Why Does The Modern World Make No Sense? (YouTube Content)

Why Does The Modern World Make No Sense?
Information
Host(s)	Chris Williamson
Guest(s)	Eric Weinstein
Length	03:01:14
Release Date	19 February 2024
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Why Does The Modern World Make No Sense? was a discussion with Eric Weinstein hosted by Chris Williamson on the Modern Wisdom podcast.

Description

Eric Weinstein is a mathematician, economist, former managing director of Thiel Capital and a podcaster.

It’s a rough time to be a human. The massive increase in information we have access to has made understanding the world harder, not easier. Whether it’s higher education, culture, physics, or pretty much anything else, life can be very confusing.

Expect to learn what Eric thinks about the most recent furore coming out of Harvard, why the world of physics has made no progress in decades, why Jeffrey Epstein was interested in Stephen Hawking, how much truth there is in the recent flurry of stories about inter-dimensional extraterrestrials, Eric’s predictions for the 2024 election and much more…

Transcript

00:00:00:03 - 00:00:07:15 Chris Williamson You got your PhD from Harvard. How do you feel, given the most recent fallout?

00:00:07:17 - 00:00:55:06 Eric Weinstein These upvoted. Questions are. Incredible. It's. It's amazing. It's amazing that it came to this. And, as a person I know studying at Harvard said, I wonder. If. We are the last generation who will continue to see Harvard as this shining, city on a hill. And that's, you know, that's somebody who's there now. I think it's a disgrace. And we can't talk about it, which is the fascinating part that we are effectively losing our society because we're afraid to say certain things, because we're being made afraid to say certain things.

00:00:55:08 - 00:00:56:22 Chris Williamson What do you mean?

00:00:56:24 - 00:01:11:01 Eric Weinstein Well. Okay. So as a Harvard alum, you get the Harvard Magazine and the this thing is incredible because it's just always, Harvard people promoting other Harvard people in the sort of PR,

00:01:11:03 - 00:01:12:08 Chris Williamson The nepotism magazine.

00:01:12:08 - 00:01:28:18 Eric Weinstein Yeah. The PR. And I think I remember. That the article introducing Claudine Gay was entitled A Scholar's Scholar, and I knew from the get go that this was not going to go well because.

00:01:28:20 - 00:05:20:20 Eric Weinstein You know. I don't think. People understand. What Harvard. Is and how it functions and why it's different. Harvard is really the fusion of two separate institutions. One is about. Brilliance. And one is about power. And so you can think about this as the sharpest minds and the sharpest elbows. And the sharp mind. Crowd. Gets, tons of. Resources because the sharp elbowed crowd makes sure that power is used to perpetuate Harvard's place of privilege. And the sharp mind crowd contributes. Prestige to the. Sharp elbow. Crowd. And so. By virtue of the fact that. You can't de. Conflate the sharp minds and the sharp. Elbows. Harvard continues to have this very special place. Now, what is the special place? Why isn't it just a university like any other? I think sort of two. Or three principal reasons, one of which is that. Harvard is sort of an extension of the US government. The government department, which is sort of Harvard's version of poly psi, is kind of an extension of the State Department at times. The economics. Department, ends up setting economic policy in many ways for the United States. And above all, there is this concept that in every field. There's usually one institution that sets the narrative. So, for example, in journalism, The New York Times is different than all other newspapers and news organs because of its focus on what we sometimes hear of as narrative driven journalism. Now, people now talk a lot more about narrative. But 15 years ago, I don't think this was common knowledge that the editorial room at the New York Times is a place where people thought about what the long arcs of stories were. And you figured out what the. Arc of the story was before the facts came in. So, for example, Hillary is inevitable. Was a long arc. In narrative driven journalism. It wasn't true, but all the information that came in when Hillary was running against Donald Trump, was fed through this prism of the inevitability of Hillary Clinton in the same way Harvard practices narrative driven academics. It tells you what is happening, what the grand arcs are, and those just like the 2016 election are very often untrue. And so that's a way in which Harvard serves power. It it, it brings people in. Who are brilliant. And then it takes the ones of those who were willing to play ball. With the engines. Of power. And it. It enters into the storytelling mode. In which. Harvard sets the tone. For everyone. So when you lose Harvard, it's very important and very different. The last thing that I would say that really distinguishes Harvard. Is that Harvard, There's the open part of Harvard, the. Classrooms, and there's the closed part of Harvard that you can't see at. All. And it's sort of a system of star chambers. And I don't think people who have not tangled with Harvard would, would comprehend. How much of what Harvard gets done. It gets done behind closed doors because it can't be done in the open.

00:05:20:22 - 00:05:22:24 Chris Williamson But like, what do you mean?

00:05:23:01 - 00:06:27:23 Eric Weinstein I'll give you a a crazy example. I was not. Allowed. To attend my own. Thesis. Defense. Now, you're not. An academic by training. If you tell this to an academic, they don't even understand what you're saying. They think that you're making a joke or you must not have understood something. Or maybe you were sick that day and you had to. Zoom in or who knows. What. But I don't mean that at all. I mean, when I. Tried. To get my PhD in. The Harvard Math Department instituted a rule that said you could not attend your own thesis defense. You could not determine who would. Present your thesis, your dissertation. So basically, what happened is. If you had an advisor, which almost everyone did, your advisor presented your thesis behind closed doors. Nobody's ever heard of this in the history of academics.

00:06:28:00 - 00:06:29:10 Chris Williamson This how Claudine Gaye got. Away with it.

00:06:29:11 - 00:08:55:18 Eric Weinstein No, I don't know. Claudine Gaye was taken down for two different reasons. One. Reason she was taken down was for not having crisper statements about. The uniformity. Of application of rules, of codes of contact when it came to, Jewish students. So it's one. Thing whether you have a free speech policy or maybe you have a. Code of. Conduct where you say we can't tolerate certain kinds of speech, whatever that is. There's certainly a question about the differential application of that on behalf of different groups. So that was one of the ways that she got into trouble. The other way she got into trouble. Was. The vulnerability. Of. Plagiarism and a weak academic record. And. You know, let me just say this early and you'll come. Everyone will come to it late. Plagiarism is the tip of the iceberg of. Attribution bullying. Where effectively you have these people who determined who did what. In the narrative driven storytelling that is academic. And what what papers get cited. Which papers don't. What discoveries are named for certain people is determined largely by a tiny number of institutions. Harvard preeminent among them. And so Harvard just plays. Games morning, noon and night with writing. Stories that put Harvard at the center and particular in individuals. At the top. Whether or not those individuals have earned it or not. And what's hard for me is most people are now thinking, okay, Harvard is just full of it, but it isn't. It's half full of it and half the best place on earth to do anything important. And that tension is not is what's not recognized now. Power has to take a backseat to academics. And to discovery and to. Brilliance. If this game is to be. Maintained, you can't constantly. Just exercise power and tell stories. So in. In my history with this university, I've tried to figure out why does it behave so differently than every other institution of research.

00:08:55:19 - 00:09:02:19 Chris Williamson Is denied the boogeyman that everyone is worried about.

00:09:02:21 - 00:11:01:01 Eric Weinstein You know, I'm. This is so. Hard to to even get. Into it. Our universities won World War two. In large. Measure. I mean. If you need codes broken, if you need new weapons developed, you're supposed to have Seal team six of the human mind that you can call on. And that's supposed to be MIT, Caltech, Princeton, Harvard. It's a very small number of super prestigious universities. Part of the. Problem is, if you think about. I don't even have to say this exact. If you think about a university is akin to, an exotic car. A lot of people buy a McLaren or a Lamborghini or Ferrari because they like the styling status. But the soul. Of all of those cars is racing. Right? And the people who. Buy the cars for the racing. Sometimes are really annoyed. By the fact that the cars are status symbols. And that's what a research university is to me. I'm interested in the racing and other people are interested because it, it sort of, what you do to show that you've got a $10 million bonus, from your investment banking job. If you don't race it. I don't know what you're doing there, and I'd prefer that you'd leave. The purpose of a university is not teaching. Purpose of a great university. Is training and research, and we can't. Afford to lose that. I don't think people have any idea how important it is to be able to. Call on your own. Nation's top academics. When you need the truth. You need something done, you need help. And so whatever it is that is denaturing our universities, that's turning this into a nightclub where the whole trick is to get past the bouncer for the pool kids, has to be stopped.

00:11:01:03 - 00:11:14:13 Chris Williamson The what does it say that the president of Harvard is someone whose academic bona fides were found out to be. Plagiarized, largely.

00:11:14:15 - 00:12:00:05 Eric Weinstein I'm trying to say the balance between the. Sharp elbows and the sharp. Minds is wildly off. And why is it? Nobody wants to say what everybody is thinking, which is this person is not fit to be the president of Harvard University. And why is that? Because they're going to get called a name. This was made all about race. Oh, what? You can't tolerate scholarship of this quality from a black female. So you're starting. I wasn't even. Questioning this before, but now you're saying a scholar's scholar. Me thinks that that's protesting too much.

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00:13:13:10 - 00:18:05:05 Eric Weinstein Look, we need to bring back exclusion. We're talking way. Too much about inclusion. Inclusion and exclusion. Are two halves. Of a normal process clotting. Claudine needed to be excluded. From that office, not included. Now. If you told me that Condoleezza Rice was the president of Harvard, she's black, she's female, and I don't agree with her politically. But I don't think many people would have a qualification issue with Condoleezza Rice or let's say, James Gates as a black man, the distinguished physicist. This has to. Do with people coming from weaker subjects, particularly activist subject subjects that didn't exist before the late 60s, early 70s when all of these things were created. You know, to an extent when you had. I don't know if you recall, the pictures of was Willard Straight Hall at Cornell with the black students emerging with weapons. You know, there was a revolutionary fervor at the end of the 60s, early 70s. And you have people creating women's studies, you know, black studies, African-American studies. And these these. Departments were basically born of activism more than scholarship. I'm not saying no scholarship gets done there, but scholarship and activism are essentially fuzed. And many of us think activism is great. Just don't do it next. To our physics and. Math and. Computer science and music. Departments. You know. If what you're really there to do is to ignore certain things and accentuate others and not search for the truth. That's not. An ignoble pursuit. It's just that's not what scholarship is. Scholarship is about understanding things and getting them right. And we've we've gone down a terrible turn. But. You know, just consider. I think your listeners, Might enjoy googling the string. Cook, cook something up to ease him out. That was a. Phrase that was used, internally in documents within Harvard when. A Kenyan. Was ejected from the Harvard economics department, back in the 60s. And what had really happened is this guy had it passed all of his exams, he was fully qualified, was working on his dissertation to become a Harvard PhD in economics. And the university, I think, decided that it didn't like an African man sleeping with white women. And in America. And it got rid of him even. Though he was in good standing, that the only reason we know about that is that turned out to be Barack Obama senior. So Harvard conspires. 100% with the State Department. To destroy the career. Of Barack Obama senior. And that's how Harvard worked. In the Star Chamber is it cooks. And what does it do? It cooks things up. It cooks up stories as it cooks up, Attribution. It gives people credit for things that they didn't do. First, it takes credit away from other people. I was there in the mid-nineties when it destroyed my wife's career, through something, a star chamber called the Harvard. Jobs, market meeting. And all the economists go into a closed room, they lock the door and they say, who's got a good student? And my wife was the student of a Nobel, award winner in economics. And she had, done something which was to bring an entirely new kind of mathematics into economic theory to replace something called the marginal revolution, a new form of differential calculus called gauge theory. And a guy named Dale Jorgensen, who recently died, said no. So even though a Nobel level economist was promoting her and saying, this is great stuff, she should go anywhere in the country. A woman of color from the developing world. An old white guy just said no. And. You know, in a second, she her position in the world is reordered in the pile. And why were they doing this? Because they wanted to fix the CPI. And I don't mean fix as in cure it. I mean fix as in fixing a baseball game. Because. The CPI is used to transfer wealth.

00:18:05:07 - 00:18:06:04 Chris Williamson What’s CPI?

00:18:06:06 - 00:18:52:15 Eric Weinstein The consumer. Price index. And the reason. It's important is that mostly what the government does after its military is, entitlements, Social Security payments, Medicare payments, and those are indexed to inflation. And the way. In which it takes in money is through taxes. And those tax brackets are indexed to inflation. So it's very funny. Everybody focuses on like central banking and the fed. But the Bureau of Labor Statistics maintains a statistic that transfers billions and billions of dollars. And if the CPI is overstated, it pays out a lot of money and takes in very little money. And if it's if you can get it to be understated, then you get to take in much more money. You don't have to pay old and sick people. And that's. What the Harvard Department was doing.

00:18:52:15 - 00:18:57:09 Chris Williamson Is a single figure that mediates everything that gets squeezed through. How funny.

00:18:57:10 - 00:19:06:03 Eric Weinstein And so what. We. Were doing as a collaboration was showing the right mathematical framework to calculate the CPI.

00:19:06:05 - 00:19:07:15 Chris Williamson But that would have allowed less fuckery.

00:19:07:18 - 00:19:33:22 Eric Weinstein It would have allowed less. Yeah. To use the technical terms. And so. But but the. Point being that the Harvard jobs market meeting inside of the Harvard economics department is a star chamber, the way the, immigration, status of Obama's father was a star chamber, as was the way in which my PhD was over and over again. Harvard closes its doors and it makes stuff up.

00:19:33:24 - 00:19:47:18 Chris Williamson This sounds unsalvageable. As somebody with sons, it sounds like we've got the people leading it have gotten in through some combination of diversity, equity, inclusion, nepotism, game playing, harsh elbows. Seems like the pig.

00:19:47:18 - 00:20:23:19 Eric Weinstein Just hired a guy named Daniel S freed, who's one of the greatest mathematicians alive in my area. Dan and I might disagree about string theory. We can have scholarly disagreements. Just had lunch with him in Austin, Texas. That guy's a scholar through and through. I can disagree with him. I can fight with him. I can I can have my differences. I would support him 100% as a scholar to take over, you know, as a as a provost or dean, if they were interested. There's no shortage of absolutely. Fantastic people at Harvard.

00:20:23:19 - 00:20:33:07 Chris Williamson But unable or unwilling to play the political games, you know, that are required unless they're prepared to file their elbows down to a sharp point.

00:20:33:09 - 00:20:40:07 Eric Weinstein Well, this is what Bill Ackman is doing. The so confusing I just I have the feeling I don't know this guy at all. Don't have positive negative.

00:20:40:07 - 00:20:41:18 Chris Williamson Thought he would have crossed paths with him at some point.

00:20:41:20 - 00:22:13:21 Eric Weinstein You would think there are various people who I don't cross paths with for whatever reason. I don't even think we follow each other. Or maybe I follow him, but I don't think he follows me. I think that the problem is, is that a lot of these people don't know how the research game works. They think about this in terms of the Harvard Business School, the law school, the undergraduate alumni network. They don't see the part of Harvard that actually produces the mystique, you know, the analog of the racing for the exotic car. And I worry that the right thing to do right now is to appoint a curmudgeonly, research oriented person in a super rigorous field and doesn't even have to be Stem like. Music is an incredibly rigorous field. But what we need right. Now is rigor. We don't need another person from, the social sciences at this moment. We need somebody to reestablish that Harvard is an intolerant place, that it has the highest possible standards. It's unabashedly elitist, it's unabashedly American. And it cannot. Live with die. Die is a parasitic ization of our best hopes and dreams, and we have to recognize that dei has to be destroyed so that goals like diversity and getting the right people into the room are not sacrificed on the altar of mediocrity and lack of ethics.

00:22:13:23 - 00:22:33:09 Chris Williamson It's interesting that at places like Yale, they had made some changes to the ways that grades and diversity account for admissions, but they didn't get rid of legacy admissions, which kind of tells you everything that you need to know about what's being protected.

00:22:33:11 - 00:22:36:04 Eric Weinstein No, I don't think it does.

00:22:36:06 - 00:22:45:08 Chris Williamson Is this not another way to ensure that the people, just to ensure that power is, is held in the people who already have it.

00:22:45:10 - 00:22:48:19 Eric Weinstein But very soon this thing isn't going to be. Worth very much.

00:22:48:21 - 00:22:53:23 Chris Williamson I don't think that people care. I think this is the same as looking at why Marvel are going downhill.

00:22:54:00 - 00:22:57:19 Eric Weinstein Yeah, say more.

00:22:57:21 - 00:23:06:00 Chris Williamson There are a lot of movies coming out at the moment. I think the most recent Star Wars director openly said, I enjoy making movies that make men feel uncomfortable.

00:23:06:02 - 00:23:08:02 Eric Weinstein To Jon Stewart.

00:23:08:04 - 00:23:18:17 Chris Williamson Star Wars yeah. Maybe one of the most male dominated audience movies that I can think of.

00:23:18:19 - 00:23:56:02 Eric Weinstein But yes, it's self-destructive. So what I'm trying to say is, is that you can you can say, oh, we're going to keep things open for legacy admissions, right? But very soon you're not going. To want to be associated. With I mean, already. Yale has mismanaged its research university for years. It made a very bad decision not to go hard on on sciences and Stem. And focused, in my opinion, too much on, on softer fields. You know, so. What happens when Harvard is no longer that prestigious if people start laughing at Harvard, what good is it going to be that you can get your kid in?

