Editing 19: Bret Weinstein - The Prediction and the DISC/lang-it
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'''Bret:''' Sì, ed infatti, Sam, mi ricordo persino il contenuto del suo tweet quando ha preso parte nella discussione, dove ha suggerito che quello che era necessario sarebbe stato deporgrammare queste persone. E vivendo all’interno di questo sconvolgente scenario, sentire un messaggio di ragione dall’esterno, che era evidente quanto pazzo fosse questo, significò molto per me. Davvero, ha cambiato le cose. Fu come confermare le osservazioni finora fatte. | '''Bret:''' Sì, ed infatti, Sam, mi ricordo persino il contenuto del suo tweet quando ha preso parte nella discussione, dove ha suggerito che quello che era necessario sarebbe stato deporgrammare queste persone. E vivendo all’interno di questo sconvolgente scenario, sentire un messaggio di ragione dall’esterno, che era evidente quanto pazzo fosse questo, significò molto per me. Davvero, ha cambiato le cose. Fu come confermare le osservazioni finora fatte. | ||
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'''Eric:''' Sì. Sam fu un eroe per quanto riguarda quello. È fantastico che arrivò presto e fu così corretto. E, sai, meglio per lui. | '''Eric:''' Sì. Sam fu un eroe per quanto riguarda quello. È fantastico che arrivò presto e fu così corretto. E, sai, meglio per lui. | ||
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'''Eric:''' Okay. | '''Eric:''' Okay. This is so uncomfortable, but it is also the real substance of our relationship. I always resented the fact that you really excelled at, and enjoyed, teaching as much as you did, and you saw this in terms of a place to play with ideas, to teach students to have a pleasant and enjoyable life, healthy as it was in the great outdoors, et cetera, et cetera, blah, blah blah. And I still see these characteristics in you, and it drives me nuts because you're your own worst enemy in some ways, to me. What you really are, to me, is an unbelievable thinker and researcher, and beneath this kind of very nice, friendly pedagogue is a thinker that the world doesn't know. And I watched recently your interactions with Richard Dawkins, and it was absolutely infuriating. I mean, you know, he's very clear. It's like, “Well, Bret is a real hero, so far as free speech and standing up for free inquiry goes. But he's very confused.” Well, no, I don't think that that's right. I think that you guys had a really substantive interaction about biology, which I wish he would spend more time on because he's phenomenal at it when he's focused on it, and you're phenomenal. And that was supposed to be a really different conversation. But because we got to know you the wrong way, in my opinion, you're always the guy who was strong enough to stand up to students at an obscure place, and this completely masks who you've always been, and you're not willing to take up the yoke, which is the more important role for you. | ||
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'''Bret:''' | '''Bret:''' Well, I don't know that I'm not willing. I think you and I have a different approach to this and it may be, you know, birth order stuff or whatever, but, you know, and I also, I have the benefit of you in the world, doing what you do, which, I do wonder sometimes what would've happened to me at Evergreen had I only had my own tools at my disposal. It is quite possible I would have been effectively snuffed out in private and I don't know what I would be doing at the moment. As it happens, the Evergreen story turned into rocket fuel that propelled me into a strata where there's lots of interesting things to do, that may not be exactly what you're talking about, but they make sense. | ||
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'''Eric:''' | '''Eric:''' Yeah, it's frustrating. I'm trying—I don't think you understand what it is that I'm trying to do here. I believe that you're miscategorized, and you're really not grasping that this is my opportunity— | ||
'''Bret:''' No, | '''Bret:''' No, I am. I am grasping it. What I think distinguishes us is that we have very different styles with respect to approaching things. I, for example, take a certain perverse pleasure in watching Dawkins slowly move in my direction, which I believe is happening. | ||
Now. I would like him to move faster. He's not a young man and I think it's actually quite important that he recognize where the errors in his own thinking are. And to be honest, I believe I know where at least several major ones live, and I know what he would see if he could be brought to understand the nature of those errors and to confront the, frankly, the portal that opens if you walk through a slightly different door than he's been walking through. But you know, it didn't work in one evening—I always wondered if it would, but there is still the possibility that he will have the epiphany that I hope he will have. | |||
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'''Eric:''' | '''Eric:''' I really don't understand even where we are in this conversation. | ||
'''Bret:''' Okay. | '''Bret:''' Okay. | ||
'''Eric:''' Okay. | '''Eric:''' Okay. You're not getting it. You were found at Evergreen State College. That is a communication to the world that you weren't very good. | ||
'''Bret:''' | '''Bret:''' Yep. | ||
