Joe Rogan Experience #1203 - Eric Weinstein

Joe Rogan 0:00 And we're live. Are you, you gonna update the, the people out there?

Eric Weinstein 0:05 No.

Joe Rogan 0:05 Oh, you shut your phone off?

Eric Weinstein 0:06 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 0:06 Oh, you're professional.

Eric Weinstein 0:08 Try.

Joe Rogan 0:08 How are you, sir? Good to see you.

Eric Weinstein 0:09 I'm doing well.

Joe Rogan 0:09 What's going on?

Eric Weinstein 0:10 Um, everything. It's all pretty weird out there.

Joe Rogan 0:13 It is very weird out there. We were just talking about how weird it is out there, um, before the podcast, about how it just seems like it's very difficult to keep together during these times, and to, to ha- to keep a reasonable position, and to handle all of the pressure of all the people that get upset at anything you do, left or right, in the middle, centrist. You're too centrist, you're too left, you're too right. You're unreasonable, you're too reasonable, you're too nice, you're not nice enough.

Eric Weinstein 0:42 Wow. Suddenly, I feel like I'm in a marriage.

Joe Rogan 0:45 (laughs)

Eric Weinstein 0:45 (sniffs) .

Joe Rogan 0:46 Doesn't it seem like that, though?

Eric Weinstein 0:47 Yeah. It does. I think that this is why dis- ... This is the era for disagreeability. If you're not easily swayed, um, because you're somehow, uh, insensitive enough that you just wanna keep, uh, to first principles, whatever it is that you believe, that seems to be the best hedge against getting swept up in the madness of others.

Joe Rogan 1:06 How so?

Eric Weinstein 1:07 Well, um, I guess I ... When I go metacognitive, I look at my yearning for group belonging, and then I also watch my inability to belong to groups that say crazy things.

Joe Rogan 1:19 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 1:19 And so, those are, those are two conflicting feelings. I think sometimes when people look at me, they say, "Wow, you're really contrarian, and you have an easy time standing up to, you know, the conventional wisdom." And I don't think it's, it's, it's that true. I just think when those two things fight inside me, uh, dialectically, the disagreeability is so strong because it's protecting a comprehensive view of the world. And so, since everything already kinda fits together fairly well, I would say I'm l- much ... It's much harder to sway me because the number of things I would have to move cognitively to accommodate a wrong idea-

Joe Rogan 1:55 Hmm.

Eric Weinstein 1:56 ... is, is quite large.

Joe Rogan 1:57 It seems unnecessary, but it also seems like it ... We should be able to disagree on things, and you should be able to point out, with reasonable courtesy, that there's something wrong with someone's idea and it not become a big personal thing. But oftentimes, that's not the case.

Eric Weinstein 2:15 Well, so a lot of the things, I think, that we're, we're exploring are what I would think of as heuristics. They're sort of rules of thumb that work fairly well within some domain of definition. And we've gotten so many of these conflicting rules ... I mean, the rules of thumb themselves conflict. So for example, "He who hesitates is lost," uh, conflicts with, um, "Nothing ventured, nothing gained," or something like that. Uh, sorry-

Joe Rogan 2:41 Hmm.

Eric Weinstein 2:41 ... no ... Um, it's, uh ... Well, I, I forget. You know, the, there's the cautionary, um, a- aphorism and then there's the be bold a- aphorism. And so, we don't have a good way of sorting out conflicts that occur at the heuristic level. And then you also have heuristics, uh, meant for social cohesion conflicting with ground truths. So, this is why biology is always controversial, because biology is a science that tells us many of the things that we wish were true are just (laughs) not true. You know?

Joe Rogan 3:12 Hmm.

Eric Weinstein 3:12 I always think about Ben Shapiro's, "Facts don't care about your feelings." Well, biology cares about your feelings. It just laughs at them and stomps on them and makes them, uh, you know, feel very sad.

Joe Rogan 3:22 Well, it also tries to explain your feelings too.

Eric Weinstein 3:24 Well, it ... Right, exactly.

Joe Rogan 3:26 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 3:26 But, but, you know, if, if you really understand biology, the world is so dark and, and so interesting and beautiful and, and crazy that it's very hard to recover simple ideas about how people should be once you really realize that our being apes has deep consequences.

Joe Rogan 3:41 Yeah, I have a very minimal understanding of biology. But in that understanding, I've come to accept some things just about being a person that I, I never considered before. Like-

Eric Weinstein 3:52 Such as?

Joe Rogan 3:52 ... all the different things that are running your decision-making, like just what we were talking about, like the, the need to f- be in a group, and all these are probably evolutionary advantages to, you know, f- fostering tribal behavior so you could all work together and feed each other. You know, this, this is always pulling at you and, you know ... When, when people give people a hard time about virtue signaling, it is kinda gross when someone virtue signals, you know, but we understand what it is. It's gross because we've all done it, right? That's one of the gross things about it. When someone is just, like, really trying hard to act like, you know, they're disgusted by the way people behave because they would never behave like that. And they just wanna let you know, "I'm, I'm above this type of behavior." What's most likely, because they weren't above that kinda behavior at some point in their life, or they're not currently really above that type of behavior, but they wish they were.

Eric Weinstein 4:44 Or the part of them that's speaking is the part that's above that behavior, but that's not the part that's gonna be operative, uh, after 11:00 on a weekend at a bar.

Joe Rogan 4:52 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 4:53 Right?

Joe Rogan 4:53 Three shots in, all bets are off.

Eric Weinstein 4:55 Right.

Joe Rogan 4:55 The wheels are off the wagon. Woo.

Eric Weinstein 4:56 So, I think we don't, we don't see ourselves ... We, we are permanently in our own blind spot because the part of us that is, uh, you know, just and righteous and good, um, seems to know very little about the other part.

Joe Rogan 5:08 Well, it's also this thing, this need to belong and need to be accepted, like we work to be accepted instead of work to be someone that you would want to be a part of the group. Instead of being, like, really honest about who you are and how you think and how you behave and how you operate in the world, instead of doing that and trying to improve upon that, you try to project an image of this.

Eric Weinstein 5:32 Well, then what ... Here's a question for us. Why is vice signaling so much more powerful than virtue signaling?

Joe Rogan 5:38 Vice signaling, like a person who admits their problems, like an alcoholic who steps up and says, "I've got a real issue."

Eric Weinstein 5:44 Could be that way, or it could be sort of Dan Bilzerian-type vice signaling.

Joe Rogan 5:48 Oh, okay.

Eric Weinstein 5:48 Like, "You wanna know what I'm into? I'm into hot chicks, weed, and guns, and making"-

Joe Rogan 5:52 And a lot of money.

Eric Weinstein 5:53 ... "tons, tons of money, and showing it off."

Joe Rogan 5:54 Yeah. Well, he's super honest.

Eric Weinstein 5:56 Right.

Joe Rogan 5:56 You know, that's one of the reasons, and you ... He's bulletproof in that regard. Like, you can't fuck with him. Like, you can't say, "Hey, look at you, you're just a playboy." He'd be like, "Yep."Yeah, I like girls.

Eric Weinstein 6:06 Yeah, it works.

Joe Rogan 6:06 Yeah, um, what else?

Eric Weinstein 6:08 Right.

Joe Rogan 6:09 You know, I'm nice. Like, he's a nice guy. Talk to Dan Bilzerian, he's friendly. He's not a bad guy.

Eric Weinstein 6:14 No, I mean, he, he, you know, he had a, he had this post which was, uh, he was, I think, offering a hand to a woman up a stair and it said, uh, "Come with me, I'll ruin your life, but it'll be fun."

Joe Rogan 6:23 (laughs)

Eric Weinstein 6:23 You know? And it, it was just like... It's so disarming.

Joe Rogan 6:26 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 6:26 And I think that this is also partially, you know, a secret to your success, which is that you're a, a nice guy, you're really into fighting, um, you're, you know, you, you, you hunt elk, you're clear about which ones you're gonna kill, which ones you won't, based on the reproductive cycle. You're, you're promoting all sorts of things that people don't wanna talk about, to a fairly conscious level, and it's produced, um, an incredible level of trust in an era where all of the virtue signaling gives way. I mean, if you scratch any person, uh, enough below the surface, you're gonna see that they're really warning you about themselves. And so the people who are the most sort of self-critical, and, and this is like, you know, I think I brought this up recently, uh, on Twitter, about meta-honesty, where there was a, in the Castro in San Francisco, there was a, a bar restaurant that was advertising, uh, free food, naked servers, plus false advertising.

Joe Rogan 7:24 (laughs)

Eric Weinstein 7:24 And, you know, it was just fun and playful, and as a result, uh, you know, you had an instant desire to, to eat there-

Joe Rogan 7:30 Right.

Eric Weinstein 7:30 ... and to trust them.

Joe Rogan 7:31 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 7:31 And so I think that in this world of virtue signaling, vice signaling is really the growth industry, and that's, that's what's working for good people, because they are m- more in touch and, you know, they are gonna lie to you and they're gonna do all the self-interested things, but they're not going to surprise you quite as much.

Joe Rogan 7:50 Well, in the case of Dan Bilzerian, I really don't think he's gonna lie to you. I don't think that's what he's doing. I think what he's doing is living like a guy who's got $100 million and happens to be 35 years old and likes to bang hot chicks and fly around in private jets and live in some rid- have you seen that fucking house that he's got? He just bought some crazy house in, like, Bel Air, I guess with that weed money. Jesus. He's got some- it looks like it probably cost $100 million or something ridiculous like that. It's a fucking insane house. But that's what he likes.

Eric Weinstein 8:19 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 8:20 You know? The guy drives... Likes to drive around Ferraris and d- and... But he's a nice guy, so it's like, well, what, where, what's, what's wrong with this picture? What's wrong with this picture is he's doing things that oth- Look at this. This is his house. What in the f- holy fuck is that? Does he have a golf course on his roof? What is that?

Guest 8:38 I don't know.

Joe Rogan 8:38 This is a fucking ridiculous house. Look at this fucking place. He gives his address out?

Guest 8:42 Well...

Joe Rogan 8:42 Is that his address?

Eric Weinstein 8:43 It's pretty hard to hide that thing.

Guest 8:45 Yeah. No.

Joe Rogan 8:45 Why the fuck would he give his address out? (laughs)

Guest 8:47 I don't thi- I don't think you can get there, it's in Bel Air.

Joe Rogan 8:49 Whoa, look at this house. It's preposterous.

Eric Weinstein 8:52 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 8:52 Anyway, this is what he likes. But it... Why is that bad? I mean, look, we only have 100 years if everything goes perfect.

Eric Weinstein 8:58 I know.

Joe Rogan 8:58 What do you give a shit? Like, why does everybody give a shit? B- but they do give a shit, they give a shit a lot, because for a lot of folks that are working, you know, making a, a good living, making, you know, $50,000 a year, whatever, that's completely out of the realm of possibility.

Eric Weinstein 9:10 Right.

Joe Rogan 9:10 That's why it feels-

Eric Weinstein 9:11 And his lifestyle wouldn't be sustainable for them.

Joe Rogan 9:13 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 9:13 I mean, because he's taking real risk. There's no question about it. When you, you know, get everybody stoned and then you take them to fire automatic weapons out in the desert.

Joe Rogan 9:21 Oh yeah, that's real risk.

Eric Weinstein 9:22 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 9:22 And also the gambling. He does a lot of, like, crazy gambling.

Eric Weinstein 9:25 Well, but this is the thing about the, uh, the relationship with the unforgiving. This is partially why I think-

Joe Rogan 9:30 Right.