00:23:56:06 - 00:24:53:09 Chris Williamson I don't disagree, but I think people are so out of touch. The people who are in power. Unable or unwilling to see just how. Just how quickly the stock price is plummeting. I don't think that they're able to see this thinking about it, especially using the the Marvel example again or some of the things that are coming out of Disney. You have a quantifiable figure. What was the opening weekend at the box office? You know exactly where this is. There are fewer places to hide when it comes to that is the number. What did it cost? What did you make opening weekend? Right. And you have projections and you have targets, presumably, that you want to hit. If that number doesn't cause people to think, maybe we don't need another narrative about an all female cast that is better than the men.

00:24:53:09 - 00:24:54:12 Chris Williamson With that, what we're.

00:24:54:14 - 00:27:15:06 Eric Weinstein Looking at is, you know, if you look at Mike Hopkins work on the covariant variant in the mathematics department. That's like opening. Opening weekend statistics. Man, great stuff happens at Harvard. Make no mistake about it. Harvard is an amazing and horrible place. And we're going to all now focus on how dumb it is and how horrible it is. And like then you're not seeing the tragedy, you're not seeing—look, I didn't have an advisor. I am one of the only people you'll ever meet with the PhD that had no advisor. But the guy who saved me was named Raoul Bott. And Raoul Bott discovered something that's so important called Bott Periodicity that, if I could convey it to you, your mind would be—you'd think DMT was for children. It has to do with the fact that there are only four systems of numbers that have a particular property, and one of those sets of numbers spins a merry-go-round with the other three with an eightfold sort of symmetry. Who knew that this thing was even possible? It's just it's an incredible fact about the world. I associate him with Harvard. That's unfudgable. There's no—There's no one in the world who can tell me that Bott Periodicity wasn't one of the most important things that happened in the 20th century. And to have a person like that, you know, just feet from John Tate. I could go on and on about all the real things that happened in Harvard. What we need right now, look, look, I. Would love to run for president of Harvard. If Claudine Gay can be president of Harvard, so can I. And what we need is somebody who's been. Wronged by Harvard. You need somebody who has not been on this kind of escalator to power, who is constantly shown love by the system. There are all sorts of people that represent what I call black sheep. Harvard, you've got white sheep, Harvard and black sheep, Harvard and black sheep. Harvard is no less important, but it's the people who are not loved by the system, who don't know when to shut up, the people who will take a stand and who will zig when everyone else zags.

00:27:15:06 - 00:27:17:16 Chris Williamson Why would that be useful?

00:27:17:18 - 00:27:31:21 Eric Weinstein Because we've got a purge. The University of the things that don't work. And it's going to be ugly. It's going to be unpleasant. It's going to be a civil. War on the faculty.

00:27:31:23 - 00:28:19:16 Chris Williamson I was learning about an idea, the Abilene paradox, on my one of my bed, one of my favorite ideas from last year. The Abilene paradox is a situation in which a group makes a decision that is contrary to the desires of the group's members, because each member assumes the others approve of it. That explains how a number of accurate individuals can become idiots when they get together. Kind of like the Emperor's New Clothes. An acquaintance invites you to his wedding despite not wanting you there because he thinks you want to attend. You attend despite not wanting to, because you think he wants you. That at a business meeting, someone suggests an idea that he thinks the others will like. Recruiting a trans influencer as the face of the brand. Each member has misgivings about this, but it seems the others will consider them transphobic if they speak out. So everyone approves of the idea despite no one liking it. Abilene Paradox. Yeah.

00:28:19:18 - 00:29:24:04 Eric Weinstein I like. It. It has a lot to do with to more. Ryan's theory of preference falsification. I think that that's not exactly how it happens. Also, most of the way. These things work is that you're afraid to speak. Like. Let's predict what's going to be said when this debuts. Sour grapes. Grifter. Charlatan. Eric doesn't like women. Eric doesn't like black people. Oh, Such snobbery. What has he ever done? You know, we know what every. Action brings about in terms of its response. And that's kind of why we don't speak up. It's just not. Worth it that these. Horrible people that follow you around looking for you to say anything like, I don't. Know, I don't, I don't know if she's qualified. It's like, did he say it? Did we get our knives out? That thing has to be driven out of the university. We can't have these people.

00:29:24:09 - 00:29:25:22 Chris Williamson It's not just in the university, though, right?

00:29:25:22 - 00:29:44:07 Eric Weinstein No, no, no, but I'm saying the universities are special because. If everyone is going to take power. Later passes. Through them, you can't afford. To lose them. You can't afford to lose your news media. You can't afford to lose your universities. You can't afford to lose your political parties.

00:29:44:09 - 00:29:46:00 Chris Williamson Three for three at the moment.

00:29:46:00 - 00:29:58:15 Eric Weinstein That's right. Yeah. But look. It's worth fighting for. So, you know, they'll call me a bunch of names, they'll try to deface my Wikipedia entry. That's what they'll. Do.

00:29:58:17 - 00:30:01:05 Chris Williamson What do you make of the most release of Epstein documents?

00:30:01:11 - 00:30:02:24 Eric Weinstein You tell me.

00:30:03:01 - 00:30:18:09 Chris Williamson Oh, man. I mean, surprising to see Stephen Hawking on there in some ways, but why? I wouldn't know what Jeffrey Epstein would want with Stephen Hawking.

00:30:18:11 - 00:30:24:05 Eric Weinstein What are you. Assuming? Is so terrible about Stephen Hawking being in these documents?

00:30:24:07 - 00:30:25:14 Chris Williamson I didn't say that. It was terrible.

00:30:25:14 - 00:30:29:11 Eric Weinstein Okay. I like that answer. That's interesting.

00:30:29:13 - 00:31:04:00 Chris Williamson I'm surprised that Jeffrey Epstein would have an interest in Stephen Hawking beyond him being somebody that is well known, influential, powerful, and potentially leverage able, which is that makes me think what he took an interest in physics. And I don't know why. And you do at least do you have an idea about why he took an interest in physics? Jeffrey. But I don't know why. I don't know why Jeffrey Epstein was interested in physics.

00:31:04:02 - 00:31:06:13 Eric Weinstein Well, what would you guess?

00:31:06:15 - 00:31:34:02 Chris Williamson There's some special mathematics there that allows him to. Or the people that he is associated with to better be able to predict things, to be able to use it in some sort of a way around financial markets, around new technology that's emerging, to just be able to see the direction that the future of technology is moving in. Perhaps. You know more about this than me. One.

00:31:34:04 - 00:33:14:18 Eric Weinstein Well, I. Look, I, I'd. Go back to this conference that he held I think it's 2006, 2004 called Confronting Gravity. So he holds a conference. I don't think he holds it on this island. On his island. I think he holds on, Saint Thomas. Maybe. And this is entirely consonant with an earlier meeting that he had with me where he wanted to know about what I was doing with mathematical physics and. I have to say. Look. Why gravity? Gravity is in some sense about the fabric of space time. And if there are things about the fabric of space time that you can unlock that are not contained in general relativity, nor in the standard model. How much power. Do you think is in there? You saw what the neutron did to unlock the strong force. You can take out a city with a little bit of physics. I'm going to turn this. Around, Chris, because we had a great dynamic the last time, and I want to see you play with ideas to, Tell me what. You imagine might be the. Power beyond. The Standard model in general relativity, if we can already destroy all of humanity. Albeit with some complications, you have to engineer a bomb. What do you think might. Be on the other side of the next great. Discoveries?

00:33:14:20 - 00:33:29:08 Chris Williamson Well, I mean, this gets into sci fi and and speculation around the probably fits the next Marvel series. They should use this as the as the tagline. I would guess things to do with being able to move across space.

00:33:29:10 - 00:33:30:04 Eric Weinstein Okay.

00:33:30:06 - 00:33:48:24 Chris Williamson Wormholes time. If there are other higher dimensions. If that allows you to access. If the multiverse theory holds, if that allows you to access different universes and to move between them.

00:33:49:01 - 00:34:58:20 Eric Weinstein It might be limitless power. It could be limitless power in the form of energy. It could be limitless power in the form of travel. What if what if it allows you to control neutrino us in a new way? I mean, like, people don't think about neutrinos. It's very hard to send a particle through planet Earth. Unscathed, but neutrinos do it, right? So in some sense, if you were a sovereign nation. Wouldn't you be focused on physics? I mean, here's the thing that I just don't understand. I'll be totally honest. About who isn't interested in this stuff. You have to be crazy to do what we're doing with physics. We're running physics into the ground. Physics is you'll go to a marvel. Movie about. Some. Guy trying to collect rings or stones to get infinite power over the universe. That's physics. That's not stones. When you see somebody. Talking about limitless power. Think physics. Don't think money, think physics. Physics is the source of infinite power.

00:34:58:22 - 00:35:04:00 Chris Williamson And is Jeffrey Epstein sufficiently versed in physics to know that he needs to be at the forefront.

00:35:04:00 - 00:35:52:24 Eric Weinstein Of the no. But this is what we dealt with last time. So, kids, if you haven't seen Last Time's episode, I don't think it was Jeffrey Epstein. I don't understand why we're so focused on this man. Why aren't we focused on whatever created him? Like, this is really weird. We can't think take half of. All the time you spend thinking about Jeffrey Epstein, talking about Jeffrey Epstein, everybody. Talking about and spend half of that. Time saying. What do we what do we think. About whoever was behind Jeffrey Epstein? Whatever was behind Jeffrey Epstein is what I think cared about gravity, cared about spacetime, cared about physics.

00:35:53:01 - 00:35:59:11 Chris Williamson And you get to use this supposed financier as a wedge to be able to start to break this open.

00:35:59:11 - 00:36:23:14 Eric Weinstein Well, this is the thing. If I'm looking. You know, there's a picture. Of Lisa Randall at this conference. Nobody's worried about the sexual depravity of Lisa Randall. This is stupid. Lisa Randall is an amazing physicist. He was interested in physics. Jeffrey Epstein. Whatever he represented, cared about physics.

00:36:23:16 - 00:36:27:06 Chris Williamson So that make him more or less nervous?

00:36:27:08 - 00:37:44:02 Eric Weinstein Well, you have to appreciate. I have no idea why my country, the United. States of America, doesn't care about physics anymore. It canceled the SEC in. 1993. As I say. Superconducting Super Collider. It's that the forum on string theory, which is completely not worked out. We're now this. Is the 40s. So we're now in 2024. This is the 40th year anniversary of the Green Schwartz anomaly cancellation, which basically handed the keys, to the liquor cabinet of physics, over to the string theorists. And they've been, drunk on these stories about the first superstring revolution. The second superstring revolution. All these things that they're going to do, the theory of everything and they just had a, panel discussion at the World Science Festival. With Brian Greene. Moderating between David Gross, Edward Witten and Andy Schrödinger. And this thing is delusion. Why, I don't know. I mean, physicists I know are calling me up and saying, you're right, Eric. I can't believe how crazy this is, because. They're pretending that they didn't flush 40 years down the tubes, driving physics into a ditch.

00:37:44:04 - 00:38:50:11 Chris Williamson In other news, this episode is brought to you by Shopify. The reason that you started a business is not to learn how to build a website, or to code, or to do inventory management. It's to sell the thing that you care about. And Shopify helps to move all of the other stuff out of the way so that you can focus on the thing that matters most. That's why we use Shopify for a new tonic. So if you've ever bought kind of this from our website, people from Shopify also, they power over 10% of all e-commerce in the United States, including huge brands like Gymshark. So if it's good enough for them, it's probably good enough for you. Whether you're selling scented soap or offering outdoor outfits, Shopify helps you sell at every stage of your business. Shopify also helps you turn browsers into buyers, with the internet's best converting checkout 36% better than other e-commerce platforms right now. You can sign up for a $1 per month trial period by going to the link in the description below, or heading to shopify.com/modern Wisdom all lowercase. That's shopify.com/modern wisdom to grow your business no matter what stage. Urine can you explain in an accessible way what the problem is with string theory?

00:38:50:13 - 00:38:56:00 Eric Weinstein Sure, it doesn't work.

00:38:56:02 - 00:38:59:13 Chris Williamson We can go a tiny bit more that level of advancement a little bit.

00:38:59:13 - 00:39:01:17 Eric Weinstein Explain it to me as if I'm to. Yeah, yeah.

00:39:01:22 - 00:39:05:11 Chris Williamson All right. Our high IQ golden retriever.

00:39:05:13 - 00:39:08:00 Eric Weinstein

00:39:08:02 - 00:39:28:13 Eric Weinstein The problem with string theory. Is it's sociology, not it's equations. The sociology of a string theorist. Do you mind if I play you a recording?

00:39:28:15 - 00:39:30:10 Chris Williamson Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

00:39:30:12 - 00:40:01:12 Eric Weinstein The following, clip is from, a. Podcast which probably has the highest IQ guests of any podcast on planet Earth called The Universe Speaks in Numbers. Nobody listens to this podcast. But this, this is Edward Witten. And he is, talking about, is being asked. About string theory by Graham Farm. ELO.

00:40:01:14 - 00:40:50:05 Ed Witten Go back to. The string theories. Do you see that as one among several candidates or the primitive candidate or what? I mean, what do you see the status. Of that framework in the landscape of mathematical physics? I say that string solution theory is the only really interesting direction that we're going down the established framework of physics, by which I mean quantum field theory is know. And as for general relativity, even at the macroscopic scale. So where we've made progress has been in the string section three framework for a lot. Of interesting things. You can say that there's a few things, interesting things. We don't understand it all, but you've never been tempted down the other routes of other options for learning. And for what do we mean by the rich, loophole to gravity, you know, it's just words like any other routes. There are words.

00:40:50:07 - 00:41:28:16 Eric Weinstein There are no other routes. They're just words. That is the world's leading. Theoretical physicist. Opining about string two. Can you imagine. Anything less scientific coming out of the mouth of Edward Witten? And by the way, this is the world's scariest individual to go up against. And I've had it. I've just absolutely had it. Can you imagine being a scientist and saying there are no other routes? When ask, are you ever tempted by other routes? They're only they're only words. No other. Routes. I don't even know. How to respond to that.

00:41:28:18 - 00:41:33:10 Chris Williamson What's the difference between, dogmatism and conviction?

00:41:33:12 - 00:41:39:10 Eric Weinstein You tell me. A fifth of checked in.

00:41:39:12 - 00:41:45:03 Chris Williamson The guy sounds like he's convinced. Why are you so sure that he shouldn't be?

00:41:45:05 - 00:42:11:02 Eric Weinstein I'm convinced the geometric unity is correct. And I am open. To being wrong. I am open. To. Ethical colleagues talking to me about their misgivings. This is an. Unethical position to hold.

00:42:11:04 - 00:42:15:07 Chris Williamson What's wrong with string theory?

00:42:15:09 - 00:44:03:01 Eric Weinstein I'm going to say the same thing again. First of all, if you if you asked me technically, what's wrong with it, I would say to you that, let's say the explanation for three generations of matter, based on an index of six on a call, IBM man folded every point in space and time is not the right explanation. You're not going to be able to handle that. I understand, and so we can't have that conversation. The problem is you have a group of people who don't feel that they have to listen to anything else, and if anything else happens, then they say, well, we'll just call that string theory you're thinking. So heads you win and tails I lose. And that's science. These people need remedial. Ethical training. In science. I'm convinced of my own theories. I have to. Be open minded that I'm. Wrong. Their theories have had all. Of the. Money. All of the minds, all of the years, the. Conferences, everything, the. Praise, the PR articles, you name it. For 40 years straight. And it's done. What? It's destroyed physics. You can't have this ethos. Look, there's no one more accomplished in. Quantum field theory. Than Edward Witten. He doesn't belong at. The lead in the lead position in a science. He's doing. Math. Fine. But you can't. You can't be a leading. Physicist and say there are no other routes. There are no, your dog doesn't hunt. We're not allowed to see other dogs. I don't understand. Your dog's been dead in the backyard for years, and you're still talking about how you know you're going to go take it hiking.

00:44:03:03 - 00:44:08:16 Chris Williamson So there's been in 40 years, basically no progress in string theory, no meaningful, no useful.

00:44:08:19 - 00:44:11:17 Eric Weinstein Internal to string theory.

00:44:11:19 - 00:44:13:20 Chris Williamson But functionally outside of that.

00:44:13:22 - 00:44:42:16 Eric Weinstein Yeah. I mean, in that's. 40 years of string. Theory. In 50 years, the Standard Model of particle theory hasn't moved. There are no young. People who have ever walked on the moon, and there are no young theoretical physicists who have contributed. To our picture. Of the universe. In a. Way that's been confirmed.

00:44:42:18 - 00:44:56:23 Chris Williamson If it's the case that the underpinnings of string theory aren't accurate, if it's also the case that for such a long time there hasn't been any progress that's been made, why are so many people continuing to cling to.

00:44:56:23 - 00:44:58:14 Eric Weinstein The thread of that man.

00:44:58:16 - 00:44:59:20 Chris Williamson That one guy?

00:44:59:22 - 00:45:00:16 Eric Weinstein Oh yeah.

00:45:00:18 - 00:45:06:24 Chris Williamson He's the tyrant that's pulling the strings, pulling the string. He's the string theorists. No, no no no.

00:45:07:01 - 00:45:18:22 Eric Weinstein Everybody who's. Gone up against this guy, in essence, has. Lost. He's terrifying.

