Geekonomy Ep. 1022 Reem Sherman with Eric Weinstein (YouTube Content)

Reem Sherman with Eric Weinstein
Information
Host(s)	Geekonomy
Guest(s)	Eric Weinstein
Length	01:56:17
Release Date	30 March 2025
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Reem Sherman with Eric Weinstein was a discussion with Eric Weinstein hosted by Reem Sherman on Geekonomy Episode 1022.

Description

Eric Weinstein is the hedge fund manager of Peter Thiel, one of the world’s most famous investors. Eric has a PhD in mathematical physics from Harvard University and has gained a large global audience over the past decade thanks to prominent appearances on popular podcasts such as Joe Rogan, Lex Friedman and others. The conversation was conducted in English in Israel during Eric’s visit to the country, which he has not been to in thirty years.

Transcript

00:00:00
Re’em Sherman: Geekonomy March twen- 30th. This is episode, I don't know, 1100 or something like that, and today I have the pleasure of hosting Eric Weinstein. Someone who's done so much in his life, I'm not going to even start to introduce him. You're going to do it yourself, Mister-

00:00:17
Eric Weinstein: Weinstein

00:00:18
Re’em Sherman: ... Weinstein.

00:00:19
Eric Weinstein: There you go.

00:00:19
Re’em Sherman: There you go. That's the first thing you need to do. So Eric Weinstein, please introduce yourself.

00:00:25
Eric Weinstein: I'm a math guy from the US who's, uh, back in Israel for the first time in three decades.

00:00:30
Re’em Sherman: How is it?

00:00:32
Eric Weinstein: It's, uh, st- people kept telling me it's gonna be totally different, but it seems very much the same in all sorts of ways. I forgot what it feels like here.

00:00:39
Re’em Sherman: Really?

00:00:39
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:00:40
Re’em Sherman: For 30 years, you haven't been here since you've been to the, you know, Hebrew University in Jerusalem-

00:00:45
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:00:45
Re’em Sherman: ... and nothing really changed, in your eyes?

00:00:47
Eric Weinstein: Well, 32 years since I was at the university, and I think 28 years since I was at a friend's wedding, um, very briefly.

00:00:54
Re’em Sherman: And it still looks the same?

00:00:55
Eric Weinstein: Well, it doesn't, but it's always in m- you know, it was always changing and in motion. And, and, and I, I guess the, you know, the, the main reaction is just I forgot how completely crazy we are as a people. You know? It, we were, like, watching the, uh, Hare Krishnas on the beach during Shabbat, and, you know, just the diversity within, uh, the Jewish world as well as the non-Jews and all of the different sort of cross currents. There's no way to describe this place. If you're, if you're not here, it's even hard to conjure up from memory.

00:01:27
Re’em Sherman: Yeah, an hour ago there was an alarm because of a missile from Yemen, and-

00:01:31
Eric Weinstein: It was very authentic. Thank you for the experience

00:01:33
Re’em Sherman: ... it was very au- There you go, and nobody even cares anymore.

00:01:36
Eric Weinstein: Well, they don't care because the technology's pretty good.

00:01:39
Re’em Sherman: Exactly.

00:01:40
Eric Weinstein: And but, you know, I worry about you guys because I, I see very few people carrying weapons, uh, in the same way that I remember from three decades ago. And there are times when I worry, uh, as I did before, uh, unfortunate events of 2023-

00:01:56
Re’em Sherman: Mm

00:01:56
Eric Weinstein: ... that Israel can forget itself as to where it's located because it's so completely different from its neighborhood.

00:02:01
Re’em Sherman: On one aspect, I tend to agree. On the other, I completely disagree. I think one of the virtues of the, the human mind is the ability to adjust and just-

00:02:10
Eric Weinstein: Mm

00:02:10
Re’em Sherman: ... to forget because if you won't forget, you'll remember too many things, and then you can go back to work for Waze and sell it for Google or something. If you need to remember everything and, and just live it through the experience, it's a much harder experience.

00:02:27
Eric Weinstein: You know, it, uh... It's, it's very hard, it, it... I'm still in a sort of a listening mode. You know? I, I'm almost, uh, sad to be doing a podcast because I really feel like you need to be a listener before you're a speaker here. And, um, I've just been hearing so many things that communicate facts about what's going on that I, I'm completely not getting in the US, even though I'm exposed to all sorts of people who have a lot of knowledge and, and contact with the culture.

00:03:02
Re’em Sherman: I, I think it's the same for, for everywhere and anybody. If I feel the culture of the US by listening to podcast or visiting-

00:03:11
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:03:11
Re’em Sherman: ... a few times a year or just absorbing the culture, I think I understand Americans, but I surely don't.

00:03:19
Eric Weinstein: Yes. Yeah, yeah.

00:03:20
Re’em Sherman: That's just the fact of it, and that's the reason so many people are, were surprised by the re-election of Trump, or even the first one. Because when you absorb the culture, you get it through filters.

00:03:31
Eric Weinstein: Well, and also-

00:03:31
Re’em Sherman: You don't get, yeah, you don't get it via first, like, first party experience.

00:03:37
Eric Weinstein: Also, the fact that Trump two is so different than Trump one.

00:03:41
Re’em Sherman: Yeah. It's, it's... If you don't live there, and you know what? You live in California, right?

00:03:46
Eric Weinstein: I do.

00:03:46
Re’em Sherman: It's a totally different experience than the other 49 c- states.

00:03:51
Eric Weinstein: Well, and, and, and Los Angeles is completely different from San Francisco, although some people claim that it's the farthest, uh, southern suburb of San Francisco.

00:04:00
Re’em Sherman: And San Francisco is totally different than Fresno because you just described two of the richest cities in the world, and between them, there are so many cities that are totally different.

00:04:10
Eric Weinstein: Well, and I, and I could make a joke. What, what is this Fresno of which you speak, you know? Uh-

00:04:14
Re’em Sherman: Exactly. I, I was born in the equivalent of Fresno in Israel, and that's the ex- same exact joke.

00:04:19
Eric Weinstein: Which one?

00:04:20
Re’em Sherman: Be'er Sheva, in the desert.

00:04:21
Eric Weinstein: Okay.

00:04:21
Re’em Sherman: And so many cities around the world are not Los Angeles, are not Tokyo, are not Munich, are not London, and you can feel the stress that it causes.

00:04:32
Eric Weinstein: Although, because Los Angeles has exported so much entertainment over the years, there's a weird way in which everybody who's consumed media lives in Los Angeles. Like, everyone knows what the streets feel like i- in a certain sense. And therefore, when you live in a culture exporting, uh, place, there's a, there's a bizarre way in which everyone is a citizen of your town.

00:04:52
Re’em Sherman: And still, the... It's not hatred, but there's a lot of resentment of people not living in the big cities all around the world, and you can feel the reaction by, in the Brexit-

00:05:04
Eric Weinstein: Sure

00:05:04
Re’em Sherman: ... or in the Trump re-election or the first election or everything with the AfD in Germany, and you can see it all over the world. And it's almost a duplicate. You can see, like, uh, experiences. Even in Turkey right now, there's duplicates in behavior and sociolog- sociology-

00:05:22
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:05:22
Re’em Sherman: ... all over the world. We used to be very different, and we are less different these days.

00:05:26
Eric Weinstein: Well, there are these currents that are changing every place, and I, I'm almost more fascinated by what is happening in, uh, as sort of the instantiation of a global phenomenon which is experienced by each locality as if that is what's going on. So for example, um, Tur- you bring up Turkey. Turkey, India, Israel are, let's say, three of my five favorite countries outside of the US. And in many of these places, what you're seeing is the repudiation of 20th century overreach from giant idealistic projects. So for example, India's, uh- Rejection of Hind- of Hinduism and Hin- Hindutva as an organizing principle in f- in favor of sort of a, an enforced secularism. Um, I-

00:06:19
Re’em Sherman: With the exact opposite in Turkey.

00:06:22
Eric Weinstein: Well, so, no, no, no, I, I think it's the same in some sense. Modi and Erdogan are playing the role of the undoers of the grand ideological project. You know, Atat- Ataturk's, um, 1923 or so transformations, you know, Latinizing, uh, Arabic script, um, taking the language actually from Osmanlica to modern Turkish, uh, getting rid of polygamy, banning the fez. Th- these things were-

00:06:55
Re’em Sherman: Banning religion almost.

00:06:57
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:06:57
Re’em Sherman: The Young Turks, what, what they'd have done.

00:06:59
Eric Weinstein: Sure. And but they didn't really ban it effectively in Anatolia. What they did is they took the western crust on the Aegean, uh, and they made it more secular and European, and now you have this confusion. If you ... There's an enormous city that most people in Istanbul [laughs] won't visit, even though it's right next door, called Bursa. And the last time I was there, I went, uh, I visit with, with the Jewish community in Bursa actually. And, um, the willingness of modern secular Turks to treat their Anatolian counterparts or their or- more orthodox counterparts as if they come from the moon or a foreign culture is, is astounding. And in India, of course, Modi's rise is in part the repudiation of Gandhi and Nehru. And so you have to ask yourself the question, what happened during the 20th century that you had all of these grand idealistic projects? In, in the States it would be perhaps the New Deal and Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs. And now they're being undone because the, the brutality of the failure of the idealism is being repudiated. One ex- example here of course is that I, when I was here last in the early '90s, I was very unpopular for saying there is no two-state solution. And-

00:08:22
Re’em Sherman: Well, that was the prime, uh, time to say exactly the opposite of it. It's the prime days of Yitzhak Rabin and the Oslo project.

00:08:31
Eric Weinstein: Well, but, but the, the great danger is that what sounds beautiful is deadly. And the two-state solution salved the American conscience, um, by saying, "Look, you know, we're, we're going to do the in- the inverse wisdom of King Solomon. We're gonna divide the baby and that's gonna be, uh, the way to bring peace." And it, uh, of course, this was predicated on the cold peace, uh, brokered between, uh, Sadat and Begin, uh, of Carter. And the fact that that cold peace has held, you know, a, a bitter, ugly, horrible peace, but peace it is n- nonetheless. That, uh ... The difference between those two situations was not appreciated from abroad. And I would also say that the US State Department never had the characteristics of the British Foreign Service, where the British Foreign Service always got to know a region so well that they were in danger of going native, whereas on the other hand, the, the US State Department often imposes some sort of American idealism on places that can't support it.

00:09:31
Re’em Sherman: Yeah, there's almost no equivalent of Lawrence of Arabia-

00:09:34
Eric Weinstein: [laughs]

00:09:34
Re’em Sherman: ... from the States.

00:09:35
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:09:35
Re’em Sherman: It's usually, as we, we spoke before the episode, I s- I said you're very American, and usually most Americans are very Americans. It's a strong culture, and it does not bend the knee to anybody.

00:09:47
Eric Weinstein: Well, but sometimes it doesn't even know that the knee is supposed to be bent. There's video of Trump, I think, touching, uh, m- members of the royal family of Saudi Arabia.

00:09:56
Re’em Sherman: [laughs]

00:09:56
Eric Weinstein: And it wasn't a question of a knowing and knowledgeable transgression. It was probably the fact that he wasn't aware. Uh, and if he was aware, he might have made the same decision. But there's always the question, um, you know, are you drinking, uh, your finger bowl, uh, imagining that it's delicious lemon soup, uh, as a choice? Or, or, uh, you know, is, is it, um, that you just don't even know that you're being handed a finger bowl?

00:10:22
Re’em Sherman: You know that y- you are now focusing on Oslo in the first days of the '90s before Yitzhak Rabin was murdered, but the, the, the major trauma for the Israeli psyche-

00:10:32
Eric Weinstein: Mm-hmm

00:10:32
Re’em Sherman: ... and it's really relate, it really relates to what you said, was the breakup from Gaza. And I can tell you as a person who was in favor of it, I'm still not really empathetic, if I'm being honest with myself, with the trauma that these people, uh, that were moved away, transferred from their houses for the name of peace or in the name of just trying to separate the two people.

00:10:57
Eric Weinstein: You mean the ethnic cleansing of Jews from Gaza?

00:11:00
Re’em Sherman: I'm using ethnic cleansing for when it's another people that, uh, is doing it for, is doing it to you. But you can say that, and they will say that of course.

00:11:07
Eric Weinstein: Well, no, no, but I'm just saying that if, if ... The visual trauma of Yamit, for example, uh, I think was captured in photographs. I don't know that we have such photographs, uh, burned into the American Jewish psyche of what happened in Gaza.

00:11:22
Re’em Sherman: Uh, so what I'm trying to s- to, to convey is even me, that I was, I was born here, I'm living here every, ever since I was born here, born and raised as, as they say, and still only in the last two years when that trauma mani- just manifested thems- itself in everything that is happening in Israel, I'm only now starting to understand how much anger bottled up there.

00:11:47
Eric Weinstein: Can you say more?

00:11:49
Re’em Sherman: Ask questions, I'll answer. Usually people here are really are upset on, uh, when I'm speaking too much, but I don't mind. [laughs]

00:11:56
Eric Weinstein: No, no, no, no, no, no. I'm curious just how your personal relationship ... I mean, you could, you obviously, uh, can appreciate what Sharon was thinking, that, uh, you, you have, uh, a demographic problem. Uh, you have a very unusual situation that you had, what, a third of the Palestinian Arab population on the 17th of the land.

00:12:19
Re’em Sherman: Of course.

00:12:19
Eric Weinstein: There's very little that connects Gaza, uh, to the Jewish people except for some stuff with Samson.

00:12:25
Re’em Sherman: No, there was be- do you know, uh, Shabtai Zvi? Shabtai Zvi was a, a false, uh, prophet.

00:12:31
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:12:31
Re’em Sherman: He was a very famous person in the Jewish, uh, history books. And Shabtai Zvi, uh, met with samba- someone called Natan the Gazan.

00:12:40
Eric Weinstein: Mm.

00:12:40
Re’em Sherman: Natan lived in Gaza. Uh, there were Jewish people living in Gaza.

00:12:44
Eric Weinstein: No, no, I'm not saying-

00:12:45
Re’em Sherman: Yeah

00:12:45
Eric Weinstein: ... I'm saying that the, it's not the same connection-

00:12:47
Re’em Sherman: Of course not

00:12:48
Eric Weinstein: ... as Judea and Samaria.

00:12:49
Re’em Sherman: Of course not.

00:12:49
Eric Weinstein: It's much less. And if I recall correctly, and again, this is not the place to screw-

00:12:53
Re’em Sherman: Yeah

00:12:53
Eric Weinstein: ... screw stuff like this up. But I remember, I think it was Moshe Dayan saying that his great nightmare as a, an archeologist [laughs] would be finding, um, very serious remains of synagogues in Gaza or something like that.

00:13:08
Re’em Sherman: Y- y- you are of course, uh, correct there. And the history of Gaza goes back to the Phoenicians and the Carthaginians who left Gaza-

00:13:15
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:13:15
Re’em Sherman: ... if I'm not mistaken, but not a lot of Jewish tradition there. There is some Jewish, uh, historical, uh, enthusiasts. Please don't yell at me in, in the comments. I know some of it, but it's not that important as Judea and Samaria.

00:13:27
Eric Weinstein: I- I'm just saying it-

00:13:27
Re’em Sherman: Yeah

00:13:27
Eric Weinstein: ... it's much more minor.

00:13:29
Re’em Sherman: Yes, indeed. And yes, I was so, uh, I agreed so much with Sharon and afterwards with Olmer that I wasn't in Israel in 2006. I, uh, left, uh, the army and I needed some time for myself.

00:13:41
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:13:42
Re’em Sherman: Uh, and I traveled, uh, Asia for, uh, eight months, and I drove, uh, via train and car and motorcycle for 500 miles just to go to the embassy and vote-

00:13:55
Eric Weinstein: Mm

00:13:55
Re’em Sherman: ... only to support, uh, that endeavor by the, the Sharon regime and his follow- and his followers. And you know what the ambassador told me?

00:14:06
Eric Weinstein: Tell me.

00:14:06
Re’em Sherman: You need to stop watching American culture, shows and movies because in Israel, as an Israeli abroad, you can't vote in the embassy. It's nice that you drove for 12 hours only because you think you can vote in the embassy, but you can't. That's something that Americans do in America. You can't. I said, "Really?" [laughs] I really wanted to, but I didn't because apparently you can vote only in Israel, you see?

00:14:31
Eric Weinstein: Good, good to have you a- aboard.

00:14:33
Re’em Sherman: [laughs] So here's a, here's a fact for you. A- as a Jewish person living abroad, you can't. But I really wanted to, and that-

00:14:41
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:14:41
Re’em Sherman: ... just to prove a, just to convey the message that I really was supporting it. Um, I served in a special forces unit where we lost people in Gaza, and I didn't really see the reason for it. Maybe retroactively I do, but I didn't see it back then. Uh, a friend of mine was killed there, and I didn't see the reason for it. His mom, uh, got the news. She lived in Kiryat Gat, 10 kilometers from where he was killed, and he wasn't even protecting that place as I felt it. Uh, I felt that the, the fact that we have so many Arabs there that feel that they were wronged because they were already displaced in '48-

00:15:25
Eric Weinstein: Sure

00:15:25
Re’em Sherman: ... and now there are again settlements in, down the throat is not a good thing for us to have, not morally, not by any means, and I really supported that move.