Eric Weinstein 9:30 ... your UFC and jujitsu life, is that when you have a relationship with the unforgiving, you can say, "You know, that guy, that guy doesn't really know what he's doing," but then you're, you're in the ring, you know? You're the man in the arena and, and you find out very quickly whether or not the trash talking, you know, paid off or it didn't. And I think that many people have no relationship with the unforgiving.

Joe Rogan 9:51 Mm-hmm.

Eric Weinstein 9:51 Like, you'll take them out on a hike into, you know, the, the, let's say the Trinity Wilderness and then two hours in they'll just sit down and say, "I wanna go home."

Joe Rogan 10:00 Right.

Eric Weinstein 10:00 And you're thinking like, "Okay, you're, you're signaling something, but there's, there's no car service and there's... We're not calling a helicopter."

Joe Rogan 10:08 (laughs)

Eric Weinstein 10:08 You know, it just...

Joe Rogan 10:08 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 10:09 There, there is this... If you live in the social layer, you're surprised by the existence of the unforgiving, but...

Joe Rogan 10:15 Ugh. Well... (sighs) On one, on one hand I wanna support people's ability to do whatever the fuck they want. On one hand I wanna support someone's ability to sit in front of a computer and whether you're working or you're writing code or you're writing a script or you're just, uh, fucking playing video games.

Eric Weinstein 10:34 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 10:34 I wanna support your ability to do whatever you want to do.

Eric Weinstein 10:37 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 10:37 If you, if you have the means, if you're not, you know, if your family's not starving, this is what you enjoy doing, why do I care? But a- as a person who's experienced a fair amount of adversity, especially self-imposed adversity-

Eric Weinstein 10:51 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 10:51 ... I would, I would tell you that you would benefit from it. I've benefited from it and I think you'd benefit from it too. You don't wanna be that guy that two hours into the hike says, "I wanna go home." You don't wanna be that guy.

Eric Weinstein 11:02 Right.

Joe Rogan 11:02 You wanna be that person that just says, "Well, this is what we're doing and I'm gonna figure out how to do this, and I'm gonna show character, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna be proud of myself at the end of this. I mean, I might have to walk for six hours and when it's all over my legs might be shaky and I might have to sit down, but that Gatorade's gonna taste so good. It's gonna be like the greatest Gatorade of all time 'cause you're dr- gonna drink it, you'll be like, 'Ah, I earned the shit out of this.'"

Eric Weinstein 11:25 Right.

Joe Rogan 11:26 "You're gonna feel it." And I think we learn about ourselves through especially self... Well, any kind of adversity. You know, look, I'm coming off of, uh, being evacuated from the fires, which was, uh, for me, not that difficult. You know, um, I'm not poor, I got a hotel, I brought my family to the hotel, we got safe, got my dog to the, to the podcast studio and everybody was all right. You know, but for those firefighters, I mean, 12-hour shifts battling the blaze, for people who lost their homes. Some of them tried to save it. There was a story about a guy in Malibu that climbed on top of his roof with a hose and tried to fight off the fire and he got severe burns and he's in the hospital and... I mean, it's raining ash and, and, and, and these chunks of, of fucking fire on people, these embers, they're falling from the sky and this guy's trying to save his house. I mean, that guy literally went through the fires. He'll be a different person after this.

Eric Weinstein 12:18 No question. Um, we've been in something of a reality drought. The number of people who have...... very little relationship to reality. I mean, y- you know, I used to live in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and you'd, you'd come in from, uh, Boston and there would be this sign that said, "Fresh killed chicken." Like, n- n- no bones about it, man. Fresh killed chicken. But, like, Chicken McNuggets? Nobody quite knows what- what it, what part of the chicken is a McNugget, right? It's just-

Joe Rogan 12:45 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 12:46 ... some abstraction that comes to you. And so, I think we've gotten very divorced. There are all these layers of indirection between us and the world, and when a fire happens, it's so overwhelming. I mean, we were just choking on the, the SF smoke, uh, in the Bay area. There's, it, it, it just, it gets real after having been unreal for a very long time.

Joe Rogan 13:09 Yeah. It's unavoidable. It makes you, it makes you buck up. Like, you gotta get outta there. Like, we got evacuated Thursday at 2:30 in the morning. We, we were looking up, we were like, "We gotta get the fuck outta here." Like, it, I don't give a shit what you leave behind. Just go. Keep your body and go. Everything else, it's, it's either replaceable or you don't really need it that much anyway. Just fucking get outta there. And when you see that fire raging over those hills and helicopters are dropping water on it, and then another house explodes 'cause the gas line gets hit, it's just, you, you ... I saw that. You see that, you go, "Oh." There's, there's not enough people in the world to save you. There's not enough fucking firefighters or cops, there's too many houses, there's too many people, and a bunch of these houses are gonna go. You gotta get the fuck outta there. And, um, but there's a certain ... I was with, uh, a bunch of my friends from my neighborhood, and my friend Tom Segura and his wife. We all stayed at the same hotel.

Eric Weinstein 14:02 Right.

Joe Rogan 14:02 And we felt, we f- there was like a, a tangible sense of community.

Eric Weinstein 14:07 Well this is, and that, I'm, I love this point. Let's imagine you go for a wedding and they house you with your third cousins. People you barely know. If you're lucky enough that the sewage system breaks and, like, stuff is leaking out of the ceiling and you guys all have to do heroic, crazy stuff to save the house, you're gonna be closer to your third cousin than you are, you know, to your uncle.

Joe Rogan 14:27 Right.

Eric Weinstein 14:28 And, th- this is this very strange feature of the world that, uh, kind of a random arrival of diversity is very often what bonds you to some particular human being. And if you avoid adversity in groups your whole life, you probably don't realize that, uh, you're never fully, uh, activated as a human being.

Joe Rogan 14:51 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 14:51 Or particularly, you know, if, if men, I think, don't form groups that, in some sense, fight or battle or contest together, so there's this very weird fact that apparently humans are the only species that organize, uh, contests in teams. Um, you know, this is an intrinsic feature of being human.

Joe Rogan 15:13 Contests?

Eric Weinstein 15:14 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 15:14 Do other animals have any contests?

Eric Weinstein 15:16 Well-

Joe Rogan 15:17 Just if they spar?

Eric Weinstein 15:18 Like chimps, you know, will, will, uh, have these incredible raiding parties.

Joe Rogan 15:22 Mm-hmm.

Eric Weinstein 15:22 They're very methodical and they'll, they'll attack somebody else. But I don't think that they practice it as like, "Okay, you're red team chimp and you're blue team chimp."

Joe Rogan 15:30 Right. Well, we're the only ones that do stuff like that that can communicate, right? Like dolphins can communicate, but they don't do stuff like that.

Eric Weinstein 15:37 Right, or you have individual sparring. Like, you'll have two bears learning to play with each other.

Joe Rogan 15:42 Mm-hmm.

Eric Weinstein 15:42 Um, because it's safer to play with your brother in childhood than it is to just suddenly show up against some big ass bear and have to compete for females.

Joe Rogan 15:51 I had William von Hippel on a couple of days ago, and he's the author of The Social Leap.

Eric Weinstein 15:56 Okay.

Joe Rogan 15:56 And, uh, we were actually talking about this, about one of the things that made human beings successful as we came down from the trees and started walking around the grasslands is our ability to organize and to work and coordinate together.

Eric Weinstein 16:11 Yeah. Well, and the, the, the, the, you know, e- but like African wild dogs are fairly good at this. And you, you watch what they do in their spare time, very often they just take the piss out of each other.

Joe Rogan 16:21 Mm.

Eric Weinstein 16:22 So they're, they actually come to each other's age- aid at a very high level, uh, in times of need. But like, are, you know, when you're just hanging out around the fire hose, firehouse, you're, you're really just giving each other shit all the time.

Joe Rogan 16:33 Right.

Eric Weinstein 16:34 And so there's something about the way in which we play, um, being kind of divergent from the way in which we behave when we actually just need each other. And like, you, you need to be on that line, you know, let's say, uh, you know, throwing burlap bags and I just need you to do that thing and we're, we're both facing something together. Uh, doesn't n- don't, doesn't have to be fighting in, in a militaristic si- situation, but I do think that, um, this is one of the weird things that's going on with all of this, uh, emphasis on care and feelings, is that often men need to give each other shit in order to form very deep bonds.

Joe Rogan 17:12 Right.

Eric Weinstein 17:13 If I can't tease you-

Joe Rogan 17:15 Right.

Eric Weinstein 17:15 ... and if I don't know where the line is, like there is this line which is like, "Dude, that was way too far."

Joe Rogan 17:20 Right.

Eric Weinstein 17:20 We all know that those lines exist, and we, we sometimes have to go up to them and sometimes we have to experiment by going over them. But if somebody says, "I don't like the way you're talking. That seems very insensitive." And my, my response is, "Well, you're gonna keep me from forming a deep bond with that person. You just don't know that that's how we do it."

Joe Rogan 17:36 Yeah, they're shielding. They- they're putting up their shield.

Eric Weinstein 17:40 Right.

Joe Rogan 17:40 And often is d- you know, to project a certain image to you. They, they, they, they, they wanna be taken seriously. They want some respect. They can't deal with you goofing on them.

Eric Weinstein 17:52 That's true, and goofing can go wrong.

Joe Rogan 17:54 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 17:54 But I, but I think that one of the things that I've been fascinated by is where did all this madness come from? And I, increasingly, am, am wondering whether it comes from social and emotional learning that started to be taught in schools around emotional intelligence. So this whole idea of EQ I think had a lot to it. But not all the bugs were worked out, because a lot of things that kind of are in the neighborhood of bullying might be actually intimacy building.

Joe Rogan 18:22 Mm.

Eric Weinstein 18:22 Right? And so if, if something turns into some super disgusting, deadly hazing ritual, we all say, "What the hell are you people doing?" But on the other hand, if it's sort of-... three clicks back from that line, and it's, you know, there was mild discomfort, we, we humiliated each other a little bit-

Joe Rogan 18:38 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 18:38 ... and now we're friends for life, um, then, you know, the fear of the hazing ritual gone wrong may actually stop people from ever actually making the really deep bonds to last a lifetime.

Joe Rogan 18:50 Well, isn't it like everything else? Some people are good at things and some people suck at it.

Eric Weinstein 18:55 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 18:55 So some people are good at being silly with their friends and some people go too far. I mean, you, you experience that. Like, I've had friends who experienced that, where they do a podcast and on the podcast they fuck with each other.

Eric Weinstein 19:07 Right.

Joe Rogan 19:08 And they'll have someone come up to them that they don't even know right off the street and immediately say something like ruthlessly insulting to them. And they're like, "What the fuck?"

Eric Weinstein 19:16 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 19:16 And they're like, "Yeah, man. You do that shit on your podcast all the time." It's like, "Okay, you're doing it wrong. I don't know you. We're not friends. We're not bonding here. You're walking up and saying something mean, calling someone a fatso or-"

Eric Weinstein 19:26 Exactly.

Joe Rogan 19:27 Yeah, it's like they're just not good at it, and oftentimes that's a ... some sort of a sign of social intelligence, a lack of social intelligence, a lack of ... I mean, who knows what's going on in their home? There might, might just be bad information-

Eric Weinstein 19:41 Right.

Joe Rogan 19:41 ... from parents and they're, they're growing up in this environment of, uh, just r- very low level social skills.

Eric Weinstein 19:47 And now what we're doing is ... I mean, I think that, that you're, you're spot on. We're now going to try to readjust everyone around our weakest players.

Joe Rogan 19:57 Right.

Eric Weinstein 19:58 So now the idea is that because that can be said in a horrible way, we're not gonna let anyone say anything remotely adjacent to it.