'''Eric:''' | '''Eric:''' And every time I try to say this is completely wrong, you miss— you don't catch the ball that's being thrown to you, which is, you're not understanding what you're up against. He doesn't take you seriously because you don't have a list of publications that speaks to who it is that you actually are, or what you've done, or where you've been, and as a result, you continue to be the good guy, who is very well spoken, very thoughtful, says very interesting things, and constantly gives away power to other people. | ||
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'''Bret:''' Mmm, | '''Bret:''' Mmm, I don't think so. There's a question about how to confront the opportunities that you've got, the hand you've been dealt, and I think you and I share a certain delight—when we do our homework and we discover something interesting and absolutely nobody else gets it? | ||
'''Eric:''' Mm-hmm | '''Eric:''' Mm-hmm | ||
'''Bret:''' | '''Bret:''' That would feel bad to most people, because they would feel like, “What am I doing wrong? Why does nobody else understand this point?” To you and me, that feels good. It is to know that you have achieved something, you have discovered something, and that nobody else can even recognize it, gives you some sort of sense of how far ahead you might be. The question is what to do with those things, and there, I think the question is if I went through something with— I said something intemperate to the New Atheists, and suddenly Steven Pinker, Jerry Coyne, Michael Shermer, Richard Dawkins, and Neil Shubin came at me all at once, not on the topic that I had caused offense– on a totally different topic. They had picked something off my YouTube channel. Jerry Coyne had claimed to have debunked it. He was wrong, but nonetheless it provided fodder for them to attack. Their point was that I didn't understand natural selection and that, to the extent I might believe I knew something that other people didn't know, the right thing to do was to submit it to a journal and go through peer review. I pointed out to them that peer review was not Richard Dawkins style, and that he in fact advanced the ball for the field, substantially, but has barely published a paper. That backed them off that course, and their tune changed to, “Well, how about a book then? That's what Dawkins did.” And to me that's a win. The idea— I'm not against peer review. I want peers to review my work, but I don't want it snuffed out in private. And so, to the extent that that little battle was the result of them underestimating me and not knowing that something was going to come back that was cogent and responsive to the world as it actually is, and having them back off their position and say, “Yes, actually a book would be a fine thing.” That was positive movement from my perspective. They underestimated me, and they had to back down. So I can't regret that too much. To me, on a different timescale, I believe I'm making progress toward a goal that you and I agree is the right one, but I'm not sure that coming at it, guns blazing is the way to go. | ||
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'''Eric:''' | '''Eric:''' Well, I'm happy to stop the interview right here and right now, because that's adorable, and it's sweet, and it's incredibly patient, and it's a beautiful sentiment, but I also feel like I sat through all of the wars and battles to get your ideas into the world, and I'm not funding that program. | ||
'''Bret:''' | '''Bret:''' Does it sound to you like I'm surrendering? | ||
'''Eric:''' No, | '''Eric:''' No, it sounds to me like you're boring me. Like, this is really uninteresting. | ||
'''Bret:''' *sigh* | '''Bret:''' *''sigh''* | ||
'''Eric:''' | '''Eric:''' If I think about what actually happened— | ||
'''Bret:''' | '''Bret:''' Yep. | ||
'''Eric:''' | '''Eric:''' This is a miss-telling. This is not even honest. | ||
'''Bret:''' Okay. | '''Bret:''' Okay. Floor is yours. | ||
'''Eric:''' Okay. | '''Eric:''' Okay. I want to talk about something I'm calling the DISC, the Distributed Idea Suppression Complex, and it has nothing to do with Richard Dawkins and peer review and Jerry Coyne and a bunch of other things that almost nobody cares about. It has to do with about a 50 year period in which great ideas got buried no matter where they occurred. Because great ideas were very likely to be highly disruptive to an institutional order. And between you and your wife, and me and my wife, three of our four theses ran into incredible problems, because they were trying to break really new ground. And the amount of delay that you suffered, I mean you're now 50 years old. This is a very late start in a career. You're coming from a very inauspicious place. You've been fitted with a story, which is “He's a sweet guy who stood up to a mob and that's his claim to fame” and you're not really understanding that you're not being taken fully seriously as a biologist. In part what Jerry Coyne is saying to you is, “Hey, you're really unknown to us. I'm at Chicago. Richard Dawkins was at Oxford.” You know, he was the Simoni professor for the— | ||
'''Bret:''' | '''Bret:''' Public Understanding of Science. | ||
'''Eric:''' | '''Eric:''' Right. The point is you're not part of the Super Club. Don't get confused. You're just, some guy who stood up. | ||
'''Bret:''' Oh, | '''Bret:''' Oh, I understand. That's what's being said. | ||
'''Eric:''' Okay, | '''Eric:''' Okay, so my point is I don't have time for your fairy tale about a healthy and kind and sweet— | ||