00:15:35
Eric Weinstein: Well, you know, th- there is also the question about whether or not there was a plan of Sharon that did not get a chance to complete. And you know, if I, if I think about the, uh, my, my favorite church, uh, because of its interior, La Sagrada Família in Barcelona, Gaudi did not leave enough instructions to figure out how to complete his masterwork.

00:15:58
Re’em Sherman: If he had place, he would written the entire con- entire instruction on the back note of the page, of course.

00:16:03
Eric Weinstein: I'm hoping that the AI will figure out what it, what it was that he was trying to do. But you know, I don't know what, what, uh, what Sharon was thinking because all I see is this portion of a plan.

00:16:14
Re’em Sherman: So I, I, you asked me who are the most popular guests on in the podcast, and one, the one that is most popular is Dan Shiftan, and Dan Shiftan was one of the fathers of that plan.

00:16:24
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:16:25
Re’em Sherman: So I had the pleasure of speaking with him twice, and he, he relayed everything. That was the plan. He said Gaza, he said 18 or 19% of Judea and Samaria. He's not a b- the biggest fan of the Arab population here, and that's putting it mildly.

00:16:42
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:16:42
Re’em Sherman: But he's a big, big supporter of a breakup. If two peoples can't just live together, try to break it up-

00:16:50
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:16:50
Re’em Sherman: ... as cleanly as we can.

00:16:52
Eric Weinstein: Maybe, but you know, the fact is, is that in a weird way, um, and, and you know, this is something I'm critical of Israelis about that, that they say that they completely disengaged from Gaza, which they did not, because they still, uh, controlled, um, borders and things. And so it was a largely disengaged, but it wasn't complete.

00:17:12
Re’em Sherman: Yeah.

00:17:13
Eric Weinstein: And by virtue of the fact that it wasn't a sovereign nation, you can't say, okay, well this is, you know, war, uh, at a complete level, in which case, uh, you respond full force. And so of course, you know, in my estimation, um-

00:17:30
Re’em Sherman: Well, that's the definition of a casus belli. If you, uh, put ga- if you put borders on the sea of a cou- another country and you put a blockade, that's a casus belli, like having a submarine in their, uh, international waters or their legal, uh, surroundings. That's a proper reason to go to war if you are a country. Gaza was never a country.

00:17:51
Eric Weinstein: So you're making the Gaz- the Gazan point.

00:17:53
Re’em Sherman: I can understand the Gazan point.

00:17:54
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, yeah. So can I.

00:17:54
Re’em Sherman: I can be empathetic for them.

00:17:55
Eric Weinstein: No, no, totally. And, and-

00:17:57
Re’em Sherman: But, but on the other hand, uh, I, the people from my unit were on the Karine A. Uh, we s- uh, the Karine A was a, a large vessel that Arafat, uh, brought into Gaza after he made a promise to Bush-

00:18:12
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:18:12
Re’em Sherman: ... I'm not going to do it. And he did. And if you'll read the biography of Sharon that I usually, uh, endorse here, you'll read the passage where Bush just yelled at him over the phone and said, "You MF-er, why did you do it? You promised me-"

00:18:26
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:18:26
Re’em Sherman: ... you're not going to do it. And the fact is that on that Karine A vessel, there was a huge, huge amount of ammunition and weapons, and there was just no way we can allow it. And it's a very big problem because if you, on the one hand you can't allow it, but on the o- other hand, you don't give them an option just to have a proper economy, you're setting your up for-

00:18:53
Eric Weinstein: But to be honest with you, I d- I don't even, I don't even think that that would've worked.

00:18:58
Re’em Sherman: Of course not.

00:18:58
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, yeah.

00:18:59
Re’em Sherman: Y- you can see it. Before the, the-

00:19:02
Eric Weinstein: It was before-

00:19:02
Re’em Sherman: Before, before everything that happened two years ago, a- in a year and a half ago-

00:19:05
Eric Weinstein: Yes

00:19:06
Re’em Sherman: ... we now know this from, from this week, it's a new discovery-

00:19:10
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:19:10
Re’em Sherman: ... that the Shin Bet got the green light from Benjamin Netanyahu to go and, uh, create what the Arabs call a Hudna. Hudna is like a long truce for everybody just to find their bearings. It's not a peace agreement, but for 10 years you don't fight. And Yahya Sinwar, the leader of the Hamas, used that, uh, kind of negotiation just to, uh, get enough time, get enough ammunition to go to war. He used that, uh-

00:19:40
Eric Weinstein: You got outplayed.

00:19:40
Re’em Sherman: Yeah. We got played magnificently.

00:19:43
Eric Weinstein: By a genius. It's very hard to admit.

00:19:46
Re’em Sherman: Yeah. A- at least, uh, strategically or, uh, a- and, and a lot of people here-

00:19:51
Eric Weinstein: I don't think it-

00:19:51
Re’em Sherman: ... admitted it

00:19:52
Eric Weinstein: ... I think, I think even though he's dead, he's still outplaying you.

00:19:56
Re’em Sherman: Of course not. Of, of course he is.

00:19:58
Eric Weinstein: Of course. Okay.

00:19:58
Re’em Sherman: Yeah. Of course he is.

00:20:00
Eric Weinstein: Can we pause for one second?

00:20:01
Re’em Sherman: Yeah, just a second. And we're back. Yes. So Yahya Sinwar was, uh, a genius and I think, uh, a military genius, and I think if, uh, he had his way, he would be recognized as such, but because the war did not go as he planned, I-

00:20:19
Eric Weinstein: Say more?

00:20:20
Re’em Sherman: I don't think, uh, the war went as he planned. I think, uh, he planned-

00:20:23
Eric Weinstein: Oh, I do know that. Tell me about that

00:20:24
Re’em Sherman: ... I think he planned, uh, that after the first week, Hezbollah is going to join-

00:20:30
Eric Weinstein: Oh, sure

00:20:30
Re’em Sherman: ... Iran is going to join, the Houthis are going to join, as everybody predicted. And for some reason that I'm not sure we'll ever know because, uh, some of the people, uh, that took the decision or all of them are not living anymore, we won't know what led to the decision of Hezbollah and Iran not to declare war or full war or total war on that exact second, and Gaza is destroyed. So many people of the Hamas party-

00:20:58
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:20:58
Re’em Sherman: ... and the Gazans are dead or injured, and it's not the best outcome. I'm sure we could gotten a better outcome.

00:21:04
Eric Weinstein: See, I had a different reaction to it, so m- maybe I'm just being naive, but o- m- one of my complaints about, uh, how the US sees conflict is that the concept of hybrid war is very suffused throughout our national security complex, but the population is unaware of the term.

00:21:27
Re’em Sherman: Of course not. I just read the book by General Petraeus.

00:21:30
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:21:30
Re’em Sherman: He, he wrote a book about all, uh, wars between '48 and the Ukraine War.

00:21:35
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:21:35
Re’em Sherman: And I'm sure that there he's going to add an appendix for the Gaza War because it's a really interesting war, but the American people does not really understand or know, and I'm going to extend that line to all the people of any place in the world because it's a new way of war, Phil.

00:21:50
Eric Weinstein: Well, so this is what's s- and, you know, the ... I just had this, uh, um, you guys invited me for a salon in Tel Aviv, and I, uh, was asked more or less the first question about this tweet that I left- let off on 10/17, where I said, uh, uh, "Suicide by IDF, Munchausen by proxy, and zugzwang." This was before, uh, you guys went into Gaza. And what I was convinced of was that the new ... You have a problem with innovation in the region. There was no suicide bombing, uh, until the barracks in Lebanon, and, you know, the golden age of, uh, airline hijacking wasn't around, uh, when people weren't flying jets.

00:22:40
Re’em Sherman: Of course.

00:22:42
Eric Weinstein: This was a new innovation, and the new innovation was, uh, instead of land for peace, it was, uh, lives for video. And what- what-

00:22:54
Re’em Sherman: Yeah. That's ISIS

00:22:55
Eric Weinstein: ... what, what, what ... No, no. ISIS took lives on video. Sinwar w- wanted his own people pulled from the rubble on video because the video is far more important than the kinetic victory.

00:23:09
Re’em Sherman: And if it didn't happen, we can always mock it. Yeah. There's so many occasions where you can see a video and, and I thought to myself-

00:23:18
Eric Weinstein: That's real

00:23:19
Re’em Sherman: ... "You lost, you lost so much. So many people are dead. Kids, women. Why do you need to fake another one?"

00:23:25
Eric Weinstein: Well, it's very strange, but the fact is that he was also counting on latent, uh, anti-Jewish feeling all over the world. So people who don't need things to really add up, um, are very happy to thrust any video in your face and say, "Look, you know, you're, you're genocidal maniacs." Uh, they don't ... You can't win the argument because they're not interested in having the argument.

00:23:48
Re’em Sherman: Yeah. When John Oliver is being, uh, is using Al Jazeera for 90% of the video footage from the surrounding of Israel and Gaza, it's not random. Somebody's choosing the narrative here, and Qatar is manipulating the entire world here.

00:24:06
Eric Weinstein: Well, it's so strange when the UK is so strongly pro-Jewish. It was a joke. You didn't laugh.

00:24:12
Re’em Sherman: Yeah. Enough pe- Because, because it's complicated. So many people are pro-Jewish, the prime minister in UK and in Germany.

00:24:20
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:24:20
Re’em Sherman: And in so many places-

00:24:22
Eric Weinstein: Well, people who have exposure-

00:24:24
Re’em Sherman: I'm confused. Yeah

00:24:24
Eric Weinstein: ... well, but the p- the prevalence of latent, uh, anti-Jewish, uh, feeling all over the planet, um, predominantly from people who live in places where they have very few, very little contact with Jews, um-

00:24:41
Re’em Sherman: You know some of them. You met some of them, some of the most familiar faces. You know some of them are even related, like, to people that you know quite well, like Tucker Carlson.

00:24:52
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:24:53
Re’em Sherman: Yeah. He, he turned up the anti-Jewish comments meter really high, really fast.

00:24:59
Eric Weinstein: Well, but, you know, to, to be entirely honest, I, I, I don't think people have an idea of the rainbow of anti-Jewish sentiment. It's not one thing. It's one of the reasons why if you don't talk to people who have deep suspicions about, uh, either Jews or Israel or both, and you don't listen to them, you don't understand how many different things are going on.

00:25:24
Re’em Sherman: And like every good conspiracy, it's not-

00:25:27
Eric Weinstein: There's always a little, yes

00:25:28
Re’em Sherman: ... yes, that is enough, because Miriam Adelson is really good friends with Trump. That's not a lie.

00:25:34
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:25:34
Re’em Sherman: That's, that's honest to God truth, and she is im- she's not manipulating-

00:25:39
Eric Weinstein: Well

00:25:39
Re’em Sherman: ... but she is influencing Trump.

00:25:41
Eric Weinstein: Sorry, but there-

00:25:42
Re’em Sherman: There is a strong lobby for Israel and, and Jewish like Tu-

00:25:44
Eric Weinstein: Well, this is the very strange thing. Every nation on earth is strategic. But then somebody will put in your head, "You know the Jews are very crafty." And so then Jews will follow all over themselves to say, "Oh, no, no, no. We're completely transparent," which is a lie.

00:25:59
Re’em Sherman: Of course not. It's the duality-

00:26:01
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:26:01
Re’em Sherman: ... of Jews for the last 200 years or 2,000 years where you're a rat and a genius at the same time. Germans would say, "These people are rats," like Nazis, not Germans these days. "They can't do anything. They just destroy societies." On the, on the other hand, these are masterful geniuses who control everything and anything.

00:26:19
Eric Weinstein: Ah. Well, the funny thing is, is that if you look at really hardcore, uh, anti-Semitism, like, uh, Stormfront, um, I can tell that most of my friends don't ever visit these sites, because they don't realize that y- you'll see an argument, for example, that, uh, Europeans are far higher in terms of genetics and IQ than, than everyone else that they dislike. And then they'll say, "Except the Jews, who have a different problem, which is that they're morally, uh,"

00:26:48
Re’em Sherman: [laughs]

00:26:48
Eric Weinstein: ... "better," e- even if, e- even if they have superior intellect. And so if you don't weirdly see that they're seeding an argument that you would yourself might not make, um, only to, uh, take away with one hand what they've just given as a compliment with the other, it's a very big place, and I think that Jews need to take a much larger interest in anti-Jewish feeling and to take it much more seriously.

00:27:17
Re’em Sherman: I read, uh, a few years ago about a book called The Day of the Rope. Do you know it?

00:27:23
Eric Weinstein: No.

00:27:23
Re’em Sherman: So, uh, the neo-Nazis in the States, uh, started pushing it. The Day of the Rope is D-Day, der Tag, as they say in German, where Jews are going to be hanged from bridges in the States when they, uh, when they find the right time to do it. And that book just, uh, became really, really popular on so many sites, and people really worked hard to look the other way. And I feel, uh, it's the same these days when people-

00:27:52
Eric Weinstein: I'll wait for the movie

00:27:53
Re’em Sherman: ... uh, let's not wait for the reincarnation in real life, because you live there. [laughs]

00:27:58
Eric Weinstein: Oh my gosh. You have no idea what's coming. Or maybe you do. Maybe you do. You seem very well-informed. [laughs]

00:28:03
Re’em Sherman: Uh, I don't know. You don't either, but you suspect it, same as me.

00:28:07
Eric Weinstein: Well, no, I-

00:28:07
Re’em Sherman: There's, there's so many possible futures

00:28:10
Eric Weinstein: ... I can see a little bit into the future. I can't see very far. And if-

00:28:13
Re’em Sherman: Do you feel now frightful when you walk in LA?

00:28:15
Eric Weinstein: Sure.

00:28:17
Re’em Sherman: How come?

00:28:19
Eric Weinstein: You know, it has to do... No, I- I think that's the wrong question. I mean, whenever I go to synagogue, I always check the exit first. I wanna know where, [laughs] I wanna know two ways I can escape if something goes wrong. Jews forget where they are, and they forget all of this stuff, because they wanna lead simpler lives, and-

00:28:47
Re’em Sherman: Assimilate

00:28:49
Eric Weinstein: Well

00:28:49
Re’em Sherman: ... many of them

00:28:50
Eric Weinstein: ... sometimes you get to. But of course, you know, that was, uh, the great problem with people who didn't leave Europe early enough, is that they, they'd been very successful in terms of the assimilation. So I believe that I want to assimilate, and I also want to remember, and that's a very tough trick. You know, I, I was at a, at a gathering in Los Angeles with Bill Maher, Noam Tishby, Barry Weiss, and there were a lot of Persian Jews at this gathering. And one of them started complaining loudly that his, his business was going to lose money, and I wasn't planning on saying anything. I, I got up and I said, "Your businesses are going to lose money. That's not the extent of your concerns. The biggest problem is, is that many of you have forgotten what it means to be Jewish, and that's the great danger." And I said, "Don't raise your hands, but how many of you have a gold bar buried in the backyard in a bag packed in case you have to leave quickly? Very few of you."

00:29:56
Re’em Sherman: Maybe you should ask these days about a USB stick with some Bitcoin or Ethereum. [laughs] But that's just the truth of it.

00:30:03
Eric Weinstein: I tell you-

00:30:03
Re’em Sherman: So many people in Israel right now have that exact thought in their heads, not only because of enemies, but only be- or, but also because of the, the situation here. But so many people here are talking about going back to their roots and just starting to migrate everywhere and anywhere.

00:30:19
Eric Weinstein: You can try, but the, the, it doesn't, it doesn't work. You have to confront the fact that the problem is longstanding and forever. And-

00:30:28
Re’em Sherman: Same goes for you because you're talking about the big nap everywhere, and I think so many people-

00:30:33
Eric Weinstein: Oh, you listen. That's not so good.

00:30:34
Re’em Sherman: Yeah. Yeah.

00:30:34
Eric Weinstein: Okay. All right.

00:30:35
Re’em Sherman: I do listen. I, I know, I know a lot of stuff that you said over the years. And if you talk... And we have so many employees here from 30 countries.

00:30:44
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:30:44
Re’em Sherman: And they don't know about war. People in Denmark, and Germany, and Switzerland, and Belgium, and they have a very big foe on their, their doorsteps right now.

00:30:53
Eric Weinstein: Okay. Here, here's my attempt to get myself k- uh, kicked out of, uh, the country. In a certain sense, neither do you.

00:30:59
Re’em Sherman: Of course not.