Joe Rogan 20:06 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 20:06 You can't do anything that would be a precursor to it, so you're just gonna say, "Well, y- you see that little patch of bad cells over there? We're gonna cut off your leg, uh, in order to stop that cancer." It's just like, couldn't we do something (laughs) a little bit more surgical?

Joe Rogan 20:19 Well, th- and also, there's some things that you're s- there's a reason why we have this instinct to mock things.

Eric Weinstein 20:25 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 20:25 It's 'cause people get out of line and then they demand too much goddamn attention and, uh, they become a problem. And this is a, I think, I believe this goes back to hunting parties and hunter-gatherers-

Eric Weinstein 20:36 Right.

Joe Rogan 20:36 ... where the one person who just wanted too much attention, like, you, you're fucking it up for this group effort. And that's kind of what happens socially when people claim these, uh, very ridiculous victim statuses.

Eric Weinstein 20:46 Right.

Joe Rogan 20:47 You know, and there was a picture that I put up on my Instagram a couple weeks ago of this guy. He had this crazy makeup on and he had this ridiculous description of himself, like non-binary, queer, that also identifies as a Muslim, and he was talking about quantum physics, that quantum physics got, uh, g- helped him appreciate his queerness. And I looked at that and I said, "Okay, maybe, or maybe you're just fucking crying out for attention." And all I wrote was, uh, "Makes sense. Definitely doesn't seem crazy."

Eric Weinstein 21:17 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 21:17 And people got mad at me for that, for something so obvious. I looked, I just peered into the fucking deep dungeon that is the comment section for a moment, and I saw people like, "You would think that the people that are most susceptible to suicide, you would leave them alone, but your cruelty is ... You know, you're exposing your cruelty." Like, listen, that's silly. That guy needs better friends. Your friends are gonna tell you you're silly.

Eric Weinstein 21:41 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 21:41 You got crazy makeup o- ... Have you seen this guy?

Eric Weinstein 21:43 No.

Joe Rogan 21:43 You have a photo? Look at this. "I'm British-Iraqi, gay, non-binary, and also identify as Muslim." Listen, you need too much goddamn attention.

Eric Weinstein 21:52 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 21:52 That's all I'm saying. I'm not saying you're a bad person, you should kill yourself, you shouldn't be queer. Be whatever you wanna be. But if you're going that hard-

Eric Weinstein 21:59 Right.

Joe Rogan 21:59 ... that hard to define yourself.

Eric Weinstein 22:01 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 22:02 Like, that is needy as shit. That's fucking annoying.

Eric Weinstein 22:05 Yeah, but your, but your point-

Joe Rogan 22:05 (laughs)

Eric Weinstein 22:05 Your point is that you have to titrate the negative feedback.

Joe Rogan 22:08 Yes.

Eric Weinstein 22:09 Right? And so what you did was you gave him a small dose in saying, "Look, cor- you might wanna course correct a little bit."

Joe Rogan 22:15 But-

Eric Weinstein 22:15 The idea that there's any course correction, that you're not sitting there celebrating this.

Joe Rogan 22:19 Right.

Eric Weinstein 22:20 Well, that's-

Joe Rogan 22:22 That's the thing.

Eric Weinstein 22:22 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 22:23 Yeah, you're supposed to celebrate it.

Eric Weinstein 22:24 I'm supposed to celebrate so many things.

Joe Rogan 22:26 Yeah. Well, you know what? You can celebrate it. That's okay. But you shouldn't get mad if I go, "Oh, that might be a little nuts," 'cause it's obviously a little nuts. It's a little nuts to paint your face with glitter. It's a little nuts. It's a little nuts. If that was just a regular person who's like, "Hi, I work at JC Penney. My name is Wendy and this is what I like to wear on my face." Like, okay, that ... Wendy's a crazy bitch. Look at Wendy. Go look at Wendy. Look at her face. What is she doing? I don't know, man. She got fucking crazy glitter and her hair's 15 different colors. Y- Yeah, and nothing wrong-

Eric Weinstein 22:58 No, but, but, okay, look, look, but l- look at it this way. I have this weird thing which I th- sometimes is called machilophobia, the fear of cosmetics.

Joe Rogan 23:07 Really?

Eric Weinstein 23:07 Oh, man.

Joe Rogan 23:09 Lips? What kind?

Eric Weinstein 23:10 (sighs)

Joe Rogan 23:10 Eyeshadow? Like smoking, smoking eyeshadow?

Eric Weinstein 23:13 Oh. Oh, ugh.

Joe Rogan 23:14 Ugh.

Eric Weinstein 23:14 No, it's like-

Joe Rogan 23:14 What about fake eyelashes?

Eric Weinstein 23:15 Well, this is the thing is, is that sometimes it looks somewhat normal and then suddenly it doesn't integrate and the person just looks like they've got crazy stuff stuck to their head.

Joe Rogan 23:24 Ooh. Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 23:24 And, and you're just like, "You've got s- crazy stuff stuck to you." Well, that's how I perceive it. Now, here's the question. I can't be in touch ... Like, it can't be, "Eric's got a problem with machilophobia." It has to be-

Joe Rogan 23:36 That ... I've never heard that word. It's freaking me out.

Eric Weinstein 23:38 It has to be-

Joe Rogan 23:38 Machilophobia.

Eric Weinstein 23:39 Yeah. It has to be, "Eric can't accept people who wear makeup."

Joe Rogan 23:43 Ah-ha.

Eric Weinstein 23:44 And it ... And my question would be, from first principles, how do you tell who to have sympathy with? Because this has been somewhat debilitating for me.

Joe Rogan 23:50 Really?

Eric Weinstein 23:50 Yeah, sure.

Joe Rogan 23:51 So it's been a real issue, like you've struggled with it?

Eric Weinstein 23:54 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 23:54 Strug- well, have you struggled with the feeling or struggled with the fact that you have the feeling?

Eric Weinstein 23:57 Look, everybody actually experience ... If you remember Tammy Faye Bakker from We-

Joe Rogan 24:01 Yes.

Eric Weinstein 24:02 Right? So she was famous for freaking people out because she had no concept of how much, uh, how many-

Joe Rogan 24:09 Makeup is too much.

Eric Weinstein 24:09 Is too much.

Joe Rogan 24:10 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 24:11 Now, what if somebody looks normal and then you turn around and suddenly they're Tammy Faye Bakker?

Joe Rogan 24:16 Mm.

Eric Weinstein 24:16 And you never can predict when that's going to happen, so that's like an interesting question about do we accept the person who ... I don't know why I have this, it just ... That's something in my mind.

Joe Rogan 24:26 Well, because you're a logical person and you're looking at this war paint that people are putting on, and you don't understand the desire to do this.

Eric Weinstein 24:36 Well, I do understand it, yeah. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 24:36 You do, but you don't understand actually doing it.

Eric Weinstein 24:39 I don't understand why it-... looks normal. Like, I have the feeling that to other people, it looks very different than the way it looks to me.

Joe Rogan 24:47 Right. Well, they've just accepted it.

Eric Weinstein 24:50 Maybe.

Joe Rogan 24:50 Like-

Eric Weinstein 24:50 Sometimes I accept it, and then suddenly, uh, you know, I shake it. It's, it's like you're shaken out of the movie.

Joe Rogan 24:56 Mmm.

Eric Weinstein 24:56 Like, you see a movie where the... Suddenly, the mic is visible from the top.

Joe Rogan 24:59 Ah.

Eric Weinstein 25:00 And you're like, "Whoa-

Joe Rogan 25:01 God damn it.

Eric Weinstein 25:01 ... what's going on here?"

Joe Rogan 25:02 It's a movie.

Eric Weinstein 25:02 It's a movie.

Joe Rogan 25:03 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 25:03 And, and that... But, uh, anyway, we all have these weird quirks. The question is, with whom should we be sympathetic and with whom, uh, do we, do we say, "Well, you're being judgmental"?

Joe Rogan 25:16 With me, it's, uh, women's shoes that have gigantic heels, those stilettos that they can barely walk in.

Eric Weinstein 25:22 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 25:22 That one freaks me out. It freaks me out 'cause I see women walking in 'em. Like, this is so crazy-

Eric Weinstein 25:28 Yes.

Joe Rogan 25:28 ... that this is a choice that you're... I mean, I can't imagine... Or I'm paranoid, I guess. Maybe I've seen too much physical conflict. I can't imagine wearing something that would physically compromise me to the point where I literally can't run away.

Eric Weinstein 25:41 Right.

Joe Rogan 25:41 'Cause you can't run away in those things. If you're in, like, stilettos, like these little things that you walk around in, and your feet are all smooshed in, and you're, you're basically doing tiptoes everywhere you go, and you're fuck... Your, your feet have to be killing you by the end of the night, right?

Eric Weinstein 25:53 Right.

Joe Rogan 25:54 You're not running away if there's a wolf chasing you or some shit. If there's something going down-

Eric Weinstein 25:59 Right.

Joe Rogan 25:59 ... you're not, you're not getting away. It's just, it's a weird des- like, the desire to lengthen your legs-

Eric Weinstein 26:05 Right.

Joe Rogan 26:06 ... and to give this graceful appearance.

Eric Weinstein 26:07 Well, it's called lordosis behavior.

Joe Rogan 26:09 Lordosis?

Eric Weinstein 26:10 Lordosis behavior.

Joe Rogan 26:11 I'm learning so much today.

Eric Weinstein 26:12 Okay.

Joe Rogan 26:12 (laughs)

Eric Weinstein 26:13 So high heels were originally developed for men. And-

Joe Rogan 26:17 To appear taller.

Eric Weinstein 26:18 Um, not sure if it was to appear taller o-only or if it was for riding. I can't remember.

Joe Rogan 26:23 Oh, for horses.

Eric Weinstein 26:23 Yeah, yeah, maybe.

Joe Rogan 26:24 So a lot of people don't know, cowboy boots-

Eric Weinstein 26:26 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 26:26 ... the reason why they slip on like that is when the, the horse bucks and takes off, your boots fall off. They're supposed to.

Eric Weinstein 26:34 I didn't know that.

Joe Rogan 26:35 Yeah. That's the whole idea behind them. The reason you slip on and slip off and they have that heel-

Eric Weinstein 26:39 Okay.

Joe Rogan 26:40 ... where there's that wooden heel, that heel slips into the stirrups. So when you get... When the horse bucks, you don't wanna get dragged, son. You want all that shit to just fly off.

Eric Weinstein 26:49 All right.

Joe Rogan 26:50 And then you're on your back going, "Oh, look at that horse go." And then you go pick up your boots 'cause they've fallen off, and the fucking horse is gone, but at least you're alive.

Eric Weinstein 26:57 Oh, well, that's that expression, "He died with his boots on."

Joe Rogan 27:00 If you... Yeah, if you get... Well, not really.

Eric Weinstein 27:01 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 27:01 I think that's, like, a gunfight type deal. But I think if you get dr- I mean, if you get dragged, horses are gonna run over rocks and shit. You're done.

Eric Weinstein 27:08 Sure.

Joe Rogan 27:08 People die all the time that are wearing regular shoes that shove their feet in the stirrups, and then you're stuck. That's why cowboy boots come off like that.

Eric Weinstein 27:17 Yeah, I remember when I used to ride horses, we'd have the, the, the guy r- leading the trail would, like, take us up to a gallop and suddenly say, "Emergency dismount!" It was really terrifying.

Joe Rogan 27:25 Ooh.

Eric Weinstein 27:26 Yeah. And, and, you know, you'd have to do it at, at speed very, very quickly. But I think that high heels got taken over by women because a lot of the things that we claim that we like about heels, that is the, uh, uh, "I, I do it for height. Uh, I like the way it makes the leg look," um, uh, probably secondary to the curvature of the back and the way in which that is typically, uh, associa- associated with sexual receptivity.