'''Bret:''' | '''Bret:''' Who said anything about healthy? I'm, look, I'm interested in winning for a couple of reasons: One, the payload. Yeah, the insight that opens the portal to the part of biology we don't know because we've had bad Darwinian tools, and for those who heard that as an attack on Darwinism, it is not. Darwinism needs fixing, and there's nothing wrong with what Darwin contributed— it's what happened after. | ||
'''Eric:''' | '''Eric:''' Will you do me a favor? | ||
'''Bret:''' | '''Bret:''' Yeah. | ||
'''Eric:''' | '''Eric:''' I really, you've got your own podcast. It's called The Dark Horse, right? The Dark Horse podcast. I think this is a great place for you to explore gradual change, incremental progression, turning minds around, opening hearts, all this stuff. This isn't your podcast. | ||
'''Bret:''' | '''Bret:''' Yep | ||
'''Eric:''' | '''Eric:''' This is my podcast. | ||
'''Bret:''' | '''Bret:''' Right. But we're talking about my life. Am I right? | ||
'''Eric:''' | '''Eric:''' We are talking about your life, but if that's what you want to do, I don't know that I'm that interested in doing what I was going to do, which was to try to get your ideas out into the world, curated by somebody who isn't you. | ||
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'''Eric:''' | '''Eric:''' You know one of the things, and by the way, I've had this issue with you— | ||
'''Bret:''' | '''Bret:''' Do I take it we are not in a podcast at the moment? | ||
'''Eric:''' | '''Eric:''' We are in a podcast. Oh, believe me, I'm going to put the hurt on you because you are backing out of your role in history, and I'm sick of it. Look, I love you like, like you were my own brother. | ||
'''Bret:''' | '''Bret:''' Amazing. | ||
'''Eric:''' Okay. | '''Eric:''' Okay. It is the case that you have always done this, and it means that you're not taking your place properly. And I had to go to the extraordinary length of tricking your advisor, Richard Alexander, one of the great evolutionary theorists of our times— | ||
'''Bret:''' | '''Bret:''' Absolutely. | ||
'''Eric:''' | '''Eric:''' Right? One of the absolute tops. Member of the National Academy of Sciences, chaired professor at the University of Michigan. I had to trick him into writing a letter of recommendation for you so that we would have some record, as he was getting on in years, of who you actually were, because I knew that Evergreen was not going to be—it's not part of the game. | ||
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'''Bret:''' | '''Bret:''' It's true. | ||
'''Eric:''' Okay. | '''Eric:''' Okay. Here's what he had to say about you. “Bret Weinstein may well be the brightest graduate student I have ever known. His thesis defense involved only one of his four thesis chapters, and it alone was far more than sufficient as a thesis. I don't know anyone who knows more than Bret about not only a wide variety of topics in biological evolution, but the problems and possibilities of cultural change and the means of bringing people together and solving difficult problems. For 40 years, I held frequent, sometimes almost daily seminars with my doctoral students in evolutionary biology. While he was a student, Bret was a major element in all of those seminars. When he spoke, there was almost always respectful silence, even when he was junior to most of the people involved. Bret's thesis topics are so significant and timely, and so well treated on the lifetime patterns of humans and other species, the function and importance of telomeres and explaining lifetimes as hedges against cancer and several other important topics such as species diversity and sexual selection, that he dramatically converted, on the spot, two reluctant—” And by the way, reluctant is British understatement here— “I will say mildly and skeptically evolutionist members of the committee. I think that, despite his youthfulness, in terms of the characteristics I listed earlier, Bret is the best candidate.” | ||
You were the number one student of Richard Alexander, who ended up at the Evergreen State College, which was a giant mistake. And it was always a mistake. You should never have been there. I was completely right. I'm sorry to be overbearing about it, but, like, how many years did I tell you, “You gotta get out of that place.” | |||
'''Bret:''' | '''Bret:''' Well, look, first of all, Dick was very clear with me about the fact that, we're he trying to compete in the modern academy, he did not believe he would have succeeded. And he was clear about the fact that there was no good solution to the problem. So, you know. I can't say that I've ever heard that letter. I believe you have quoted parts of it to me. | ||
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'''Eric:''' | '''Eric:''' Yeah, because you're going to do this thing where you downplay your gift, and I'm sick of it. I'm tired of it. I've just, I've had it. And part of it, what happened is that you are now distorting the history of science. You have a place in the history of science that you are not taking up, you are not advocating for, there's something that you don't like about this. | ||
'''Bret:''' No, no, | '''Bret:''' No, no, I don't think this is true. I just think I'm pursuing it—maybe I'm pursuing it in a way that it doesn't work out in the end, or maybe I'm pursuing it in a way that it would, maybe there's more than one path. | ||