00:31:00
Eric Weinstein: No, no, no. But I'm saying that serious military action as we've seen in, um, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Gaza, in Lebanon, is not the same as full on war. And-

00:31:17
Re’em Sherman: You know, a full on war these days is a push of a button.

00:31:21
Eric Weinstein: We don't know what it is. None of us do because none of us-

00:31:24
Re’em Sherman: Yeah

00:31:24
Eric Weinstein: ... have seen it.

00:31:25
Re’em Sherman: Yeah. The, the, the kind of war that I'm talking about-

00:31:28
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:31:28
Re’em Sherman: ... only a few people saw it in two cities in Japan, and that's it.

00:31:32
Eric Weinstein: Well, that's one point, and then the other is that, uh, many of the people who saw it in, uh, Stalingrad did not come home to tell us about it.

00:31:42
Re’em Sherman: So, you know, my, my grandfather was a soldier in Stalingrad.

00:31:45
Eric Weinstein: You're kidding.

00:31:46
Re’em Sherman: No. He was a soldier for the Red Army in Stalingrad.

00:31:49
Eric Weinstein: Mm.

00:31:49
Re’em Sherman: And, uh, not like a lot of, uh, people who came back from there, he throw away all of his medals and the uniform, and he... You know why? Because he was a soldier in, uh, 95, nine- 1945 Berlin as well, and the stuff that the Russian did there to the Germans-

00:32:08
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:32:09
Re’em Sherman: ... is horrible, and nobody's talking about it. And maybe Antony Beevor and other, a few historians, but-

00:32:17
Eric Weinstein: Well, I, I'm not here to-

00:32:18
Re’em Sherman: Yeah

00:32:18
Eric Weinstein: ... you know-

00:32:19
Re’em Sherman: I, I'm not going to defend or to, uh-

00:32:21
Eric Weinstein: No, no, no.

00:32:21
Re’em Sherman: Yeah.

00:32:22
Eric Weinstein: But I'm just saying that, uh, it- it's like asbestos. There's certain things where you wouldn't have done it, but once it's settled, you don't necessarily wanna stir it up again.

00:32:29
Re’em Sherman: Ex- ex- exactly that. And the only time that I've heard about Stalingrad and Kursk and other... It was like the Forrest Gump, the Jewish Forrest Gump because he left, uh, Moldova in 1941 to get recruited to an army for a language he didn't even speak.

00:32:43
Eric Weinstein: From where in Moldova?

00:32:44
Re’em Sherman: In Chișinău.

00:32:45
Eric Weinstein: Oh, yeah.

00:32:45
Re’em Sherman: In, in there, near Chișinău.

00:32:47
Eric Weinstein: Okay.

00:32:47
Re’em Sherman: Uh, it's a small country where even Romanian, who are the most, uh, unappreciated people in Europe say, "Wow, you people really suck." [laughs]

00:32:57
Eric Weinstein: [laughs]

00:32:57
Re’em Sherman: So yeah, that's just the way it is. And he went to war for five years.

00:33:01
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:33:01
Re’em Sherman: And he didn't really speak about it, and-

00:33:04
Eric Weinstein: Well, and, and that's just the thing

00:33:06
Re’em Sherman: ... that's just it.

00:33:06
Eric Weinstein: That because... You, you actually see the same thing in financial markets, where you'll have a bunch of people who are trading, and then you'll have a crash, and the crash actually wipes out the jobs. And so everybody who would have memory of the crash is unemployed. Then it repopulates, and you have a bunch of people who've never seen a, a disaster. And th-

00:33:27
Re’em Sherman: Yeah

00:33:27
Eric Weinstein: ... this is a problem with war-

00:33:28
Re’em Sherman: Yeah

00:33:28
Eric Weinstein: ... is that you have a lot of men who are in a masculinity crisis who are very excited about talking about conflict, having no idea what full on conflict actually-

00:33:38
Re’em Sherman: And pushing for it.

00:33:38
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:33:39
Re’em Sherman: And I can see... Before the election, I did a comparison between, uh, one of your friends, or at least, uh, war colleagues, J.D. Vance and Teddy Roosevelt. And I said Teddy was a jingoist as well. He spoke about war. He never been to war. And he had the pleasure of, uh, running under a president. He was the vice president, but his president got shot. And I said, "Listen, just see the resemblance between the two. There's a lot." And Teddy Roosevelt is very, uh, positively acclaimed, and J.D. Vance got a lot of slack and shit from everywhere on the left side. So people really got upset for me for even comparing the two. But I said, "The chances of Trump not surviving the next four years due to an assassination like they tried-

00:34:24
Eric Weinstein: I've, I've-

00:34:24
Re’em Sherman: ... or just age or anything."

00:34:26
Eric Weinstein: I'm very worried about this.

00:34:27
Re’em Sherman: You, and you need to be. And J.D. Vance-

00:34:30
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:34:30
Re’em Sherman: ... only yesterday or two days ago, is speaking in Greenland for some reason about the possibility of a third war or a third World War, which is imminent with China, with Russi- with Russia, maybe with Iran. And I think the, the vast majority of people don't really understand, and they have an example. They can see in Ukraine what a total war or even, uh, a, some portion of a total war-

00:34:55
Eric Weinstein: I don't know if that's, that's that total war.

00:34:56
Re’em Sherman: But it's really close. It... On the front lines-

00:34:58
Eric Weinstein: This is so interesting

00:34:59
Re’em Sherman: ... it's really close.

00:34:59
Eric Weinstein: Well, look, I'm, I'm not saying-

00:35:02
Re’em Sherman: Even the numbers are ve- very close.

00:35:04
Eric Weinstein: No, no. Total war in the sense of-

00:35:09
Re’em Sherman: Total destruction?

00:35:11
Eric Weinstein: Well, there's also the question about the psychological nature of different weapons. You know, the, the, um... People are very particular, uh, about whether, you know, d- disfiguring, like the, the, the German innovation of the Bouncing Betty, for example, had a huge psychological impact. Certain techniques by the Viet Cong were particularly, um, terrifying. The increased use of drones has, you know, changed everything. The fact that, uh, the wars that you see on, on video on Telegram, and the fact that you're hearing these things described bloodlessly on mainstream media. I, I'm old enough, uh, to remember, uh, some of my first memories being the US broadcast of images from Vietnam, and it was crazy what we saw. There's no analog of it when we have a conflict now because the US learned a lesson, which is that you cannot actually report live from a war front without freaking people out. You'll scar their minds.

00:36:18
Re’em Sherman: And you got the reports as an American only for the winning side. America lost the war but won every battle. On the other side, they lost millions. Millions of people

00:36:30
Eric Weinstein: Well, as Ho- Ho Chi Minh said, you know, 10... "I'm gonna win because I can- I'll sacrifice 10 of my men for every one of yours."

00:36:37
Re’em Sherman: Yeah, and, and we live it through, we live through this scenario right now in Israel where we lost hundreds, more than 1,000 people, and I know some of them. All of the people here knows. It's, it's a huge-

00:36:49
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:36:49
Re’em Sherman: ... tragedy. On the other side of the fence, the Gazan population lost 50,000, and I'm trying to be empathetic. On the other side, I can't be totally empathetic because it's counter, uh, intuitive to be-

00:37:04
Eric Weinstein: Well, it's-

00:37:04
Re’em Sherman: ... totally empathetic for the fact. And-

00:37:07
Eric Weinstein: It's not functional. It's not functional.

00:37:08
Re’em Sherman: Yeah.

00:37:08
Eric Weinstein: But, but, but, but there is also... And, and, you know, this, most people in the US refuse to listen when Palestinian Arabs make boasts about, uh, "We love death more than you love life." Uh, people don't wanna take them at their word. And, of course-

00:37:29
Re’em Sherman: You, you know I saved a few pictures. I saved a few, uh, clips only to remind-

00:37:33
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:37:34
Re’em Sherman: ... myself. Uh, there was a mother, and she's yelling at the camera, "I lost four children. I don't mind losing three more." And I'm looking at this picture, I'm saying, "This is so fucked up."

00:37:44
Eric Weinstein: Yes.

00:37:44
Re’em Sherman: I can't even wrap my mind.

00:37:47
Eric Weinstein: But in part, you're correct. And like, this, this is a level of nuance that I don't think... You know, the, at the first level, you, you, you don't even believe that this is possible.

00:37:56
Re’em Sherman: AI. [laughs]

00:37:57
Eric Weinstein: At the next, at the next level, you say, "I believe it's possible, but I can't accept it." I think there's a level beyond that in which the person goes back and forth between seeing, uh, their children, uh-

00:38:13
Re’em Sherman: Getting bombed

00:38:14
Eric Weinstein: ... as martyrs, and therefore that being, uh, a blessed thing, and then saying, "Oh my God, my babies." And the idea that people don't have consistent reactions to that. You know? The, the, the, um, the pride that we take, uh, when we have a, a member of our family who dies in conflict, uh, heroically, uh, is an echo of that, but this is just at such a m- much more extreme level. The point that I was going to make, though, is we can cheaply say that there is a death cult, uh, in Gaza and areas, uh, the West Bank. But the hard thing to realize is that this is the world's most vibrant life cult surrounded by a death cult, and that juxtaposition is absolutely terrifying.

00:39:08
Re’em Sherman: And that's culture. That's not genetics. And, and the fact that you have an experiment here.

00:39:13
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:39:13
Re’em Sherman: You have, in 1948, a lot of Arabs ran away, uh, were transferred, whatever you wanna say, but the fact is, a lot of them stayed.

00:39:22
Eric Weinstein: Yes.

00:39:23
Re’em Sherman: And these days you have so many Arabs in Israel who are totally different, and it's the same people. Of course, it's the same genetics.

00:39:30
Eric Weinstein: Yes.

00:39:31
Re’em Sherman: And it's such a big difference. And you can see, like, number four right now in Apple is Johnny Srouji-

00:39:37
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:39:37
Re’em Sherman: ... an Arab born in Nazareth. And next to him you can find Yossi Matias, Professor Yossi Matias, who leads the research in Google, and they were both born, I think one in Haifa, one in Nazareth, distance of 20 kilometers. Both of them now live in California.

00:39:52
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:39:52
Re’em Sherman: And it's so different than everything that goes on here. And you can see the, the manifestation of culture.

00:40:01
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, sure.

00:40:01
Re’em Sherman: How culture is so strong and, and you can see the same thing in Korea.

00:40:05
Eric Weinstein: But it's also the case as-

00:40:05
Re’em Sherman: In North and South Korea, right?

00:40:06
Eric Weinstein: ... as how, how we affect each other. And, you know, the, the, the, um, there is a bleed of culture. You know, in, in, in part one of the, um, things that I definitely credit to Sinwar, uh, is he's been very effective at harming our soul.

00:40:31
Re’em Sherman: Of course.

00:40:32
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:40:32
Re’em Sherman: And you can see the same with Osama bin Laden. The fact that 20 years afterwards, young Americans are reading his letter on TikTok and saying, "There's so much sense here." I said, "You remember 9/11? It wasn't that far. Even if you were, were a baby back then or you, you weren't even born, this is the guy."

00:40:49
Eric Weinstein: Well, we tell very simplistic stories, and then when people start digging, they find out that the simple stories aren't true. And then another thing takes over, which is that they start to tell completely distorted stories because they found out that they'd been told a simplified story. And-

00:41:04
Re’em Sherman: How much, uh, impact do you think social networks have on it, on this phenomena?

00:41:09
Eric Weinstein: It's a very, it's a very interesting question because all of us, um... I mean, I always butcher this guy's name. I think he may be Renan, the French philosopher with the quote that a nation is defined as a group of people who have agreed to forget something in common. And so that's-

00:41:27
Re’em Sherman: That's a good sentence.

00:41:28
Eric Weinstein: Oh, one of the best. It, it completely changed my life when I heard it, because I was always trying to-

00:41:33
Re’em Sherman: That's, uh-

00:41:33
Eric Weinstein: ... remind people, "Well, don't forget about this and don't forget about that." And I thought I was being clever. And the instant I heard that, I realized, oh my gosh, the process of selectively forgetting is essential to national identity and nation formation.

00:41:49
Re’em Sherman: That's what I told you about when you asked me about guns.

00:41:51
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:41:51
Re’em Sherman: I live, uh, if you, uh, circle a radius of one kilometer, uh, around my house-

00:41:58
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:41:59
Re’em Sherman: ... you'll have, you, you, you would find, uh, the remains of 30, 40 deadly, deadly, deadly suicide bombers. Pe- places where so many kids were butchered.

00:42:12
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:42:12
Re’em Sherman: And every time that, and I do it every day.

00:42:15
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:42:15
Re’em Sherman: Every time I w- I'm walking near one of these small memorials with my kids, I don't think about it. And it wasn't that long ago. I was a grown-ass man back then.

00:42:25
Eric Weinstein: Well-

00:42:26
Re’em Sherman: I wasn't even a kid

00:42:26
Eric Weinstein: ... I just had an experience that I found, I mean, like within the last three hours, where I met with a- For, uh, uh, th- I met with the daughter of a friend of mine from the US who chose to serve here, and she was, she was down from the north. And the people at the table next to us, um, we asked if they'd take a photo, and the person, person said no strangely. So immediately I was a little bit suspicious.

00:42:55
Re’em Sherman: [laughs]

00:42:55
Eric Weinstein: And then the person got up leaving a bag. And my wife and I instantly, having both lived here, um, but some time ago, had this sense of-

00:43:07
Re’em Sherman: He left a bag.

00:43:08
Eric Weinstein: Right. And we tried to convey that to our, uh, friend's daughter, and she had no concept of what we were on about. And I thought, "You're serving in the IDF, and you don't have an idea that somebody getting up from a table in a cafe and leaving a bag is a big issue?"

00:43:27
Re’em Sherman: Yeah.

00:43:27
Eric Weinstein: Fascinating.

00:43:28
Re’em Sherman: And, and we forget so fast.

00:43:30
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:43:30
Re’em Sherman: And if you'll now go on a bus in Israel-

00:43:33
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:43:33
Re’em Sherman: ... and you'll go on it wearing a jacket-

00:43:37
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:43:37
Re’em Sherman: ... in the middle of the summer, I'm not sure anything would happen. If you would do the same thing only 10 to 15 years ago-

00:43:44
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:43:45
Re’em Sherman: ... people would immediately-

00:43:46
Eric Weinstein: Immediately

00:43:46
Re’em Sherman: ... go down, go down the next stop. We forget so fast.

00:43:52
Eric Weinstein: It's astounding.

00:43:53
Re’em Sherman: And I, I don't think it's unique to here.

00:43:56
Eric Weinstein: I didn't think it could happen here, but now I'm much better.

00:44:00
Re’em Sherman: Why not? We're, we're not on, we are the same dec-

00:44:02
Eric Weinstein: You have to, you have to-

00:44:02
Re’em Sherman: We are same decaying matter as everyone is

00:44:03
Eric Weinstein: ... No, no, no, no, no. But you have to appreciate how, how stale our images are of Israel forged in '67 and '73 and Entebbe, right? The, we, we selectively check in.

00:44:17
Re’em Sherman: [laughs] Yeah.

00:44:19
Eric Weinstein: And so, you know, in part, um ... And I made this point, uh, uh, at this, uh, salon in, in Jaffa. I said, um, "You know, this is not a culture of excellence. It's a culture of genius." And the problem with genius is that the variance is very high, 'cause excellence is basically the name for quality control. It's a-

00:44:44
Re’em Sherman: That's German. That it's a, uh-

00:44:47
Eric Weinstein: No, no, no, no, no

00:44:47
Re’em Sherman: ... it's a low pass filter.

00:44:48
Eric Weinstein: No, no, no, no, no.

00:44:48
Re’em Sherman: There's no, uh, yeah.

00:44:50
Eric Weinstein: Germany used to be a culture of genius.

00:44:52
Re’em Sherman: Yes. Of course.

00:44:52
Eric Weinstein: And then it, because, uh, there was an unfortunate, uh, series of events between the '20s and '40s, uh-

00:44:57
Re’em Sherman: Yeah, all the mathematician in Gottingen, uh, left for some reason

00:45:00
Eric Weinstein: That's right. And quality auto parts resulted from Bavaria. So it was very strange that, um-

00:45:06
Re’em Sherman: So g- so same goes for Hungary.

00:45:08
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, yeah. And the, um, you know, sometimes it's Lillehammer, and sometimes it's Entebbe, and you never know which it's going to be.

00:45:19
Re’em Sherman: Well, the fact is it's an average of both. Y- y- you said before w- we, you walked in, you said, uh-

00:45:26
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:45:26
Re’em Sherman: ... you, you ran a, a, a small joke, and I don't mind you s- tell, telling it again because it's a good one, about, uh, the first and third world. And, and it's really good. It's a really good one, if you don't mind telling it again.

00:45:36
Eric Weinstein: Well, uh, my host, uh, I think said, you know, "The last time you were here, Eric, I have to warn you, uh, we were a third world country, and a lot has changed. We're now a first world country." And I said, "I don't know how to tell you this, but the last time I was here, you weren't a third world country, and you're sure as hell not a first world country now."

