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. [1]
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
2009
This is intolerable. English needs more words: Kayfabe, Nu, Sanuk, Yakamoz, Dafka, Paskutsvah, Masti, Retcon, Subclass, etc... #newesperanto
Huge thanks to the good folks @ScienceBlogs who set up a forum:
"@EricRWeinstein the Krugman debate carries on at ScienceBlogs..."
"[A] time varying objective function generally cannot be tracked by an economic index." -The Fed's T.N. 2007 Sure....without Fiber Bundles
"The definition of the true cost-of-living index depends crucially upon the choice of a single indifference map" -F&S 1972. But it doesn't.
"The obstacle is the lack of an answer to the question: how can you do welfare economics, if preferences change endogenously?" -CvW 2005
"How can we evaluate an economic system with a measuring rod that itself changes with the system?" -CvWeizacher 2005 Wait...lets ask H. Wyl!
I feel confident of what I have said about Gauge theory and Inflation. Here is something much more far out: George Soros' Thy as a gauge Thy
Soros' General Thy of Reflexivity:
Markets tell worldviews how to move. (Cognitive) Worldviews tell markets how to curve. (Participating)
I think Soros may well be trying to tell us something Deep but we are holding him back with ugly nonsense about mkt actors.
So G.Soros: It ain't nutty. I'll try rendering your theory of Reflexivity in elegant mathematics...If you'll spring for beer.
I am not ignoring the micro/macro divide. I just don't buy this "micro is healthy and macro is sick." B-S always goes metastatic.
I am also not ignoring the freshwater/saltwater divide. The difference between these two schools is nothing compared to science/silliness.
VaR -> Kayfabe | Coase -> Economics | Stable Tastes -> Kayfabe | Arrow's Theorem -> Economics | Rep. Consumer -> Kayfabe | B. Scholes-> Econ
Good Work (e.g. Black Scholes) doesn't have to be perfect. But if it's sillier than Dr. Seuss, it should .. y'know .. probably rhyme.
Now let me unpack my point about Inflation. The vulnerability of Kayfabe economics is that it can't come into contact with economics.
Inflation exists in Microeconomics, In Macroeconomics, and in Kayfabe Economics. So Kayfabe is forced into convulsions to avoid the topic.
Kayfabe solves it by fiat while, as the quotes show, it is thought unsolvable even in standard theory. But In Gauge theory it is solvable.
What happened in 1996 is that Economics and Kayfabe Economics accidentally ran into each other head on at Harvard over inflation.
This is where I learned not only about the very existence of a made up world of economics but its power and ubiquity. Kayfabe is amazing!
4 YO: ROAR: I'm an Allosaurus 7 YO: No-you're-not! 4 YO: Okay. But...I'm an Allosaurus in Kayfabe! [Advantage: 4 YO]
But that's political Kayfabe. In science, obligate Science is critical. It's hard to find nice things to say about Kaybrication in science.
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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.
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Related Concepts
Additional Resources
References
- ↑ "2011 : WHAT SCIENTIFIC CONCEPT WOULD IMPROVE EVERYBODY'S COGNITIVE TOOLKIT?". Edge.org. Retrieved 10 December 2025.