'''Eric:''' | '''Eric:''' I've been through too much helping you, trying to make this happen, where people become aware of the complex of ideas that you've been pushing out, and my feeling about this is that you maintain this very beautiful, very calm position, and it's enough already. Like, you have a story and that story is an explosive story. I mean, I'm happy to bury this podcast so that nobody ever hears it, but I want to actually explore the truth, rather than this extremely good for you, high fiber, you know, low sugar, bowl of granola. | ||
'''Bret:''' | '''Bret:''' I just don't think that's where we are. I've been very clear and very public about the fact that I think my entire field is spinning its wheels, that they've gotten caught by a few bad assumptions and that they are spending decades in the weeds for no good reason, that there is a way out, that I didn't know what it was for a long time. I did figure out what it was, and getting their attention on the question of what they're doing wrong is a Herculean task. I've made that clear. The question is what is the best use of the opportunity that I've got, the cards that I hold, and we have a difference of opinion about what that might be. And you may be right. I'm not saying you're not right, but I am saying that there's at least a discussion to be had about what the best way to play the— | ||
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'''Eric:''' | '''Eric:''' Why don't we have that on your podcast. I accept your invitation to come on. This is my podcast. We're going to do it my way. | ||
'''Bret:''' | '''Bret:''' Let's do it your way. | ||
'''Eric:''' | '''Eric:''' Alright. I'm the older brother. | ||
'''Bret:''' | '''Bret:''' I've noticed I have the ultimate Marcia Marcia market problem. | ||
'''Eric:''' | '''Eric:''' All right. Bret, this is not the story of your career and your life. What happened is that you got stuck at the university of Michigan for a very long period of time, because you made people very uncomfortable. What he's saying in that letter of recommendation is that you wrote four different theses, so far as I can remember, and they were on widely different topics. Furthermore, here's an interesting one: no one that I know of, despite the amount of discussion that's been spilled in ink over Evergreen has put you together with the hero of a book called The Tapir’s Morning Bath, that appeared years earlier. | ||
'''Bret:''' | '''Bret:''' It's odd that it never shows up. | ||
'''Eric:''' | '''Eric:''' Right? It never shows up. And then you're also the recipient of the Golden Gazelle award, I think of the National Organization of Women, for standing up to ZBT at the University of Pennsylvania. And you got ejected, effectively, from an Ivy League school due to threats of physical violence for standing up for black women being exploited by white men. I mean, like, then you're like the, the field assistant and main student as an undergraduate of another legendary evolutionary theorist, Bob Trivers. And somehow, you know, Richard Dawkins is treating you as a guy who isn't really his equal. “You're not really a major theorist. You're very confused and you need to learn more about the extended phenotype” and all this kind of nonsense. And you're so polite that you're not even just, I dunno, I think you're out to lunch. No offense. | ||
'''Bret:''' | '''Bret:''' I get it. I get it. And you know, like I said, you may be right. | ||
'''Eric:''' Okay. | '''Eric:''' Okay. I want to talk about the subjects that you're most associated with starting with your thesis. And I want to get into the science of it using podcast. If people get left behind, they get left behind. | ||
'''Bret:''' Okay. | '''Bret:''' Okay. | ||
'''Eric:''' Okay. | '''Eric:''' Okay. Now Dick Alexander is a legend in evolutionary theory because it's very hard to use evolutionary theory to make predictions that can be verified in the world. It's sort of this loose amorphous collection of techniques and viewpoints. And people sometimes think it's not even a theory because it doesn't seem to be predictive. | ||
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'''Eric:''' | '''Eric:''' And then there are a few predictions. So, am I right? Darwin started this game off by predicting that there would be [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xanthopan a moth with a really long tongue] because there was [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angraecum_sesquipedale a flower that had a really long distance to go] before you could get the nectar out of it. | ||
'''Bret:''' | '''Bret:''' Yeah, he had been sent an orchid by Bateson, maybe, with a foot long corolla tube. And he reasoned very straightforwardly that it would make no sense for this plant to have invested in this very long structure if there were not a tongue that could reach down to gather the nectar. And I believe he did not live to see the discovery of that animal. | ||
'''Eric:''' | '''Eric:''' I didn't know that. | ||
'''Bret:''' | '''Bret:''' But he was absolutely correct. There is a moth that has this beautifully long tongue. It's a Sphingid Hawkmoth one of these sort of hummingbird-esque moths, and anyway, yeah, it's one of the major predictions, demonstrations, that evolutionary theory actually can be used predict phenomena that you haven't been able to observe. | ||
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