Joe Rogan 27:54 Yes.

Eric Weinstein 27:54 And so it's that particular-

Joe Rogan 27:55 For sure.

Eric Weinstein 27:55 ... posture that-

Joe Rogan 27:57 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 27:57 ... the heel connotes. And so the way I read it is that the cost of the heel is part of the communication. In other words, I'm willing to do something that is clearly not comfortable or for my benefit in any other way so much so that you can tell that I must be interested in sending a signal.

Joe Rogan 28:13 100%.

Eric Weinstein 28:14 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 28:14 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 28:14 And so, so the, uh... Well, but you have to deny the signal too, so part of the signaling is to say, "Oh, uh, these are actually my most comfortable shoes."

Joe Rogan 28:22 They always say that. Girls are hilarious. "They're so comfortable. These are so comfortable."

Eric Weinstein 28:28 Right.

Joe Rogan 28:28 Like, how is that even possible? Those aren't Crocs.

Eric Weinstein 28:31 Yes. But, but, but the deception has to be part of... Oh, now I'm, like, picturing Crocs with heels.

Joe Rogan 28:39 (laughs)

Eric Weinstein 28:39 That was really weird.

Joe Rogan 28:41 Well, the deception has to be... You have to ex- you have to decide that you're not ridiculous. All right?

Eric Weinstein 28:48 No, it's, it's a shared deception.

Joe Rogan 28:49 Yes.

Eric Weinstein 28:50 'Cause then, then as the, as the guy, I have to say, "Oh, that's so interesting."

Joe Rogan 28:53 Yeah, but that's a lie.

Eric Weinstein 28:55 Well, we're all lying, but it's mutually understood as a lie.

Joe Rogan 28:57 Yeah, but when the girls are s- "Well, nah." Girls could say, "These are so comfortable," because they're not killing them, because they've accepted a higher level of pain tolerance with footwear than men have. Like, if I had to just jam my feet into something pointy-

Eric Weinstein 29:14 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 29:14 ... like, some pointy-ass-

Eric Weinstein 29:15 Yes.

Joe Rogan 29:15 ... Spanish-

Eric Weinstein 29:16 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 29:16 ... dancer-type shoes-

Eric Weinstein 29:17 Okay.

Joe Rogan 29:18 ... it would hurt after a while.

Eric Weinstein 29:19 You ever wear a tie? I hate those.

Joe Rogan 29:21 I've worn ties.

Eric Weinstein 29:21 I hate those things.

Joe Rogan 29:22 Yes.

Eric Weinstein 29:23 Okay. So that's some kind of uncomfortable thing that we do to ourselves as men.

Joe Rogan 29:27 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 29:27 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 29:27 Well, I used to have to wear one when I drove limos. I think... Well, I've definitely worn one since then, but very rarely.

Eric Weinstein 29:33 Very rarely.

Joe Rogan 29:34 Someone could kill you pretty easily with a tie. Like, if someone has a tie on, and I grab ahold of their tie-

Eric Weinstein 29:39 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 29:40 ... boy, unless you're a lot bigger than me, I might kill you. Got ahold of your tie, tie's a hard thing to shake loose. It's really strong. Like, you could... Uh, you... A good s- tie is not gonna rip.

Eric Weinstein 29:51 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 29:51 Someone gets ahold of your tie at the knot-

Eric Weinstein 29:53 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 29:53 ... and just twists and holds onto you, all they have to do is hold onto you, grab an arm, and just gr- wrap their legs around you and hold onto that tie, you're a dead man. You're dead. You're, you're giving them a weapon-

Eric Weinstein 30:05 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 30:05 ... to kill you all the time.

Eric Weinstein 30:06 All right, you've convinced me. No more ties.

Joe Rogan 30:08 I just... The... Grab that and just fucking twist. You don't have much time, man. You, you don't have much time to get this arm off your neck and get-

Eric Weinstein 30:16 This is such a UFC spin on it.

Joe Rogan 30:17 You're gonna have to figure out... It's a jujitsu spin.

Eric Weinstein 30:20 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 30:20 'Cause UFC, you don't wear clothes. But the-

Eric Weinstein 30:21 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 30:22 To be able to grab ahold of someone's clothing, like... Like, a person with a leather jacket, if you're talking shit and-

Eric Weinstein 30:28 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 30:28 ... you have a leather jacket on, you're with a guy who knows judo-

Eric Weinstein 30:31 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 30:31 ... you are beyond fucked. You don't... Yo- this, this guy might as well have cannons coming out of his body. Like, you're, you're doomed.

Eric Weinstein 30:38 Okay.

Joe Rogan 30:38 You're 100% doomed. He's gonna grab that leather jacket, and basically it has handles. And he's gonna throw you up in the air, and he's gonna hit you with the world.... the whole world (slaps table) is below.

Eric Weinstein 30:49 Okay.

Joe Rogan 30:49 And he's gonna drive you into the world and you're so fucked and you don't even realize it.

Eric Weinstein 30:56 Joe, how often do you end up in fist fights?

Joe Rogan 30:57 Never.

Eric Weinstein 30:59 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 30:59 Never, man. I, I don't, I don't wanna have nothing to do with that. I just get away. I would never wanna get in a fist fight.

Eric Weinstein 31:05 No, I know-

Joe Rogan 31:05 Fist fights are dangerous.

Eric Weinstein 31:06 ... but like, this is, this is fascinating to me about this sort of th- the world here. It's always talking about fighting and what can happen.

Joe Rogan 31:11 Well, it's just, it's just-

Eric Weinstein 31:12 And in our world, there's like almost none of this in, you know, relatively boring, white guy, middle age-

Joe Rogan 31:20 You ever go on WorldStarHipHop? That shit's all day-

Eric Weinstein 31:23 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 31:23 ... every day. There's plenty of videos. You, most of the time-

Eric Weinstein 31:26 Oh, no, no. That's what I- that's what I'm sure.

Joe Rogan 31:26 ... it never... Most of the time, nothing happens.

Eric Weinstein 31:29 Right.

Joe Rogan 31:29 But the one time when shit does happen, if you don't know how to defend yourself, you're really fucked.

Eric Weinstein 31:36 Uh, this is, this is true.

Joe Rogan 31:37 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 31:37 But then the thing is is that in all the practicing that you do, you're also exposing yourself to the potential for injury.

Joe Rogan 31:43 Oh, yeah.

Eric Weinstein 31:44 So there's a question as to whether you're safer, uh, if you spend all of your time in this kind of, "Well, what if something happens? I wanna be prepared," but the preparation for it is itself potentially fairly hazardous.

Joe Rogan 31:57 That's unquestionable, but isn't that just like the guy who sits on the couch and never goes into the woods 'cause he doesn't wanna get tired?

Eric Weinstein 32:02 I know.

Joe Rogan 32:03 It's very similar-

Eric Weinstein 32:03 It's a puzzle.

Joe Rogan 32:04 ... 'cause like here we are, I'm 51 years old and I'm, and it all works. Tada!

Eric Weinstein 32:08 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 32:09 So even though I've been injured, I'm right here, everything works. Like-

Eric Weinstein 32:13 Yeah, but you also got out of the-

Joe Rogan 32:13 ... I got a bunch of shit fixed.

Eric Weinstein 32:15 What, what if the UFC thing was like bold and interesting when you were a young guy? Do you think you would've, uh-

Joe Rogan 32:20 I would've 100% done it and I probably w- would have a much harder time having this conversation.

Eric Weinstein 32:24 That's right.

Joe Rogan 32:25 Yeah. For sure. Yeah. Um-

Eric Weinstein 32:28 So I think, I think, I think you hit the sweet spot where you got the skills, you've been in training idiom, you really know what you're talking about, and y- you're getting front row seats but not actually having to have your brain particularly take the pounding.

Joe Rogan 32:40 There's no getting away from that. It, that is the unfortunate reality that every fighter accepts. There's no getting away from that. There's, there's an absolute possibility, and it's not just your head, it's also your joints, a big part is your back and your neck. I know many guys that have neck impingements and disc herniations and fused neck discs and then nerve pinches where their nerves are impinged to the point where they have atrophy in their arms.

Eric Weinstein 33:08 Wow.

Joe Rogan 33:08 Um, I know several guys who have that, where they have one arm that's smaller than the other arm, and it severely impedes their ability to move, and they used to be world champions. Two guys that have been on the show, Bas Rutt and Pat Miletich, two of the greatest of all time. Both guys have a sm- one small arm and one regular size arm 'cause of, uh, neck impingements, so their nerves are literally pinched down by all the swelling and scar tissue and damaged discs. Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 33:34 Well, since we became friends, I started just casually looking at this world and, uh, it's utterly fascinating. I mean, there's, there's nothing like it.

Joe Rogan 33:43 Well, the jujitsu world, I think you would... There's, there's two different worlds, right?

Eric Weinstein 33:48 Right.

Joe Rogan 33:48 There's the MMA world, which incorporates all the different martial arts, and then there's the jujitsu world. And the jujitsu world, I think you would find-

Eric Weinstein 33:56 Would geek out.

Joe Rogan 33:57 Yes.

Eric Weinstein 33:57 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 33:57 You would love it because it's basically, well, to call it chess is not quite fair.

Eric Weinstein 34:03 Right.

Joe Rogan 34:03 Because it's more complex than chess. There's much more going on.

Eric Weinstein 34:06 The degrees of freedom are so high.

Joe Rogan 34:07 But it's also easier to win if someone's better than chess 'cause like even if someone is fairly competent in chess, it'll take a few moves to beat them. In jujitsu, if someone's fairly competent and the other one is a master, he'll probably crush you very quickly.

Eric Weinstein 34:19 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 34:19 But the, when you watch two really high level guys trying to set each other up, it's this crazy rolling exercise in leverage and position and then-

Eric Weinstein 34:29 Oh, I saw this.

Joe Rogan 34:29 ... the knowledge of moves.

Eric Weinstein 34:31 That Eddie Bravo versus, uh, Royler Gracie.

Joe Rogan 34:34 Royler Gracie.

Eric Weinstein 34:34 Oh, crap.

Joe Rogan 34:35 Yeah. Crazy. Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 34:36 It's hard to even know what's going on.

Joe Rogan 34:37 It's crazy if you don't know. It's one of my more difficult challenges of being in s- uh, a commentator, is when the fight goes to the ground, explaining to people watching at home, "What he wants to do right now is get his right leg over his arm, and as soon as he does that, now that arm is stuck, he's in trouble right now."

Eric Weinstein 34:54 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 34:54 You know, and like to try to explain that to people so they can follow along and go, "Oh, I see, I see." And, "He's gonna grab that, he's gonna arch his back," (claps) and he tapped. And people go, "Oh." And it gets people really excited about jujitsu 'cause they see that and they go, "Oh, this is like, really complicated. Like, he's got, there's like a dance he's doing and the other guy's trying to resist the dance."

Eric Weinstein 35:10 Well, the first time I saw the Gracie breakdown of particular fights where they've c- committed to memory every move-

Joe Rogan 35:17 Yes. Yes.

Eric Weinstein 35:17 And it's like replaying the great games of like morphy or capablanca-

Joe Rogan 35:21 Mm. Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 35:21 ... and chess. And you're just thinking, "Wow." That, okay, there's the evergreen game, there's the immortal game. And that, that to me is fascinating. But it's actually more interesting to me in the UFC arena because of the fact that that's only a component and that it's the-

Joe Rogan 35:37 Yes.

