Joe Rogan Experience #1203 - Eric Weinstein

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   And we're live. Are…

   1. JRJoe Rogan0:00

      And we're live. Are you, you gonna update the, the people out there?

   2. EWEric Weinstein0:05

      No.

   3. JRJoe Rogan0:05

      Oh, you shut your phone off?

   4. EWEric Weinstein0:06

      Yeah.

   5. JRJoe Rogan0:06

      Oh, you're professional.

   6. EWEric Weinstein0:08

      Try.

   7. JRJoe Rogan0:08

      How are you, sir? Good to see you.

   8. EWEric Weinstein0:09

      I'm doing well.

   9. JRJoe Rogan0:09

      What's going on?

   10. EWEric Weinstein0:10

       Um, everything. It's all pretty weird out there.

   11. JRJoe Rogan0:13

       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.

   12. EWEric Weinstein0:42

       Wow. Suddenly, I feel like I'm in a marriage.

   13. JRJoe Rogan0:45

       (laughs)

   14. EWEric Weinstein0:45

       (sniffs) .

   15. JRJoe Rogan0:46

       Doesn't it seem like that, though?

   16. EWEric Weinstein0:47

       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.

   17. JRJoe Rogan1:06

       How so?

   18. EWEric Weinstein1:07

       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.

   19. JRJoe Rogan1:19

       Yeah.

   20. EWEric Weinstein1:19

       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-

   21. JRJoe Rogan1:55

       Hmm.

   22. EWEric Weinstein1:56

       ... is, is quite large.

   23. JRJoe Rogan1:57

       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.

   24. EWEric Weinstein2:15

       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-

   25. JRJoe Rogan2:41

       Hmm.

   26. EWEric Weinstein2:41

       ... 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?

   27. JRJoe Rogan3:12

       Hmm.

   28. EWEric Weinstein3:12

       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.

   29. JRJoe Rogan3:22

       Well, it also tries to explain your feelings too.

   30. EWEric Weinstein3:24

       Well, it ... Right, exactly.
2. 15:00 – 30:00

   Contests? …

   1. EWEric Weinstein15:00

      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.

   2. JRJoe Rogan15:13

      Contests?

   3. EWEric Weinstein15:14

      Yeah.

   4. JRJoe Rogan15:14

      Do other animals have any contests?

   5. EWEric Weinstein15:16

      Well-

   6. JRJoe Rogan15:17

      Just if they spar?

   7. EWEric Weinstein15:18

      Like chimps, you know, will, will, uh, have these incredible raiding parties.

   8. JRJoe Rogan15:22

      Mm-hmm.

   9. EWEric Weinstein15:22

      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."

   10. JRJoe Rogan15:30

       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.

   11. EWEric Weinstein15:37

       Right, or you have individual sparring. Like, you'll have two bears learning to play with each other.

   12. JRJoe Rogan15:42

       Mm-hmm.

   13. EWEric Weinstein15:42

       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.

   14. JRJoe Rogan15:51

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

   15. EWEric Weinstein15:56

       Okay.

   16. JRJoe Rogan15:56

       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.

   17. EWEric Weinstein16:11

       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.

   18. JRJoe Rogan16:21

       Mm.

   19. EWEric Weinstein16:22

       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.

   20. JRJoe Rogan16:33

       Right.

   21. EWEric Weinstein16:34

       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.

   22. JRJoe Rogan17:12

       Right.

   23. EWEric Weinstein17:13

       If I can't tease you-

   24. JRJoe Rogan17:15

       Right.

   25. EWEric Weinstein17:15

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

   26. JRJoe Rogan17:20

       Right.

   27. EWEric Weinstein17:20

       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."

   28. JRJoe Rogan17:36

       Yeah, they're shielding. They- they're putting up their shield.

   29. EWEric Weinstein17:40

       Right.

   30. JRJoe Rogan17:40

       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.
3. 30:00 – 45:00

   Yeah. …

   1. JRJoe Rogan30:00

      around you and hold onto that tie, you're a dead man. You're dead. You're, you're giving them a weapon-

   2. EWEric Weinstein30:05

      Yeah.

   3. JRJoe Rogan30:05

      ... to kill you all the time.

   4. EWEric Weinstein30:06

      All right, you've convinced me. No more ties.

   5. JRJoe Rogan30:08

      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-

   6. EWEric Weinstein30:16

      This is such a UFC spin on it.

   7. JRJoe Rogan30:17

      You're gonna have to figure out... It's a jujitsu spin.

   8. EWEric Weinstein30:20

      (laughs)

   9. JRJoe Rogan30:20

      'Cause UFC, you don't wear clothes. But the-

   10. EWEric Weinstein30:21

       Yeah.

   11. JRJoe Rogan30:22

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

   12. EWEric Weinstein30:28

       Yeah.

   13. JRJoe Rogan30:28

       ... you have a leather jacket on, you're with a guy who knows judo-

   14. EWEric Weinstein30:31

       Yeah.

   15. JRJoe Rogan30:31

       ... 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.

   16. EWEric Weinstein30:38

       Okay.

   17. JRJoe Rogan30:38

       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.

   18. EWEric Weinstein30:49

       Okay.