00:45:18:24 - 00:45:22:13 Chris Williamson When you mean when you say go up against, what do you mean.

00:45:22:15 - 00:47:33:10 Eric Weinstein You'll bring up a point? Well. You might have an. Argument with him, and he'll solve the problem you've been working on for two years. In an hour, if it takes him that long. Yeah. You have to. Understand how vertical human achievement can be. And this guy is at the very top of the human mind. I mean, he's he's just he's utterly amazing. And he's completely. Scientifically, outside of his ethical boundaries with statements like this. You can't do that to science. Even Edward Witten is not so great of a mathematician that he's allowed to take out theoretical physics. And, you know, if you asked. Me, like about my own theory. In in terms of like what has happened to me to trying to talk about for 40 years. More or less. The field says, well, what does that think? What does it say? What was Ed's feedback? Because everyone was afraid of him. You have to understand. How dominant a single individual can be in order to understand this effect. There was a great. String. Theorist named Joe Pinsky, and Joe once said to me, Eric, you talk a lot about string theory, but I'm not sure it exists. Sometimes I think we're just running subroutines for it. That's how dominant this person was, that even one of the top figures in the string theory movement, guy who basically introduced brane theory, above strings. His point. Was we don't even quite know what we're doing. It just tells us to do things. And it's time for Ed Witten to actually face the other theories that are out there, and stop jawing. Off about how it's. Only just words. Outside. It's. It's almost. Hysterically funny.

00:47:33:12 - 00:47:37:03 Chris Williamson But that never happened. Do you think that one.

00:47:37:07 - 00:48:52:03 Eric Weinstein Where does he. Hey, Ed, if you're out there. Whenever chat love to. Won't happen. Why? Because it's a spell. Because he's casting a spell. Because if he actually. Had to face a real critic, somebody who has some knowledge of what the history of string theory was. He would have to take into account. All sorts of things. He doesn't have to take into account. When he appears on a stage of colleagues. He has a right not to face unethical people. He has a right. Not to face people who are badly informed or not trained in the subject. That's fine. But I don't see these people as having gone. Up against. Their technical critics. You know. Feynman was a huge critic of string theory. Sheldon Glashow, who won a Nobel Prize for symmetry breaking, was a critic of string theory. They're string theorists who have defected, like Dan Friedan. There's no shortage. Of very competent people who have said, what the hell is going on? Why are we doing this? This is. Madness. I've never heard Ed Witten face one. Of these people.

00:48:52:05 - 00:49:13:13 Chris Williamson When I think about somebody like Brian Greene. Sure, he doesn't strike me as the sort of guy that needs to bow at the feet of this person. Brian Greene's got a successful career bug hosting these events on and so forth. Is everybody dancing to the tune of some super smart, tyrannical, string theorist.

00:49:13:15 - 00:52:44:21 Eric Weinstein Tyrannical? Look, I don't know how to. Say this, right, because I'm obviously a. Critic. I Revere this person. This is very painful for me to say. You know, if you if. You ask me, of all the people's minds on planet Earth, that I Revere. The wonder. That is Ed Witten's brain is beyond almost anything I can communicate. At least when you have a Beethoven or a, I don't know, an Art Tatum or a Picasso or a modigliani, you can see what it is that they're doing. This guy has done so much for us, and he's done so much to take. Science out. Of physics. And it's it's almost impossible. To talk about. The the profound nature. Of his contribution and the enormity of the destruction is. Caused. It's, you know, it's like. He gave us everything. He took away. Everything. Because, you see, the quantum field theory under Ed Witten. With help from particularly Michael Attia and Graham Siegel, was revealed to be just math. We thought quantum field theory was about the physical universe, but it's much more general than that. And Ed Witten. Is largely responsible for showing us what quantum field theory really is. But in so doing, he also divorced it from mathematics. And so what Ed Witten does effectively showed us that what we thought was the physical universe was just like calculus. Just a framework. But, you know, keep in mind that. My view of it is if if the universe is traversable, the only way to get there is through the study of physics, because in time and, These guys are guarding the exit. To me. A previous generation threw a lit. Match into a. Room filled with kerosene. And this is the generation that's blocking the exit. So, you know, Teller and Ulam, gave us the hydrogen bomb. That's a geometer. And, Particle theorist. And I would expect that Ed Witten was taking responsibility for trying to figure out whether the cosmos are traversable and whether we can leave Earth. Is there any way we can get access to more energy? Is there any way that. We can reveal. Spacetime to not be fundamental, so that maybe we can do something that would be confused with going faster than light? Maybe we. Can reach the stars through methods that we can't understand using. What we have. Why is Ed Witten guarding the exit? Ed, there are other theories. There have been theories for 40 years. I met you in your office in 1984 85, in Princeton, on a snowy day, and you threw me out of your office. For what reason? Because I started talking to you about the fact that I didn't think you were right. About three generations for for particle theory. And you claimed that, Kaluza Klein theory couldn't work, because of chirality considerations. You were wrong. You have one claim as to why they're three generations. I have another. Do you want to meet? Let's talk. Nothing will happen. They don't. Show up.

00:52:44:23 - 00:52:55:14 Chris Williamson How long can the world of physics be captured by an idea that no meaningful progress is made inside of? Before more people say, it's time to look at something else?

00:52:55:16 - 00:54:09:15 Eric Weinstein That's an interesting question. The problem is. That. There isn't going to be much of physics left when this group dies. It just retired, I believe, from the Institute for Advanced Study because it has a capped age of 70, and he was born in 1951. No, There isn't much physics left. People have forgotten what the original problems are. He swapped out. One set of problems that we all agreed on. Why is nature left? Right asymmetric? Why are there three copies of matter rather than only one? Why the particular set of symmetries that, generate the strong, weak and electromagnetic forces? All of these problems that are all about the physical world in which we live. And he swap them out for different problems, like how do we quantize gravity as if that's definitely what we have to do. Those were sort of mathematical analytic problems rather than physical problems. And so as a result, two generations of physicists have been brainwashed into not caring about the physical world and being there, totally devoted to various abstract areas of mathematics.

00:54:09:18 - 00:54:11:15 Chris Williamson How long can the legacy of that continue for?

00:54:11:18 - 00:55:01:20 Eric Weinstein Well, how do you. Rebuild theoretical physics when almost nobody is doing theoretical. Physics? And I don't mean, look, there's some. Technical wiggle words that if I don't say them, my colleagues will go crazy. But in the field of fundamental physics, beyond general relativity, in the Standard Model, there isn't much of a field left. You go on a random day to the ArXiv where people post papers, and the papers aren't really about charmed quarks or muons or realistic models of the universe. They're about weird, esoteric topics in mathematics, and that has everything to do with, transition between 1980, actually 83 through 86, 87, where the field lost its mind.

00:55:01:22 - 00:55:06:19 Chris Williamson Rediscovering the problems of physics can't be as hard as discovering the problems of physics.

00:55:06:21 - 00:55:59:05 Eric Weinstein If you're not paid to work on physics—the way they've got us is by our—they've got their hands wrapped around our wallets. We can't afford to do physics. It's as if there's a force that says, if you want to work on the world's most important problem, we're going to make you poor. We're going to discredit you. It's almost like there's a force field trying to get us not to unlock this power. And I've been very curious about why that is. And nobody—like, with all the rich people in the world, nobody's funding the stuff at the level that it needs to be funded. This is the most important funding priority on planet Earth. Because otherwise you're all sharing one atmosphere with a bunch of idiots and really powerful toys.

00:55:59:07 - 00:56:06:22 Chris Williamson So unless we can somehow channel the technology of interdimensional space beings.

00:56:06:24 - 00:56:08:20 Eric Weinstein Please never say these words.

00:56:08:22 - 00:56:09:14 Chris Williamson Hey.

00:56:09:16 - 00:56:11:07 Eric Weinstein Interdimensional space—

00:56:11:07 - 00:56:16:20 Chris Williamson Interdimensional space beings. David Grusch didn't say extraterrestrial, he said interdimensional—

00:56:16:20 - 00:56:56:09 Eric Weinstein Yes, but Eric and David talk. And this is not fair to David Grusch. David Grusch knows that he's a physics BA. He knows he's not a PhD. He's repeating things that have been said to him. He had the presence of mind to try to give an example of what interdimensional might mean. And he used holography. And so as a result, everyone's making, oh, David Grusch says, holographic interdimensional beings. This is absurd. And it's not fair to David Grusch. I'm telling you, I mean, we can call David up right now, and I promise you, he's not going to back this madness and stupidity.

00:56:56:11 - 00:57:00:05 Chris Williamson So what's going on with this most recent update about aliens?

00:57:00:09 - 00:57:01:11 Eric Weinstein Which one?

00:57:01:13 - 00:57:14:22 Chris Williamson Well, I saw this frustration that lawmakers had because they were getting compartmentalized. If you don't ask precisely the right person, precisely the right question, in precisely the right way, you're not allowed to get an answer. You don't get an answer that.

00:57:14:22 - 00:58:38:11 Eric Weinstein You couldn't even look, if you don't know what a Romanian. Manifold. Is, if you don't know what a. Determinant line bundle. Is, there's. No way you can ask intelligent questions about alien visitation. How did they get here? There are no scientists there, no real scientist. In the story. Does anybody find that at all odd? You even this. The situation with David Crush is fantastic. He goes in to a hearing. He says a bunch of completely. Batshit crazy stuff. Right? Can we agree on that? All right. And then weeks later. Some representatives go into a. Skiff and they say. Well, it certainly, seems like it confirms some of what Prussia's. Been telling us. And you're thinking. Okay, so you've separated the confirmation, but you did abstractly because it was inside of a skiff. But you won't. You can only. Talk to people who've emerged from the skiff who were willing to say vague. Things and the crazy claims. Now, what is this really all about? Weed? Nobody knows. Now, what. I've been saying for about four years is there's way more to the story than I had understood. I thought UFOs were total nonsense. I thought this was a waste of time and. I was wrong. I was just wrong.

00:58:38:13 - 00:58:39:08 Chris Williamson Why?

00:58:39:10 - 00:58:40:14 Eric Weinstein What do you mean?

00:58:40:16 - 00:58:45:06 Chris Williamson In what ways? We were wrong. Why are you now convinced in a way that you weren't previously?

00:58:45:08 - 00:59:20:05 Eric Weinstein Well, I didn't know you. I'm not convinced that. UFOs, like shiny metal craft are real at all. What I didn't know is that they're almost certainly. They are large. Programs inside the federal government that are denied, that are labeled UFO. Don't tell anyone. Now whether those programs contain. Anything about non-human intelligence or aliens or spacecraft. Or anything like that is anyone's guess, because I haven't seen anything. However, the programs almost certainly exist.

00:59:20:07 - 00:59:21:16 Chris Williamson What gives you that impression?

00:59:21:18 - 00:59:55:06 Eric Weinstein Talking to 4 million people who tell stunningly similar stories? In other words, there is a weirdness. And the weirdness is tremendous. Circumstantial evidence that these programs exist have existed for a long time and have involved extraordinary, in particular, physicists way back in the day. And on the other hand, that there is no credible proof that there are craft or aliens or anything like that.

00:59:55:08 - 00:59:58:02 Chris Williamson How do square that circle?

00:59:58:02 - 01:00:01:19 Eric Weinstein How would you hint? Look.

01:00:01:21 - 01:00:07:19 Chris Williamson The coordination problem of all of these people is immense.

01:00:07:21 - 01:00:14:04 Eric Weinstein There's that. But secrets have been kept. Much more effectively than people imagine.

01:00:14:06 - 01:00:15:10 Chris Williamson Say more?

01:00:15:12 - 01:02:07:00 Eric Weinstein I don't want to. No, but I mean that. There are organizations that you cannot Google. There are organizations that have clubhouses and members that you cannot Google. So I know that secrets are durable. What we don't know is what. These secrets are. About. So let's create. A decision tree, which is there are a little green men, shiny spacecrafts and all this kind of cool stuff. And there aren't. Okay, if there aren't. What's the best explanation for why there's so much energy and activity and so many claims around. This? And I would guess. And then again, this is a this is a guess and not a particularly. Good one. That there. Was a. Clearinghouse program for everything under the sun. If we needed to retrieve somebody else's plane behind enemy lines, we had a UFO cover story. If we were trying out new aerospace equipment, we had a UFO cover story. If we were trying to get our rivals to spend their, precious treasure on weaponry and strategic countermeasures, we had a UFO cover story. If we were up to no good, we had a UFO. Cover. Story. Whatever all these. Things are, imagine there was a kitchen. Sink approach. And that's what UFOs are all about. It's about a black SAP special access program. As waved and bigoted as it. Could possibly be. That, Basically was a one size fits all, story for all.

01:02:07:00 - 01:02:10:12 Chris Williamson It's a it's an in the extraterrestrial scapegoat.

01:02:10:14 - 01:04:59:07 Eric Weinstein Yeah, an extraterrestrial scapegoat program. Okay, now, whatever that is. If you imagine that that leg of the decision tree is real, it's all very funny, because now you're like, all these people. Have taken it seriously. But it was the Russians and the Chinese and the Iranians were supposed to take it seriously. Ixnay on the UFO, Fe. You know, it's like people are going to blow this. Beautiful cover story that we've created for everything. So that's one. Possible. Another possibility is that we're on the other leg of the decision tree, and that we have no programing for it. And so everything about it seems impossible. It would say what you said about physics. Physics is science fiction. The physics that you just learned is almost always about science fiction. What if you. Have, Multiple time dimensions and people can circle around in time, and if you find out about them, they can circle back to the point where you didn't know you have a neural eyes or built into the successor to space time. Is that real? I don't know, all I know. Is that physics will always blow your mind. There will always do something that seems impossible. And that's why. That's why it's the coolest subject around. Now, I don't know what's going on. But I can tell you that the circumstantial evidence that there's been a program that has been, long running and involved very high level people, it's almost impossible to imagine that this is fake. There's a 1971 Australian document from the, Australian Intelligence Service that has been declassified, made public, which clears up all sorts of, mysteries about what was going on with physics in the 1950s and 60s. And it names, names. It says that Freeman Dyson, John Archibald. Wheeler. Pascal Jordan, the Nazi. All of these people were working on anti-gravity. And the only reason to be working on anti-gravity was, is that there was reason to think that something had gone beyond, Einstein in relativity. In other words, mostly we we learn about physics from colliding. Yeah. It's like breaking rocks together. You're going to smash two rocks, and then maybe you'll see a little spark and you'll study that. Well, except we do it with protons. This would be like some different thing where there was a more advanced species, and you're looking at its machinery to try to figure out, well, what science does it know that you don't.

01:04:59:09 - 01:05:18:08 Chris Williamson How much truth do you think is in that? They've seen rumors on the internet of leaps forward in technology throughout the mid 1900s that people suggested was due to reverse engineering. If something that had been discovered. Do you think that the technology movements that we made through the 1900s were self-created?

01:05:18:08 - 01:08:41:22 Eric Weinstein I'm not. Clever enough to solve the UFO. Puzzle. There's almost no topic where I can't generate multiple explanations. This is the only topic I've ever met where I can't generate a single explanation for what the hell is going on. Nothing I can think up makes sense. But I'm very. Focused on this because. If if there are aliens here, I. I might be the only guy who knows how they're here. How so? I don't think. It's practical to traverse the cosmos using general relativity. In the standard model, you can use time dilation. You can hope for wormholes. You can imagine generation ships. There's a whole bunch of stupid stuff that people talk about when they talk about interdimensional interdimensional travel and all this kind of nonsense. Why? Because they can see the night sky and they can't get there. So you think, okay, in terms. Of the science that I've seen Carl Sagan discussing or on cosmos with Neil deGrasse Tyson, how would I get to a distant planet using the science I know? And then you have to sort of do it with masking tape and, you know, chicken wire or whatever. Whatever that is. Doesn't really. Appeal to me. They're not here if they're here. Using standard physics. Now. I've tried to make a list of everyone on earth who has a distinct theory of physics. Right. So you have, you know, Julian Barbour has a theory or Stephen Wolfram has a theory, or Peter White has a theory. So I go through all of these other theories, and to the best of my knowledge, nobody else does that. Like we've stopped. Talking to each other. We stop thinking about this. So in the world of theories about how something might be here, there are very few theories of the universe. And why is that? It's because the constraints are so profound. There's no room. To move, to imagine, to let human creativity take over. We're in a straitjacket that is so tight nobody can think. And we're there because our theories are so good. The Standard Model and general relativity are astounding theories, but they're also a straitjacket. So I'm very interested in. You know, for Obama, you just reach out, grab it and kill it. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I'm. Very interested in this topic specifically because the universe is either traversable or it is. And if it is, it's not surprising that anyone's here. And if it isn't. We die here in short order. So it's a hugely consequential quest. But there are almost no, no theories. I can't imagine, like, look, Chris and I. I'm almost reluctant to do podcasts anymore because I don't understand why we're behaving the way we're behaving.

01:08:41:24 - 01:08:44:23 Chris Williamson What do you mean when you say we.

01:08:45:00 - 01:09:07:18 Eric Weinstein No one on planet Earth is behaving rationally with respect to physics and UFOs. You have a claim that is being heard at the highest levels in Congress that we've lost control of our airspace. You either clear this thing up in an afternoon, or you call in Seal Team Six.

