type II Error
Artists are vital for translating the ideas of The Portal into mediums understandable by any.
General Knowledge
History
- Article 58
- Bayh-Dole Act (1980)
- Church and Pike Commissions
- Eilberg Amendment (1976)
- Image Cheapening
- IMMACT90
- Mansfield Amendment (1969)
- Operation COINTELPRO
- Science Since Babylon
- Science, The Endless Frontier (1945)
- Section A of the Reserve Index
- The Evolution of U.S. Science and Defense Research Policies
- Twin Nuclei Problem
Reference
Video/Audio
Podcasts
- Dark Horse Podcast - YouTube channel
- Dark Horse Podcast - Odysee channel
- Into the Impossible Podcast by Dr. Brian Keating - YouTube channel
- Jocko Podcast - YouTube channel
- Joe Rogan Experience - YouTube channel
- The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - YouTube channel
- Lex Fridman Podcast - YouTube channel
Mathematics
- 3Blue1Brown - YouTube channel for educational mathematics content
- Richard E. Borcherds - YouTube channel for mathematics lectures by Fields medalist Richard Borcherds
- Richard Behiel - YouTube channel for maths and physics content
Physics
- Air on a Dirac String - YouTube video explaining spinors
- Sabine Hossenfelder - YouTube channel for educational physics content
Spaceflight
- Cosmic Perspective - YouTube channel for documentaries and interviews about spaceflight
- Everyday Astronaut - YouTube channel for spaceflight news and educational content
- NASASpaceflight - YouTube channel for spaceflight news and video journalism
- Scott Manley - YouTube channel for news and educational content on spaceflight and astrophysics
Websites
Portal
General Resources
- Archive.org - Online archive of books, media, and websites
- The Ellsberg Archive Project - Online archive of Daniel Ellsberg's whistleblowing activities
- Project Gutenberg - Repository for digitized books out of copyright
- Wikipedia - Free online encyclopedia
Mathematics
- Euclid's Elements
- LaTeX Cheat Sheet
- Math3ma - Blog by mathematician Dr. Tai-Danae Bradley with educational material
Physics
- BackReaction - Blog by Dr. Sabine Hossenfelder
Culture
- Astral Codex Ten - Blog by Scott Alexander, of former Slate Star Codex
- Common Sense - Newsletter by Bari Weiss featuring journalism, interviews, and guest columns on "curiosity about the wrong topics"
- Continuing Ed - Blog by whistleblower Edward Snowden writing about civil liberties and technology
- Natural Selections - Blog by evolutionary biologist Dr. Heather Heying about biology and culture
- New Discourses - Website by James Lindsay on the workings of social justice ideologies
- Quillette - Online magazine for free thought
Tools
Software
Audio/Image/Video Editing
- Audacity - Free audio editing tool
- Blender - Free 3D modeling, rendering, and animation tool
- Figma - Free web design and diagramming tool
- Gimp - Free image editing tool
- Inkscape - Free vector graphic tool
- Krita - Free image editing/drawing tool
- Resolve - Free video editing tool
Programming
- Jupyter Notebooks - Free interactive Python environment
- Manim - Animation python code used to create the videos on 3Blue1Brown
- Spyder - Interactive development environment for scientific python
- Threejs - Javascript 3D Library
- WordPress - Free and open source software for developing websites
Productivity
Websites
Wiki Tools
- List of Pages on this Wiki
- List of Categories on this Wiki
- List of Users on this Wiki
- List of Files on this Wiki
- API Access to this Wiki
Other Sites
- Geogebra - Math visualization site.
- Shadertoy - Repository and API for coding shaders, such as this hopf fibration.