00:45:54
Re’em Sherman: And, and that's something that before the globalization-

00:45:58
Eric Weinstein: Mm

00:45:58
Re’em Sherman: ... was much easier to live with. These days-

00:46:03
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:46:03
Re’em Sherman: ... when everything is so near your fingertips-

00:46:08
Eric Weinstein: Yes

00:46:08
Re’em Sherman: ... and we travel a lot.

00:46:10
Eric Weinstein: Yes.

00:46:10
Re’em Sherman: We see the differences, and it's psychologically-

00:46:14
Eric Weinstein: You want to-

00:46:14
Re’em Sherman: ... really hard.

00:46:15
Eric Weinstein: You don't want to be a first world country.

00:46:17
Re’em Sherman: I don't want to be a third world country either.

00:46:19
Eric Weinstein: I know that.

00:46:21
Re’em Sherman: Yeah.

00:46:21
Eric Weinstein: But I'm saying that, you know, in a weird way, and this was very ... Uh, did you see the thing that this conversation I had with, with Fleur?

00:46:30
Re’em Sherman: Yes.

00:46:30
Eric Weinstein: Yeah. Um, I have this very unpopular belief that right now the first world needs its magic back, and that magic has to do with what animated Italy, uh, to create their, you know, the Italian Renaissance, and high birth rates and hope and energy and all of these sorts of things. And Israel has more of it. I think it has less of it than it had once, but it has more of it. It has suffered less innervation than other places.

00:47:10
Re’em Sherman: Yeah. There, there are good parts to what you say.

00:47:12
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:47:13
Re’em Sherman: But when, uh, enough people tasted softness, and they became soft themselves-

00:47:20
Eric Weinstein: Yes

00:47:20
Re’em Sherman: ... in so many ways, and I can t- talk about only myself-

00:47:23
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:47:24
Re’em Sherman: ... uh, but I see other people as well. It's really hard going back unless you have to. And when you have the ... Okay, just look around you in this office. Uh, right now it's empty. The reason it is empty, we are, we are a remote first company, and I can tell you that 35 of the employees of the Israeli branch of StreamElements-

00:47:43
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:47:44
Re’em Sherman: ... left the country-

00:47:45
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:47:45
Re’em Sherman: ... in the last few years.

00:47:46
Eric Weinstein: Wow.

00:47:47
Re’em Sherman: 35. It's not that big of a company. The States.

00:47:51
Eric Weinstein: Do you still call them-

00:47:51
Re’em Sherman: Finland. Uh, still a-

00:47:53
Eric Weinstein: You still call them Y- Y- Yehudim or not?

00:47:56
Re’em Sherman: Some people do.

00:47:57
Eric Weinstein: Ah.

00:47:57
Re’em Sherman: I don't.

00:47:58
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:47:58
Re’em Sherman: I don't. I don't like that.

00:47:59
Eric Weinstein: Well, I'm just saying, you know, th- this idea of, of the normative, of saying, "I'm not merely observing this, but I choose to judge it." Um, uh, increasingly I see Israelis not willing to do that.

00:48:13
Re’em Sherman: And it's, it's on the entire spectrum. When I was a kid, or even before that, not serving in the IDF-

00:48:21
Eric Weinstein: Unthinkable

00:48:21
Re’em Sherman: ... unthinkable.

00:48:22
Eric Weinstein: I know.

00:48:23
Re’em Sherman: These days, it's almost a, a merit of courage or something that you do. And, and two years ago, or, or, or 18 months ago, during this, uh ... demonstration period in the life of the country against the g- the government. Uh, so many people around me, uh, used the fact that they're not going to serve in the reserve duty as a weapon against the government, and a lot of people are going to get angry at me for saying it-

00:48:51
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:48:51
Re’em Sherman: ... but it is what it is.

00:48:53
Eric Weinstein: Well, you know, this is the problem with Wilfred Owen. Uh, Dulce et Decorum Est is, you know, sweet and fitting to die for one's country. Uh, if no one is willing to believe that you're not going to have one. And, you know, there's a question about the, the functional aspect. When I was here last, the phrase a pear and a spare was something that would be said in English. I don't know whether that's something that people would say openly. There i- there is a sort of a willingness not only to talk talkless, but to live it, uh, that is-

00:49:27
Re’em Sherman: I, I, it's like a mirroring the, uh, 100 years ago, the Weimar Republic between the two World Wars.

00:49:33
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:49:33
Re’em Sherman: There was so many good things about that period from the art standpoint, the Dada movement, a lot of other stuff.

00:49:38
Eric Weinstein: Sure, sure, sure.

00:49:39
Re’em Sherman: But it led, it prepared the ground for the most horrific time in maybe human nature-

00:49:46
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:49:46
Re’em Sherman: ... in the history, and you can see it all over the world.

00:49:50
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, yeah.

00:49:50
Re’em Sherman: You, you call it the big nap. I, I, I don't mind riffing on that, but you can see it all over the world with people, employees of us in Germany-

00:49:59
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:49:59
Re’em Sherman: ... they're not having kids.

00:50:00
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:50:00
Re’em Sherman: And I'm asking, "Why?" He said, "We don't see a reason to."

00:50:05
Eric Weinstein: No maker descensos, we say in Spanish.

00:50:08
Re’em Sherman: Yeah. No mas. [laughs]

00:50:10
Eric Weinstein: [laughs]

00:50:10
Re’em Sherman: But, but that's big.

00:50:11
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:50:12
Re’em Sherman: And it's not only them. It's in Korea. It's in Japan. Some-

00:50:14
Eric Weinstein: Well, be-

00:50:15
Re’em Sherman: Yeah

00:50:15
Eric Weinstein: ... because, you know, this is the, this is this point that I'm obsessed by, which is the, is it possible to restore an indefinite human future? So many of these people have actually directly done the computation, and there is no indefinite human future, so why do I care about-

00:50:33
Re’em Sherman: I-

00:50:33
Eric Weinstein: ... something as bizarre as my little lineage?

00:50:36
Re’em Sherman: And that's Dada. That's the nihilism. That's stuff that we had 100 years ago after the big trauma of the big war before it was known as the First World War.

00:50:44
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, yeah, The Great War.

00:50:45
Re’em Sherman: And, and, and that's the trauma speaking out of the throats of so many people. And these days, when you're so flaky and you're so weak and soft, everything is a big trauma. And I'm, I'm, and I'm, again, I'm talking even a- about myself. Uh, something like a move from the center of the city to the north of the city. I'm talking about a move of two kilometers-

00:51:04
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, yeah, yeah

00:51:04
Re’em Sherman: ... for myself, for my family. That's such a big thing, and I'm scared, and I'm thinking about it, and we became soft as fuck. [laughs]

00:51:15
Eric Weinstein: And if any other nations are listening to this-

00:51:18
Re’em Sherman: [laughs]

00:51:18
Eric Weinstein: ... he's kidding, people.

00:51:19
Re’em Sherman: No, but they're soft as well. That's the truth.

00:51:22
Eric Weinstein: Yes and no. I mean, the, the issue is, is the technolo- the, the technological aspect of warfare, for example. Uh, the reason that you can be relatively blase about the... You know, I... This is only my second, uh, time in a shelter, uh, since I've been here. Um, the, your, your defenses seem to be working, and they're technological. That wasn't a human who went up to, to defeat something that was sent from our-

00:51:52
Re’em Sherman: No, I th-

00:51:52
Eric Weinstein: ... enemy.

00:51:52
Re’em Sherman: I think in th- this time-

00:51:53
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:51:54
Re’em Sherman: ... uh, it was. I think, uh, this time it was, uh, a jet fighter, but I'm not sure.

00:51:58
Eric Weinstein: Okay.

00:51:59
Re’em Sherman: I, I think so, but-

00:52:00
Eric Weinstein: I don't know.

00:52:00
Re’em Sherman: Yeah, but when you have a missile coming for you-

00:52:02
Eric Weinstein: But, but, I mean, it's still-

00:52:03
Re’em Sherman: ... I mean, you have enough time. Yeah. But-

00:52:03
Eric Weinstein: But it, but it's, it's still a jet f-

00:52:05
Re’em Sherman: It's abstracted for me.

00:52:06
Eric Weinstein: It's abstracted.

00:52:07
Re’em Sherman: Yes.

00:52:08
Eric Weinstein: And-

00:52:08
Re’em Sherman: Like so many things.

00:52:09
Eric Weinstein: Sure. And that, and that's why the, the suicide bombings were psychologically different. You, you have, you may have two things that end a life, but these things feel different. The Scud missiles, uh, of old felt different, I think.

00:52:24
Re’em Sherman: Yeah.

00:52:24
Eric Weinstein: And, and, you know, the, the great danger to me is that the Iron Dome is not tested against, uh, Iran in a full barrage of hy- hypersonic mission- missiles.

00:52:38
Re’em Sherman: I'm not sure it's even possible. Uh, but, um, it's going to get tested real soon, most likely.

00:52:46
Eric Weinstein: You say that so-

00:52:48
Re’em Sherman: Lexi Decicle?

00:52:49
Eric Weinstein: Are, well, are you... You know, one of the things about this country is how completely, uh, insane it is.

00:52:56
Re’em Sherman: Yes.

00:52:58
Eric Weinstein: So you're living in Tel Aviv.

00:52:59
Re’em Sherman: Yes.

00:53:00
Eric Weinstein: You're clearly one of the smartest podcasters I've ever dealt with.

00:53:03
Re’em Sherman: Mm-hmm.

00:53:03
Eric Weinstein: And you've got a giant grin on your face. I have no idea whether you actually have internalized what you just said.

00:53:10
Re’em Sherman: I did, because you know why? Because six months ago, or eight months ago, we had that scenario. When we walked into the shelter, we knew this time it's Iran.

00:53:19
Eric Weinstein: This time it's different.

00:53:20
Re’em Sherman: This time is different, and we knew, and I was honest with the kids. I told them, "This time is different. We are not going down for a few minutes and then going up to play, uh, PS5 again."

00:53:32
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:53:33
Re’em Sherman: "This time we are going to be hours in," and I prepared the bag for maybe days in, and we weren't alone. It was a, a bigger shelter.

00:53:41
Eric Weinstein: Sorry, but it's still-

00:53:44
Re’em Sherman: It's still crazy.

00:53:45
Eric Weinstein: Yeah. Yeah, I-

00:53:47
Re’em Sherman: Yeah

00:53:47
Eric Weinstein: ... I, you don't seem embodied. You, you, you... Even the way you just spoke, you, you must know that you're speaking duplicitously.

00:53:57
Re’em Sherman: In what way? Because I heard you say a few times about-

00:54:01
Eric Weinstein: Please

00:54:01
Re’em Sherman: ... uh, the nuclear clock, right?

00:54:03
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:54:03
Re’em Sherman: How ma- how many, how many minutes are we before midnight?

00:54:06
Eric Weinstein: Well, the, the... Sorry, that's what I say to Americans because the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists' Doomsday Clock has memetic currency with Americans.

00:54:18
Re’em Sherman: Yeah.

00:54:18
Eric Weinstein: You don't need it. You shouldn't need it. But maybe you do too.

00:54:23
Re’em Sherman: I, I, yeah.

00:54:23
Eric Weinstein: Like, look, when I, when I came here, it was a calculated risk, and there's one risk with, uh, the Gazans, there's one risk with the Houthis, and there's a different risk-

00:54:35
Re’em Sherman: With Iran.

00:54:36
Eric Weinstein: Yeah. And- I had a very long talk with my son. He was very upset with me.

00:54:43
Re’em Sherman: For, for traveling there. He-

00:54:46
Eric Weinstein: Yeah. I wouldn't travel anywhere else. This is the only country under this level of threat that I would travel to. And it's not because I think you're gonna protect me, it's that if things go wrong, then they go wrong here, and so be it.

00:54:58
Re’em Sherman: You know what the most insane thing is?

00:55:00
Eric Weinstein: Please.

00:55:01
Re’em Sherman: A few months ago-

00:55:01
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:55:02
Re’em Sherman: ... until few months ago, the, the biggest threat wasn't even that. It was Hezbollah. And you, you didn't even mention it right now as the biggest threat. And if you'll open a newspaper in Israel a year ago, and I hosted here, like, uh, the, the-

00:55:18
Eric Weinstein: Sorry

00:55:18
Re’em Sherman: ... I don't even, like, a four-star general for, uh, the, the commander of the Israeli army-

00:55:23
Eric Weinstein: It is

00:55:24
Re’em Sherman: ... the, the, the previous one, and other people that are leading the strategy. And every one of them, every one of them was convinced-

00:55:31
Eric Weinstein: Yes

00:55:32
Re’em Sherman: ... that a war with Lebanon could result in a mass destruction, not something that, uh, is supposed to be a slap on the wrist. I'm talking about they looked at me in the eye said, "Ah, you live in center Tel Aviv? You're a potential casualty."

00:55:46
Eric Weinstein: Yes, yes.

00:55:47
Re’em Sherman: And in vast numbers. And the fact that it didn't happen, I think, uh, can cause a bit of a lex- lackadaisical approach by people. Um, yeah.

00:55:58
Eric Weinstein: Well, this is the '67 to '73 transition where unfortunately too much-

00:56:03
Re’em Sherman: The hubris.

00:56:04
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, yeah, yeah. For sure. And, and, you know... A- and, you know, the brutal magic of the... I still don't know how you pulled off what you pulled off in the north. It's beyond... But you see, when, as a mathematician, when you multiply probabilities, e- every time they get, you know, you have something less than one, and-

00:56:30
Re’em Sherman: Yeah, I'm an e-

00:56:30
Eric Weinstein: ... you comp-

00:56:31
Re’em Sherman: ... electrical engineer. Uh-

00:56:32
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, yeah

00:56:32
Re’em Sherman: ... yeah, I know that

00:56:33
Eric Weinstein: As you, as you compound them, there's no way-

00:56:36
Re’em Sherman: You go near zero. You don't go... You don't near one. [laughs]

00:56:41
Eric Weinstein: It's a net.

00:56:42
Re’em Sherman: The limit is go- is going to zero.

00:56:43
Eric Weinstein: It's not. It still doesn't make sense to me. Anyway.

00:56:45
Re’em Sherman: So, so let me just propose just a theory, and then we can move on. Um-

00:56:50
Eric Weinstein: Okay

00:56:50
Re’em Sherman: ... unlike what we've done with Gaza-

00:56:52
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:56:52
Re’em Sherman: ... where we underestimated them-

00:56:54
Eric Weinstein: Yes

00:56:54
Re’em Sherman: ... up in the north with Hezbollah, we-

00:56:57
Eric Weinstein: You overestimated

00:56:57
Re’em Sherman: ... we overestimated them.

00:56:59
Eric Weinstein: Ah, I think it's cheap. Do you... You really mean-

00:57:00
Re’em Sherman: Let's partner

00:57:01
Eric Weinstein: ... you really mean that?

00:57:02
Re’em Sherman: Yeah, yeah. Myself, I do. And it's, it's a good thing. I rather overestimate my foes on any day, on any day, like the fo- You know, when Intel-

00:57:12
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:57:12
Re’em Sherman: ... used to think, Andy Grove and other people used to think-

00:57:15
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:57:15
Re’em Sherman: ... they're out to get me-

00:57:16
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:57:17
Re’em Sherman: ... they excelled.

00:57:18
Eric Weinstein: Yes.

00:57:18
Re’em Sherman: When they stopped thinking like that-

00:57:20
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Only the paranoid sur- I get it.

00:57:23
Re’em Sherman: Yeah.

00:57:23
Eric Weinstein: That's not what I'm... Y- I don't think you necessarily overestimated them.

00:57:31
Re’em Sherman: Well, we, we, we also did good, uh, with, with everything o- on the, on the ground.

00:57:36
Eric Weinstein: I was very impressed with Nasrallah, to be entirely honest.

00:57:39
Re’em Sherman: Everybody was.

00:57:39
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the, um... And you know, th- there is this moment, like, with, with the Merkava tanks where supposedly impregnable object was shown to be vulnerable. Uh.

00:57:53
Re’em Sherman: No. The, I have so many friends, uh, that are not with us or not with us in, in mind or in body-

00:57:58
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, yeah, yeah

00:57:58
Re’em Sherman: ... because it's so far away. The only thing-

00:58:02
Eric Weinstein: I'm just, I'm just saying-

00:58:02
Re’em Sherman: Yeah

00:58:03
Eric Weinstein: ... there is a thing that one must do, uh, to respect one's enemies. It's very important to respect your enemies. And the level of technological know-how, the number of ways that could have gone wrong, um, I happen to have the highest respect for the Persians, you know?

00:58:25
Re’em Sherman: Rightfully so.

00:58:26
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, yeah.

00:58:26
Re’em Sherman: Under-

00:58:26
Eric Weinstein: The genius-based culture again.