01:09:07:20 - 01:10:00:17 Chris Williamson Yeah, that's a really good point. How is it that we've got such an outlandish claim, which is being. Accepted? Not necessarily accepted, which is being received without the justified fanfare. It's like either this is completely crazy and needs to be thrown out, or this is absolutely wild and we need to do something about it. Why is it why is it the case? That's a really great point. That's a really great point. Why is it the case that this has made either—it hasn't made more fanfare in terms of people mobilizing, governments and such, or hasn't made way more criticism in terms of it being thrown out.

01:10:00:19 - 01:10:06:12 Eric Weinstein I don't know, why does the Diffuse proposal from the EcoHealth Alliance not get properly adjudicated scientifically?

01:10:06:15 - 01:10:08:03 Chris Williamson I don't know what that is.

01:10:08:05 - 01:10:09:18 Eric Weinstein

01:10:09:20 - 01:11:56:01 Eric Weinstein The EcoHealth Alliance is this group run by a zoologist who got $50 million from the Defense Department to help a lab in China work on coronavirus and making them more humanized. I mean, like, we should be able to adjudicate: did we start Covid? But we can't. All of these very simple things, we don't adjudicate. Look, Bureau of Labor Statistics claims that the Consumer Price Index is based on a cost of living measure. I claim that's not true. In order for that to be true, you have to take in consumer preference data, and you claim that you don't work with consumer preference data. I'm either right or I'm wrong. It's hugely consequential in terms of billions. I claim that the Bureau of Labor Statistics is completely lying that it's working on a cost of living framework, and that the academic responsible for it, a guy named Erwin Diewert, his theory of superlative index numbers is hogwash, doesn't work. It's based on homothetic preferences. That takes an afternoon to adjudicate. I claim that there is no labor shortage of scientists and engineers, despite claims that it's been going on since the 50s, because large market economies don't have labor shortages. That's a feature of centrally planned economies. There's no possible way—that's a four minute discussion. We are just lying, lying, lying, lying, as the substrate of our society. We're lying about physics. We’re lying about economics. We’re lying about finance. We’re lying about coronavirus and biological research. We’re lying about monetary aggregates.

01:11:56:01 - 01:11:59:06 Chris Williamson How many different hills are you waging a war on?

01:11:59:08 - 01:12:11:03 Eric Weinstein There's only one. It's called Managed Reality. This is all Managed Reality.

01:12:11:05 - 01:12:17:11 Chris Williamson What's that?

01:12:17:13 - 01:14:33:16 Eric Weinstein You know, I have this image of a tanker that is flipped over on a freeway, and there's bodies scattered, and people are bleeding, and the tanker’s on fire. And there's a cop, maybe a Special Forces guy with an automatic weapon who says, “Nothing to see here, folks. Move along.” You’re like, “Nothing to see?!?” There's, like, a severed hand on the pavement and you've got a tanker and it says, you know, “danger, flammable hazard”. And it's—is it about to blow? And—tell me what's going on! Like, nothing to see here, folks. Well, the “nothing to see here, folks”, is Managed Reality. We all know what that is. Policeman is actually saying, “Act as if there is nothing to see here, and move along”. It's an instruction to pretend. So we are being given instructions right now to pretend on everything. Pretend that you don't understand the CPI, Eric. Oh, okay. Pretend that you don't understand immigration and labor markets, Eric. Okay. Pretend that you don't understand physics. Pretend that you don't understand plagiarism. Pretend that you don't understand biology and gender. Well, it's—it's one hill. It's enforced pretending by a class of people that thinks that it is in a position to tell us all how to think at this level. Now, I don't disagree that that policeman has a right to say, “Move along, folks. Nothing to see”. There's a very clear reason why that person is saying that. But when you start to say that to your experts, to the Hazmat team who's telling you, you know, don't put out an electrical fire with water, when you are telling “nothing to see” to the mother who sees her child on the pavement, when you're constantly telling everybody who has a stake in something, and particularly everybody who has expertise in something, “you're a charlatan”, “you're a grifter”, “you're a fake”, “you're a fraud”, you're—it's like, shut up, just shut up. There's one hill.

01:14:33:18 - 01:14:42:04 Chris Williamson Are you the only person on that hill, though? Because as you've said here, there's a bunch of different the CPI stuff to do with physics, the stuff to do with the space.

01:14:42:05 - 01:14:43:12 Eric Weinstein I appreciate what you're saying.

01:14:43:14 - 01:14:47:02 Chris Williamson Funneling on you.

01:14:47:04 - 01:16:11:12 Eric Weinstein There are lots of people on the hill. The problem is that you have to visit all of these fields to know it's in that field to, you know, I was complaining about narrative-driven journalism before people were talking about narrative at the same level, that if you go back to my written output or speaking output, you'll find that in 2011, I was talking about professional wrestling and kayfabe as the model for underlying reality that this is what's going on in our society. It's because I visited all these different fields. I've been an immigration expert. I've spent the middle of the 1990s in Washington trying to understand why we passed the Immigration Act of 1990. I've been a finance guy, have the first papers that I know of on mortgage backed securities, and the danger they pose to the world financial system from 2001 2002. Rose, rang the alarm on the Chinese using our universities as an espionage program. I said that Hillary was not inevitable and that Trump was in much better position to win because of Timur Kuran's theory of Preference Falsification. I said this thing about physics, you're all out of your mind. I switched my field from physics to mathematics because I could see what was going to happen. I think that what you're trying to ask me is, are you the only person who's visited all of these fields to see the pattern?

01:16:11:15 - 01:16:15:06 Chris Williamson And why are you at the center of all of these stories?

01:16:15:08 - 01:16:44:07 Eric Weinstein Well. Narcissism. Now, This is the personal and uncomfortable part. I think. I didn't. Understand that my principal. Means. Of trying to figure out where I'm supposed to allocate my efforts is. Wrong. I just detect that something doesn't make any sense. Like, very. You know, autism is not necessarily a bad thing.

01:16:44:09 - 01:16:47:06 Chris Williamson I think it's a competitive advantage. In the right. Dose.

01:16:47:08 - 01:18:28:04 Eric Weinstein There's a sweet spot. There's a sweet spot of autism. I think I'm beyond the sweet spot. I think that what happens is, is that I become convinced that somebody is wrong, and I start trying to tell them about the fact that they're wrong. And, you know, as the joke goes, I thought I would be graded as liberators. But in fact, you're actually causing a huge problem. So, you know, the. Bureau of Labor Statistics. They're sitting ducks. Obviously, what they're doing is completely ridiculous. But if I say that and everybody's. Agreed to keep their mouth shut about. It, it's not like they. Don't know what I'm saying. It's not like they don't know that I'm right. It's that we've all agreed to act. As if I'm insane. What I keep doing is I keep using the same stupid algorithm. Saying, hey, that thing about. UFOs doesn't make sense. Or we could clear this up in an afternoon or. Hey, guys, what if we roll up. Our sleeves and just fix the problems? Many problems are owned. A problem that's owned, you know, does the person who rebuilds homes want fewer homes to burn down? No. Their businesses building homes after they burn down? Doesn't doesn't. Arms maker want a more peaceful. World? Does a health. Care system want nutrition to decrease the number of patients who walk. Through their doors? All of these are owned problems. And my problem is I keep trying to solve somebody's owned problem. That's why I keep ending up in all these places.

01:18:28:06 - 01:18:30:16 Chris Williamson Can I teach you about Milgram questions?

01:18:30:16 - 01:18:31:15 Eric Weinstein Tell me about Milgram.

01:18:31:19 - 01:18:32:13 Chris Williamson This is—

01:18:32:18 - 01:18:33:09 Eric Weinstein Stanley Milgram?

01:18:33:10 - 01:19:39:15 Chris Williamson —an idea from J. Sanilac. So what makes a woman attractive? Is a milgram question. In other words, the social penalty for an unflattering answer is much higher than the reward for telling the truth. Because of this, we simply can't trust the answers we receive, even if they're coming from friends. The best known trick question is when did you stop beating your wife? Any conventional answer to the question confirms its assumption. To escape the trap, you need to call out the question. This type of question isn't that common in practice. It's really just a rhetorical gimmick. The most important and most common type of trick question sounds more like do you love Big Brother? It's a question about an unacceptable answer. Regardless of whether it's true or false will be punished, and the punishment is greater than the reward for the true answer. I'm going to recall these Milgram questions after the famous psychology experiment where electric shocks were administered for wrong answers. There's a associated idea called the chilling effect. When punishment for what people say becomes widespread, people stop saying what they really think and instead say whatever is needed to.

01:19:39:20 - 01:19:43:01 Eric Weinstein That's closer to the Asch experiment.

01:19:43:03 - 01:19:46:03 Chris Williamson Thus, limits on speech become limits on sincerity.

01:19:46:05 - 01:19:55:15 Eric Weinstein It's an interesting problem. You. Tell me about why you brought it up and what you find interesting. About it.

01:19:55:17 - 01:20:30:23 Chris Williamson It is one way that explains how. A group of people from the outside can look coordinated, but it's actually. A. Common. A common trend, a common motivation working below the surface that motivates them all to behave in a way that appears coordinated from the outside. From the inside. It just looks like perhaps cowardice, perhaps compliance.

01:20:31:00 - 01:21:48:09 Eric Weinstein So yeah, I've been very interested. In these sorts of. Issues. I try to tell people why the truth can't work, and people are always confused by this. I say, okay, tell me I have mildly bad breath. And some people will say, you have mildly bad breath. And I say, well, you just told me that my breath is so horrendous that you were willing to cross a social chasm that essentially no one ever crosses to tell me that I have mildly bad breath. So obviously my breath must be as bad as a sewer. Then they say, would you like a stick of gum? And I said, sure, and I'd show no cognition that you've actually told me about, you know, you can't transmit that piece of information easily. It's very akin to this. Yes. Now, our society hinges on these things. On the other hand, there are. Ways of getting at these. Questions through language. So, for example, you're not allowed to say that you like cleavage, but you are allowed to say that was an incredibly dramatic neckline. Right. And so why is it that one phrase is penalized? It's because there's a rustle conjugation that works. Or Russell conjugation that does.

01:21:48:09 - 01:21:50:20 Chris Williamson He sweats. Sheep aspires. They glow.

01:21:50:20 - 01:22:14:14 Eric Weinstein Right. And so in such circumstances. The key question, Is how you are allowed to discuss the truth as well as whether you are allowed to discuss the truth. Many times. There's a. Penalty for not being skilled. The skilled person is allowed to say something deftly.

01:22:14:16 - 01:22:17:05 Chris Williamson The appropriate nuance with the appropriate social graces.

01:22:17:05 - 01:23:51:19 Eric Weinstein Yeah, but then the question becomes, why can't you say certain things and, you know, this is, in part—I believe in these social norms, but I believe that it is necessary to create spaces in which you can actually talk about the truth. And increasingly what we're doing—and this is why inclusion is one of the dumbest ideas I've ever heard in my life—is you put somebody to create a low trust environment in every high trust environment’s discussion group. So diversity is good so far as it goes. Inclusion is good so far as it goes. Equity is a disaster, we can’t even discuss it. But the reason that inclusion is has become terrible is that we're trying to create a low trust environment in all previous high trust environments, and that thing means that we can't actually have any serious discussions. Like if you have, knowledge about why a venereal disease is spreading, it may require that people tell you that they're having sex with animals. That's a—you can't have somebody who's going to giggle. You can't have somebody who's going to shame. You have to have a completely dry-as-dust conversation about how venereal diseases can leap from non-humans to humans. And we need experts. And we need closed doors not to become star chambers.

01:23:51:21 - 01:23:56:22 Chris Williamson You mentioned before about being able to have an insight into what was happening in 2016.

01:23:57:01 - 01:23:57:11 Eric Weinstein Yeah.

01:23:57:14 - 01:24:03:04 Chris Williamson What do you think happens in 2024?

01:24:03:06 - 01:25:01:21 Eric Weinstein I don't know, I don't know, you know, I. I, I met with Robert Kennedy Jr not too long ago, and he was nice enough to have, my wife and I to his house. It's very clear that he's trying to harken back to a previous remembered America through his family, and he's willing to die for. It. There's no question that he's willing to die to seek the presidency. I think that Americans are going to have to come to grips with the fact that our two political parties—either one of them could win if they wanted. But the problem is, is that they want to win as a trough. So, in other words, imagine that what America wants is no more trough. You don't want to win playing to that aspect of America if it means getting rid of the trough, because the trough was your entire reason for running a political party.

01:25:01:21 - 01:25:05:02 Chris Williamson What do you mean when you say trough?

01:25:05:04 - 01:26:40:20 Eric Weinstein Assume that your party gets into power. Now you get to hire all of your friends into government positions. Then they get revolving door contracts with whoever they were regulating or dealing with. So effectively everybody's going to pig out and help themselves. Okay, we got Democrats into Congress, now they can trade their personal accounts and pass legislation and do far better than the market—you know, whatever it is. Imagine what Americans want is like, hey, stop the corruption. I don't trust why we're in Ukraine the way we're in Ukraine, because I don't trust why Hunter Biden is being given a cushy salary from a Ukrainian company. Well, what you're telling—what the population is telling the two political parties is: “End the troughs!” And the political parties are saying, “Okay, what else do you want? We can't give you that, because that's the whole point of why we do what we do. We're not public spirited. We're not thinking about America. We're not thinking about the future. We're not thinking about the good of the world, of the environment, or any of the stupid stuff that we are forced to talk about every four years. We're talking about swimming pools. We're talking about third wives, fourth homes, you know. You're getting in the way of that. So tell us what else you want that doesn't interfere with the troughs”. And Americans are pretty clear. It's like, get rid of the goddamn troughs. You're slop—you know, you're slopping each other. You’re pigs at a trough. And now the idea is that, since you're not doing anything, I want my ethnic group to be at the trough, too. So this has nothing to do with anything—we have to clear these people out. They're just bad people.

01:26:40:22 - 01:26:47:18 Chris Williamson Well, we're way too close to the 2024 election for anybody to be cleared out now.

01:26:47:20 - 01:26:48:16 Eric Weinstein Really?

01:26:48:18 - 01:26:51:07 Chris Williamson I mean, what's going to happen between now and November?

01:26:51:09 - 01:26:55:00 Eric Weinstein I don't know, I mean. How old is Joe Biden?

01:26:55:02 - 01:26:56:19 Chris Williamson I don't know.

01:26:56:21 - 01:27:15:16 Eric Weinstein Okay. What are the odds that Joe Biden has a debilitating event between now and November, including death? So he runs a one in 20 chance of dying in any given year. Or above that. So I don't think you know whether he's even going to make it to November—

01:27:15:18 - 01:27:16:18 Chris Williamson 81.

01:27:16:20 - 01:27:51:13 Eric Weinstein Yeah. You have no idea what—it's a million years between now and November. I don't know whether Donald Trump is going to be, you know, facing jail time. I don't know whether there's going to be an insurrection by MAGA people who feel that the Department of Justice is going after a candidate for political reasons. I don't know if people are going to look at Kamala Harris as, you know, the likely commander in chief. Why are you laughing?

01:27:52:11 - 01:28:12:02 Chris Williamson Kamala Harris is like—she's become a meme of a meme of a meme. So absent from public life, as far as I can see, that it's hilarious. You don't think it's hilarious?

01:28:12:04 - 01:28:26:20 Eric Weinstein Oh, it's hysterically funny. You're talking about Kamala Harris being in charge of the world's greatest nuclear superpower. It's it's a scream. You're talking about Joe Biden being in charge, or Donald Trump.

01:28:26:20 - 01:28:34:15 Chris Williamson Well, Trump will be older than Biden on this next reelection than Biden was when he first entered office.

01:28:34:17 - 01:29:17:19 Eric Weinstein Well, yeah. Biden began at 29 in the Senate in ‘72. Look, this whole thing is—Chris let me just be more forthcoming. People want to know why I've somewhat retreated from public life. I have no clue how to talk about this stuff. This whole thing is so incredibly stupid. Nobody has ever done this in the United States. We had an election in 1980 because Ronald Reagan was 69 years old. Age was central. We've never been in this territory before.

01:29:17:22 - 01:29:22:02 Chris Williamson Does that not mean that you should spend more time trying to grapple with ideas, if you're not sure about them?

01:29:22:07 - 01:29:23:05 Eric Weinstein What does that mean?

01:29:23:07 - 01:29:42:17 Chris Williamson That if your concern is—you mentioned people have asked why you stepped back from having more public conversations. One of the reasons is that a lot of the topics that you try to grapple with don't seem to make sense that much anymore. Is that not the time when you're supposed to grapple harder with them?

01:29:42:19 - 01:30:46:02 Eric Weinstein If somebody says to you, “Eric”—you know, a previous election—”Are you supportive of the Hillside Strangler or Ted Bundy? Go!” “Well, I don't know if Charles Manson might run as a third party candidate, so it's too early to say....” This is all so pathetically, crazily stupid. What am I supposed to do? Just say “get off my lawn” every four seconds? I don't know how to react anymore. There's no part of this world at the moment that looks sane to me. And, you know, I've done the requisite work, which is, “if that's the way it feels to you, then you should look at your own sanity”. Okay, let's let's entertain the idea that I've lost my mind. It's like, no, no, this is all completely one problem of Managed Reality.