Eric Weinstein 35:37 ... it's... What I didn't understand was how much we could get close to unrestricted fighting and still have people fairly dependably survive with minimal obvious disfig- disfigurement. There is disfigurement?

Joe Rogan 35:52 We could even... Well, there is some. We could even be safer if we eliminated weight cutting. The weight cutting is the number one health issue in the sport, in my opinion.

Eric Weinstein 36:00 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 36:01 Number two is the brain damage and the impact and the, you know, broken bones and things along those lines. But then number one is weight cutting because it's so unnecessary. It's such a, such an issue that needs to be addressed 'cause these guys wanna compete at the highest weight possible so they can... Do you know how it works?

Eric Weinstein 36:15 No.

Joe Rogan 36:16 Okay. Say if you were gonna compete in the 170 pound division but you actually weighed 190.

Eric Weinstein 36:20 Right.

Joe Rogan 36:21 What you would do is you would wait until you had followed a pretty strict diet, keep your body weight and your fat at a certain level, and then when it comes-

Eric Weinstein 36:28 Radically.

Joe Rogan 36:28 ... down to a few days before, you would dehydrate yourself pretty radically.

Eric Weinstein 36:32 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 36:32 And then rehydrate yourself scientifically using the cr- there's a b- bunch of guys like George Lockhart, guys who are experts in this, and then they'll give you the exact right amount of nutrients, right amount of potassium and zinc, and they wanna replenish all of your electrolytes and get you in a perfect balance but you're still compromised. And if you don't have a guy like a George Lockhart or someone who's a real expert in nutrition and understands biology and can get you back into that position, you're most likely gonna compete compromised, but you can accept that significant compromising because you're gonna be a bigger person than the person you're fighting. But the also th- like...... in, in boxing in particular, the vast majority of deaths have occurred in the lighter weight divisions. And a lot of it is not just because of the head trauma, but because it's head trauma to someone who's dehydrated.

Eric Weinstein 37:16 That's interesting.

Joe Rogan 37:17 Yeah. It's like, it's, uh, it's, it sucks. And it's, it's contrary to what martial arts are supposed to be about. Martial art's supposed to be about skill for skill, it's not supposed to be about cheating. And the, uh, the cheating thing is like, uh, you're dehydrating yourself, it's like sanctioned cheating. You're saying you're 170 pounds, but you're, like if you say the, "The 170-pound champion," and get on the scale, he's 193. What the fuck's going on? What the fuck's going on? This isn't 170 pounds, right?

Eric Weinstein 37:40 But how frustrating if I want to meet you in a different class. Like, I've wanted to fight you my whole life, but we're, we're really separated.

Joe Rogan 37:45 Well, you can lose weight the right way.

Eric Weinstein 37:47 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 37:47 Look, if somebody wants to compete at 170 pounds, in my humble opinion, they should actually weigh 170 pounds. My friend, Cam Hanes, is a ultra-marathon runner.

Eric Weinstein 37:56 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 37:57 And, uh, one of the things that he does when he gets ready for ultra-marathons is he loses body weight. But he doesn't have any body weight to lose, so he'll, he'll burn 3000 calories and eat 2000 calories, and that's how he loses weight. He lets his body eat itself.

Eric Weinstein 38:10 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 38:11 So he gets down to the 160s, and that's when he runs these gigantic long races, like 240 miles. But it, I know he's done this. You can do this. Like, you don't have to dehydrate yourself, but they choose to dehydrate themselves because they replenish and then they get much bigger when they get inside the octagon. When he's 165, he's actually 165. That's just what he weighs-

Eric Weinstein 38:29 Got it.

Joe Rogan 38:29 ... and that's, uh, the best way to run 240 miles. So he does it through discipline. But these guys that are doing it, and it's not their fault, because it's already been established, it's a part of the sport, it's been there for years and years and years, and it's, uh, it's sanctioned cheating, and everybody does it. And it's the worst part of the sport because it's really damaging to your kidneys.

Eric Weinstein 38:49 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 38:49 Terrible for your organs. Your, your body starts to shut down when you do it too often. Your body doesn't wanna lose weight anymore, so it starts to really hold onto that water. And guys fall asleep and pass out and bang their heads off walls and fights get canceled. Like, pro, like, championship level fights get canceled 'cause guys black out and crack their head off the wall. And this is, this has happened in the, in the UFC before. It's just super, super unnecessary and unfortunate. And part of it is because there's not enough weight classes. There's like, you know, there's 155, then there's 170. The difference between 155 and 170 is not just 15 pounds. 'Cause if you actually weigh 155 and this guy's dropping down to 170, that motherfucker could be 190 plus.

Eric Weinstein 39:33 Right.

Joe Rogan 39:33 And he's just figuring out a way to cut weight to get down to there. And that happens all the time. So you're, you're dealing with, you know, it could be 25, 30 pounds difference between you two guys if you're, if you actually weigh what the weight class is when you get into the octagon. So people are forced to drop weight, they're forced to go lower. If they wanna compete at a world-class level, they're forced to take this extra risk. And it could be mitigated, it could, uh, it could all be stopped by hydration tests, the, the, the UFC could step in, all the athletic commissions could step in and say, "Enough is enough. You're gonna fight at what you weigh, and we're gonna give you more weight classes so you can figure out what's the weight for you to be best at." And I hope it doesn't take someone dying before they figure this out. 'Cause it's one of those things that people have done, like circumcision, they've done it forever so they just keep doing it. But if they just started doing it tomorrow, people would be like, "Why did you cut that baby's dick?"

Eric Weinstein 40:26 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 40:26 "Are you fucking crazy?" "Well, I've always cut babies' dicks. I've been cutting babies' dicks for years."

Eric Weinstein 40:31 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 40:31 Like, this is, right? It's like-

Eric Weinstein 40:32 You need more of a Yiddish accent on that one.

Joe Rogan 40:33 You get used to it. "Well, it's not just Yiddish." "I'm Catholic, my dick got cut." It's, it's, like, practiced-

Eric Weinstein 40:39 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 40:39 ... across the board under the, the guise of, you know, uh, uh, being sanitary. It's, and, uh, prevention of AIDS. There's all these stupid reasons to cut dicks. Like, really, it's just a tradition that doesn't make any goddamn sense. Now, it's not the best analogy to weight cutting, but they're all, they're both stupid.

Eric Weinstein 40:54 Wait, wait, wait. Before we get onto cutting dicks-

Joe Rogan 40:55 Mm-hmm.

Eric Weinstein 40:55 ... I, I do wanna, uh, pick up on an analogy which I'm curious about.

Joe Rogan 41:00 Mm-hmm.

Eric Weinstein 41:00 So when you're trying to describe the ground game, uh-

Joe Rogan 41:02 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 41:04 ... it's super tough for a lay audience because it, the, the, the picture doesn't necessarily match what you're seeing because the, the layer of expertise makes a bunch of random arm movements and, and head movements and hip movements-

Joe Rogan 41:15 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 41:16 ... into something else. We have the same problem in, like, math and physics, where everybody wants to know-

Joe Rogan 41:21 Mm-hmm.

Eric Weinstein 41:22 ... "What the, what's going on with that thing?" And then, when you... I, I've been listening to, like, the physicists on your program, I don't think you have many mathematicians, but it's so confusing-

Joe Rogan 41:32 Mm-hmm.

Eric Weinstein 41:32 ... to figure out how to talk to the world about things that people, everybody wants to know about. And I was just curious as, if you saw a parallel, uh, in those two things. Those are both-

Joe Rogan 41:42 Certainly, yeah.

Eric Weinstein 41:43 ... very high art forms.

Joe Rogan 41:44 Yeah. Um, Sean Carroll has done a really good job of trying to explain things. Neil deGrasse Tyson's done a really good job of trying to explain things.

Eric Weinstein 41:51 Well, I s- I saw, um, the explanation of gauge symmetry-

Joe Rogan 41:56 Lawrence Krauss?

Eric Weinstein 41:57 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 41:57 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 41:57 On your show, which is, like, from t- t- f- to my way of thinking, one of the most important principles in the world.

Joe Rogan 42:03 Yet, I still have no idea what the fuck he said.

Eric Weinstein 42:04 Exactly.

Joe Rogan 42:05 (laughs)

Eric Weinstein 42:05 Well, like...

Joe Rogan 42:06 Well, I read his book.

Eric Weinstein 42:07 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 42:08 And after I read his book, that was the number one question I had.

Eric Weinstein 42:10 Right.

Joe Rogan 42:10 I said, "Okay, I need you to explain to me what is gauge symmetry?" What does that mean?

Eric Weinstein 42:14 It's so weird that he didn't...

Joe Rogan 42:17 I don't think he expected me-

Eric Weinstein 42:18 He didn't-

Joe Rogan 42:18 ... to just bust it out.

Eric Weinstein 42:19 Yeah, I, I don't think so either.

Joe Rogan 42:21 Maybe that's it.

Eric Weinstein 42:21 But I think that it's so hard to... Like, okay, here, here's one of my... I, I want, uh, we'll get back to gauge symmetry-

Joe Rogan 42:29 Okay.

Eric Weinstein 42:29 ... maybe, but like, when people say the universe is expanding-

Joe Rogan 42:33 Right.

Eric Weinstein 42:33 ... what the fuck does that mean?

Joe Rogan 42:35 Um, it's going somewhere.

Eric Weinstein 42:35 Like, every smart, every smart person says-

Joe Rogan 42:39 (laughs)

Eric Weinstein 42:39 ... into what?

Joe Rogan 42:40 Right.

Eric Weinstein 42:41 You know? Like, uh, it's the universe, what is it expanding into?

Joe Rogan 42:44 Right.

Eric Weinstein 42:44 And...

Joe Rogan 42:45 Where's it going?

Eric Weinstein 42:46 Right. And what...

Joe Rogan 42:46 How could it?

Eric Weinstein 42:47 It doesn't make any sense-

Joe Rogan 42:48 Right.

Eric Weinstein 42:48 ... because the l- the linguistics of the universe is expanding isn't really what the m- what...

Joe Rogan 42:53 So you're saying the matter in the universe is moving outwards? Is that what the universe is expanding means?

Eric Weinstein 42:57 No, no, no. What it means is, um...

Joe Rogan 42:59 The infinite universe is getting more infiniter?

Eric Weinstein 43:02 N- no. So the pr- first of all is that they, they t- did you say that?

Joe Rogan 43:06 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 43:06 Okay.

Joe Rogan 43:06 Infiniter. (laughs)

Eric Weinstein 43:09 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 43:09 I was trying to be silly.

Eric Weinstein 43:10 The sativa's kicking in.

Joe Rogan 43:11 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 43:12 Um, so if you think about this bottle-

Joe Rogan 43:14 Okay.

Eric Weinstein 43:14 ... right?... it's the slices of the bottle that are expanding. But if you think of the bottle as the universe, the bo- the bottle isn't expanding.

Joe Rogan 43:25 Mm.

Eric Weinstein 43:25 It's just the cross-sections that are expanding. And so that's what they really mean. What they really mean is something like, "The spacetime metric on space-like cross-sections has, uh, its volume form, when integrated, is, is higher." Something like that.

Joe Rogan 43:39 Mm-hmm.

Eric Weinstein 43:39 It's some, some mathematical statement. But, "The universe is expanding," is not helpful to me. Like if I wasn't able to read the math, I would say, "I don't get it."

Joe Rogan 43:50 Well, I don't get anything. He, quite honestly, and I'm not being self-deprecating. I don't get the Big Bang.

Eric Weinstein 43:56 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 43:57 I don't get it at all.

Eric Weinstein 43:58 Well, okay. Here's what somebody should tell you.

Joe Rogan 44:00 Okay.