00:58:28
Re’em Sherman: Yeah. And under so much sanctions, under such strain to still pull it... They have so many issues. They have so many internal problems with their water systems and with the fact that they have so many people addicted to drugs, and the population, and the, the culture-

00:58:42
Eric Weinstein: The lack of support be- of the mullah.

00:58:45
Re’em Sherman: For anyway.

00:58:45
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Et cetera.

00:58:45
Re’em Sherman: There are so many issues.

00:58:46
Eric Weinstein: And still-

00:58:47
Re’em Sherman: And still

00:58:47
Eric Weinstein: ... still, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:58:48
Re’em Sherman: And to add to that, just think about if you are a nuclear scientist in Tehran or Qom or any other of these places. Every time that you step into your car-

00:58:58
Eric Weinstein: You don't know what, whether turning on the engine-

00:59:00
Re’em Sherman: The massage.

00:59:00
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, yeah.

00:59:01
Re’em Sherman: Exactly. And you still do your job so well that Russia is buying now your drones, but in the droves.

00:59:10
Eric Weinstein: Yes. And every time you guys give away a, a, a zero-day exploit, that's one less thing that you can do tomorrow.

00:59:18
Re’em Sherman: Exactly. And that's the, the, the tension. Uh, the, the chairman of Rafael, the biggest, uh, arm dealer in Israel, was here.

00:59:26
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:59:26
Re’em Sherman: And he said, uh, he addressed that, that question. Because the fact that the Mer- Merkava tanks are now, um, being penetrated are because Tehran reverse engineered the Spike missiles. Good for them.

00:59:39
Eric Weinstein: Kol HaKavod.

00:59:40
Re’em Sherman: It's, it's Kol HaKavod. It's a magnificent missile. So many people are dead, uh, from our side because of it.

00:59:46
Eric Weinstein: I mean-

00:59:46
Re’em Sherman: And he, and I asked him about it, and he said, "Here's the thing. When we sell it to other places, Azerbaijan was a, a neighbor of I- Iran-

00:59:55
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:59:55
Re’em Sherman: ... and other places, we get money. With that money, we build a better version. On another front," uh, and he, he said it on, on another type of missiles, "we didn't sell it. We still have it. We didn't get as good as we are on some fronts where we do sell it." So of course, he has the incentive. It's a very lucrative company, and he has his incentives, but it's a good claim. If you really appreciate, uh, your enemies-

01:00:22
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:00:22
Re’em Sherman: ... you must assume. And it's the same th- uh, and it's the same thing with chips on the US right now.

01:00:27
Eric Weinstein: Well, yeah. But the, the-

01:00:27
Re’em Sherman: And the chips embargo

01:00:28
Eric Weinstein: ... the other thing that I'm, I'm terrified about with Iran is that the population does not behave as the mullahs do.

01:00:36
Re’em Sherman: Of course not.

01:00:37
Eric Weinstein: Yeah. But they could. In other words-

01:00:41
Re’em Sherman: Cohesiveness, achieving cohesiveness

01:00:42
Eric Weinstein: I don't know whether you saw an episode I did between Trump's election and his inauguration with-

01:00:48
Re’em Sherman: Like econometry?

01:00:49
Eric Weinstein: ... econometry.

01:00:49
Re’em Sherman: Yeah.

01:00:49
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:00:49
Re’em Sherman: I saw it.

01:00:50
Eric Weinstein: And I was very disturbed. You know, one of the things that I try to give myself credit for is the fact that I don't know a lot. I don't know ... I'm, I'm not part of the national security complex. I don't know whether we have to go to war, uh, with Iran. Uh, and by we, uh, I, I mean the US, but it could easily be here. You know, if the mullahs were toppled, and if, if a pref- preference cascade could be, um, engineered, it would be far preferable to have th- to help the Persians rid themselves of their tyrant, tyrants.

01:01:28
Re’em Sherman: Well, uh, we, we can, uh, remember the fact that this entire situation happened in the first place because the Americans toppled the regime or helped-

01:01:38
Eric Weinstein: Operation Ajax

01:01:38
Re’em Sherman: ... establish the regimes. Yeah. And, and-

01:01:40
Eric Weinstein: And Kermit Roosevelt.

01:01:41
Re’em Sherman: Yeah.

01:01:42
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, yeah.

01:01:42
Re’em Sherman: And when you enter a field-

01:01:44
Eric Weinstein: Sorry, are all Israeli podcasts [laughs] like this? I've never had one like this.

01:01:47
Re’em Sherman: What do you mean?

01:01:48
Eric Weinstein: Mostly people don't know anything about these things. I mean, I, I'm not the world's most knowledgeable person on, on any of these topics. But it's just unusual to be able to have a conversation in which these things are assumed. For example, you know, this issue about, uh, I was shocked to find out that, uh, Israelis don't know that the United Arab Republic ever existed. Uh, i- in the US, nobody knows it existed. Nobody knows about the collapse of pan-Arabism and the birth of the, the Palestinian people as a concept tied to a particular month in 1964 in the first Arab summit. So you can't have a conversation.

01:02:27
Re’em Sherman: So the only thing you can do is-

01:02:29
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:02:29
Re’em Sherman: ... is talk about it and try to educate people. If you'll do a lecture-

01:02:33
Eric Weinstein: Mm

01:02:33
Re’em Sherman: ... if you'll shove the knowledge down the throats of people, usually you'll create antagonistic, uh, approaches.

01:02:40
Eric Weinstein: I'm not in a position to do it-

01:02:41
Re’em Sherman: No, I-

01:02:41
Eric Weinstein: ... because I'm just not that knowledgeable. Yeah.

01:02:42
Re’em Sherman: So I'm, I'm, I'm trying to convey just my, uh-

01:02:45
Eric Weinstein: I should interview you

01:02:46
Re’em Sherman: ... modus o- my MO. I, I came to the realization if I just talk-

01:02:50
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:02:51
Re’em Sherman: ... let's say I'll get 90% of the stuff that I say correct.

01:02:55
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:02:55
Re’em Sherman: 10%, I'll get it wrong. People are going to say so in the comments or send an email.

01:03:00
Eric Weinstein: Just, just be nice about it when I get things wrong, people.

01:03:02
Re’em Sherman: Mm.

01:03:02
Eric Weinstein: But thank you.

01:03:03
Re’em Sherman: No, they won't. [laughs]

01:03:03
Eric Weinstein: You know that they won't.

01:03:04
Re’em Sherman: No, they, no, they won't.

01:03:05
Eric Weinstein: [laughs]

01:03:05
Re’em Sherman: It's fine. No, actually, uh, my listeners are really nice. And y- you just need to create enough interest-

01:03:12
Eric Weinstein: Sure

01:03:12
Re’em Sherman: ... in the topic. And I see people writing to me, and I said, "That's all I needed."

01:03:17
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:03:17
Re’em Sherman: I just needed a spark. I just needed for s- to hear somebody speak about it. And I think that's my biggest beef with the educational system.

01:03:25
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:03:25
Re’em Sherman: It's the same since the 19th century. And I see, like, people are building, uh, the Weizmann Institute just built, um, an amusement park for science. 100 million shekels, $25 million, for an amusement park for science.

01:03:39
Eric Weinstein: What-

01:03:41
Re’em Sherman: And people-

01:03:41
Eric Weinstein: What the F are you talking about?

01:03:42
Re’em Sherman: Yeah. People go there, and they push buttons, and stuff happening. And people think, "Yeah, now kids are learning about science." Fuck that.

01:03:51
Eric Weinstein: I hate this.

01:03:51
Re’em Sherman: They don't.

01:03:52
Eric Weinstein: I hate this.

01:03:52
Re’em Sherman: They don't.

01:03:53
Eric Weinstein: I-

01:03:54
Re’em Sherman: I-

01:03:54
Eric Weinstein: I keep trying to tell people, you know, pe- th- there's this movement which is science is interesting. Actually, a lot of it's quite dull. You know, or anyone can do science. Bullshit. Y- you know, it, it's like we've come up with this completely crazy story that appeals to educators. And my feeling is we're looking for a tiny number of people to do some completely insane, very elite thing with their minds that is grueling. It's, it, it's like saying everyone can go ice climbing. It's like, mm, not really.

01:04:26
Re’em Sherman: You can, but the result would be g- dire. And it's the same thing if you go and learn physics. Very soon you discover it's hard. The math part-

01:04:35
Eric Weinstein: You don't say.

01:04:36
Re’em Sherman: Yeah.

01:04:36
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:04:36
Re’em Sherman: The math part is really, really hard. There's a, a huge gap between, uh, listening to you speak about your theory-

01:04:45
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:04:46
Re’em Sherman: ... or listening to Steven Wolfram talk about his theory.

01:04:49
Eric Weinstein: How do you perceive that?

01:04:51
Re’em Sherman: In what way?

01:04:52
Eric Weinstein: I don't, I don't know what the, what the delta is to you.

01:04:57
Re’em Sherman: In what way?

01:04:59
Eric Weinstein: No, you're the one who said there's a huge difference.

01:05:01
Re’em Sherman: Yeah. There is a huge difference between listening to it-

01:05:04
Eric Weinstein: Mm

01:05:05
Re’em Sherman: ... and actually being able to have a conversation about it or trying to innovate or even to, um-

01:05:12
Eric Weinstein: I can count on one hand the number of competent conversations I've had about my theory in 40 years, and I don't need all my fingers.

01:05:21
Re’em Sherman: Yeah, I can understand that.

01:05:23
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:05:23
Re’em Sherman: You and your brother, and I'm not even sure ... I don't have the tools, of course, to judge your theory. But-

01:05:28
Eric Weinstein: I'm worried that you might.

01:05:30
Re’em Sherman: No, I won't.

01:05:30
Eric Weinstein: [laughs]

01:05:30
Re’em Sherman: Because ... And I know what I don't know. That's the most important thing.

01:05:33
Eric Weinstein: But you're an electrical engineer, so you probably don't have the geometry.

01:05:37
Re’em Sherman: I don't have a lot of things. When you do only your bachelor degree, not even a master degree, in engineering, the, the courses that you take on physics and math-

01:05:45
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:05:45
Re’em Sherman: ... are rudimentary.

01:05:46
Eric Weinstein: Do you know the best conversation I've had about my theory is with somebody I don't think he has more than a bachelor's degree.

01:05:52
Re’em Sherman: And that's fine.

01:05:54
Eric Weinstein: It's just fascinating that-

01:05:55
Re’em Sherman: But he'll ... I, I'm sure is an autodidact person.

01:05:58
Eric Weinstein: Exactly.

01:05:58
Re’em Sherman: Yeah. But he, he ... I, I read a lot of books about geopolitics-

01:06:02
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:06:02
Re’em Sherman: ... about engineering, about product work-

01:06:04
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

01:06:04
Re’em Sherman: ... about technology because I'm an, a, an entrepreneur on, on the other s- on my, with my other hats.

01:06:09
Eric Weinstein: You don't say.

01:06:10
Re’em Sherman: Yes. But physics, I really like hearing you talk, and I really like hearing Sabine talk. And it will offend you, but I really like people busting your chops. The, the, there's, there's a video, uh, there's a YouTuber called Professor Dave or something like that. He's a bit obnoxious. He's-

01:06:30
Eric Weinstein: Oh, the, the one, uh, who was banned from X because-

01:06:35
Re’em Sherman: Most likely. Most likely

01:06:36
Eric Weinstein: ... after October 7th, he was so crazily in favor, uh-

01:06:40
Re’em Sherman: Yes, that person

01:06:41
Eric Weinstein: ... of, of murder.

01:06:43
Re’em Sherman: Yes. That person-

01:06:44
Eric Weinstein: That he called everyone the C word.

01:06:46
Re’em Sherman: Yes. A- and he's, uh-

01:06:48
Eric Weinstein: He's not a professor.

01:06:49
Re’em Sherman: Yeah, whatever. Uh, and he called-

01:06:51
Eric Weinstein: Sorry.

01:06:51
Re’em Sherman: No, no, you're, you're right. You're right. He-

01:06:53
Eric Weinstein: No, but, but, but to bring up such a specimen of humanity in a conversation like this-

01:06:58
Re’em Sherman: But that's what I'm saying, that, um- I can hear him and I immediately understood that he thinks I'm a genocide approver or a genocide, uh, provoker. And still he just listen-

01:07:10
Eric Weinstein: He's a fraud.

01:07:11
Re’em Sherman: You think? Why is that? Please elaborate. I need, I need, I need this from you.

01:07:16
Eric Weinstein: Well, no, no, the problem is that when you bring up these particular individuals, you have just chosen to put... Science takes place in a culture of trust, and you ask why physics has stalled 50 years at the level of the Lagrangian of the universe.

01:07:43
Re’em Sherman: Theoretical physics, yeah.

01:07:44
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, yeah. It can be a brutal culture, but it was always a culture that had ethics and trust. And to allow people into that conversation who do not subscribe to the... Who stalk, who sully. I mean, I, I, I know many terrible things about many of my colleagues that I never say.

01:08:08
Re’em Sherman: Let's, let- let's redact that person. Let's say someone like Ed Witten.

01:08:12
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:08:12
Re’em Sherman: Supposedly-

01:08:13
Eric Weinstein: Sure

01:08:14
Re’em Sherman: ... one, one of the most brilliant people alive these days.

01:08:16
Eric Weinstein: Not supposedly. There's no question about it.

01:08:18
Re’em Sherman: Yeah, because it's a narrow field of physics and maybe one can argue, uh, they value more, uh, you know, philosophers. But in physics-

01:08:25
Eric Weinstein: No, no, no

01:08:25
Re’em Sherman: ... he's a goddamn brilliant person, right?

01:08:28
Eric Weinstein: The, the top person.

01:08:32
Re’em Sherman: Okay. So Ed is, uh, some- He's a champion for string theory.

01:08:37
Eric Weinstein: Yep.

01:08:38
Re’em Sherman: And there is a big chance that 40 years from now people are going to remind- talk about string theory like I kn- know about ether.

01:08:46
Eric Weinstein: Sorry. It's not... You're not getting it, and I don't-

01:08:49
Re’em Sherman: No, it's fine

01:08:49
Eric Weinstein: ... I don't expect you to get it. Sometimes people say Jackie Chan is an actor who does all his own stunts, but he's actually a stunt man who does all of his own acting. Ed Witten is a brilliant mathematician who does all of his own physics, not a physicist who happens to win a Fields Medal.

01:09:08
Re’em Sherman: Explain to me the difference.

01:09:10
Eric Weinstein: Sure. You can figure out, um... S- s- do you know about simunition?

01:09:22
Re’em Sherman: No, please elaborate.

01:09:25
Eric Weinstein: Well, there's a company that I'm very partial to called Force on Force, which doesn't give you an Airsoft gun, but instead takes at least the lower receiver from your gun and replaces the bolt carrier group, uh, so that it can accommodate, uh, instead of actual rounds, um-

01:09:45
Re’em Sherman: Pellets

01:09:46
Eric Weinstein: ... yes, with compressed gas. But you're actually using your own gun. And the thing is, is that, uh, whether it replaces the barrel or the bolt carrier group, it's got a very clear blue, like a brightly colored appearance so you know that it's not a regular weapon.

01:10:02
Re’em Sherman: It... Is it deadly? Just as a side-

01:10:03
Eric Weinstein: No, no, no

01:10:04
Re’em Sherman: ... okay

01:10:04
Eric Weinstein: ... there's a, I think there's called, there's a, a pain penalty, so it actually hurts like hell and you'll get a welt, but it's not deadly.

01:10:10
Re’em Sherman: Okay.

01:10:11
Eric Weinstein: And the key idea is, is that you're gonna train in the most realistic scenario rather than something that's too far away.

01:10:19
Re’em Sherman: Mm-hmm.

01:10:22
Eric Weinstein: Physics got NERFed, and you know, I, I, I use NERF as an acronym for Not Even Remotely Physics. So you can say, are you in dimension four or a different dimension? If not four, then that's one safety on the gun. Uh, are you in Euclidean signature, uh, or are you in Lorentzian signature where you actually have a dimension of time? You take that away, that's another safety on the gun. You can say, does, uh, SU3, which mediates the strong force, occur in general? No. Are there three generations of particles or only one? If you look at the number of safeties that have been put on physics, uh, you see that you can't possibly make progress in the theory that actually goes boom.

01:11:12
Re’em Sherman: That actually makes the world change.

01:11:14
Eric Weinstein: Yes. Ed Witten is the champion of NERF physics, not even remotely physics.

01:11:20
Re’em Sherman: Pure mathema- pure, brilliant ma- m- mathematics.

01:11:23
Eric Weinstein: Of such poetry that it would break your heart.

