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== Transcript == | == Transcript == | ||
[https://theportal.wiki/images/a/a2/2_What_Is_The_Portal_.vtt Raw transcript file] | [https://theportal.wiki/images/a/a2/2_What_Is_The_Portal_.vtt Raw transcript file] | ||
=== Housekeeping === | |||
'''[[Eric Weinstein]]''': Hi, it's Eric Weinstein. Um, just to put it simply, we're blown away. We've just released the first episode of The Portal, which is my new show. And, um, we had a response and reaction that we really couldn't have imagined. So while we have several shows in the can and we have some great interviews lined up, | '''[[Eric Weinstein]]''': Hi, it's Eric Weinstein. Um, just to put it simply, we're blown away. We've just released the first episode of The Portal, which is my new show. And, um, we had a response and reaction that we really couldn't have imagined. So while we have several shows in the can and we have some great interviews lined up, | ||
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[00:00:57] uh, an improvisational [[Riffs to Animate|riff]] on where we may be going with the show, The Portal. I hope you like it. | [00:00:57] uh, an improvisational [[Riffs to Animate|riff]] on where we may be going with the show, The Portal. I hope you like it. | ||
=== What The Portal is About === | |||
[00:01:13] Hello, I'm Eric Weinstein, and you found The Portal. This is our second episode, and perhaps you caught our [[1: Peter Thiel|first one]], which I interviewed my friend [[Peter Thiel]]. In that conversation, Peter and I discussed a great many things, but one of the, let's say, overarching themes is that somehow the world around us seems to have been completely misexplained and not only misexplained for a short period of time, but perhaps misexplained for decades without anyone much noticing. | [00:01:13] Hello, I'm Eric Weinstein, and you found The Portal. This is our second episode, and perhaps you caught our [[1: Peter Thiel|first one]], which I interviewed my friend [[Peter Thiel]]. In that conversation, Peter and I discussed a great many things, but one of the, let's say, overarching themes is that somehow the world around us seems to have been completely misexplained and not only misexplained for a short period of time, but perhaps misexplained for decades without anyone much noticing. | ||
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[00:03:04] The Portal is an attempt to end this bubble, to look beyond the intellectual laziness and stasis that is available everywhere through the institutional media, through, let's say, [[Gated Institutional Narrative|legacy sense-making structures]] and to start listening in on a different conversation, perhaps a conversation that many of you are relatively unfamiliar with, in which different players, different names, are rotated into the spotlight and the familiar pundits and talking heads are rotated out. | [00:03:04] The Portal is an attempt to end this bubble, to look beyond the intellectual laziness and stasis that is available everywhere through the institutional media, through, let's say, [[Gated Institutional Narrative|legacy sense-making structures]] and to start listening in on a different conversation, perhaps a conversation that many of you are relatively unfamiliar with, in which different players, different names, are rotated into the spotlight and the familiar pundits and talking heads are rotated out. | ||
[00:03:33] Now, what is it that this group of people is thinking about? What are they working on? What do they believe? Well, in part, many of them are worried about the idea of complacency and excited about the idea of breaking through a portal into a different space. Sometimes that's in an area like radical life extension, where so far up until the present, almost no one has gotten beyond the, um, biblical age of Moses set at 120 years by convention. | [00:03:33] Now, what is it that this group of people is thinking about? What are they working on? What do they believe? Well, in part, many of them are worried about the idea of complacency and excited about the idea of breaking through a portal into a different space. Sometimes that's in an area like [[Convex Hull of Radical Longevity|radical life extension]], where so far up until the present, almost no one has gotten beyond the, um, biblical age of Moses set at 120 years by convention. | ||
[00:04:04] If that's been the hard stop, some people are now dreaming about life expectancies that could go into 200 or 300 years if we could only find access to the right molecular mechanisms. Likewise, in areas like physics, we have the possibility that there are two main dominant theories that are irreconcilable and therefore incomplete. | [00:04:04] If that's been the hard stop, some people are now dreaming about life expectancies that could go into 200 or 300 years if we could only find access to the right molecular mechanisms. Likewise, in areas like physics, we have the possibility that there are two main dominant theories that are irreconcilable and therefore incomplete. | ||
[00:04:27] What if we had an ability to bridge those theories and come up with a much more detailed and accurate theory that spanned both the phenomena covered by Einstein's general relativity and the quantum theory known as the standard model | [00:04:27] What if we had an [[Theory of Geometric Unity|ability to bridge those theories]] and come up with a much more detailed and accurate theory that spanned both the phenomena covered by Einstein's general relativity and the quantum theory known as the standard model? Would there be something to do, something wholly unexpected? We don't know. | ||
[00:04:49] We also dream of limitless energy. Perhaps fusion technology or incredible storage devices would allow us to harness, you know, much greener energy sources. Perhaps we would find some way of living in a world of abundance in which we could print things, freeing us from drudgery using artificial intelligence and machine learning, | [00:04:49] We also dream of limitless energy. Perhaps fusion technology or incredible storage devices would allow us to harness, you know, much greener energy sources. [[The Square Root of Capitalism|Perhaps we would find some way of living in a world of abundance]] in which we could print things, freeing us from drudgery using artificial intelligence and machine learning, | ||
[00:05:10] and learn to have much more harmonious and fulfilling existences, or perhaps this would unleash some sort of economic problem whereby very few of us would be able to earn a living in this new world and that the abundance that we thought we craved would in fact be a curse in disguise. What I want to do is to talk to you very simply and plainly about the problems that we currently face that almost no one is willing to discuss, and that is that we have a world | [00:05:10] and learn to have much more harmonious and fulfilling existences, or perhaps this would unleash some sort of economic problem whereby very few of us would be able to earn a living in this new world and that the abundance that we thought we craved would in fact be a curse in disguise. What I want to do is to talk to you very simply and plainly about the problems that we currently face that almost no one is willing to discuss, and that is that we have a world | ||
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[00:07:10] Didn't we think that fusion was around the corner? If you think about all of the things that we could be doing, we've learned in most of these areas that it is no longer mature to hope, to imagine that somehow we are going to be able to make the future very different than the present. Yes, things will get a little bit better, but are they going to get dramatically better? | [00:07:10] Didn't we think that fusion was around the corner? If you think about all of the things that we could be doing, we've learned in most of these areas that it is no longer mature to hope, to imagine that somehow we are going to be able to make the future very different than the present. Yes, things will get a little bit better, but are they going to get dramatically better? | ||
[00:07:33] Are we going to be leading a life in our here in our now that would allow a kind of escapist lifestyle that we saw on Star Trek, or even in Star Wars, which came out in the sixties and seventies respectively? I think that in general, most of us have realized that these dreams have remained dreams for so long that we've consigned them to the world of children. | [00:07:33] Are we going to be leading a life in our here, in our now that would allow a kind of escapist lifestyle that we saw on Star Trek, or even in Star Wars, which came out in the sixties and seventies respectively? I think that in general, most of us have realized that these dreams have remained dreams for so long that we've consigned them to the world of children. | ||
[00:07:55] Perhaps very dim people believe these things. What I'm interested in is trying to get the smartest, most dynamic and most agentic people in our society once again talking to each other and ignoring the people who are most focused on dampening all of our enthusiasm. Now perhaps, you think, look, this doesn't sound very scientific. | [00:07:55] Perhaps very dim people believe these things. What I'm interested in is trying to get the smartest, most dynamic and most agentic people in our society once again talking to each other and ignoring the people who are most focused on dampening all of our enthusiasm. Now perhaps, you think, look, this doesn't sound very scientific. | ||