Eric Weinstein 44:00 Um, there are two kinds of singularities when you try to solve Einstein's field equations for gravity. So, gravity is a thing. Einstein tells us pretty much, uh, what we think gravity is. It's the curvature of space and time. And when we try to solve his equations, we get these black hole singularities, which are called Schwarzschild, uh, singularities. And then we get this initial singularity, uh, which we associate back to the Big Bang with the Friedmann-Walker-Robertson model. In some sense, those singularities are indications to us that we're not at the end of physics and that Einstein's equations aren't the, aren't the real story. And so rather than sort of saying, "They're a pretty good model up until this point, and then we kinda really don't know what happened then. We have the observational thing that we would map to the Big Bang, and then we have the model thing that we would map to the Big Bang. And to be honest with you, we're pretty sure that our, our models don't make sense past a point. And now we're having this conversation past the point where we're pretty sure they don't make sense." That would be much more honest to me.

Joe Rogan 45:03 Mm.

Eric Weinstein 45:03 But because we have this desire to, uh, to blow people's minds gratuitously, um, and everybody wants to know, "Well, how did everything begin, and, and where are we, and who are we?" And we want to sort of answer more of that than we probably should.

Joe Rogan 45:21 Hmm. That's an interesting way of put... That makes sense.

Eric Weinstein 45:26 Like, let me give you an alternate spin on quantum mechanics, okay? So typically, people will say, "You know, the mind-blowing thing about quantum mechanics is that it's probabilistic." And that is pr- kind of mind-blowing, but if you actually say it differently, you say, "Look, in classical mechanics, like Newton, stuff that we feel more comfortable with, you have good questions and bad questions." Like if you and I go hang out at the beach, and I say to you, uh, "Hey, where is that wave concentrated? At what point does that wa- wave live?" You'd look at me and say, "It's a wave. It's not concentrated at a point. It's all along the shore." So, as a classical physicist, you'd just say, "That's not a good question, Eric." And when I ask you a good question, like, "How fast is that wave front moving, you know, along this trajectory or something?" You can give me an answer, and it's definite. So as long as you ask a good question in classical mechanics, you get definite answers.

Joe Rogan 46:25 Mm.

Eric Weinstein 46:25 When you go to quantum mechanics and you ask a good question, uh, technically that means that the state vector is a observable of the Hermitian operator representing the question. Never mind. Um, funny thing happens. You get deterministic answers. There's no probability involved whatsoever. So if I ask a good question in quantum mechanics, I have the same property that I, I do when I ask a good question in classical mechanics. I get a definite answer. There's no probability. When I ask a bad question in quantum mechanics, instead of, like classical mechanics says, you know, "Screw off, I'm not answering that. That's ridiculous. It's a bad question." Quantum mechanics says, "You really wanna ask me a bad question? All right. I'll give you maybe this answer and maybe that answer, and here's the probability distribution that I'll actually give you either of those two answers. And what's more, I'll even kick it into the state that I, that you asked about." So for example, if you ask, "Where is that wave concentrated?" So like, let's say this is my coffee cup, and I drop a little drop in the center of it. That creates a circular wave that radiates out. And I say, "Where is the wave concentrated?" Well, at one second it hits the coffee mug, let's say, it's a big coffee cup, and at one second after that, it's concentrated again in the center. So that becomes a good question only when the wave becomes re-concentrated in the center of the cup, right? But if that wave were a quantum wave, I could ask, "Where is the wave concentrated?" And with equal probability, suddenly the wave will concentrate at some point along the circle that represents the wave. Right?

Joe Rogan 48:01 So what would your answer be then?

Eric Weinstein 48:03 Well, the point would be, uh, it'll concentrate at one of these points around the circle at random with equal, uh, with, with equal probability. And suddenly the wave will concentrate randomly when it, when it's a quantum question.

Joe Rogan 48:14 So this is why quantum mechanics is so confusing, quantum physics are so confusing to people.

Eric Weinstein 48:18 Well-

Joe Rogan 48:19 'Cause they hear, they hear that and they go, "Okay, this is..."

Eric Weinstein 48:21 It is confusing.

Joe Rogan 48:22 "... just went in my head like Jell-O."

Eric Weinstein 48:24 Well, that's the thing. But the point of, if I, if I have a wave and I slow it down, I can look at a wave in a coffee mug.

Joe Rogan 48:30 Right.

Eric Weinstein 48:30 And I can see that if I ask, "Where is the wave concentrated?" You would say, "It's concentrated at, like, half an inch out from the center of the cup." You know, say, "No, no, not what ring is it concentrated around? What exact point?" It's not concentrated at an exact point. But that wave in quantum mechanics, which is not concentrated at an exact point, behaves differently when I ask a bad question. So the, the point that I'm trying to get across is, good questions have exactly the same properties in classical mechanics and quantum mechanics. There's no introduction of probability theory. The weird question is, why is quantum mechanics answering bad questions?

Joe Rogan 49:08 Well, or maybe even weirder question is...

Eric Weinstein 49:14 (sighs)

Joe Rogan 49:14 Not just why... Is, is, is quantum mechanics in an adolescent state of understanding? I mean, is part of the problem that l- they don't know enough yet?... and they're trying to, like, explain what they do know and what they can prove on paper. And for a person like me, they're like, "Well, what do you know?" And they're like, "Well, we know probabilities. We know this, we know that." And a person like me who doesn't have any studying in it just goes, "Whoa. What does that mean?"

Eric Weinstein 49:38 Well, that's, that's great. So like, let's say we were having a conversation about genetics, and we were looking only at the DNA, and we didn't see epigenetics-

Joe Rogan 49:45 Right.

Eric Weinstein 49:45 ... in terms of, uh, like, methylation patterns. Then you'd, you'd shove everything onto DNA, and maybe you had no concept of, like, development. And y- the f- the model would work up to a point. It would explain why you have blue eyes or brown eyes, but it wouldn't explain all sorts of other things. And so now, then you over, over-develop that model. So I think that what you're saying is really Einstein's intuition, which is, "I'm, I'm not saying," eh, Einstein, "I'm not saying that this is wrong. I'm saying this is incomplete." And then when we finally get the answer, we're gonna say, "Oh, that's why we used to think of it in those crazy terms."

Joe Rogan 50:19 Hmm. So back to gauge theory.

Eric Weinstein 50:22 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 50:22 Gauge symmetry. What the hell is that?

Eric Weinstein 50:25 All right. Well, here's the, here's the craziest thing.

Joe Rogan 50:28 Okay.

Eric Weinstein 50:29 There is a very confusing visual image of the fundamental unit that you need to appreciate what gauge symmetry is all about. And, uh, I had Jamie load it up, um, under the tab called Planet Hopf. And this is gonna be-

Joe Rogan 50:45 H-O-P-F?

Eric Weinstein 50:46 Eh, H-O-P-F.

Joe Rogan 50:48 What the fuck am I looking at?

Eric Weinstein 50:50 You are looking at the most important object in the universe.

Joe Rogan 50:53 What?

Eric Weinstein 50:54 'Cause-

Joe Rogan 50:56 That looks like some, uh, trippy screensaver on your laptop.

Eric Weinstein 50:59 Take another puff, my friend-

Joe Rogan 51:01 (laughs)

Eric Weinstein 51:01 ... because it's worth it. Uh, this is, what you're looking at is a principal fiber bundle.

Joe Rogan 51:08 And it's, uh-

Eric Weinstein 51:09 And it is the only-

Joe Rogan 51:09 ... the Earth. Those are the continents I'm looking at.

Eric Weinstein 51:12 Well, that's, yeah, that's the cool part about it, which is this is very confusing to figure out what you're looking at, but it's finite. In other words, it, if we stay, uh, for an hour or two on this and we actually answer all your questions, you will actually know what a principal bundle is, and you will know the arena in which gauge theory exists.

Joe Rogan 51:30 For folks at home that are just listening and they, well, "What the fuck are these guys talking about?" What is the name of this video, Jamie?

Guest 51:37 It's not a video. It's-

Joe Rogan 51:38 It's not a video.

Guest 51:39 It's a small file on a page. I typed in Planet Hopf, and it was the first thing that showed up on math.toronto.edu.

Joe Rogan 51:46 Okay, so-

Guest 51:47 It's the extended thing.

Joe Rogan 51:48 Planet H-O-P-F-

Guest 51:50 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 51:50 ... for anybody who wants to look at this, if you're just listening and you have no idea why I'm freaking out. So-

Eric Weinstein 51:56 And this, this was done by, uh, a friend of mine named Dror Bar-Natan. I actually coded the same thing up. Um, strangely enough, didn't do, uh, uh, as brilliant a job of coloring it. And-

Joe Rogan 52:07 This looks amazing, by the way.

Eric Weinstein 52:09 So, okay, what you're looking at is a two-dimensional sphere that is the surface of the Earth where an extra circle is included at every point on the surface of that sphere, which you're now visualizing, and that extra circle, which would be called the fiber, um, when you take the totality of all of those circles together, one for each point on the surface of the sphere, they create something called a three-sphere. That is all the points that are one unit o- of distance away from the origin in four-dimensional space. So that three-dimensional sphere is the analog of a two-dimensional sphere sitting in three-dimensional space. So think about a caramel apple. If you've ever made caramel apples, you get a disc of caramel, and you wrap it around the sphere that is the apple surface, right? So this is the three-dimensional version of caramel wrapped around the three-dimensional, uh, sphere sitting in four-dimensional space.

Joe Rogan 53:21 (laughs)

Eric Weinstein 53:21 Now-

Joe Rogan 53:22 Do you understand any of this, Jamie?

Guest 53:24 I'm trying.

Eric Weinstein 53:24 Well, look, it's-

Joe Rogan 53:25 Okay, thank you.

Eric Weinstein 53:25 Dude, it's totally trippy, right?

Joe Rogan 53:27 Yeah, it's re-

Eric Weinstein 53:27 And so we're not gonna get it completely during this session. However, the way-

Joe Rogan 53:31 Well, I lack, I think I lack the tools.

Eric Weinstein 53:33 I don't think so. I th- we lack the time.

Joe Rogan 53:36 Mm-hmm.

Eric Weinstein 53:36 So the first thing is, you are finding out that one of your friends thinks this is the most important object in the universe, and you've never even heard of it.

Joe Rogan 53:44 Right.

Eric Weinstein 53:44 Much less know that there's one visual example. So-

Joe Rogan 53:47 What the fuck? How is this happening now? Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 53:49 I know. Exactly.

Joe Rogan 53:50 (laughs) It does look fucking crazy.

Eric Weinstein 53:54 Well, okay, this is what was discovered in the mid-1970s as the connection between mathematics and different, what we call differential geometry, and the discipline of particle theory. So two guys, uh, Jim Simons, the m- world's, now the world's most successful hedge fund manager, and C.N. Yang, a person who might arg- arguably be the world's first or second greatest living theoretical physicist, had a lunch seminar, and they said, "Why don't we figure out how do we talk to each other?" And what they found out is they both had developed a version of this picture, and w- th-

Joe Rogan 54:32 Independently?

Eric Weinstein 54:33 Independently. So it was the Rosetta Stone that u- unleashed a revolution. So when Lawrence Krauss was talking to you about gauge theory, he, he was saying things about chess boards, and you color it white and you color it black. That's super confusing to me. I would rather your people be confused about an actual example of the object on which we do gauge theory that you can visually see.

Joe Rogan 54:57 Hmm.

Eric Weinstein 54:58 Right? Now, if I started to tell you what gauge theory is, it's pretty simple. So here's a des- here's a description I never hear anyone say. When you're doing differential calculus, I don't know if you remember differential calculus, you're trying to figure out the slopes of lines-

Joe Rogan 55:15 Mm-hmm.