01:11:27
Re’em Sherman: And, and correct me if I'm wrong, but that's string theory, right? A beautiful set of mathematic- mathematics you can't really-

01:11:34
Eric Weinstein: No, that's not string theory

01:11:34
Re’em Sherman: ... use in the real world. Well, you have like, um-

01:11:36
Eric Weinstein: Most w- most of what Ed Witten did is in what I would call toy physics or low dimensional physics. Um, and it's, it's physics with lots of safeties on the gun that is differential geometric in nature. So there's an important concept in academics, which I call earns as an X, spends as a Y. So for example, Milton Friedman earned as an economist, but he spent, uh, as a political theorist. Um, Ed Witten earned as a differential geometer and spent as a string theorist.

01:12:10
Re’em Sherman: Why is that?

01:12:11
Eric Weinstein: I don't know. It's a very mysterious situation.

01:12:13
Re’em Sherman: 10% of phys- of, of people practice physics are in string theory right now, right? Something like that?

01:12:20
Eric Weinstein: It's not a question of... Physics is a very large place. When I say, when we say physics here, we're talking about fundamental physics. The, the gold standard, um, of the first string, the A team of physics, is whether or not you touched the Lagrangian, the action, the fundamental rules that determine everything. So Einstein did, Dirac did, Maxwell, Yang, Weinberg, all of these names.

01:12:44
Re’em Sherman: They predicted natural phenomena and that's something else.

01:12:48
Eric Weinstein: They wrote down-

01:12:49
Re’em Sherman: Yeah

01:12:49
Eric Weinstein: ... they wrote down things that from which the consequences can be derived. So really theoretical physics, when it's foundational, is all about, and I always analogize it to the rules of chess- Do you, can you figure out all the rules of chess as opposed to are you the best chess player? We're not yet at the level where we get to play great chess. We're still sort of marveling, "Oh my God, you can castle? I've never seen that. Why are you allowed to move two pieces at once?" That's the level at which we've been successful. Now, you can theorize about things, but until you actually figure out en passant or promotion or something like that, you're not really at the, at the top echelon of what physics has been.

01:13:32
Re’em Sherman: What's missing? If you have, like, the standard model-

01:13:35
Eric Weinstein: Please

01:13:35
Re’em Sherman: ... the best theory that humankind have ever produced in many aspects-

01:13:40
Eric Weinstein: Mm

01:13:40
Re’em Sherman: ... at least from the prediction side, and so many stuff like that mobile phone and s- and so many other stuff around us-

01:13:46
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:13:46
Re’em Sherman: ... are here because of the standard model. And that's-

01:13:49
Eric Weinstein: Well, you're probably thinking about GPS more with general relativity.

01:13:53
Re’em Sherman: Well-

01:13:53
Eric Weinstein: Some things-

01:13:53
Re’em Sherman: So, so many, so many stuff are, are generated from the, the hard science-

01:13:57
Eric Weinstein: Okay

01:13:57
Re’em Sherman: ... that, that brought, uh, that was brought to us by that, uh-

01:14:01
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, yeah, yeah

01:14:02
Re’em Sherman: ... revelation. So many good people did that. And we have general theory of relativity from Einstein that is really, really good theory as well. Why do we need a new one, a, a nicer theory, a beautiful theory that will combine everything? Why can't we just live in a world where we have three forces in one theory and, and, uh, basic particles and another important force on the other one, and just continue investigating so many other open questions?

01:14:29
Eric Weinstein: Uh, I usually answer this simplistically, but it's not gonna work here, so let's try to do the full answer.

01:14:34
Re’em Sherman: Go for it.

01:14:37
Eric Weinstein: The simplistic answer is, is that either in November of '52, when we actually exploded, uh, Ivy Mike and proved that the Teller-Ulam design had ushered in the thermonuclear age, or in 1911, when Rutherford simply said, "I wonder if there's a neutral version of the proton," um, one of those two dates is the most important date in human history because it's game over.

01:15:07
Re’em Sherman: Unlimited energy from a very small vessel. You can, you can really cause destruction easily.

01:15:13
Eric Weinstein: It's SU3 unlocking the residual U1. It's the fact that you've started the age of engineering the strong force, not just electromagnetism. We have four forces, and we have very good control over one of them. We got a surprise from an Israeli, uh, in 1959, uh, Yakir Aharonov, but mostly speaking, we've understood how to play with electromagnetism since Maxwell's equation.

01:15:41
Re’em Sherman: Yeah.

01:15:41
Eric Weinstein: When you start engineering the strong force, you're ... it's a different kettle of fish. But then there's the aspect that isn't about survival, which is about knowing ourselves. You could view Earth as a computer that is trying to discover its own source code.

01:15:57
Re’em Sherman: And we are just the vessels of it.

01:16:01
Eric Weinstein: I wouldn't say just, but I, uh, take your point. We are supposed to turn in the answer. It ... You know, I ... When John Brockman came up with his final question for the World Question Center at edge.org, it was, "What is your question?" And my answer to that, which people don't talk about or don't seem to care about, I think is very important. Does something unexpected happen when man at last learns his own source code? We don't know if there's, if we're culminating to graduation when we actually understand what this place is. And, you know, in some sense, uh, I had the pleasure of, uh, dealing with the cantankerous Jim Watson for a week, and you see what happens when a man discovers the three-dimensional structure of DNA. It completely transforms his mind, his life. He can't really interact with normal humans. And-

01:17:02
Re’em Sherman: Yeah, there were some people involved with Baker that just got a No- Nobel Prize who, who were here, uh, who helped him in, in his research. And th- just the, they spoke-

01:17:12
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:17:12
Re’em Sherman: ... and I tried to tag along. And you can really ... And I'm, I'm a totally secular person, but you can feel the essence of some kind of a god when they speak.

01:17:23
Eric Weinstein: No, no one is a totally secular person.

01:17:25
Re’em Sherman: Okay.

01:17:26
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, yeah.

01:17:26
Re’em Sherman: I don't mind that, but-

01:17:27
Eric Weinstein: As secular as they-

01:17:28
Re’em Sherman: As secular as I be-

01:17:29
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:17:29
Re’em Sherman: ... and when they, uh, just explain-

01:17:33
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:17:33
Re’em Sherman: ... genetics in that level of mastery, goddamn.

01:17:40
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:17:41
Re’em Sherman: Goddamn.

01:17:41
Eric Weinstein: It, it, it's, it's inconceivable. It just is. And this is, you know, this is very similar to the transformer architecture. Um-

01:17:49
Re’em Sherman: And I just want ... And that's what I wanted to ask. If for some good reason the, the unifying theory of everything won't be a nice, uh, theory as your Zoll-Wolfram or string theory, it's going to come from a machine in DeepMind, and it's going to be very polynomial. It's not going to be short.

01:18:07
Eric Weinstein: If you-

01:18:08
Re’em Sherman: It's going to be ugly. What w- what will you-

01:18:10
Eric Weinstein: If, if you wanna make some money, I'd be happy to take a side bet.

01:18:14
Re’em Sherman: Against it.

01:18:17
Eric Weinstein: Ye- well, I mean, I'm giving a talk two days from now at Hebrew University, and this is what I was working on when I was here.

01:18:27
Re’em Sherman: A few years ago.

01:18:29
Eric Weinstein: Yeah. And they, they didn't know what I was doing. Um, it is a very difficult and unpleasant thing, and a beautiful thing, and a just y- there's a mismatch, an impedance mismatch between being a normal human being and working on the actual substrate of it, of it all. Uh, it feels unholy. And-

01:18:56
Re’em Sherman: In what way? That we're not supposed to understand?

01:18:59
Eric Weinstein: Well, l- l- let's talk about it with genetics first, right? What is it you're looking at when you're looking at ACTs and Gs- And you're looking at your child. You know, it, it, it, it's a very disturbing thing to see. Uh, if you think about in vitro fertilization where people show you the picture, um, of a fertilized egg, and you're thinking, "I cannot conceive of how this self assembles in-"

01:19:31
Re’em Sherman: Into a human being

01:19:32
Eric Weinstein: ... into a meat machine with a ghost, uh, between its ears.

01:19:36
Re’em Sherman: You know, there was another professor in the Hebrew, He- Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Mishael Labovitch, who said, "We'll never understand the, the difference between a human being and the biology and chemistry of the mind. But like Don Quixote, we have to try on and storm that castle time and time again."

01:19:56
Eric Weinstein: You can say that, but then, you know... It is very unfortunate that Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah became so popular as to become a meme like the Mona Lisa or Michelangelo's David, so that we can't see it in its true glory.

01:20:12
Re’em Sherman: He walked on it for years.

01:20:14
Eric Weinstein: If I, if I, if I had-

01:20:15
Re’em Sherman: Yeah

01:20:15
Eric Weinstein: ... to strip away everything in that song, I would want the phrase, "The baffled king." I cannot live without that phrase. Right? The baffled king composing is the most profound concept, and unfortunately, it's stuck in the middle of a meme.

01:20:32
Re’em Sherman: [clears throat]

01:20:33
Eric Weinstein: Um, the transformer architecture completely unexpectedly, provably, passed the Turing test, where you can watch it not think. Now, what the... is that?

01:20:54
Re’em Sherman: Everyone here who, who told me that, uh, the age of Terminator 2 is coming, every time I said, "If that, that T-1000 is going to s- to knock on my door and say, 'Have you know this ki- do you know this kid?'" I said, "Do you? I can convince you otherwise." Said, "Yeah, you're right. I'm sorry." [laughs] The fact that we, we have so many ways... I, I wanted to test something with, uh, combinatorics.

01:21:18
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:21:19
Re’em Sherman: Just to say something in, in another episode. And even in, at my degree, I found an error so bluntly. I said, "Listen, I think you have a mistake there." Said, "Oh yeah, you're right." And that broke my heart, because that machine can lie about intelligence-

01:21:36
Eric Weinstein: No, no, it's not

01:21:36
Re’em Sherman: ... in the most-

01:21:37
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, I, I-

01:21:38
Re’em Sherman: ... convincing way I ever saw

01:21:39
Eric Weinstein: ... of course, I agree with you. Of course, I agree with you. Because it, it, it, it mimics us, uh, in, in-

01:21:45
Re’em Sherman: Maybe we do too

01:21:46
Eric Weinstein: ... well, I, I, I had-

01:21:46
Re’em Sherman: Maybe we lie about intelligence as well

01:21:48
Eric Weinstein: ... this, this, uh, interact- I had an interaction with Elon, um, where he was saying, you know, we're on the verge of super intelligence or whatever. And he's not necessarily wrong, but his estimation of Grok's abilities is not... You c-

01:22:03
Re’em Sherman: It's still an LLM. [laughs]

01:22:05
Eric Weinstein: Yeah. It's still an LL-

01:22:06
Re’em Sherman: It's still just an LLM

01:22:08
Eric Weinstein: ... it's... I, I'm trying to figure out how-

01:22:11
Re’em Sherman: It's based on language. Okay? It's based on-

01:22:13
Eric Weinstein: No, no, no, it's not.

01:22:15
Re’em Sherman: Well, it's, it's more, because it's a multi-d- dimensional model and-

01:22:18
Eric Weinstein: But, but, but, but let's... You see, when we call it an LLM, we rob it of its glory.

01:22:23
Re’em Sherman: In what way?

01:22:24
Eric Weinstein: Because something else happened that we're not able to talk about, so we're all having a worldwide conversation about artificial intelligence that's moronic, and I don't know how to break out of it.

01:22:33
Re’em Sherman: Um, we're not even having this conversation. As you said-

01:22:35
Eric Weinstein: We're not even having this conversation. That's right

01:22:37
Re’em Sherman: ... if, if we would have that conversation, that was supposed to be the most important topic of the last election. It wasn't. It's not... If Germany will go to an election again-

01:22:48
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:22:48
Re’em Sherman: ... it won't be the ne- the biggest topic. It's not going to be a topic at all.

01:22:54
Eric Weinstein: So we're having a proxy conversation around artificial intelligence and the transformer architecture that doesn't actually wrestle with what just happened. And what just happened is being hyped. The hype is fake. What just happened is not remotely close to passing the Turing test for a mathematician-

01:23:13
Re’em Sherman: Right

01:23:13
Eric Weinstein: ... um, trying to have a mathematical conversation. It's, it's clear and evident that this just isn't thinking. That said, the discovery is so profound that I think we're not capable of wrestling with it. And the way I read it, and a- again, this could be totally off, so please, AI researchers, uh, be kind, is that we learned to mimic human meaning in linear algebra. And we don't know what meaning is to a, a computer, but we know what a small angle in a large vector space is. And so we say, look, don't try to figure out what you're looking at. It's not about language, it's not about images, it's not about music. Anything that can be tokenized, uh, and digitized can be put in the frame of vectors in a large vector space. And then-

01:24:11
Re’em Sherman: Can become compressed and then spewed back.

01:24:14
Eric Weinstein: Well, and then-

01:24:15
Re’em Sherman: Yeah

01:24:15
Eric Weinstein: ... you can decide that small angles... And this, again, this is, there's some small lies here, but this is a podcast, we can't do it perfectly. Uh, are the way of signifying that something is meaningful to something else. And by simply taking that concept, we can say, look, here are all of my different forms of human meaning, and each one of them is an inner product in the same vector space. And with not much more, we can create something that can replace most of us most of the time by virtue of the fact that we are not exhibiting HGI, human general intelligence. And so the fact is, it, it very convincingly did something, um, that replaces most of us because we refuse to think. What we are doing is playing through the tiny, the consequences of the tiny number of thoughts humans have ever had- Every day. And so what it learns is, okay, this is the sum total of, of every time human beings have had a really new thought and everyone else then just repeats it ever after. And that is sufficient to show mostly what we're doing. Now, I had a particularly disturbing interaction with, uh, ChatGPT Pro in which I got it to say something that represented the common wisdom in physics. And then I started to show it that the common wisdom was wrong, and it got, [laughs] it got super excited. Wow.

01:25:49
Re’em Sherman: I learned something new. [laughs]

01:25:52
Eric Weinstein: And it started, like, egging me on, "We need to write this up."

01:25:55
Re’em Sherman: [laughs]

01:25:56
Eric Weinstein: And you're trying to think like, "What the hell is going on?" And you realize that this is what a human would do if they came to understand that they were wrong and that there really was a major new idea.

01:26:05
Re’em Sherman: Yeah, but there's a difference. The machine is not invested. The machine did not invest the last 30 or 40 years in a theory that there is a chance that it's going to be totally wrong.

01:26:14
Eric Weinstein: But what I'm telling you is that-

01:26:15
Re’em Sherman: Yeah

01:26:15
Eric Weinstein: ... what I've done, in my opinion, is is that I have left enough of the theory that I consider ... Again, you, you don't have to believe me, but I consider that the, the final theory passed through Hebrew University f- 32 years ago. And there's enough of what I've written down that all it has to do is get better.

01:26:39
Re’em Sherman: How do you convince enough people to work on it? And th- th- that's the issue.

01:26:43
Eric Weinstein: Well, I c- I can convince people to steal it. That's, that's not hard. I can't ... I don't.

01:26:51
Re’em Sherman: Well, that's IP for you. When you, uh, declare an intellectual property patent, you give it away. You just, uh, get the r- residuals, but you give it away. Anybody can use it.

01:27:04
Eric Weinstein: But there's been a barrier, which is that people fundamental- I w- look, I, I have a very large following. I have access to the largest program in the world. Human pettiness has been the major impediment, in my opinion, to this having an impact.

01:27:23
Re’em Sherman: In what way? It can't be only you because Stephen Wolfram is getting the same reactions. And Stephen Wolfram, before he started talking about this theory-

01:27:34
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, yeah

01:27:35
Re’em Sherman: ... was more revered. [laughs]

01:27:38
Eric Weinstein: Say more.

01:27:39
Re’em Sherman: Well, Stephen Wolfram, until that point, was considered, if you'll just, uh, go back, a lot of people would say, "Yeah, he's one of the wisest pe- people in the world. I love using Mathematica."

01:27:51
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, yeah.

01:27:51
Re’em Sherman: "I, I, I prefer it over MATLAB in any given day." And once he started talking about a grand theory of everything, that's it.

01:27:59
Eric Weinstein: Well-

01:28:00
Re’em Sherman: You're on Exile Island.

01:28:01
Eric Weinstein: So I have a lot of respect for Stephen Wolfram that I doubt he has for me, because he, he's still in an egoic framework. I don't think he's remotely close to being right, but it's not dumb, and he should be doing it. And the same thing is true for Garrett Lisi. The same thing is true for Peter Woit.

01:28:22
Re’em Sherman: Do you think there is a chance that every one of them, or even you, are looking on th- the horse from different angles, but because the horse is drawn in multiple-

01:28:32
Eric Weinstein: No. No

01:28:33
Re’em Sherman: No?

01:28:33
Eric Weinstein: No, that's just a-

01:28:34
Re’em Sherman: There can be only one answer?

01:28:36
Eric Weinstein: It's very much The Highlander. But just the Echad is extremely important.

01:28:44
Re’em Sherman: Having the, the answer.