01:30:46:04 - 01:30:57:14 Chris Williamson One of the things that I am concerned about to the back end of this year is whether or not whoever wins is going to be accepted in even remotely a peaceful way.

01:30:57:16 - 01:31:37:02 Eric Weinstein It doesn't mean the same thing as it used to. Look, there's some mystique and some majesty necessary to make these things work. You have to. Believe that the Supreme Court is a bunch of incredibly smart legal minds. You have to believe that the president of the United States is an exalted being who has power to make decisions on behalf of the country. You can't afford Nancy Pelosi's husband trading up a storm like this.

01:31:37:04 - 01:31:41:14 Chris Williamson Everything's become Instagram stories behind the scenes of the Kardashians.

01:31:41:16 - 01:32:21:20 Eric Weinstein Nobody trusts experts exist. When your kid needs a life saving surgery, you're going to find out that all your jawing off on Twitter about “screw the experts” doesn't mean anything to you. You're like, “save my child”. We need experts. We need institutions. We need lies. We need fictions. We need stories. We need adult-level, public spirited fictionalizations of the truth. I'm not claiming we don't. But now you've got this different class of people who says, “Okay, you don't want the truth. We need to have stories. Let's just make up stuff and put stuff in our pockets.”

01:32:21:23 - 01:32:26:16 Chris Williamson How much of it is coordination, how much of it's cowardice?

01:32:26:18 - 01:33:13:22 Eric Weinstein Well, I would rephrase that a little differently maybe. I would say, nobody smart has gotten anything to work like this in a long time. The reason we have Donald Trump versus Joe Biden is that everybody failed. I failed. I've been podcasting, reaching millions. I've been teaching people about all sorts of things. One of the things I find very funny is that there's, if you look at the negativity that follows you around, there are these very conserved things. One of them is “Eric goes on forever and says nothing”. If you look at the sheer density of information I've dropped on podcasts, I'll put that up against anybody, you know? But it's like, “We want Eric to disappear. We want Eric not to say things.”

01:33:13:24 - 01:33:16:08 Chris Williamson Who do you think is behind that?

01:33:16:10 - 01:33:19:15 Eric Weinstein I don't know.

01:33:19:17 - 01:33:20:22 Chris Williamson Because you stopped your podcast.

01:33:21:03 - 01:33:21:17 Eric Weinstein Yeah.

01:33:21:19 - 01:33:25:20 Chris Williamson I was a fan of that podcast. That first episode that you did with Peter I thought was was fantastic.

01:33:25:20 - 01:33:30:15 Eric Weinstein I can't tell you how many people, every day, “Where's The Portal? Bring The Portal back. What does it take to bring The Portal back?”

01:33:30:15 - 01:33:31:14 Chris Williamson Are you tempted?

01:33:31:16 - 01:34:15:23 Eric Weinstein Mick Jagger said something about Brian Jones. That has just haunted me, and he said, “Fame doesn't sit comfortably on anyone's shoulders, but there are shoulders upon which it appears not to sit at all.” And I thought, okay, if there's one guy who's good at being famous, it must be Mick Jagger. And for him to say it doesn't sit comfortably on any shoulders, if you just parse it, you think, oh, he's telling us something: “It looks like I'm good at being famous, but it's not easy and it's not something that's comfortable.” And then he makes the second point about Brian Jones, and he says, “there appear to be shoulders upon which it does not sit at all”. And I think I don't like the fact that you can't turn it off.

01:34:16:00 - 01:34:18:19 Chris Williamson It's a one way street for a very long time.

01:34:18:21 - 01:34:32:07 Eric Weinstein That's right. And you know, there's a point where you're wandering through Istanbul and somebody yells out “Eric Weinstein” and you're like, there's no way to get away from this.

01:34:32:09 - 01:34:34:20 Chris Williamson And you didn't like that?

01:34:34:22 - 01:34:54:15 Eric Weinstein Wonderful guy. Most everybody I meet is fantastic. I like lots of being well-known, but the toothpaste hasn't—I've hoped that the toothpaste would sort of go back in the tube, I could do a little bit of podcasting here and there, and it just doesn't work.

01:34:54:17 - 01:34:57:21 Chris Williamson So you don't, you at the moment are not prepared to bring The Portal back?

01:34:57:21 - 01:35:14:02 Eric Weinstein No, I'm thinking about it. I'm thinking about it because I can't get back to—look, I have fantasies about not being well known, and I don't—and I think it's too late.

01:35:14:04 - 01:35:15:04 Chris Williamson Deeper into the breach.

01:35:15:09 - 01:35:51:07 Eric Weinstein Look. But also, nobody wants to listen to this, you know? Remember what you're saying before, Milgram questions. I don't know. Let's play with it, because I think it's a fun. It's a fun. Idea. You ever heard somebody say something? Oh, the paparazzi, you're like, yeah, but actually, I believe it. I wouldn't want to live with paparazzi. The problem is, is that nobody's going to. Hear it for what it is. If I really dislike somebody, I want them to become famous. Let's see how they do.

01:35:51:09 - 01:35:58:19 Chris Williamson I came up with this idea. I put it in my newsletter last week. A titanic problem. You could also call it a champagne problem.

01:35:58:20 - 01:35:59:11 Eric Weinstein Okay.

01:35:59:13 - 01:36:27:14 Chris Williamson Titanic problem is an issue that everyone sees. You're in such a privileged position to deal with. This is an extra special type of tragedy. A tragedy that unfolds while everyone cheers. Like being on the Titanic after the iceberg, water up to your chin with everyone telling you you're so lucky to be on the greatest steamship of all time. And the Titanic is indeed so huge and wonderful that you can't help but agree. But also, you're feeling a bit cold and wet at the moment, and you're not sure why. It's from Adam Sirianni.

01:36:27:15 - 01:36:46:12 Eric Weinstein I, I didn't know you had that up your sleeve. That's really good. Yeah, yeah, I think, look, I like my ideas being well known. There's tons of being well known. That's fun. But in the aggregate, it's like somebody tells you you can have you can have an orgasm every three minutes, but you can't turn it off.

01:36:46:12 - 01:36:47:24 Chris Williamson And there's some people who have that.

01:36:48:01 - 01:37:07:03 Eric Weinstein I know it's a neurological disorder. And except it's 30s, right. And you can quickly see that you wouldn't sign up for that. Right. And so fame is like that. Is that do you really want to never know who sees you when you go out in public?

01:37:07:05 - 01:37:25:17 Chris Williamson I've been fascinated by the price that people pay to be someone that most of the world admires. And Ellen was recently on Lex's show, and he said, my mind is a storm. I don't think most people would want to be me. They may think they would want to be me, but they don't. They don't know. They don't understand.

01:37:25:19 - 01:38:35:10 Eric Weinstein I love that. I love that. Friend of mine said to me. Very dear friend said, I'm Eric. I'm always jealous of where you end up. But then I think about it and I'm. I realize I'm never jealous of how you get there. Right. Like, at some level. Well. The easiest thing is somebody is ripped. Wow, that must be awesome. Well, did you just figure in how much work that took? You know, I have this guy that I think the world of, Ryan Williams, who was a scooter kid who then did BMX and does these crazy tricks. Three seconds and, er, what he can do is amazing. And I worry about him. He's comp me tickets to Nitro Circus, which I very much enjoy. I don't see anybody I know there because it's a different slice of the world, I think. I don't understand why we all don't.

01:38:35:12 - 01:38:36:15 Chris Williamson Go to Nitro Circus every weekend?

01:38:36:21 - 01:39:05:15 Eric Weinstein —monster truck. I'm all in. But I look at how many times he fell. Doing this trick where he got the bike to rotate in an opposite direction, and he and the bike did opposite circles before they came back together. And I said, that's your Mona Lisa. And they started putting out a reel of like. How many times he didn't succeed at that trick.

01:39:05:15 - 01:39:08:11 Chris Williamson And hundreds of bailouts.

01:39:08:13 - 01:39:39:18 Eric Weinstein Yeah. There's no way in the world you could get me to do. I want to do the trick. I want to know what it feels like. But he's one of the world champion followers, right? And so, in large measure, I'm divided. I like having my ideas well known. 95, 98% of the audience figures out how to be respectful and reasonable. And there's just this hard core 2%.

01:39:39:20 - 01:39:43:20 Chris Williamson There's a article by Tim Ferriss called 13 Reasons Not to Get Famous.

01:39:43:20 - 01:39:44:09 Eric Weinstein Is that right?

01:39:44:09 - 01:40:23:09 Chris Williamson One of my favorite articles. It's over ten years old. So Tim Ferriss, if you think about his trajectory, it's really interesting. He sort of gets thrust into fame with the four hour workweek and has this sort of very unique. Angle on life where he's so intensely curious about the the way that you do something. So you would mention that you have a gratitude practice and you wouldn't just say, oh, what time do you do it on the morning? It would be what pen do you use? What notepads which prompts you using? Do you have a timer? You doing this in the sunlight? Are you doing this indoors? Outdoors? What sort of a seat is it all of these things. Right. He's very, very interested in the particulars.

01:40:23:09 - 01:40:24:10 Eric Weinstein Right.

01:40:24:12 - 01:41:03:18 Chris Williamson Then he gets this TV show, and he's part of this TV show where he tries to sort of hack his way very quickly through lots of different things. Do you know that he managed to make himself into a Thai boxing champion? No. So Tim read the rulebook of a particular subset of K1 Thai boxing, kickboxing, something like that. And he found out that if your opponent goes out of the ring three times in any bout, you win by default. So he just sprinted across the ring, grabbed his opponent, threw him out of the ring three times, and became a champion by doing that consistently. They then carved that back out of the rules and got rid of it. But he just had this.

01:41:03:20 - 01:41:05:08 Eric Weinstein This hacker mentality. Yes.

01:41:05:10 - 01:41:33:19 Chris Williamson Yeah. How can mentality was life hacking and then he talks about what actually happens when you reach the size of audience that most people aspire to have, and that there are strange externalities. There was a guy that camped outside of his house, managed to work out where his house was, maybe from metadata and photos of some kind. Right. And it camped outside of his house for a while, adamant that Tim was sending him secret messages in his podcast saying that he wanted to be with it.

01:41:33:20 - 01:41:34:15 Eric Weinstein Exactly.

01:41:34:17 - 01:42:07:24 Chris Williamson He had to start checking into hotels and to pseudonyms. He no longer posted photos of where he was going when he was going on trips, because people were reverse engineering it. Right. He uses this example that million to one odds happen eight times a day in New York City. Because if you have any sufficiently large data set, the law of large numbers suggests that within the catchment area of 100, how many people does how many people does Rogan reach per year? You know, individuals, a billion individual people.

01:42:08:01 - 01:42:09:11 Eric Weinstein But he's surrounded. By security.

01:42:09:12 - 01:42:10:00 Chris Williamson Of course.

01:42:10:03 - 01:42:44:21 Eric Weinstein So, you know, in part. One of the things that I'm trying to think about is you have to become rich enough to make. Use of the tools. And then you have to decide, okay, I'm going to go behind walls. And that's not what I ever wanted. I wanted to be able to go to Starbucks, not tell anyone, work on stuff that I care about. And, you know. There was something about being contacted by killers. It was a Colorado killer, I think, that killed five people in tattoo parlors who was trying to get in touch with me.

01:42:44:23 - 01:42:45:13 Chris Williamson Why?

01:42:45:15 - 01:42:49:03 Eric Weinstein I don't know. Because I'm a lightning rod for crazy people.

01:42:49:05 - 01:42:53:04 Chris Williamson What do you think it is? Is it something to do with the ideas of.

01:42:53:06 - 01:44:25:21 Eric Weinstein Well, let's see, almost. Everything is fake. We have to get off of this planet. The alien story has. Much more to it than you could imagine. Take Jeffrey Epstein is a construct of somebody tech. You know, we're going to go through all of these. The world is an incredibly interesting place, and we're pretending that it's incredibly boring. And I'm I have the stupidity to say, hey, can we go back to reality. And. And claiming that we should go back to reality. In a world which is suffused with, delusion means that. I think we also don't understand how many. People are driven crazy by small amounts of sanity. You know, if you imagine the Robert De Niro character in Taxi Driver, you imagine David Byrne of Talking Heads doing psycho Killer, right? It's somebody who's seeing through the world, and they're creating their own illusions, but then they're not aware that they're creating their own illusions. They just see that the world is fake and, you know, filled with sludge and sewage and. You don't want. To meet the taxi driver. Character.

01:44:25:23 - 01:45:01:14 Chris Williamson Yeah. This idea, the the champagne problem or the Titanic problem. Of. Almost everybody has less wealth and less fame than they want, which means that anybody who complains about the externalities that come with wealth or fame, the total addressable market for sympathy is basically zero. Yeah, the total addressable market for envy is very high. Who is going to say when lots of people aren't as well known, or aren't as wealthy, or are suffering in one way or another, that you seem to have somehow figured out? It's very difficult to garner sympathy for seemingly crying from your gilded cage.

01:45:01:14 - 01:45:30:22 Eric Weinstein But again, it's not about it's not about fame. Think about it in terms of privacy and insulation. Everybody wants privacy when they want privacy. Right? If we had a toilet here and said, feel free to use it, nobody's using it. But there was no walls, you would not. Think that that was being offered to you. Seriously. That's that's the way that you explain what this is, is a complete absence of privacy.

01:45:31:02 - 01:46:07:05 Chris Williamson The something similar. But it's about music, so you might be interested. I must have brought this up ten times. It's so fascinating. Lewis Capaldi, the Scottish singer, did a documentary, for Netflix that, he does this first album. He's singing songs that he made when he was a teenager. The same songs get recorded and released, and he has just the most phenomenal success. Billions of streams worldwide tour. He then has to write a second album. Covid happens.

01:46:07:07 - 01:46:07:20 Eric Weinstein Yeah.

01:46:07:22 - 01:46:59:17 Chris Williamson And he starts to develop a Tourette's twitch like this because of the pressure that he feels, some of it very rightly coming from the world, but some of it being internally generated as well. Yeah. You know, he can move at his own pace. And there's this it's interesting watching him go through it because you think, yes, there is all of this pressure and the world is expecting so much of you and you didn't ask for this. You just wanted to sing the songs that you sang and so on and so forth. But also there's not the same type of pressure that you're putting. You're imbibing this and then starting to spin it up yourself as well. And he is the perfect example of somebody, I think, who has the ability to become world class but doesn't have the ability to be world famous.

01:46:59:19 - 01:47:00:03 Eric Weinstein Yeah.

01:47:00:09 - 01:47:06:01 Chris Williamson And I think that those are two different skill sets, the ability to be world class and the ability to be famous.

01:47:06:06 - 01:47:25:23 Eric Weinstein Yeah. I also I. Think I like, I like people too much. I really enjoy just being able to be the normal human being in the world and move around and try out ideas. And, you know, a.

01:47:26:00 - 01:47:32:14 Chris Williamson Pseudonym. Nice pseudonymous Substack account.

01:47:32:16 - 01:49:08:06 Eric Weinstein Okay. So like for. Christmas, you know, tell Wilkin Felder's she was the bass player with Jeff. Beck. She's an amazing talent. Friend of mine. Came over for Christmas to Jews. We start hanging out and she wants to sing the song, the the gospel song the last month of the year. She just come off tour with the Allman Brothers Band. So there I am. Trying to follow her. Some song I've never heard I can't sing and playing guitar. And we're just clowning. Around and somebody taking video of it. And she's like, oh, we got to release this. I'm just thinking, if you release this, I'm going to have to listen to everybody. Eric thinks he's the world's greatest guitarist and it's embarrassing because she plays with Jeff Beck, and now Eric is making an ass out of himself. So I didn't release it. I mean, it was joyous. It was fun. It was silly and it's just like the the constant stream of moronic abuse. I don't even know. How much of it is from. Humans. I think a lot of it's from bots. I think Elon is very misguided. He there's this idea of, like anybody who shrinks from criticism or, you know, jokes. It's too thin skin. It's like you have no. Idea what your product is. Your product allows. Stalking. You don't know how. This isn't about people yelling. You suck. This is about people combing your. All your public record and saying, oh, well, if you didn't, if you didn't want us to know where you live, you wouldn't have thrown that check into the trash or.

01:49:08:08 - 01:49:28:00 Chris Williamson So I was going to bring this up before we before we started. I mean, it's a it's such a shame that we can't play music on YouTube without getting copyright struck. It's so annoying because I'd love to get you to react. Well, I'll do it once we finish. Yeah. I want to get you to react to my favorite band of 2023. All five of my songs from my Spotify Wrapped were from the same artist. Okay, the band called Sleep Token.

01:49:28:05 - 01:49:28:23 Eric Weinstein Don't know it.

01:49:29:00 - 01:49:49:20 Chris Williamson Okay, so they I don't even know how to begin to describe what this particular genre is. Okay, I get the listed under metal technically, but they have elements of rap. They have elements of hip hop, they have elements of jazz, a lot of elements that are off key, that are also brilliant, completely anonymous. Every single member of the band completely anonymous.

01:49:49:20 - 01:49:50:24 Eric Weinstein Oh, I love that.