Eric Weinstein 55:15 ... the ro- instantaneous rise over the run. So that always makes sense to people. "Okay, I figure out how fast it's going up versus how fast it's going across."... but a question arises which is, where do you measure the rise from? So for example, if I say, "H- what is the height of Mount Everest?" Jamie will say?

Joe Rogan 55:37 30, what is it, 35,000?

Guest 55:41 Yeah, something like that.

Joe Rogan 55:42 Something crazy like that, right?

Eric Weinstein 55:43 Well-

Guest 55:44 Just go with that. I was gonna say base from where-

Eric Weinstein 55:45 Well, have you ever got an internet connection?

Guest 55:46 Yeah. All right, all right, all right.

Joe Rogan 55:47 Let's take a guess. What do you think it is?

Eric Weinstein 55:49 I don't know. I can't remember if it's-

Joe Rogan 55:50 I wanna say it's 35,000. What do you think?

Eric Weinstein 55:53 I thought it was 29 or ...

Guest 55:54 Sh- 29,029.

Eric Weinstein 55:56 Oh.

Guest 55:56 That'll be good.

Eric Weinstein 55:57 Okay.

Joe Rogan 55:57 What's, uh, the highest? What's the highest one? Is it K2?

Eric Weinstein 56:01 No, wait. K2 is second, right?

Joe Rogan 56:03 Is it?

Eric Weinstein 56:03 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 56:04 Is Everest the highest?

Eric Weinstein 56:04 Yeah. But okay.

Joe Rogan 56:06 Okay.

Eric Weinstein 56:06 So Everest, so 29, what'd you say, 29?

Guest 56:08 29029.

Eric Weinstein 56:09 029. Above what?

Joe Rogan 56:13 Sea level?

Eric Weinstein 56:14 Okay. Where is Mount Everest located?

Joe Rogan 56:17 The Himalayas.

Eric Weinstein 56:18 What's-

Joe Rogan 56:18 Tibet.

Eric Weinstein 56:18 What's sea?

Joe Rogan 56:19 Uh, there's no ocean there, sir.

Eric Weinstein 56:21 (laughs) Right. So-

Joe Rogan 56:22 Right.

Eric Weinstein 56:22 ... like we snuck in, "It's above sea level and there's no ocean."

Joe Rogan 56:25 Right. So we start from the center of the Earth.

Eric Weinstein 56:27 We have this structure called the geoid, which is the interpolation of sea level as if sea level, as if the Earth was only ocean and there was no tide.

Joe Rogan 56:35 Right. And as if there's some sort of a-

Eric Weinstein 56:38 So we snuck in the reference level. That's my point, is that, that we-

Joe Rogan 56:40 Mm-hmm.

Eric Weinstein 56:40 ... we teach these kids to repeat, "Why, it's 29,000 and change above sea level," and there's no sea.

Joe Rogan 56:46 Right.

Eric Weinstein 56:47 So that reference level is the magic of gauge theory, right? Which is that we measure the rise over the run based-

Joe Rogan 56:54 Mm-hmm.

Eric Weinstein 56:55 ... on a custom level.

Joe Rogan 56:57 So a, a level that we all agree upon?

Eric Weinstein 56:59 So for example, let's imagine that you and I are in some country experiencing hyperinflation, right? And I'm your boss. And you say, "Dude, I need a raise." I say, "W- well, look, I- I told you I would hire you for, you know, 10,000 dinars a month." And you say, "Yeah." I say, "Well, your, your salary is constant. I took the derivative of it. I've paid you 10,000 last month, 10,000 this month, so you're getting the same amount. Derivative equals zero, it's constant salary." Now you have to come back at me in calculus, and you say, "No, I don't like your notion of the derivative because what you're doing is you're measuring the absolute number of dinars that y- you're paying me. But what I wanna do is I wanna measure it in purchasing power, because I'm losing money every month that you don't increase my salary."

Joe Rogan 57:48 Oh.

Eric Weinstein 57:49 So I now come up with a version of the calculus in which my salary is not constant because it's being measured, uh, relative to purchasing power rather than absolute units. That's gauge theory, is that you're bringing in a reference level that does the differentiation. So you, you're measuring rise over run by customizing the problem. So these were two different applications of the calculus.

Joe Rogan 58:15 Mm-hmm.

Eric Weinstein 58:15 The cheating employer says, "I wanna go with constant dinars." The gifted employee says, "Not so fast. I, I know gauge theory. I'm gonna use a custom reference level which is purchasing power." Right? So it's like sneaking the geoid into Tibet to measure Everest. I've got my custom level.

Joe Rogan 58:34 Does this make sense to you?

Guest 58:35 Yes.

Joe Rogan 58:36 It makes sense, right?

Guest 58:37 Yes.

Joe Rogan 58:37 But now explain it. Say what he said.

Guest 58:40 Uh, well we'd d- we would need, would need a new reference of what w- what you wanna measure. What would ... Like a new conversation to have a ref-

Joe Rogan 58:46 Right.

Guest 58:46 ... like a flat level-

Joe Rogan 58:47 Right, right.

Guest 58:48 ... I guess.

Joe Rogan 58:48 Yeah. It would be really difficult for me to recall a day from now.

Guest 58:53 Maybe.

Joe Rogan 58:54 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 58:54 L- lay off the weed. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 58:55 No, it's not the weed. It's a lack-

Guest 58:57 No, that might help. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 58:58 No, the weed might help.

Guest 58:58 Yeah, I might recall better.

Joe Rogan 58:59 Might pop a mushroom cap, see what's up. It's, um, it's still in reference to quantum physics, like how you would use-

Eric Weinstein 59:08 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 59:08 ... gauge symmetry.

Eric Weinstein 59:09 Well, but let's-

Joe Rogan 59:10 How you would-

Eric Weinstein 59:10 ... let's look at some more cool stuff-

Joe Rogan 59:11 Okay.

Eric Weinstein 59:12 ... with the visual cortex, because everything that we can do visually should inform what we can do linguistically. So you should push everything into the visual realm that you can, uh, in or-

Joe Rogan 59:21 What do you mean by that? Like ...

Eric Weinstein 59:23 Well, I just showed you the Hopf fibration, which is the only, in some sense, the only mature picture I can show you of a principle fibration in geometry or physics that is honest and has the full complexity. It's got a certain kind of knottedness to it. It's got something that we would call curvature. And it is visualizable. And so it would be better that we spent, you know, a day or two on this most important object, which we think reality is based around, and that you visually got comfortable with it. And then you said, "Okay, now tell me again what gauge symmetry is." And then instead of Lawrence talking about this chessboard and the colors and all this stuff by analogy, you'd actually be seeing gauge theory visually. Like I could program a computer, and have done so, to show you visually what a gauge theory is. And it'll take some time to sort of understand what the trippy pictures are, but if, let's bring up the Escher staircase.

Guest 1:00:24 Yep.

Joe Rogan 1:00:24 Uh.

Eric Weinstein 1:00:24 And Jamie has a nice wrinkle on this that instead of using M.C. Escher's staircase, he's got this animated guy who just keeps going down.

Joe Rogan 1:00:32 Hm.

Eric Weinstein 1:00:33 All right. Now what's going on with those stairs? Now those stairs are sort of an optical illusion because obviously it can't just keep going down. But then you build these sys- systems like rock, paper, scissors. What's the best thing to throw in rock, paper, scissors?

Joe Rogan 1:00:47 Well, it depends on what you throw.

Eric Weinstein 1:00:49 Well, but we should be able to agree that rock is better than scissors.

Joe Rogan 1:00:52 Rock is better than scissors-

Eric Weinstein 1:00:53 So scissors-

Joe Rogan 1:00:53 ... but paper is better than rock.

Eric Weinstein 1:00:56 Right. So you go around that thing, and now the, the point is that you get to, like, "Rock is much better than rock!" Right? And yeah-

Joe Rogan 1:01:01 Yes.

Eric Weinstein 1:01:01 ... that seems crazy.

Joe Rogan 1:01:02 Seems crazy.

Eric Weinstein 1:01:02 Now that concept would be what we would call holonomy, the weird sentence, "Rock is better than rock" because of that going around the loop.

Joe Rogan 1:01:09 But why, why rock is better than rock? I don't get it. Like-

Eric Weinstein 1:01:12 Well, rock-

Joe Rogan 1:01:13 ... rock is better than scissors.

Eric Weinstein 1:01:14 ... is better than scissors, scissors is better than paper.

Joe Rogan 1:01:15 Right.

Eric Weinstein 1:01:16 Paper is better than rock.

Joe Rogan 1:01:17 Right.

Eric Weinstein 1:01:17 So by transitivity, rock is therefore better than rock because you went around the loop and came back to rock.

Guest 1:01:23 It's like MMA math.

Joe Rogan 1:01:25 Yeah.

Guest 1:01:25 Yeah. You take what you came to.

Eric Weinstein 1:01:26 Or if, like, if y- if you're ch- if you're changing, uh, currencies and you don't spend any of it because you keep u- losi- using your credit card-... by the time you come home, you have more money than when you left because the exchange rates did something so that when you changed into each currency, you, you, you somehow got richer.

Joe Rogan 1:01:43 But by saying rock is better than rock, you're denying the fact they're exactly the same.

Eric Weinstein 1:01:46 Like, well, no. That, that-

Joe Rogan 1:01:48 You're not, you're not addressing it, you just wanna continue to say-

Eric Weinstein 1:01:49 That's the linguistic-

Joe Rogan 1:01:50 Right.

Eric Weinstein 1:01:51 ... that's the linguistic fallacy, right?

Joe Rogan 1:01:52 Right.

Eric Weinstein 1:01:52 So the idea that this system here, so those stairs in, in gauge theory would be these reference levels for the derivative.

Joe Rogan 1:02:01 Mm-hmm.

Eric Weinstein 1:02:02 And you can have situations where the reference levels don't knit flatly together, right?

Joe Rogan 1:02:08 Mm-hmm.

Eric Weinstein 1:02:08 And so by virtue of that, we would say that the system has curvature. Curvature is the Escher-ness of, of these better than transitive statements.

Joe Rogan 1:02:19 What we're looking at, folks, for people who are just listening, we're looking at ... If you've never seen those Escher, uh, etches, those sketches, they're very strange because what they are is a bunch of staircases that appear to always be going downhill, even if one of them is above the other one. It's very strange.

Eric Weinstein 1:02:35 Very strange.

Joe Rogan 1:02:36 And this one, we're watching an animated guy roll down the staircase constantly, even though it really looks like somehow or another it must go up somewhere, but you don't ever see it going up. But it's al- also a factor of the illusion of perspective and how it's drawn and, and, you know, playing games with lines.

Eric Weinstein 1:02:54 Exactly. But if you do this very weird experiment, which we didn't know about until the late '50s called the Aharonov-Bohm experiment, um, if you run, um, a, uh, e- electric, uh, current through a wire that's insulated, um, it's, it appears not to have any electromagnetic field outside, uh, of the insulation. However, if you do some sort of quantum interference experiment, you can tell that there's current going through because it affects the phage, phase shift, let's say, of an electron orbiting that insulated electromagnetic system. So nobody thought that that was going to happen because they thought, "Well, an insulator would keep the, uh ..." We thought the electromagnetic field is what determines the shift in the electron. But it's insulated, so there is no electromagnetic field to worry about. It turned out that it wasn't the electromagnetic field alone, it was some previous geometric concept, which was called the electromagnetic potential that determined something about the phase shift. So this Escher staircase, in the case of electromagnetism, it's like the photons are the analog of those steps. They're partially what determine the derivative operators, these reference levels, ag- again, in our, in our discussion of the, uh, am I paying you the right amount in a hyperinflationary economy? So all of these things, you, you're trying to figure out, well, that's an optical illusion, but that effect actually occurs in some systems not as an optical illusion. Yes, right? Th- so this weirdness, um, requires a fair amount in terms of either study of math or learning visualizations. But there's no way to achieve it, in my experience, with l- linguistic communications. Like, all the stuff that gets said about, you know, the universe is expanding or let me tell you what a gauge theory is and, and why. There's a reason it's confusing. It's 'cause it doesn't make any effing sense.