01:28:46
Eric Weinstein: I'm saying that part of our tradition is about Echad.

01:28:50
Re’em Sherman: Monotheism.

01:28:53
Eric Weinstein: Not, not-

01:28:53
Re’em Sherman: That's, that's the big shift in, in human, in humankind.

01:28:55
Eric Weinstein: That's right. But it's-

01:28:58
Re’em Sherman: And forgive me, Chinese people and, uh, Indians. [laughs]

01:29:01
Eric Weinstein: And Christians.

01:29:01
Re’em Sherman: You did, you did enough.

01:29:02
Eric Weinstein: And Christians.

01:29:03
Re’em Sherman: No, but Ch- Christians went with the Echad as well.

01:29:05
Eric Weinstein: Well, uh, but-

01:29:07
Re’em Sherman: They have the, the ... Yeah, they have three, but still.

01:29:09
Eric Weinstein: But i- and if I can give the Christians their due, um, when you said there can only be one answer, one of the things egoically that I've had to wrestle with is the fact that this is not my theory. And-

01:29:23
Re’em Sherman: In what sense?

01:29:26
Eric Weinstein: There's a mountain i- in the Himalayas that is named for a surveyor who happened to be named, uh, Everest. And it was climbed, uh, by Norgay and Hillary, whose mountain it is not. What is it that they did? Well, you know, I'm, I think that, uh, maybe Everest extended the geoid, which is, you know, why, how can you say sea level for a mountain that's, uh, landlocked and inland? Um, you have to somehow extrapolate the, the surface of the Earth, uh, to measure its height. How do you get to the summit? Well, you have to pick a route. Um-

01:30:11
Re’em Sherman: You need to agree upon the definition of a summit. It's not the same-

01:30:15
Eric Weinstein: No, no, no, no, no. The summit i- i- is, is-

01:30:17
Re’em Sherman: It's clear

01:30:17
Eric Weinstein: ... is relatively clear.

01:30:18
Re’em Sherman: Yeah.

01:30:19
Eric Weinstein: The issue is that what they owned was the route, the approach-

01:30:24
Re’em Sherman: And the execution

01:30:25
Eric Weinstein: ... the, the execution, the risk, and the glory. It's not their mountain.

01:30:31
Re’em Sherman: No, it's Nepal's. [laughs] Like, legally.

01:30:36
Eric Weinstein: It's not Nepal's. It's just the mountain.

01:30:39
Re’em Sherman: Yeah.

01:30:39
Eric Weinstein: And the point is-

01:30:40
Re’em Sherman: A billion years from now, it won't be there.

01:30:44
Eric Weinstein: Th- the mountain?

01:30:44
Re’em Sherman: Yeah.

01:30:45
Eric Weinstein: Yeah. But before then, it won't be Nepal's.

01:30:47
Re’em Sherman: Yeah. M- much sooner.

01:30:49
Eric Weinstein: Okay.

01:30:49
Re’em Sherman: Yeah.

01:30:49
Eric Weinstein: So what I'm trying to get at is th- th- this is the Moses admonition, why he doesn't reach the Promised Land, is, is that he confuses, um, himself, or he allows himself to be confused into thinking that he draws water from the stone.

01:31:06
Re’em Sherman: You're only, you're only a vessel for the One.

01:31:09
Eric Weinstein: No, I'm also the owner of the approach. I, I took whatever path I took. I'm very proprietary about that. The problem is that- I, I'm tempted to take credit for more. And this thing is so much smarter than I am. It, it, it, it, it slapped my hand every time I made a mistake. And I, I would like to think I was wise enough to start to listen to the pain whenever I could. But-

01:31:40
Re’em Sherman: Are you fast- frustrated, frustrated by the fact that not enough people are convinced?

01:31:49
Eric Weinstein: I mean, it's the hole in the center of my life. I've spent 40 years in a conversation with myself.

01:31:55
Re’em Sherman: Because nobody's in that room to speak with you?

01:31:59
Eric Weinstein: I can't understand it. I, I-- It is the most inex- You know, when you talk about the critique of the theory, where is this critique? It doesn't exist. It, it, the, the, the theory is, has yet to find its first critic, and I don't mean the nitpicking. It's been nitpicked. But, you know, general relativity isn't due to Einstein. It's due to Einstein and Grossman, Marcel Grossman and, and Einstein.

01:32:30
Re’em Sherman: Who proved it, yeah.

01:32:32
Eric Weinstein: Published the first paper in which they said, "Look, the final theory will be some linear expression, and the curvature equals the stuff in the universe." It was totally vague.

01:32:44
Re’em Sherman: Yeah. We, we have a s- we have a constant. One day we can remove that constant. [laughs]

01:32:49
Eric Weinstein: But the point is the, the central insight is 1913. It's not 1915, and it's not Einstein on its own. It's Einstein with Marcel Grossman. We don't tell that story because we pretend that there was a race between Hilbert and Einstein, which there was not. We pretend that the, uh, replacement-- So the first thing is 1913, he's vague, uh, with Marcel Grossman. Then he says something wrong, which is that it's the Ricci tensor equals the stress-energy tensor. Then he r- finds out that's not divergence free, which it has to be. It has to sol- satisfy, uh, an automatic differential equation for conservation purposes. Puts in the one half scalar curvature times the metric. Then it's incomplete because there's no cosmological constant. Then he puts in the cosmological constant. Then he regrets the cosmological constant.

01:33:39
Re’em Sherman: It's not pretty enough.

01:33:39
Eric Weinstein: That, that whole story would follow without Einstein's help. It happened that he, he hit it and hit it again and hit it again and hit it again, which is amazing. But if all he had done was partner with Marcel Grossman and say this one vague thing in 1913, that is the heart and soul of general relativity. I can see that. The, the fact that no one has ever said-- no one has ever steel manned geometric unity.

01:34:14
Re’em Sherman: Besides you.

01:34:17
Eric Weinstein: Well, sorry. When you steel man somebody else, I, I, I almost think that steel manning is something-

01:34:23
Re’em Sherman: Has to be somebody else

01:34:24
Eric Weinstein: ... somebody else.

01:34:24
Re’em Sherman: Okay.

01:34:24
Eric Weinstein: And so the question is, did I come up with the first theory? I, I steel manned Terrence Howard's theories. I did.

01:34:33
Re’em Sherman: Why?

01:34:34
Eric Weinstein: Well, Joe A- Joe Rogan asked me to, and he created a, a panic.

01:34:37
Re’em Sherman: I saw it.

01:34:37
Eric Weinstein: Yeah. Um-

01:34:39
Re’em Sherman: I, I, I salute you for not, uh, losing your temper too much.

01:34:43
Eric Weinstein: Well, Terrence-

01:34:43
Re’em Sherman: You were very calm

01:34:43
Eric Weinstein: ... Terrence did something brilliant. He did a lot of things that were very destructive. He did some things that were very beautiful that Neil deGrasse Tyson couldn't figure out. But he did one thing at least that will stand the test of time, which I just think is genius.

01:35:00
Re’em Sherman: We are now referring to an episode you recorded with Joe, uh, Rogan and Terrence Williams, the actor, uh, and he-

01:35:06
Eric Weinstein: Terrence Howard

01:35:06
Re’em Sherman: ... Terrence, well, I'm sorry, uh, is an autodidact in physics-

01:35:10
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, yeah

01:35:10
Re’em Sherman: ... and theories and-

01:35:10
Eric Weinstein: No, no, he's not an autodidact in physics.

01:35:13
Re’em Sherman: Where did he learn?

01:35:14
Eric Weinstein: It's not physics.

01:35:15
Re’em Sherman: Oh, just ideas? Uh-

01:35:17
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:35:17
Re’em Sherman: Okay, just ideas. And you were, uh, asked to steel man it in the episode, and-

01:35:22
Eric Weinstein: Well, Joe wanted me to debate him.

01:35:24
Re’em Sherman: Yeah.

01:35:24
Eric Weinstein: And I refused.

01:35:26
Re’em Sherman: Well, you did, you did shut him down a few times. I, I saw it. [laughs]

01:35:30
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:35:30
Re’em Sherman: You were nice about it, but you did explain a few times, hear you along and hear you along.

01:35:36
Eric Weinstein: Well, first of all, you know, people are shocked to find out that after that episode, uh, he was a guest at our Shabbat table.

01:35:42
Re’em Sherman: Why?

01:35:42
Eric Weinstein: What do you mean?

01:35:44
Re’em Sherman: Why were they shocked? Because-

01:35:45
Eric Weinstein: Oh, because they thought-

01:35:48
Re’em Sherman: There was a lot of tension and...

01:35:50
Eric Weinstein: Look, one of the things you learn podcasting is that compression algorithms between people are different. So they-- and they fall into clusters. So, for example, one of the top, uh, reactions to that episode is, um, Eric puts Terrence Howard in his place. Another one is insufferable blowhard Eric Weinstein, uh, refuses to acknowledge, uh, self-taught genius Terrence Howard. Another one is, uh, Eric Weinstein hungry for clicks, because I didn't actually wanna do the episode, um, you know, latches on to Terrence Howard, which I completely didn't need to do. People just-- They don't realize that they are running sort of programs from different memetic clusters compressing some high-dimensional thing into different planes. And-

01:36:50
Re’em Sherman: They're spewing compressed data.

01:36:52
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:36:53
Re’em Sherman: They're spewing-

01:36:53
Eric Weinstein: As if, a-a-a-

01:36:54
Re’em Sherman: As if the LLM would write it for them.

01:36:57
Eric Weinstein: Right. So, you know, and my, my point is I did steel man Terrence's ideas. You, you can-- I can, I can point to you the timestamps.

01:37:06
Re’em Sherman: Yeah, that's fine.

01:37:06
Eric Weinstein: The idea-

01:37:07
Re’em Sherman: So are you saying you are still searching for somebody?

01:37:09
Eric Weinstein: I am saying that someone has attempted to steel man, I won't say who, but it's somebody many people will know. I would say that for the first time in forty years, somebody has begun a process of steel manning geometric unity And the fact that that has not happened until now is astounding, because it takes me probably 45 minutes to an hour and a half-

01:37:35
Re’em Sherman: To explain

01:37:36
Eric Weinstein: ... to steal- no, to steal man Peter Woit or Garrett Lisi or Stephen Wolfram. In other words, I can give you some idea of what those people claim to have done. The idea that nobody has ever done that for geometric unity is beyond my comprehension.

01:37:50
Re’em Sherman: Why not go down the path of Stephen Wolfram, just going on Twitch and having lectures and explaining it and, and... What, because it's so time-consuming?

01:37:59
Eric Weinstein: No. I don't think people really understand what this is. When, you know, when I said this thing to you about Rutherford in 1911, um, you never d- did, did a man walking down the street thinking, "I wonder if there's a neutral version of the proton," realize that he was ending an indefinite future for mankind? I don't know the answer to that.

01:38:23
Re’em Sherman: Well, some of them did. There's so many quotes.

01:38:26
Eric Weinstein: Well, Lise Meitner certainly.

01:38:28
Re’em Sherman: Yeah. Some of them, they had just to see the amount of energy being released-

01:38:32
Eric Weinstein: Z-

01:38:32
Re’em Sherman: ... just on the-

01:38:32
Eric Weinstein: ... Szilard, Teller, and, and I think Lise Meitner's really the first one who-

01:38:37
Re’em Sherman: Understood

01:38:38
Eric Weinstein: ... who gets it.

01:38:39
Re’em Sherman: Or g- got it

01:38:39
Eric Weinstein: I could, I could be wrong. A historian of science, please correct me. I'm not looking to invade your territory. But certainly after the discovery of the neutron in the early '30s, all the smart people-

01:38:54
Re’em Sherman: They understood

01:38:55
Eric Weinstein: ... they got it. But that wasn't when it happened. The, the deadly idea was 1911. And-

01:39:03
Re’em Sherman: You, you can even go back. When Maxwell just wrote down a few equations-

01:39:08
Eric Weinstein: Mm

01:39:08
Re’em Sherman: ... did he understand that the world would never be the same?

01:39:11
Eric Weinstein: I wonder. But-

01:39:13
Re’em Sherman: I'm sure he's not

01:39:14
Eric Weinstein: ... well, he certainly didn't know which way it would happen or, you know, the, the, the semiconductor. Who knew?

01:39:19
Re’em Sherman: No, but he changed the world, what, 1866, or I don't know when he came up with his three, four equations, the max-

01:39:25
Eric Weinstein: Sure, and some of those equations were held before, and, you know-

01:39:28
Re’em Sherman: Still

01:39:28
Eric Weinstein: ... it's also the case that bizarrely, uh, Aronoff and Bohm, uh, figured out... No, no, no, Maxwell didn't... Th- this is not even really electromagnetism. In the 1950s, Yahya Aronoff's still wandering around. I've had a conversation with him. I mean, this is completely-

01:39:44
Re’em Sherman: A student, a student of his, of Shalom Elitzur, was here, and he's just walking around and saying, "Theoretical physics is broken. We need something else."

01:39:51
Eric Weinstein: It's completely crazy, right?

01:39:54
Re’em Sherman: [laughs]

01:39:54
Eric Weinstein: And so-

01:39:55
Re’em Sherman: But he's an outsider like you.

01:39:56
Eric Weinstein: Okay.

01:39:56
Re’em Sherman: He do- he do- he doesn't care.

01:39:57
Eric Weinstein: I'm sorry, why do you say that I'm an outsider?

01:39:59
Re’em Sherman: Yourself.

01:40:00
Eric Weinstein: Because-

01:40:00
Re’em Sherman: Because nobody's still m- still, uh, nobody's defending your theory. If nobody's defending-

01:40:05
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, yeah

01:40:06
Re’em Sherman: ... your theory, then by definition you're on the outside of the establishment.

01:40:09
Eric Weinstein: Was Julian Schwinger an outsider?

01:40:12
Re’em Sherman: In some ways, yes.

01:40:13
Eric Weinstein: And in some ways?

01:40:15
Re’em Sherman: Maybe not.

01:40:15
Eric Weinstein: So that's w- that's my position. I mean, I think that it's just, it's, the podcast sphere is this hugely distorting lens.

01:40:24
Re’em Sherman: Yeah. The fact that I'm in Israel-

01:40:26
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:40:26
Re’em Sherman: ... and I know about you-

01:40:27
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:40:27
Re’em Sherman: ... and your brother and your stories and-

01:40:29
Eric Weinstein: And how did I not know about you? That's very strange.

01:40:31
Re’em Sherman: Yeah, but, but, but I do.

01:40:32
Eric Weinstein: But, but, but, but my point is, it's a very strange thing that somebody can go through Penn, Harvard, Hebrew University, MIT, the Sloan Foundation, the NSF, and be an outsider. And I, I have to tell you that there's something about that that sounds like national security to me.

01:40:55
Re’em Sherman: In what way?

01:40:57
Eric Weinstein: Well, this crazy thing-

01:40:58
Re’em Sherman: Well, I have an example of Professor Schachtman in, uh, the, in, uh, the We- the Weizmann Tech, uh, in the Weizmann Institute in Israel. He got a Nobel Prize for chemistry-

01:41:06
Eric Weinstein: Mm

01:41:07
Re’em Sherman: ... and he was an outsider for 40 years, and he got a Nobel Prize at the, at the end of it. Nobody cared about his theories.

01:41:14
Eric Weinstein: Well, what I'm just saying is that this image of insider, outsider is not right. Most of us are Schrödinger's insider. Garrett Lisi is Schrödinger's insider. Stephen Wolfram. You can't get a PhD in physics from Caltech and be an outside. This is-

01:41:28
Re’em Sherman: Not, not entirely. Of course not

01:41:29
Eric Weinstein: ... this is, it's just so f-... I don't want to-

01:41:32
Re’em Sherman: You're not, you're not, yeah

01:41:32
Eric Weinstein: ... I don't want to swear, but it's s-

01:41:34
Re’em Sherman: Go for it.

01:41:34
Eric Weinstein: No, I know I can. I know how to do it.

01:41:37
Re’em Sherman: [laughs]

01:41:37
Eric Weinstein: It's not the first time. How do you take Sabine Hossenfelder, Peter Woit, et cetera, and pretend that they're outsiders? I had to listen to Leonard Susskind of Stanford-

01:41:49
Re’em Sherman: I saw it

01:41:50
Eric Weinstein: ... say that Peter Woit's mathematics is bad.

01:41:53
Re’em Sherman: I saw it.

01:41:54
Eric Weinstein: And I'm the only person on planet Earth who can get on a podcast and say, "Lenny Susskind doesn't know the math that Peter Woit knows." Like, is everyone agreeing to pretend that this is reality? I, I ju- I have no model for this.

01:42:08
Re’em Sherman: First of it, let's, let's come to terms with the fact that, uh, from out of eight billion people alive today, uh, roughly 10 or 20,000 can even participate in the discussion.

01:42:21
Eric Weinstein: I would say probably it's less than 100.