01:49:51:01 - 01:50:22:09 Chris Williamson They have lore around the band. They, use what look a little bit like Nordic Runes on the album artwork. And if you track all of the different runes and then reverse engineer what they are, sometimes in the corner of tiny little pieces of album artwork, there's there's the notes and things that are the first song they made, made the songs or they made the albums in eras, and this one was this last one was a trilogy, the first song of the first album of this particular trilogy, which was released in 2018. There was different members in the band on the back side.

01:50:22:09 - 01:50:23:08 Eric Weinstein Right.

01:50:23:10 - 01:50:29:12 Chris Williamson Has the exact same melodic progression and sample as the last song of the last album.

01:50:29:14 - 01:50:30:13 Eric Weinstein Wow.

01:50:30:15 - 01:50:45:21 Chris Williamson These guys are just another level and an absolute other level. Last week, the not named I that this vessel that's one. Then there's two, three and four and then there's backing singers and they're referred to as like I, I, I and I've.

01:50:45:23 - 01:50:46:24 Eric Weinstein Loved.

01:50:47:01 - 01:50:52:21 Chris Williamson Three's birth certificate was discovered and released on the internet. Yeah. Through a telegram chat.

01:50:52:23 - 01:50:54:00 Eric Weinstein Yeah.

01:50:54:02 - 01:51:21:07 Chris Williamson They'd reverse engineered based on some that they'd looked at this particular, American Recording Copyright Association website where you have to legally list some of the names of the people, and you can reverse engineer who that is. And, oh, that person used to be in this band. And that sound, that his voice sounds like that person. And then we go back and see the live recording from that, we can work out where these people live.

01:51:21:09 - 01:52:12:22 Eric Weinstein This is exactly it. Right. And I tell a. Joke about this that's not funny at all. Which is, well, if. You didn't. Want us to understand your bracket jean status, you wouldn't. And publish it on the front page of the New York Times, you wouldn't be throwing out your dental floss. Yeah, well, okay. So I get it. You went through my garbage, you picked up my dental floss, you took it to a lab. And you came up with a cock and bull. Story that because. No particular link in. This chain may have been. Technically illegal. Everything you do is fine. And I also joke about this under the heading of Perfectly Legal. If you ask somebody whether something is. Legal. And they say it's perfectly legal, you know that you shouldn't. Be doing.

01:52:12:24 - 01:52:23:23 Chris Williamson I've never thought of that before, but that's so true. And interesting one that I heard recently is any website. This is from Kevin Kelly. Any website that has the word truth in the URL, you could immediately discount.

01:52:24:00 - 01:52:58:23 Eric Weinstein Yeah, yeah. I mean, there is this very funny sort of Newton's law that I asked to talk about with Ben Shapiro and Sam Harris, that Ben Shapiro is always talking about the need for reason, in areas which seem normative because he doesn't want to make an appeal to religious norms so much because he's known to be an Orthodox Jew, whereas Sam Harris is always talking about spirituality and morality. Because he's an atheist who is suspected of not having a moral code because he doesn't come from a god.

01:52:58:23 - 01:53:00:05 Chris Williamson You've got to count a signal, you.

01:53:00:05 - 01:53:13:08 Eric Weinstein Have to counter signal. And this is one of the reasons, for example, why people with unusual beliefs often take down other people with unusual beliefs, because you've already pulled out so many blocks out of the Jenga tower you can't afford anymore.

01:53:13:10 - 01:53:15:23 Eric Weinstein

01:53:16:00 - 01:53:43:03 Chris Williamson I was, reflecting on the odd horseshoe that we've seen from people like Douglas Murray and Sam Harris, who were very critical of religion, stellar in a large degree, but especially, you know, 20 years ago, kind of breaking down a lot of these walls, being involved in and being skeptical about the role of it. And yet the there's now almost a return to.

01:53:43:04 - 01:53:45:04 Eric Weinstein Church.

01:53:45:06 - 01:53:56:03 Chris Williamson Nostalgia for a grand narrative that unifies everybody. There's a concern about what has come in in its place. Is it wokeism? Is it is it Trumpism? Is it?

01:53:56:05 - 01:53:59:11 Eric Weinstein How do you see that?

01:53:59:13 - 01:55:01:09 Chris Williamson Stew tried to say baby and bathwater. It's easier to say we don't know the second order effects of the things that we do. Perfect example of this is after the introduction of the contraceptive pill, abortions went up and single motherhood went up. That's like a third or fourth order effect that nobody could have predicted. I don't think nobody. It would have taken an unbelievably sharp mind to have gone, okay, so if before contraceptive birth control is available reliably for the woman to use, an accidental pregnancy is seen as the man's obligation as opposed to the woman's choice, but after that, it's reversed, which means that the shotgun wedding goes out of the window because the onus can always be put on the woman. And that's interesting. Let's think that. Sometimes you don't know the like, better the devil. You know, in some ways.

01:55:01:11 - 01:55:08:09 Eric Weinstein I have a different take. On it. But, that's interesting.

01:55:08:11 - 01:55:08:24 Chris Williamson Give me take.

01:55:09:00 - 01:55:51:18 Eric Weinstein Well, okay. So one of my riffs is that if you look at the Declaration of Independence. The language says we hold these truths to be self-evident. You have to say, because. You have to. Say we are not going into an infinite sequence of wise statements. And by saying we hold these truths to be self-evident, you're saying you may not hold them to be self-evident? Bugger off. We hold these truths to be self-evident. If you can't hold these truths to be self-evident.

01:55:51:18 - 01:55:52:20 Chris Williamson Exclusionary in some way.

01:55:52:20 - 01:57:22:06 Eric Weinstein Absolutely. And so very often when you imagine that you're going to put everything on reason, anybody who's had an intelligent child knows. Why, daddy, why is that? Well, why is that? And eventually infinite regress. Well, I joke with my son. And I say, either the parent eventually says, because or you end up as a theoretical physicist. Because that's what? That's the exterminate. You have to have. An organizing principle that. Scales. And, you know, Sam's mistake. Is not understanding the even if Sam Harris can be a moral and ethical, somewhat rational human being at times. On his best day, take Sam Harris as a reasonable, rational memorial. Human being. You can't scale that. It doesn't scale. That's a big difference between. Saying it's impossible for an individual and saying it's impossible for a society. The next part of that. Part of the document is, that all men are created equal and are endowed by their creator. You have to make a reference to ground. Assumption where you are not going to go. Below. And if you. Don't do that, you end up in the infinite regress.

01:57:22:06 - 01:57:23:14 Chris Williamson That's good, because.

01:57:23:16 - 01:58:06:16 Eric Weinstein Yeah, I mean, if I ask. You as a. Computer. Divide one by three to infinite precision. Give me the answer. It'll say point three and it'll blow up. It's called a resource leak. You can't allow these infinite recursions seeking truth. And as a result of that, we didn't understand the the load bearing nature of religion in the atheist movement. Now I say. We that was never my problem. I'm an atheist who prays, as I've said. And people get very confused. Well, who do you pray to and what do you mean? And your brain knows how to pray. You knows. Your brain knows how to believe in a God. Whether there is a God or there is no God.

01:58:06:18 - 01:58:09:11 Chris Williamson How important is belief?

01:58:09:13 - 01:58:45:09 Eric Weinstein I don't know. But I've never met an atheist who never believes. And I've never met a religious person who always believes. Humans flit. In and out of belief in unbelief. It is the nature of our of our beast. And as a result of that, you know, I feel like, we're just not honest. If if you claim as an. Atheist that you never entertain the idea of an almighty and the creator, I don't believe. You. And if you're a. Religious person says like. My. My belief in my Lord is 100%. I was like, nope.

01:58:45:15 - 01:58:50:12 Chris Williamson There's a line from George Janko where he says, every man knows God when he's at his lowest place.

01:58:50:12 - 01:58:52:19 Eric Weinstein Okay. The foxhole.

01:58:52:21 - 01:59:57:16 Chris Williamson Yeah, yeah, it's very interesting. Very interesting to think about what's going to come next as, whether it does descend into this sort of. Post for the next one that you want to do that post apocalyptic blown out windows, spring mattress in the back corner world where nothing is unifying. Given that what we spoke about for the, you know, first 90 minutes is the world is confusing. Hard to make sense. We don't know what's real. We don't know what isn't. We don't know if we can trust the information that we're getting that's in front of our eyes. We don't know if we can trust the people that are around us. Do they have our best interests at heart? How do we make sense of the world? Religion provided a pretty good tool for that. And I, I, I, I'm not sure whether it's possible to be a cultural Christian or a cultural Muslim or a cultural Jew. I wonder how important the belief bit is to the religion bit.

01:59:57:18 - 01:59:59:09 Eric Weinstein Do you do you pray.

01:59:59:11 - 02:00:05:06 Chris Williamson And meditate, which is as close as you're going to get? What do you mean?

02:00:05:08 - 02:00:11:23 Eric Weinstein I'm going to try prayer. Sure. Well, I mean, what what prayers move you.

02:00:12:00 - 02:00:37:16 Chris Williamson I don't know enough. I mean, I took my mum to Ripon Cathedral on Christmas Eve, and we went through a full service of 90 minutes with 13, 14, 15 hymns and a bunch of prayers in between. A lot of Christmas trees and decoration and stuff, but I think that would have been the first time that I would have heard something like that since primary school, since I was 11 or 10.

02:00:37:18 - 02:00:58:11 Eric Weinstein Yeah. The religious music that moves you. See? If the major scale is the centerpiece of Western music.

02:00:58:13 - 02:01:01:01 Chris Williamson Do you need a guitar?

02:01:01:03 - 02:01:06:15 Eric Weinstein Okay. Why do you have a guitar?

02:01:06:16 - 02:01:16:21 Chris Williamson We have a guitar. Can we get the guitar? Come on. We need a need to be able to hear this.

02:01:16:23 - 02:01:27:18 Eric Weinstein Principle reason for bringing out. A guitar would be to stop me from singing. Which I think is an excellent idea. Okay, well, hey. No, but look, I can't sing. I can't play the guitar. I enjoy doing it to the internet.

02:01:27:20 - 02:01:33:16 Chris Williamson There you go. Well, look, this is a full size one. Last time we gave you one that made you look like you were a giant.

02:01:33:18 - 02:01:55:04 Eric Weinstein Okay, so if you just take the the major scale right? That's not really music. But try just the descending major scale. What is that to you?

02:01:55:06 - 02:02:02:16 Chris Williamson Sounds like Mary had a little lamb or something similar.

02:02:02:18 - 02:02:04:04 Eric Weinstein Now, what is it?

02:02:04:06 - 02:02:06:19 Chris Williamson Where do I know that tune from? What is that?

02:02:06:21 - 02:05:04:00 Eric Weinstein Joy to the world? The Lord has come right now. If you take a different scale. Right. And you go, the blues scale. Right. It's a little bit meaner. So you can ask the same question. If I do the descending scale. You know. What is that? It's like the intro for messing with the kid. Or it's close to sunshine of Your love. Right. So is a descending scale music? Not much. But when it's. Made music by pausing or by emphasis. One of the great tunes of, Western civilization has created joy to the world. You know, my my feeling. About it is. That song should move you and. All of these religious songs, They mean something. You know, I was in. A car train going. From Bulgaria to Kiev, and there are all of these Siberian miners. I brought my. Harmonica, and. They were they had a transistor radio. And at some point the radio gives out and they want to drink and dance because this is their holiday and they start getting really rowdy. And I realized I had the ability to make music. So I pull the harmonica out, I start playing some blues and everybody's dancing and having a great time. And they're like more I'm no longer whatever, and I'm paralyzed. I don't have that much of a repertoire on the. Harmonica and the one thing I could do was I. Start, playing Jewish songs, and this woman comes up to me and grabs me by my lapel and says, you know, in Russian, where do you know this from? Where do you like? I'm realizing that I'm in an anti-Semitic environment. And I think, and I've got a Siberian. Miner who. Recognizes that I'm playing Jewish music and I'm terrified. I'm paralyzed. I don't say anything. I pretend that I can't understand her in Russian. And she reaches into her bosom and she pulls out a giant Star of David. Right. And like, she's just looking. Me in the eyes like I know you. You know me. There's a way in which religious music is incredibly powerful and prayer is incredibly powerful. And. I think we're afraid to pray. You know, you say this in terms of meditation. We're afraid to submit to something bigger than ourselves, to use the the programing that we have that. That makes us feel.

02:05:04:02 - 02:05:47:17 Chris Williamson There's something that feels disingenuous about praying if you don't believe. And there's a line from Dan Brown's Angels and Demons, the movie Tom Hanks is speaking to the camera, and he's trying to get access to the Vatican archives. He wants to get down there to work out some secret that was left that he needs to find out who who's killing, who's killing everybody. The kind of lingo asks him, played by Ewan McGregor, and he says, do you believe, professor? And he starts giving some politicians answer where he skirts around the question, he says, I didn't ask that. I asked if he believed it, looked him straight in the eyes. And he says faith is a gift that I'm yet to be given.

02:05:47:22 - 02:05:53:20 Eric Weinstein

02:05:53:22 - 02:07:29:02 Eric Weinstein I don't. Believe it. We all have the gift of faith, but we don't have the ability to sustain it. We don't have the ability to import it into. All four quadrants. Of our minds. Look, I'm saying that I'm an atheist. I don't I. Don't believe in the stories about the deity. But that's not constant. You flit in and out. You know, my. Do you believe in Ray Charles? I do, do you? No, no, I'm. Sort of joking. But if I think about what did I say by Ray Charles, why was that song so powerful? Is basically bringing Saturday night and Sunday morning together. Right. There's a there's a religious sort of gospel choral aspect to it, and he's got the rillettes in the background. Echoing it, and he goes, and they go, he goes, oh, oh, oh, oh. That's, that's pretty, that's satanic Grunting. Going on on Saturday night. Right. And then you're going to show up in church and you're going to turn it into something else. Ray Charles was. Scandalous because he fuzed the secular and the sacred, the profane and the sacred. Do you believe in the devil? One of the. You know. You know this song. Crossroads by Robert. Johnson? Nope. Well, I can't.

02:07:29:02 - 02:07:34:06 Chris Williamson Let's see if you do like.

02:07:34:08 - 02:09:38:07 Eric Weinstein I don't know that I could. Do a Robert Johnson Ruby Country Blue, but, like, if this were an electric guitar, you probably know, Two. It went down to the crossroads. Try to flag myself around. Went down the crossroads. Try to flag myself around. All good people. They just passed me by him. He's talking about. Going to the crossroads to bargain for his soul. He wants to learn how to play the guitar. And that's powerful. Because you have this myth. You know, the devil goes down to Georgia or. You go to the crossroads to gain something in a Faustian bargain. How are you going to believe that with no Lord? You're going to screw. Yourself out of the ability to listen. To folklore, to mythology, to great literature? And that makes me sad. You know. It's like. Are you making a. Point of saying that you can't understand the religious person, but we need churches. And, Mandalas and mustards and synagogues, and we need them to behave non psychopathic. And you can't hate on the psychopathy. And divorce yourself from the power, you know, the power of the word and of song and of communal prayer and,

02:09:38:09 - 02:09:44:14 Chris Williamson Calming something. It's something I'm wistful for. And I wistful for a belief that I never had in a way.

02:09:44:15 - 02:09:47:00 Eric Weinstein You know,

02:09:47:02 - 02:10:09:11 Chris Williamson Yeah, there's, I think there's a particular Latin church. Chase, can you grab this, big guitar lately for me, please? One of the quickest growing denominations, I think, of church attendance in America is this thing that's all in Latin. We heard about this.

02:10:09:11 - 02:10:10:08 Eric Weinstein No.

02:10:10:10 - 02:10:18:04 Chris Williamson I can't remember what it is. And it's growing massively in the in a young age demographic under 30 or something. And the whole thing's in Latin.

02:10:18:06 - 02:10:19:18 Eric Weinstein It can be awesome, right?

02:10:19:20 - 02:10:21:22 Chris Williamson Well, I think I'm wondering.

02:10:22:01 - 02:10:50:23 Eric Weinstein Vatican 2nd May have been kind of a big mistake. Now. So. Because when you're forced to actually contend with what the words. Are in a modern context. They don't have the power that. They sometimes have as a. Spell.

02:10:51:00 - 02:11:24:05 Chris Williamson Where it's difficult to switch off a very particular type of critical, vigilant, analytical mind when what you're looking to try and do is allow the experience to wash over you. So perhaps, yeah. Not being it, unless you are fluent in Latin, being able to just enjoy the experience and just be. Maybe that is most of what you're trying to. Maybe that's most of what religious service was doing. Maybe it wasn't really anything to do with the words.