Joe Rogan 1:04:55 Right. I see what you're saying, sort of. But, so this is, this is like what Feynman said, "If you think you know quantum physics, you don't know quantum physics."

Eric Weinstein 1:05:05 Well, there's, there's some of that. Like-

Joe Rogan 1:05:06 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 1:05:06 ... there's, you know ... One of the most important things in the world is this thing called a spinner. Like the electrons and the protons correspond to things called spinners. And the average person has no idea that spinners exist. What's more, spinners have a property that, when I tell it to you linguistically, won't make any sense. (knock on door) All right. I'm-

Joe Rogan 1:05:27 Okay.

Eric Weinstein 1:05:27 Good. Let's do this with coffee.

Joe Rogan 1:05:29 Hit me with it.

Eric Weinstein 1:05:30 Okay. So-

Joe Rogan 1:05:31 Once more?

Eric Weinstein 1:05:32 Yeah. Thank you, sir. Perfect.

Joe Rogan 1:05:34 Okay.

Eric Weinstein 1:05:35 All right. Now here's the problem.

Joe Rogan 1:05:37 Okay.

Eric Weinstein 1:05:37 Hold your cup. No.

Joe Rogan 1:05:38 Sorry.

Eric Weinstein 1:05:39 From the bottom.

Joe Rogan 1:05:40 All right.

Eric Weinstein 1:05:41 And here's the first challenge. Without spilling it-

Joe Rogan 1:05:43 Okay.

Eric Weinstein 1:05:44 ... I want you, and without readjusting your grip on the bottom of your cup, I want you to turn your cup 360 degrees. No, no, no. Uh, sorry. Turn ... Your, your fingers should not change on the cup.

Joe Rogan 1:05:56 Oh, okay.

Eric Weinstein 1:05:57 Turn the cup 360 degrees without spilling it and try to take a sip. Okay. That, that didn't work.

Joe Rogan 1:06:08 No.

Eric Weinstein 1:06:08 Now, without coming back-

Joe Rogan 1:06:10 (laughs)

Eric Weinstein 1:06:10 ... how would you take a sip?

Joe Rogan 1:06:11 If I got it all the way around that way?

Eric Weinstein 1:06:13 Yeah. (slurping) Mr. Jujitsu man.

Joe Rogan 1:06:16 I would have to, uh ... I would have to help myself.

Eric Weinstein 1:06:21 Yeah, no, no. You're gonna do it. All right. You ready?

Joe Rogan 1:06:24 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 1:06:24 Okay. Here we go.

Joe Rogan 1:06:25 Okay. Are you gonna-

Eric Weinstein 1:06:26 Are you gonna go around in a circle? I'm gonna do 360.

Joe Rogan 1:06:28 Okay. Right.

Eric Weinstein 1:06:31 Now, I'm screwed if I don't bring it back underneath.

Joe Rogan 1:06:35 Oh, I see.

Eric Weinstein 1:06:36 So that system required 720 degrees of rotation unexpectedly.

Joe Rogan 1:06:41 Oh, you just keep going.

Eric Weinstein 1:06:42 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:06:43 Okay.

Eric Weinstein 1:06:43 Now, the idea that there are objects that don't come back to themselves under 360 degrees of rotation but require 720 is probably something you've never thought about before in your life.

Joe Rogan 1:06:54 Right.

Eric Weinstein 1:06:55 But without that, you wouldn't have the Pauli exclusion principle, you wouldn't have the stability of matter. And this thing is called the Philippine Wine Dance. Jamie, do you wanna ...

Guest 1:07:03 Yeah, yeah.

Eric Weinstein 1:07:38 ... is, uh, entirely responsible for the world that we live in.

Joe Rogan 1:07:41 This is so bizarre to watch-

Eric Weinstein 1:07:43 And nobody-

Joe Rogan 1:07:43 ... this in animation.

Eric Weinstein 1:07:44 And nobody knows about it, right? Like, unless you're hanging out with physicists, they don't tell you that electromagnetism has to do with the fact that there's a secret circle at every point in space and time that's invisible to you. They don't tell you that there's stuff that requires 720 degrees of rotation. They just say mind-blowing stuff about-

Joe Rogan 1:08:02 Whoa. So what is happening in this 720 degrees of rotation in the quantum world?

Eric Weinstein 1:08:09 There's an object that is requiring this, just the way the cup arm system requires 720 degrees of rotation.

Joe Rogan 1:08:16 What object is this?

Eric Weinstein 1:08:17 It's called a spinner. And that spinner is how we model the electron, the neutrino, quarks. All that is spinorial matter. Sir.

Joe Rogan 1:08:32 That's a good long pause. I like it.

Eric Weinstein 1:08:34 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:08:35 And what, where does this fit in, in our model of the universe? Like, what is the function of this? Why is it there? What is it? How do we know it's there?

Eric Weinstein 1:08:45 Well, we know it's there, um, because, uh, when Dirac... So there was this problem with, like, the Schrodinger equation. The Schrodinger equation takes one derivative in terms of the direction of time, and takes two derivatives in the direction of all the spatial directions. But because Einstein told us that space and time are woven together, for the theory to be relativistic, you need the same number of derivatives of time as of space. Because spacetime is sort of one kind of semi-unified object. All right, that means you either have to boost the number of derivatives of time up to two to match the two t- derivatives in the directions of space, or you have to knock the two direct- derivatives in the spatial directions down to one derivative to get it to be equal. Now, one direction gets you to something called the Klein-Gordon equation. What Dirac did is he took a square root of the Klein-Gordon equation to get these spinors. So he had these numbers... He didn't understand at first that he was gonna get kicked into this world of spinors. He came up with a square root equation in which A times B, thought to be numbers, was not equal to B times A. It was, like, equal to the negative of B times A. So it was like, what two numbers, when, when you multiply them, matter, in which order? It wasn't numbers, it was matrices. So this was one of the great insights, you know, rival to Einstein in terms of the depth of what it told us about the universe. Most of us haven't really heard of Paul Dirac. We don't realize that he has one of the three most important equations in physics.

Joe Rogan 1:10:15 Now, in, when you say three most important, important in how it's applicable to everyday life, or important in how it's given us an understanding in quantum physics, or important how its understand- it- it's- its understanding is significant to quantum physicists?

Eric Weinstein 1:10:32 We're talking about a ... We're talking about bedrock reality. Like, you and I are having a conversation, in, if, if you're a Matrix fan, in what we might call the construct.

Joe Rogan 1:10:40 Okay.

Eric Weinstein 1:10:41 What is the construct made of? It's made... So, the way I do it is I, I think of it as a newspaper story. There's where and when did it happen, there was who and what was involved, and there's how and why. Okay? So where and when is space and time, clearly. The who and the what, to me, let's, uh, say the who is the spinorial stuff, it's like electrons, it's protons, neutrons, quarks, the stuff that we're made of. And then you and I are only able to see each other because we're passing photons back and forth, which are force particles. They're not spinorial. They, they come back to themselves after 360 degrees. They don't require 720. No, so this is sort of the... You know, if you were going to go to a play, you'd have the, the dramatic personnel of the play given to you at the beginning. So this is what this universe is. It's a story about space and time, where and, where and when, about what is in that, you know, like who are the players and what equipment are they using? That's like bosons and fermions. And then there's the how and the why, which is the equations and the Lagrangians that govern the rules of play. You know, so for example, if you and I, you know, start, go to the beach, and, uh, we've got a ball and a net, and you think we're gonna play volleyball, and we actually, somebody says, "No, no, we're gonna play Sepak Takraw," which is like volleyball played with the feet in a martial art style, which is awesome.

Joe Rogan 1:12:06 Yeah. We've showed a video on that recently. From-

Eric Weinstein 1:12:08 S-

Joe Rogan 1:12:08 I believe it was from Thailand or Bali-

Eric Weinstein 1:12:10 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:12:10 ... or something.

Eric Weinstein 1:12:11 They're, they're really good at it, are they.

Joe Rogan 1:12:12 Amazing.

Eric Weinstein 1:12:12 It's amazing. It's like ballet, martial arts-

Joe Rogan 1:12:14 Crazy to watch.

Eric Weinstein 1:12:14 ... soccer-

Joe Rogan 1:12:15 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 1:12:15 ... it's volleyball all happening in one thing.

Joe Rogan 1:12:16 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 1:12:16 We should, we should do this as a nation. That's a different set of rules for a ball and a net and two teams that you, you could've done it one way as volleyball, and you could've done it another way, uh, as Sepak Takraw, where you're d- using your feet and not your hands.

Joe Rogan 1:12:32 Mm-hmm.

Eric Weinstein 1:12:33 So those, that's sort of the breakdown of what a physics theory is. You gotta tell me where and when, you gotta tell me what's in the game, and you gotta tell me what the rules are. And that's what this place is. And so theoretical physics is the most interesting of all of these fields to me. Not because it speaks to us about our daily lives. Because it speaks to us about, well, where are we? Where is, where is this thing taking place?

Joe Rogan 1:12:57 So it seems to me that there's a small number of people, like, that are studying this stuff. That are, they're getting past biology. They're getting past gravity, climate change, all, all these different variables that we're constantly dealing with. And they're, they're getting to the very things that make everything.

Eric Weinstein 1:13:25 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:13:25 And what is it under the wiring?

Eric Weinstein 1:13:27 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:13:27 Like, lift, lift up the board. What's going on in here?

Eric Weinstein 1:13:31 Right, it's like getting to a computer down to the zero and one logic-

Joe Rogan 1:13:34 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 1:13:34 ... gates. Right?

Joe Rogan 1:13:35 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 1:13:36 So that thing, we've got three or four equations. We've got three or four different kinds of objects in the system.We seem to be, a- and people are gonna not like what I'm about to say, but screw them, we seem to be almost at the end. Like, these equations are so beautiful, they're so tight, that it's almost most mysterious, because it feels like this thing... like a movie that ended prematurely.

Joe Rogan 1:14:04 How so?

Eric Weinstein 1:14:06 Well, um, when we found the Higgs particle at the, uh, LHC, there wasn't anything left that needed to, to close to explain the system. We know that there's dark matter out there that we don't understand. We know that there's dark energy out there that we don't understand, because of astronomical observations. But all the stuff that we know about, when you look at it and collide it at high energies and figure out what mutates into what, there's nothing missing anymore. So it's like, it's like you have got this odd thing where everything got very, very simple, very unified, and it felt like we were gonna get one or two more giant unifications, and the whole thing would be tied up with a bow. And right now, we just don't have anything that is needed to close the system. So for example, when you have radioactive carbon decay, um, what you see is that one of the neutrons flips into being a proton, and it spits out an electron when it does that, right? So it's like, it's like a trans nucleon. It, it shifts what it is. Okay. That electron doesn't carry off enough energy to explain how energy would be conserved. There was something missing. So this guy Wolfgang Pauli said, "I bet there's a particle that's neutral, so we can't see it, that won't leave a track in a cloud chamber. It won't have any effect that we can see electromagnetically. But it's carrying away some of the energy, because I'm not