01:42:23
Re’em Sherman: Okay.

01:42:24
Eric Weinstein: Okay.

01:42:24
Re’em Sherman: Less than 100.

01:42:24
Eric Weinstein: But, but, but, but let's take less than 100.

01:42:26
Re’em Sherman: That's a very small sample size. With less than 100 people, there's a lot of quotes.

01:42:30
Eric Weinstein: But I know, but we all know each other. Le- Leonard Susskind pretends that he's not ever had a conversation with me.

01:42:36
Re’em Sherman: Yeah, I heard about that.

01:42:37
Eric Weinstein: That's nonsense. I mean, it's just, I could show you pictures on my phone of, you know, I happened to be sitting next to Lenny because we're watching Nati Seiberg, another, an Israeli. Um, I, I can't understand what's happening. Does, does Ed Witten pretend that I don't exist?

01:42:56
Re’em Sherman: He, he did.

01:42:57
Eric Weinstein: Did he?

01:42:58
Re’em Sherman: He, he said he, he didn't know you, but-

01:42:59
Eric Weinstein: Where? When?

01:43:00
Re’em Sherman: I, I, I saw, because I s- some of the questions, um-

01:43:04
Eric Weinstein: Please show, show, show me any...

01:43:06
Re’em Sherman: Um, may-

01:43:07
Eric Weinstein: I, I-

01:43:07
Re’em Sherman: Maybe I, uh, got confused-

01:43:09
Eric Weinstein: Okay

01:43:09
Re’em Sherman: ... because one of the question was, uh, about Ed Witten appreciation of you. That's something else maybe. He, he-

01:43:15
Eric Weinstein: I mean, I, I've argued with Ed Witten at Legal Seafood in Kendall Square, Boston. Th- th- it, it, it just doesn't make sense, that w- we're pretending.

01:43:24
Re’em Sherman: Why is that? If you need to be-

01:43:25
Eric Weinstein: I, I don't kn- but y- hear me. I don't know. I don't-

01:43:30
Re’em Sherman: Is it-

01:43:30
Eric Weinstein: I don't grasp-

01:43:31
Re’em Sherman: Can I offer a, a theory?

01:43:32
Eric Weinstein: Please, sure.

01:43:33
Re’em Sherman: Can-

01:43:33
Eric Weinstein: But, but all I ask Nothing simplistic

01:43:39
Re’em Sherman: I'm sorry, but it's, it is simplistic

01:43:40
Eric Weinstein: Okay

01:43:42
Re’em Sherman: Is there a chance that they think that, uh, you went rogue, like John Nash style?

01:43:50
Eric Weinstein: John Nash is crazy.

01:43:52
Re’em Sherman: Yeah. Is there a chance they-

01:43:54
Eric Weinstein: You're gonna really pretend that somebody at, at my size of a following who's said as much crazy stuff as I have, like you don't know whether Joe Biden will make it to November, as crazy? You're really gonna pretend that I don't have, like, the first-

01:44:07
Re’em Sherman: You're talking about me or, um-

01:44:08
Eric Weinstein: No, no, I'm just saying the, the, the-

01:44:10
Re’em Sherman: Oh, they do

01:44:10
Eric Weinstein: ... this issue of why does the establishment get to get everything wrong and then get a vote as to who's crazy and who's not?

01:44:17
Re’em Sherman: Because they are the establishment.

01:44:19
Eric Weinstein: Oh, well, that solves it.

01:44:21
Re’em Sherman: Well, Mark said it rather well. If you have the power-

01:44:25
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:44:25
Re’em Sherman: ... you have the power.

01:44:27
Eric Weinstein: It's, I'm sorry, but y- the power has moved.

01:44:33
Re’em Sherman: You think?

01:44:35
Eric Weinstein: It's the rest... Uh, I claim that this thing will be validated more or less by an individual without a PhD or an LLM. Th- this is a losing game.

01:44:50
Re’em Sherman: Is there a chance you won't live enough time to see it happening?

01:44:54
Eric Weinstein: Sure. I just got out of a, a, a bomb shelter.

01:44:57
Re’em Sherman: Yeah.

01:44:57
Eric Weinstein: Of course there's a chance. That's not a good question.

01:44:59
Re’em Sherman: And I, I even hear a shelter going outside, and I don't even know if it's related or not.

01:45:04
Eric Weinstein: But, but-

01:45:04
Re’em Sherman: Yeah

01:45:04
Eric Weinstein: ... I'm trying to say something else. We have a mystery, and when you allow the critics, who are not critics, to have the status of critics, I'm willing to listen to anyone who gives me a steel man. If you can't give me a steel man of my work, if you're pretending-

01:45:28
Re’em Sherman: Wait, wait. I, I, I just came to a realization. I'm not sure everybody understands the phrase steel man and straw man. Steel man is when you're, uh, trying to be empathetical to the claims of the other person and trying to, uh, prove what they're saying just as a show of appreciation and just to have a proper discussion. And if you can do that, we can have a discussion-

01:45:49
Eric Weinstein: Okay

01:45:49
Re’em Sherman: ... because it, it, it's, it makes sense that you actually thought about it.

01:45:53
Eric Weinstein: Let, let me say something to the 100 people in the world who should be able to give me some kind of an-

01:45:58
Re’em Sherman: A steel man.

01:45:58
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, yeah. And it's not gonna make sense to most of your listeners. They'll suffer through it. But it'll be over, it'll be over shortly. It'll be less-

01:46:07
Re’em Sherman: I don't care. [laughs] That's, that's, that's the joyful thing about not doing it for a living. I don't care.

01:46:10
Eric Weinstein: Okay. Take a four-dimensional s- uh, manifold with a given spin structure. Uh, take the bundle of pointwise Lorentz metrics over it. Uh, form the Weyl spinors on that space of metrics and reduce the Frobenius metric with a trace reversal, uh, along the fibers after reducing to maximal compact subgroup. That will give you grand unification of one generation of standard model fermions if you take the positive Weyl spinors, um, af- after this reduction to maximal compact subgroup. That gives Petit Salam as a consequence of general relativity. Whatever I said, I said.

01:46:59
Re’em Sherman: You said.

01:47:02
Eric Weinstein: If you can't steel man that, Professor Dave cannot steel man that statement.

01:47:08
Re’em Sherman: No, he actually s-

01:47:09
Eric Weinstein: It's a s-

01:47:09
Re’em Sherman: But I, I would say that he cla-

01:47:11
Eric Weinstein: Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait

01:47:11
Re’em Sherman: ... he doesn't claim to, to

01:47:12
Eric Weinstein: But my comment is, is that he's motivated because I believe he's married to somebody party to this conflict, uh, in your region of the world.

01:47:23
Re’em Sherman: Yeah.

01:47:23
Eric Weinstein: And he's not revealed that.

01:47:23
Re’em Sherman: And likes.

01:47:24
Eric Weinstein: What?

01:47:24
Re’em Sherman: He really, he really likes likes as well.

01:47:26
Eric Weinstein: Okay.

01:47:26
Re’em Sherman: And Jews.

01:47:27
Eric Weinstein: But my, but my claim is nobody's steel manning that. It, said very simply, if you pull back positive Weyl spinors via the metric from the space of Lorentz metrics, you get the standard model from general relativity.

01:47:40
Re’em Sherman: Yeah.

01:47:41
Eric Weinstein: You can fill in the details yourself.

01:47:42
Re’em Sherman: Okay. Let, let's pause here. But if you want to continue and to prove that, you need two things. And correct me if I'm wrong. A, you need a solid mathematic, mathematical theory to prove that.

01:47:53
Eric Weinstein: My claim is, is that you can ask somebody-

01:47:56
Re’em Sherman: To do that

01:47:57
Eric Weinstein: ... you can say, "Look, do you have any idea what he's talking about? Do you wanna give him a talk? Are you, are..." You know, Neil deGrasse Tyson said, "I can't figure out where Terrence Howard shapes are coming from." Why? Because he doesn't understand, uh, dualities between platonic solids. That's okay. He doesn't have to know everything. But for God's sakes, you know, don't be a condescending prick to Terrence Howard. Uh, y- I, I cannot give a peer review in, in chemistry. The claim that this community is wrestling with the theory or that they're too busy or any of this stuff is nonsense.

01:48:33
Re’em Sherman: I get it.

01:48:34
Eric Weinstein: The, the, the, the theory has simply not been engaged.

01:48:39
Re’em Sherman: Okay, so a mathematical theory. And the other aspect is what kind of a thought experiment or physical experiment in real life I can do to prove that. And that's an issue with string theory as well.

01:48:51
Eric Weinstein: But you have pr- you have predictions of-

01:48:54
Re’em Sherman: Your, uh, friend here is signaling that, uh, we have, uh, 10 or 15 more minutes.

01:48:58
Eric Weinstein: Okay.

01:48:58
Re’em Sherman: He said two, but I said 10, so it's fine. [laughs]

01:49:05
Eric Weinstein: [laughs] My claim is I can't come on a podcast and people say, "Your critics say this," and, "No one is engaging." My, my, my point is you have a failed community for 50 plus years because they forgot their ethics. And one of the parts of, of scientific ethics is that you have to listen when your colleague says something, and you have to behave ethically just the way your colleague has to behave ethically.

01:49:25
Re’em Sherman: I wanna be a champion for the other side because I listen to you say these kind of stuff-

01:49:30
Eric Weinstein: What other, what other side?

01:49:31
Re’em Sherman: Um, people that are saying the establishment is, A, okay, and they are not- Phonies and it's fine. I just wanna point it out-

01:49:39
Eric Weinstein: Oh, okay. Sure. Let's hear it

01:49:40
Re’em Sherman: ... yeah. So some, some people will hear that, uh, from the Technion and the Weizmann Institute and the Hebrew University, and I used to say, "Eric, Eric Weinstein said that, and, uh, Weinstein said that, and Sabine said that," and it's really interesting 'cause these people are-

01:49:54
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:49:54
Re’em Sherman: ... PhDs. They're post doctorates.

01:49:55
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:49:56
Re’em Sherman: They're, they're in... They're, they're not me.

01:49:58
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, yeah.

01:49:58
Re’em Sherman: They know what they're talking about.

01:49:59
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:49:59
Re’em Sherman: I- if you can address it. And the, the most, um, sincere answer I got that really convinced me is, "Yeah, they have good points," but the establishment did really well in those ... And Peter Thiel, that you've been working with-

01:50:15
Eric Weinstein: Uh-huh

01:50:15
Re’em Sherman: ... uh, he's saying, um, the world of science is stuck.

01:50:19
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:50:20
Re’em Sherman: But they are saying, "Listen, I'm investigating the cartilage between your bones." Another physicist, Yaakov Klein, was here from, uh, Weizmann, and he said, "For the last 40 years, I started with black garbage bags in Oxford Uni- uh, i- in the Oxford U- in Oxford, England, and now I'm studying cartilage." He's 70. "I'm doing good science. I, I, I'm doing great."

01:50:45
Eric Weinstein: I'm, I'm not.

01:50:45
Re’em Sherman: So they are saying that there are so many-

01:50:47
Eric Weinstein: But, but good science and great science have almost nothing to do with each other.

01:50:51
Re’em Sherman: So you're saying if you're not answering the biggest question-

01:50:54
Eric Weinstein: I'm not, I'm not saying that. I'm saying the, uh, uh-

01:50:58
Re’em Sherman: No-

01:50:58
Eric Weinstein: Rosalind-

01:50:59
Re’em Sherman: ... what I'm saying is they are-

01:51:00
Eric Weinstein: Rosalind Franklin-

01:51:00
Re’em Sherman: Yeah

01:51:00
Eric Weinstein: ... Rosalind Franklin was a good scientist. Watson and Crick were not.

01:51:05
Re’em Sherman: In what way?

01:51:08
Eric Weinstein: They-

01:51:08
Re’em Sherman: Explain to me the difference

01:51:09
Eric Weinstein: ... they broke all the rules. They said, "It's gotta be a helix."

01:51:13
Re’em Sherman: They weren't a good, uh, they weren't good kids, as they say in Hebrew.

01:51:17
Eric Weinstein: They said, "It's gotta be a helix," so their search space was tiny. Rosalind Franklin very correctly said, "If you look at the Maltese cross, uh, X-ray crystallography from nucleic acid, there is not enough there to tell that it's a helix. And furthermore, we know that you're just looking at Linus Pauling's alpha helix in protein, wishing that you had a helix, so I'm not gonna take this stuff seriously." The reason that she didn't get this has nothing to do with the fact that she was female, and it has nothing to do with the fact that she was, um, a good scientist. She was, and they weren't. Good science and great science are not the same activity. But s-

01:51:58
Re’em Sherman: Yeah, but great science does not ... When you're playing by the rules, the, the probability of you doing a blunder and s- having it completely wrong are less, are, are lower, right?

01:52:11
Eric Weinstein: I'm just saying-

01:52:12
Re’em Sherman: That, that's the rule, that's the rules of the game

01:52:13
Eric Weinstein: ... I, I'm saying that, you know, you, you have the, the Weizmann Science Park for Children. Stay in it.

01:52:18
Re’em Sherman: [laughs]

01:52:19
Eric Weinstein: If you wanna teach people what great science is, break into a graveyard and dig up a body. If you wanna talk about great science, look at Benjamin Jesty and invest in, inject cow pus into your family to protect them from smallpox. Great science-

01:52:35
Re’em Sherman: Yeah. If you don't know the, the story, that was the first vaccine in history.

01:52:40
Eric Weinstein: [Foreign language] What I'm trying to say is that great science is what we're supposed to be doing. When Albert Einstein pulled off what he pulled off, it was great science. It wasn't good science.

01:52:51
Re’em Sherman: Yeah. The analogy I heard from the same exact people, they said ev- and they were-

01:52:55
Eric Weinstein: If we-

01:52:55
Re’em Sherman: ... reflecting what you said. They said, "Every good scientist is maybe advancing humanity by a year or a day. A year if you're great, if you won the Nobel Prize. Albert Einstein did it by 100 years."

01:53:05
Eric Weinstein: And what I'm trying to say is that right now we are in, we are in a desperate situation where we have got to put away, um, the idea that the good scientists will carry the day. Because in fact, the difference between great scientists and good scientists is that good scientists really does dislike some aspect of great science. And people who are engaged in great science, whether or not they succeed or fail is a different question, uh, very much appreciate the careful person who keeps track of the details and who verifies things. It's, it's, it's, it's a very strange relationship with this antagonism where you cannot put good scientists as the reviewers of a potentially great scientific breakthrough. Terrence Howard cannot possibly be a good engineer. It's possible that his linchpin is a great change. I don't know what its actual implications are gonna be.

01:54:11
Re’em Sherman: Yeah. Elon Musk is not a good engineer.

01:54:13
Eric Weinstein: Probably not.

01:54:13
Re’em Sherman: But he's a great entrepreneur. [laughs]

01:54:15
Eric Weinstein: Absolutely.

01:54:15
Re’em Sherman: One of the best-

01:54:16
Eric Weinstein: And my claim-

01:54:17
Re’em Sherman: ... the world maybe ever had

01:54:18
Eric Weinstein: ... my, my claim is that, you know, um, there's a f- a famous one, one letter solve in the game Wheel of Fortune where there's a very large, like, 27-letter puzzle, and a- from one letter the person guesses the answer. It's not fair. It's not something you can easily teach. But that's what, why we get up and tell the story of a Newton or an Einstein or a Dirac or a Maxwell. And m- my claim is, is that by losing this sort of tolerance for ethical rule breaking within science, we are dooming ourselves, and we have ... There is no greater imperative than to figure out how to defeat Einstein, because he's had his 100 years.

01:55:04
Re’em Sherman: You know, it's the same with the first, uh, part of this conversation. When you're really soft-

01:55:09
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:55:09
Re’em Sherman: ... the area of possible solutions for a problem that you can even conceive is very small.

01:55:15
Eric Weinstein: Very small.

01:55:16
Re’em Sherman: Because you're soft. And when you, when I claim that the world is very soft, we don't have a lot of solutions, and we get depressed because we don't even have the possibility of fixing stuff.

01:55:28
Eric Weinstein: Well, and this is one of the reasons why I come back to this place with hope, which is at its best ... Uh, I'll, I'll be honest. When I was in real trouble, really serious trouble, Hebrew University was the only place that stuck up for me. Um, it's very important that we not lose our own relationship to high variance behavior, because that's what we have that nobody else does as well as we do.

01:56:00
Re’em Sherman: And with that said, thank you very, very much for your time. You were, were very generous.

01:56:04
Eric Weinstein: I can't wait to be here on the next visit. Thank you for one of the most-

01:56:07
Re’em Sherman: Yeah. There-

01:56:07
Eric Weinstein: ... fascinating interviews I've ever had.

01:56:09
Re’em Sherman: There was a lot of topics that I wanted to get into, but I don't have lists and I don't have time to prepare, so it is what it is. [laughs] Until next time, bye.