02:11:24:07 - 02:15:13:08 Eric Weinstein Very often it isn't. I mean, it depends, you know. So we're actually meeting on Shabbat. This is the I should have traveled here. We shouldn't be using electronic devices, but I'm not a practicing Jew at that level. But I think about. What we say over the wine when we pray. You know. We have this thing where we begin, They hear of a worker, she she by a mime. The. It's called diva. Like, hallelujah medium Harvey Miller to usher. So like, this is the sound of of Jewish prayer, right. And then you're thinking about what it says, and it's very moving to me. Because what it. Is is it's a, it's it's taken directly out of Genesis via a very vocal yom hashish. And it was, evening and it was morning, the sixth day. Right. And yom is day and she, she is six and Arab is evening and workers morning. So you know what the words mean. And you're actually. Recapitulating God's shifting. From work to rest. So as you come to understand what the words. Mean. It's not destroyed. By knowledge. You know, you know that old. Song by the. Rivers of Babylon that's related. To the grace that we say after. Meals? These are references that matter. And I think people are shocked. They don't know how much. Of their. Life comes from scripture. You know, you have. A round of firings at a company. Somebody says, I can read the. Writing on the wall. Well, do you know that that's Daniel 525. Do you know what the wall says? I think many, many. Take a look. First. You know, you've. Been measured and found wanting. Your lands will be distributed to the Persians or something like that. You know, these these are. Incredibly. Powerful. References that we. Live with. You know, you think about the Byrds to everything. Turn, turn, turn people's ears on. There is a season and a time and purpose under heaven. It's Ecclesiastes. You think about Jimi Hendrix going off. About two writers were approaching and the wind began to howl. That's Isaiah. Where are you? Where are you? With the power of the word. Are you afraid. To welcome it in? Are you worried that you'll lose your atheism? What are those two writers approaching? They come with news. That's the fall of Babylon. Who are the Joker and the thief? And that song. I believe they're on either side of Christ being crucified. Religion. Is interested in you. Whether or not you give a shit, it knows about you. And it finds its way into every aspect of your life. And if you're going to be an honest atheist, you have to admit that.

02:15:13:10 - 02:15:22:02 Chris Williamson Talking about younger people, have you seen the data showing the movement of teenage boys politically to the right? You've been looking at.

02:15:22:02 - 02:15:24:04 Eric Weinstein The where else are they going to. Go?

02:15:24:06 - 02:15:25:04 Chris Williamson And it's a good question.

02:15:25:04 - 02:19:41:24 Eric Weinstein I mean, I, I had a teenage boy, I still have one, but he's 18 now and I watched them be pushed farther and farther right by their schools. You suck. All of your instincts are bad. These girls are amazing. Look at you. You're pathetic. Be less masculine and more attractive. You're just barking at them constantly. They're not moving, right? They're moving out of your stupid way. You've given them what? Nothing. Nothing. One of my son's friends died recently by his own hand. And I don't know what kind of pressures he was put under. But. I watched those kids go through this pressure cooker created by this crazy parasitized, left wing educational movement. Get away from our sons, get away from our daughters, get away from our sons and wait for it. It's not left or right. I don't have a Republican bone in my body. Get the crazy people who do not understand human development away from our children. Stop giving our daughters terrible life advice. But like. That's one of these Milgram questions. What am I supposed to say? Let me speak abstractly so we don't get distracted with stupid stuff. Gender is about reproduction. And it's paired, and there's nothing you're going to do that's as good as the male female pairing that produces families. Yes, there's a ton of problems with that. There's a ton of problems with traditional femininity, with traditional masculinity. I actually believe that toxic masculinity used to mean something before it meant nothing. Right now. We are allowing our children to be parented by people who should be nowhere close to a child. Because development for humans is different. We're not like wildebeests, where you come out with programing, where you can walk on day one. We're basically not blank slates, but self-assembling computers. And what you put. Into a developing. Mind, you know what, normal. Child trying to figure out gender identity. Does not go through a process trying to figure out, oh, I like that dress. Do I want to marry. Somebody who's wearing it or do I want to wear it myself? That's a. Normal. Process that you go through in development. And if a parent. Hears that, they usually, you know, try to guide. Natural gender identity. Now what happens. When an administrator says, oh, he. Said he wanted to wear a dress. He's a girl. Everybody respect his choice. You're thinking, wait, what? You took a moment. That happens in every boy's life. And you turned it. Into a trans affirmation. Moment. And then you tried to, like, freeze it in. And let me guess, you really just want to protect something, which is great. Some people want to protect trans kids. Trans kids exist. They have life very hard on them. Okay, let's ask how many. Trans kids got manufactured by this. Dye movement? Versus how many would occur naturally. And you have. Type one and type two error. You have a trans kid who was always going to be a trans kid that wasn't properly treated. That's terrible. I agree with the. Diplomat that. You have another collection, huge collection of normal. Kids were never going to be trans and you pushed them towards this.

02:19:41:24 - 02:19:49:22 Chris Williamson I had J. Michael Bailey on the show who his paper on rigged rapid onset gender dysphoria.

02:19:49:22 - 02:19:50:17 Eric Weinstein Yeah.

02:19:50:19 - 02:20:54:17 Chris Williamson Was pulled very, very rare that this happens. And. I learned during my research for that about the left handedness argument for both gay and transsexual people. So in the Middle Ages, it was seen as being a mark of witchcraft, of being touched by the devil, that you were left handed, which meant that people who were hit with their left handedness. Yeah, I think about 12% maybe of the population is left handed, something like that. But during the Middle Ages, it was significantly less. The, ceiling gets released and people are free to be their true left handed selves and more people become left handed. I can now fully manifest that forward, and that is an argument that gets put forward a lot for a while. Now that we have released the lid on the pressure cooker that was tamping down people's natural trans or gay proclivities or whatever, they're now free to be themselves. But that doesn't explain why gender dysphoria appears to occur in clumps. It's not evenly distributed across all.

02:20:54:17 - 02:21:50:02 Eric Weinstein So you linked two. Things that I think. Have to be unlinked. We are fighting the last war because we got male homosexuality wrong. I'm old enough to remember when it was a lifestyle choice. Right. And I had gay friends in college. Who said a choice. You know, it's like a quiet. I didn't choose this. We're lumping a bunch of stuff together. I don't think male homosexuality has almost anything to do with female homosexuality. I think calling them both homosexuality is very confusing. There's something that seems much more obligate about male homosexual is highly conserved. I don't think it's unnatural. I think it's it's part of the design of humans. We haven't quite figured out why it's there.

02:21:50:04 - 02:21:57:09 Chris Williamson I don't disagree, but I think the left handedness argument makes sense when it comes to homosexuality, but not when it comes to the trans issue.

02:21:57:11 - 02:23:05:02 Eric Weinstein No, it makes sense and both. But the size of the effect is the problem you're claiming. Yeah, I have no doubt that there were some people who had transgendered brains who were closeted, you know, transvestites and. That that a closet. Somewhere in the basement where they got to be their true selves. No question that that exists. The issue is that you created an enormous amount of like, type two error. So you could go after a much smaller amount of. Type one error. You created all sorts of negative stuff. By not. Balancing type one and type two. And that's an unforgivable. You're not. Actually the defender you think. You are. You're somebody who's destroying some lives to privilege others. And why have you made that decision? I completely agreed with you, like I, I won't say there are only two genders. You know why? Because it's not true in humans. Yeah.

02:23:05:04 - 02:23:07:11 Chris Williamson Two genders or two sexes.

02:23:07:13 - 02:23:17:18 Eric Weinstein Well, first of all, the gender in sex used to be largely synonymous before we decided that one was in some sense obligate, biological and the other was software program.

02:23:17:20 - 02:23:19:14 Chris Williamson Well, that was a lexical game. That was, I believe.

02:23:19:14 - 02:23:20:21 Eric Weinstein In the 1950s.

02:23:20:21 - 02:23:22:14 Chris Williamson That was played to try bifurcates.

02:23:22:15 - 02:23:35:13 Eric Weinstein Yeah. But you can you can make an argument. That you need a term. I don't think the gender should be purposed for that, but you could make it an argument that just like abstracting male and female into top and bottom had some utility.

02:23:35:15 - 02:23:38:22 Chris Williamson Right? Okay. So what do you mean when you talk about that?

02:23:38:24 - 02:24:48:18 Eric Weinstein Intersex is a really important category to me. I know people who are. Intersex and they're screwed. They were screwed because our society had no way of dealing with them. The gender binary is so strong that somebody. Through no fault of anybody, is born with. Ambiguity in their genitalia and their chromosomes. Something. So yes, there are two intended sexes or genders, but nature isn't good enough to hit that mark all the time. And those are those are human beings. Those are souls. And the sloppy right wing thing, which is find the Schelling point where you just sit there and you say there are only two sexes and two genders. I understand why you're doing it. You're trying to stop this crazy conversation that's taken off. So it's not like I don't have sympathies with why you're saying that. But when I bring up, you know, my favorite example is persistent Eulerian duct syndrome, where somebody goes into their doctor having trouble having a kid and it's like, well, you have twigs and berries, but you've also got a uterus. You're female on the inside.

02:24:48:20 - 02:25:00:23 Chris Williamson Does that person produce both sperm and eggs? No. Right. No. But surely that's the definition. That is the that is the line in the ground around male and female large gametes.

02:25:00:23 - 02:25:43:18 Eric Weinstein Yeah, but sorry, the gentleman who goes into his doctor and find out that he's got a uterus. Who is he? If he wants to be male, I understand why he wants to be male. If he wants to. Be able to talk about the fact that he got handed some very strange cards by, by the creator in her infinite wisdom. I want him or her. However that person conceives of itself to be. That's that's a soul to me. And I don't like. The energy of saying there are only two sexes and two genders, and that's it. It's like, I get it. I understand what you're trying to do. You're trying to say that there are two intended sexes and genders. It's reproductive. It's nature. I get it.

02:25:43:19 - 02:25:50:18 Chris Williamson It depends on how we're going to define sex, because if it comes down to gamete size that's that is binary.

02:25:50:20 - 02:25:54:18 Eric Weinstein Sure. Okay. But what do. You do about the edge category. The edge case.

02:25:54:18 - 02:25:57:07 Chris Williamson But no one's producing both. So there are none.

02:25:57:09 - 02:30:19:21 Eric Weinstein I don't know that nobody's producing. Both. Maybe that's a fact. You know usually. The issue is, is that you have this this list of. Homologs, right. So that the clitoris maps to the penile shaft in the labia majora, map to the testicles. And what you're doing. Is you're taking a common female. Template. I believe, and you're treating it through the s r y cascade, differently during development so that the default is female. But you also have this ability. Through. This one protein to create a cascade that creates male at. A female. Okay. That doesn't always work out. Now you've got an ambiguous situation, and you've got a culture that basically can't think in ambiguities. That's where. A lot of this frustration with the gender binary comes. From is that, you. Know, somebody's in this in a category where they're not really one thing or the other at a hardware. Level. I believe that beyond that, there's also a software level. There are people with male brains and female bodies. And conversely, I don't understand this stuff, but I believe that that's true. If you ever have the opportunity to interview Deirdre McCloskey, who used to be, I think, Dennis McCloskey. A very. Famous economist. I had the. Pleasure of speaking with her a while. Back and, you know, one of the things that she said. Is that she wasn't doing this to be hotseat artsy. She was going to she wanted to die. A an old lady, not an old man. It wasn't wasn't a sex. Thing, was just the fact that she'd been. Uncomfortable. In a male body her whole. Life. So I'm using the term her. Do I have to use the term now? No, I could use the term him or his. But why would you do that? Don't. Don't you have. Enough compassion that somebody ruined their family life and went through hell. And in. Public because it was so painful to be in the wrong body? I get it, okay, now you have that compassion. And how many lives are you going to ruin over that? How many lives are you going to ruin pretending that this is an enormous cohort? So to the extent. That I have a slogan and I basically never speak about. Trans. My slogan is make trans accepted and rare. Make it rare means use the developmental environment. In order to give good coaching about male. Strategies and female strategies for life, don't relitigate the fact that we screwed up male homosexuality. Just take your lumps. We screwed it up. It's part of the human condition. It's never going to go away. It's different from female homosexuality. Almost certainly. We don't exactly know why it's here. We've been blessed with untold riches, particularly in the memetic realm from male homosexuals. It is what it is. And now we're going to refight this over trans where. No, I think you have tremendous opportunities through development to assign behaviors. Is the skirt for a female object? No. The lungi. In South. Asia is a skirt. Men wear. It. I have a lungi. It's like telling a Scottish person that he's a. He's he's a cross-dressing. What are you, an idiot? If you ever dealt with a Scotsman, you do not want to make that mistake. They will let you know very quickly who they are. We're out of our minds. We're out of our minds. We're creating so much misery for these young men and young girls. And, you know, just it makes me upset because we don't love our children enough. We don't love our children enough to tell these teachers, hands off my kids. Go work out your weird stuff. I get it, they get away from our children.

02:30:19:23 - 02:30:29:05 Chris Williamson I came up with this idea of toxic compassion, which was something I was looking to name metastatic maternity. Yes, yes, like an Oedipal complex.

02:30:29:07 - 02:30:45:03 Eric Weinstein Like the need to smother and protect something so badly that you just want to do violence to somebody because you want to get your rocks off that you. There is this problem with compassion.

02:30:45:05 - 02:30:51:24 Chris Williamson But if you prioritize short term emotional comfort over everything else, you end up with some very strange externalities.

02:30:52:01 - 02:30:57:07 Eric Weinstein That's not just that, though. I mean, I wonder if you're talking. About the same thing.

02:30:57:07 - 02:32:27:17 Chris Williamson Let me know. Let me read you mine. Toxic compassion is the prioritization of short term emotional comfort over everything of a truth reality, actual long term outcomes, flourishing everything. It optimizes for looking good rather than doing good. This is seen in much of popular culture as the desirable, fair and empathetic thing to do. And it's everywhere. People would rather claim that body fat has no bearing on health and mortality outcomes to avoid making overweight individuals feel upset, even if this causes them to literally die sooner or have a worse quality of life over the long run. Parents would rather allow children to play computer games or watch screens and access social media every night instead of dealing with the discomfort of taking it away from them, even if it ruins their brain development, social skills and self esteem. People would rather say that children growing up in a single parent household suffer no worse outcomes than those from two parent households, even if this misleads parents, children and teachers about why kids behave the ways they do. Elon Musk recently responded to criticism about his political alignment and contribution to climate change. He identified how big of a shift Tesla had caused in the electric vehicle market, and the downstream impact impact of that on the environment, saying that he's done more for the climate than any other human in history. What I care about is the reality of goodness, not the perception of it. And what I see all over the place is people who care about looking good while doing evil, telling people what they want to hear, giving them immediate gratification, and avoiding saying anything that could cause distress. Prioritizes appearing good over actually doing good. It's dangerous.

02:32:27:19 - 02:38:08:12 Eric Weinstein I'm with you. You are in an area I. Think a lot. About, and I don't want to. I don't want to. Attack something that you're saying, but I, I conceive of this differently. There's a point. About sanctimony and appearing. To do good while doing. Evil. That is different from the need to. Parent and protect. Part of what's going on is a redistribution of empathy, which is being called an expansion of empathy. Right. So the idea is we are going to be extra specially sympathetic with some groups and empathic with their their trauma, their pain. And we are going to take away compassion. From other groups. So, for example, if you look at suicide statistics in the United States, from all of the rhetoric, you would. Think that young. Black Asian females would be, at the top of the suicide statistics. But it's really middle aged white. Men who are. Killing themselves, incredible numbers. And you bring up the statistic and. There's an exchange. Rate in terms of human mis measure, misery that is measured in suicide. It's a pretty unforgivable thing when you kill yourself, you're probably in an extremely negative state of personal trauma. So what does the compassion group think about the fact that the group most likely to end their own lives is exactly the group that is faulted? You know, for the patriarchy, it's astounding. Oh, poor little white men in the Midwest had their privilege taken away. What the hell are you talking about? You're talking about people killing themselves. You're talking. About fathers and grandfathers. Dying. What we're talking. About is a redistribution of compassion. We're talking about taking compassion away from people of European descent. We're talking about taking compassion away from men. We're talking. About taking. Compassion away from a business person like Steve Jobs, who might have pancreatic cancer and be dying from it in his 50s because he had the privilege of building billion dollars. Companies. Who the hell are you? What is your problem? What? Come out of the shadows and admit to what you want. You want a redistribution of compassion. You're calling this. Empathy. It is anything but. Empathy. Empathy would be an expansion. Of our understanding of each other's problems. And woes. This is basically saying that these people are worthy of compassion, and these people aren't. The child who might have been wronged. For not having a clear gender identity. And that would have happened under any era in in any circumstance. That's one life. And then you have a bunch of lives over. Here that are children who are pushed toward. Sexual reassignment surgery and are sexually mutilated for no reason at all because of of developmental, you know, reasons that they got bad advice from adults while they were trying to assemble themselves. And you're compassionate about this and you're not compassionate about that. I don't want you anywhere near a school. If you're not willing. To deal with type one and type two. Error. You don't belong around our children. If you don't. Understand. The human development is important and that it is very hard. To improve. On the gender binary. That is. Even if there are edge. Cases, the gender binary is there for. A reason and you don't have a clue. How complicated the gender binary. Is. You probably haven't even studied sexuality in different species that assign gender. You know, flatworms assign it based on a contest. The winner is male and the loser is female. You don't like that? Tough luck. You know. Bedbugs only practice traumatic insemination. You don't like that? I'm sorry. How are you going to engineer the entire world. Around your crazy theories of gender and sexuality? We need these people. Away from children. They're working out their own stuff. We need to recognize that homosexuality, particularly among men in an obligate fashion, is a normal, conserved part of the human experience that basically there is a gender binary, that there is a small number of edge cases at a hardware level, there's a small number of cases meant at a software level. We have to be compassionate about all that, but we can't take compassion away from everyone else. That's a message. To both the left and the right. Stop saying there are only two sexes. It's offensive. And and stop forcing people to say something so simplistic because you're threatening their children.

02:38:08:14 - 02:39:34:17 Chris Williamson There was a story about Winston Churchill's father that I wanted to tell you about. In September 1893, Churchill was admitted on his third attempt to the Sandhurst Military College. He wrote to his father, I was so glad to be able to send you the good news. On Thursday, his father, a former Chancellor of the Exchequer and the leader of the House of Commons, wrote back a week later the full text. The reply doesn't seem to be available, but we do have glimpses. You should be ashamed of your slovenly, happy go lucky harem Skyrim style of work. Never have I received a really good report of your conduct from any headmaster or tutor, always behind incessant complaints of a total want of application to your work. You have failed to get into the 60th rifles, the finest regiment in the army. You have imposed on me an extra charge of some 200 pounds a year. I do not think that I'm going to take the trouble of writing you long letters. After every failure you commit and undergo, I no longer attach the slightest weight to anything you may say. If you cannot prevent yourself from leading the idle, useless, unprofitable life you have had during your school days, you will become a mere social wastrel. One of the hundreds of public school failures, and you will degenerate into a shabby, unhappy and futile existence. You will have to bear all the blame for such misfortunes. Your mother sent her love. Churchill was 19.

02:39:34:19 - 02:39:39:03 Eric Weinstein What do you make of it? Come on.

02:39:39:05 - 02:40:07:24 Chris Williamson Tough to read. It makes me think about what drove Churchill to be the person that he became. It makes me think about the price. A game that people pay for the successes that others look at and have envy of, Revere, admire. Remember, we don't know what drives people. They often don't know what drives them as well when they look sufficiently deep. But that's rough to read.

02:40:08:01 - 02:40:09:15 Eric Weinstein Say more about that.

02:40:09:17 - 02:42:02:12 Chris Williamson The guy goes on to be perhaps the greatest leader of the 20th century, one of the greatest leaders of all time. He stops Nazi Germany on just this domino fall as they move through Europe. Every single country that they come up against in the first one that they hit, that they find some proper resistance from, is the Battle of Britain up against Britain. He is prepared to play a game that nobody else in the British government is prepared to play. There's a great book called Churchill's Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, and basically the Brits saw as they entered World War Two, they saw the way that guerilla warfare tactics were so uncouth that one of the other military leaders was quoted as saying, if that's what it takes to win, then I am prepared to lose. And Churchill took whatever the opposite approach of that was. So he begins to find renegade scientists and inventors. People that can do guerrilla tactics. They can break down bridges, they can sew distrust, and they create the first limpet mine underwater magnetic mine. And these guys are doing it by buying up all of the condoms in villages so that they can water, protect aniseed balls that they know will reliably dissolve at the particular all of these different things. Just this crazy insight. That man, the slovenly, happy go lucky harem Skyrim style of work. If you cannot prevent yourself from leading the idle, useless and profitable life you have, I no longer attach the slightest weight to anything you may say. I know it makes me sad to think that Churchill may have done so much great in his life, and yet never felt enough because of the source code they had programed into him.

02:42:02:12 - 02:43:33:10 Eric Weinstein Yeah. Unwinnable. Unwinnable. Parental love is an incredible engine. But I also see love in that letter. You see? Imagine there was no World War Two. Imagine there was no Nazi regime. What was he. Supposed to do with his life? Open a dry. Cleaner. Was he supposed to become a. Vice president for inventory at a. Large company? Well, what was Winston. Churchill supposed to do absent Adolf Hitler? God, this is just so hard to even talk about and think about. Greatness. You're supposed to have great people under glass. I call this, you know, break glass in case of emergency people. We don't have any. If you had trouble now, who would you go to? You know, you're from the UK. I don't think you're. A biologist, but you know who David Attenborough is. What is the. UK's opinion of David Attenborough?

02:43:33:12 - 02:43:34:18 Chris Williamson Almost universally loved.

02:43:34:19 - 02:44:59:08 Eric Weinstein Universally loved. I don't know if you must know an ex-girlfriend because you said all, But, Yeah, he's a national treasure of the UK. We're supposed to have tons of those people. I don't know of any. We've beaten up everything we have. And if if somebody attacks, you know. I've made this point before, but everybody focuses on. The wrong. Speeches of Neville Chamberlain. You want to get choked up? Look at his. Resignation. Speech. That thing is. A thing of wonder. His point is, this is the move that Hitler doesn't see coming. Hitler does not see that I'm going to resign for the good of my country, and that Winston Churchill has asked me to stay on. So you got you. Guys better know what you're doing, because you're going to have to. You're going to have us to deal with the UK needs to get back in the game. Let's just be honest about it. I don't know what the hell is going on in the UK. It makes me very angry and very sick now. So I don't know. I was at. Do you know Ditchling. Some estate that Winston Churchill was at in the UK, not far from.

02:44:59:08 - 02:45:04:01 Chris Williamson Oxford? It sounds like every other. Yeah, yeah. A state that exists. Yeah, yeah.

02:45:04:03 - 02:45:31:09 Eric Weinstein I was there for a meeting. Was a quiet meeting. There were lots of people in the British Foreign Service there, and they're all impeccably educated and spoke multiple languages and all this stuff. And they were all, like, moping about. You know. Oh, well, you. Know, of course, with the US, there's nothing really for us to do. And this is no longer the UK of the previous blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I was like, what. The hell is. Wrong with you people? You have this. Incredible role to play.

02:45:31:11 - 02:45:38:19 Chris Williamson Yeah, there's definitely a degree of defeatism. But yeah, like playing second string.

02:45:38:21 - 02:45:40:08 Eric Weinstein Walk it off.

02:45:40:10 - 02:45:41:01 Chris Williamson Dude, this.

02:45:41:01 - 02:46:21:24 Eric Weinstein Your special forces are still the envy of the planet. Everybody knows how tough the UK is when it comes to special forces. Your facility with the language is second to none. And it's not just that accent. It's the. Fact that you live it culturally. There's so much, quirkiness, tolerance for. Eccentricity, for brilliance, not just excellence. That is deep in the English soul. And I have no idea. What the UK is doing. Yeah. You're smaller, you lost your empire. Tough luck. And walk it off.

02:46:22:01 - 02:46:28:12 Chris Williamson It feels a little bit like, Someone who's given a ceremonial.

02:46:28:14 - 02:46:31:02 Eric Weinstein Oh, stop it.

02:46:31:04 - 02:46:51:24 Chris Williamson No. When you look at, let's say there's a large debate that's going on this some sort of meeting of of countries and the UK. Is there, and it seems like that there is a token gesture to some bygone dynasty. We we must remember to invite the Brits because it's it's it's it's important that they have a seat at the table.

02:46:52:01 - 02:46:57:00 Chris Williamson I don't, I don't know, I don't I don't feel like we're forging forward in the world. I don't, I don't know.

02:46:57:02 - 02:47:36:22 Eric Weinstein Yeah. You weren't, you weren't, you weren't doing enough. You aren't doing enough. But you want to know from. Your little brother. Get back in the game. Walk it off. Cut it out. You're incredibly important. Okay, so let's say you're small. So you're relatively small as a market. And so. Why did Jim. Watson have to go over to the Cavendish Laboratories to do. DNA? You know. Think about all the things that came out of the UK. I'd kill for. The Dirac equation to have been invented in the. US. Have some pride in yourselves.

02:47:36:24 - 02:47:40:14 Chris Williamson There's a lot of criticism at the moment about multiculturalism in the UK.

02:47:40:16 - 02:47:41:23 Eric Weinstein What does that mean?

02:47:42:00 - 02:47:57:23 Chris Williamson That as you enter, maybe Heathrow, maybe Gatwick may be one of the tube stations coming out of there. It's something like diversity is our strength is one of the taglines. And there are a lot of people that are, okay.

02:47:58:00 - 02:48:14:21 Eric Weinstein So let's fight this out because I want to do this. I really do. Undoubtedly, you know, many. People of Indian Pakistani origin who speak, with an Oxbridge accent. Right. And they have including.

02:48:14:21 - 02:48:15:15 Chris Williamson Our prime minister.

02:48:15:21 - 02:48:56:06 Eric Weinstein All sorts of mannerisms had. Noticed the joke. The UK. Is also a. Software product. You can teach people to think as if they've always been. I mean, look, let's be honest. Your royal family is partially German. Think about the UK as a software product. Imagine that you can load that software into a mind no matter what the skin color looks like. It's the software that we're attached to much more than your hardware.

02:48:56:12 - 02:48:59:22 Chris Williamson I don't think we're getting that level of integration.

02:48:59:24 - 02:50:17:17 Eric Weinstein But depends. With which groups. You have plenty of, Ashkenazi Jews. Who are completely insane. I mean, I just brought up Paul Dirac. Dirac isn't a, typically British name. It's French. Right there, all sorts of people. Who are quintessentially English. Who aren't historically. I have a. Good friend from way back, Marcus De Soto. Who, never really. Thought about the fact that his. His last name is totally French. You know. What is he? A fellow of the Royal Society and. OBE whatever it is that he is, you know, it's just. Yeah, I think I think you guys are much better than you think you are. And I don't know what got into your. Tea, but. We can't afford. For the UK in the Anglophone universe to keep sobbing like this. You know, I, I chew out the Australians all the time. It's like, my God, you have this great country far away from Europe. This is your time to lead. The US is stumbling. What?

02:50:17:21 - 02:50:18:20 Chris Williamson Do something with it.

02:50:18:22 - 02:51:41:02 Eric Weinstein Do something with it, new Zealanders, come on guys. No, I look I'm. Incredibly happy to be part of the Anglophone. World and not just. In terms of the language, in terms. Of cultural norms, in terms of all of the. Things I say. We've. Contributed to the world. I'm not. British, I've never. Held a British passport, but I very much feel like. You know, the great science that came out of the UK. Is part of my heritage, you know? And by the way, you know, look at a map of the names of. Surnames in Scotland and Ireland. And it's like a who's who of everything that happened. It's just I'm so proud. At some level of this tradition. I sometimes tell somebody. That you can tell. That a man is only partially educated. If the word Hamiltonian. Means something, because. Which Hamilton the Hamilton. Of mathematical. Physics, the Hamilton of biology, the Hamilton of US historical fame. I'm very I'm I'm very bullish on. Pride in the Anglophone universe. And we've got to stop moping around. And the UK is supposed to lead.

02:51:41:04 - 02:52:35:16 Chris Williamson It's been a while. There's a really awesome Netflix series. World War two from the front lines, I think it's called. So they've used a combination of AI and archive footage to recolor and put into 4K this entire series, and it's outstanding. And there's one about the Battle of Britain, and it's been a while. I moved away from the UK and I had my problems with it, and I tried for a long time to try and sort of nudge the culture as best I could from within my business or whatever I was doing, and then just thought that I can't, that I'm trying to shovel sand away from the seashore here and it's just not working. So I've come over to America. I've flourished since I've been here. But that was the first time watching that and looking at that degree of spirit. That was the first time in quite a while where I've thought to myself.

02:52:35:18 - 02:52:36:06 Eric Weinstein Yeah.

02:52:36:08 - 02:52:47:02 Chris Williamson Like that's that's something that I can genuinely be proud of. It's been almost as long as I can remember, since I genuinely thought I'm proud of being British.

02:52:47:04 - 02:53:03:03 Eric Weinstein Come to Saint Helena. Seriously, you've got a speck in the. Middle of the Atlantic Ocean below the equator. I just spent a week there. Do you know about Saint Helena?

02:53:03:07 - 02:53:07:06 Chris Williamson I did the first time I've ever heard those two words put together in my life. Okay?

02:53:07:08 - 02:55:26:18 Eric Weinstein They're the remnants of the British Empire called the British Overseas Territories. Right. And you have, like, Gibraltar and Diego Garcia, Ascension, Tristan da Cunha, Pitcairn, all these sort of bits and pieces. That is what's left. It's an island of around four. Thousand people where Napoleon died. And during his second exile, after Elba, because it was so secure. Apparently it's the second most fortified island in the world after Malta. It's an unbelievable place. People are incredibly proud of being British. And I believe that William is going. To visit at the end of this month. And there it's been 20 years since a royal visit of Prince and. In any event, one of the things that. I loved about being in Jamestown, Saint. Helena, is the pride that people have in being British and being under the British order. And we just can't afford. For you guys. I mean, look, when I say lead, it doesn't mean the US isn't going to lead. You have a different leadership role, use it. But we are in. Crisis right now. We all remember what what you know, it sounds. Like to be Winston Churchill. Right. We know what. That voice sounds like. And it's very painful for us. That actually, you know, I'm thinking back to the problem is which. Diversity is our strength campaign. It's like some visual diversity. If you fly British Airways and you look at that. Safety reel, it's a joke. I mean, they're just trying to find everybody who they could find. You know, who. Displays some kind of visual diversity. Know the power of it. You know the name Michael Atiyah? He was the. The master of Trinity College. Cambridge. One of the greatest mathematicians of all time, certainly of the 20th century. The name of tea is what Lebanese. Nobody thought about him as Lebanese. We thought about him as British. I think you guys are much better. At this stuff. Than you think, and. You've fallen for the wrong kind of diversity. This kind of. Visual. Diverse.

02:55:26:18 - 02:55:27:11 Chris Williamson Shallow. Diverse.

02:55:27:11 - 02:55:35:24 Eric Weinstein Yeah. Shallow diversity. Don't be afraid to be British.

02:55:36:01 - 02:55:40:18 Chris Williamson What are you working on next? What's next for you?

02:55:40:20 - 02:56:20:22 Eric Weinstein Yeah, it's a problem. I'm supposed to say something like, I've got a special coming up, or. A book. I'm thinking about writing a book. But. Look, the most important thing that I have is I have a possible expansion of our two main theories in physics. And nothing else compares to that, even if it's wrong. A decent probability, which could be, you know, imagine it were 1 in 100 or 1 in 1000, which I it's far north of there in my estimation.

02:56:20:22 - 02:56:21:14 Chris Williamson That it's wrong or.

02:56:21:14 - 03:00:51:07 Eric Weinstein It's right. No, that it's. It's the that it's right. I think it's much greater than those odds. And of course you have to believe that or you wouldn't be working on it. But it's also the case that there aren't that many people who have even ballpark level skills to say what a theory would be. That's hope for me. Can you imagine if. Well, let's. Just imagine next week somebody said, you know, actually, this looks right. We could start dreaming about looking up at the night sky and seeing it as a bucket list. Where do you want to go? You could ask questions about. Is there any way to harvest the zero point energy from all the quantum oscillators? You could say. Is there dark chemistry? Well, you have dark matter. We could have dark matter. At. Some level, this room is filled with dark. Matter. Neutrinos are effectively dark matter. The only thing. That can grab them is, gravity, which is way too weak. And, And the weak force, which is too weak. So in general, we're just being irradiated by neutrinos morning. Noon and night. Imagine. That you had slower moving particles than you could build things with them, and they're just weren't coupled to the matter that we see here. So they passed through ordinary matter. If my theories were. There'll be incredible things to play with. And one of the things that I find fascinating is that it becomes this issue of psychology, like, why is he pretending that he has a theory? I'm not pretending. Why does he think. You. Know, who does he think he is? And I just, I look at it and I just think, oh my gosh, you guys have all lost the plot. That the world right now needs hope. And it needs a quest. It needs something for people to dream. About that isn't the same set of questions. One of the things that I don't love about podcasting is that people tend to ask clustered questions, and I'm always looking for that interviewer who's going to ask me things that are just like. People haven't heard. Mostly what we do is we just do retreads of the same old questions. And it's not a critique of either one of us as interviewers. It's just we don't know how to get out of our traffic circle where we go around and around. I'm trying to build. The most exciting thing in the world. Which is hope and a future. And access to the source code of reality to through differential equations and geometric structures. The. That sounds crazy to people. Yeah, well, look around you. How much of this was here in 1700s? Now go away. If you're not. Understanding that we've changed. We've progressed. You've lived through a time of stagnation. And I'm sorry about that. And I can't help you. Computers were the only. Thing that really, really took off during this. Period of time. So think. About. If science progressed the way computers progressed over the last 50. Years, your world would be completely. Unrecognizable to. Now. What do we have? We have a wood table, mugs, exposed brick, glass, metal. There's nothing here that's astonishing except the computers, that thing. That iPad or whatever it is. Is the only astonishing thing. To somebody who's looking at this from the point of view of 1971. That's terrible. Okay, so you've all lost the plot. Don't blame me. That I haven't. That's what I work on. I'm going to try. To make sure that you have options that your kids don't have to die on this. Planet. Elon is exactly right about this stuff. The only thing he has wrong is chemical rockets and Mars. I'm sorry. He used it as an advert for space, but he was right about everything else.

03:00:51:09 - 03:01:01:00 Chris Williamson Eric Weinstein, ladies and gentlemen, Eric, I appreciate you. I always enjoy coming and sitting down with you. These ones fly by. I'm looking forward to the next one as well.

03:01:01:02 - 03:01:02:11 Eric Weinstein Thanks for having me, Chris.

03:01:02:13 - 03:01:13:05 Chris Williamson Thank you very much for tuning in. If you enjoyed that episode with Eric, you will love my last episode with Eric, which was also three hours long, and you can watch right here. Go on, give it a.