   19. JRJoe Rogan30:49

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

   20. EWEric Weinstein30:56

       Joe, how often do you end up in fist fights?

   21. JRJoe Rogan30:57

       Never.

   22. EWEric Weinstein30:59

       (laughs)

   23. JRJoe Rogan30:59

       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.

   24. EWEric Weinstein31:05

       No, I know-

   25. JRJoe Rogan31:05

       Fist fights are dangerous.

   26. EWEric Weinstein31:06

       ... 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.

   27. JRJoe Rogan31:11

       Well, it's just, it's just-

   28. EWEric Weinstein31:12

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

   29. JRJoe Rogan31:20

       You ever go on WorldStarHipHop? That shit's all day-

   30. EWEric Weinstein31:23

       Yeah.
4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

   Mm. …

   1. EWEric Weinstein45:00

      That would be much more honest to me.

   2. JRJoe Rogan45:03

      Mm.

   3. EWEric Weinstein45:03

      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.

   4. JRJoe Rogan45:21

      Hmm. That's an interesting way of put... That makes sense.

   5. EWEric Weinstein45:26

      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.

   6. JRJoe Rogan46:25

      Mm.

   7. EWEric Weinstein46:25

      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?

   8. JRJoe Rogan48:01

      So what would your answer be then?

   9. EWEric Weinstein48:03

      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.

   10. JRJoe Rogan48:14

       So this is why quantum mechanics is so confusing, quantum physics are so confusing to people.

   11. EWEric Weinstein48:18

       Well-

   12. JRJoe Rogan48:19

       'Cause they hear, they hear that and they go, "Okay, this is..."

   13. EWEric Weinstein48:21

       It is confusing.

   14. JRJoe Rogan48:22

       "... just went in my head like Jell-O."

   15. EWEric Weinstein48:24

       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.

   16. JRJoe Rogan48:30

       Right.

   17. EWEric Weinstein48:30

       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?

   18. JRJoe Rogan49:08

       Well, or maybe even weirder question is...

   19. EWEric Weinstein49:14

       (sighs)

   20. JRJoe Rogan49:14

       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?"

   21. EWEric Weinstein49:38

       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-

   22. JRJoe Rogan49:45

       Right.

   23. EWEric Weinstein49:45

       ... 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."

   24. JRJoe Rogan50:19

       Hmm. So back to gauge theory.

   25. EWEric Weinstein50:22

       Yeah.

   26. JRJoe Rogan50:22

       Gauge symmetry. What the hell is that?

   27. EWEric Weinstein50:25

       All right. Well, here's the, here's the craziest thing.

   28. JRJoe Rogan50:28

       Okay.

   29. EWEric Weinstein50:29

       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-

   30. JRJoe Rogan50:45

       H-O-P-F?
5. 1:00:00 – 1:15:00

   Yep. …

   1. EWEric Weinstein1:00:00

      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.

   2. GUGuest1:00:24

      Yep.

   3. JRJoe Rogan1:00:24

      Uh.

   4. EWEric Weinstein1:00:24

      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.

   5. JRJoe Rogan1:00:32

      Hm.

   6. EWEric Weinstein1:00:33

      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?

   7. JRJoe Rogan1:00:47

      Well, it depends on what you throw.

   8. EWEric Weinstein1:00:49

      Well, but we should be able to agree that rock is better than scissors.

   9. JRJoe Rogan1:00:52

      Rock is better than scissors-

   10. EWEric Weinstein1:00:53

       So scissors-

   11. JRJoe Rogan1:00:53

       ... but paper is better than rock.

   12. EWEric Weinstein1:00:56

       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-

   13. JRJoe Rogan1:01:01

       Yes.

   14. EWEric Weinstein1:01:01

       ... that seems crazy.

   15. JRJoe Rogan1:01:02

       Seems crazy.

   16. EWEric Weinstein1:01:02

       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.

   17. JRJoe Rogan1:01:09

       But why, why rock is better than rock? I don't get it. Like-

   18. EWEric Weinstein1:01:12

       Well, rock-

   19. JRJoe Rogan1:01:13

       ... rock is better than scissors.

   20. EWEric Weinstein1:01:14

       ... is better than scissors, scissors is better than paper.

   21. JRJoe Rogan1:01:15

       Right.

   22. EWEric Weinstein1:01:16

       Paper is better than rock.

   23. JRJoe Rogan1:01:17

       Right.

   24. EWEric Weinstein1:01:17

       So by transitivity, rock is therefore better than rock because you went around the loop and came back to rock.

   25. GUGuest1:01:23

       It's like MMA math.

   26. JRJoe Rogan1:01:25

       Yeah.

   27. GUGuest1:01:25

       Yeah. You take what you came to.

   28. EWEric Weinstein1:01:26

       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.

   29. JRJoe Rogan1:01:43

       But by saying rock is better than rock, you're denying the fact they're exactly the same.

   30. EWEric Weinstein1:01:46

       Like, well, no. That, that-
6. 1:15:00 – 1:16:14

   Section 6

   1. EWEric Weinstein1:15:00

      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 gonna give up on elec- on conservation of energy just because this particular process doesn't seem to conserve it." And sure enough, there was this sneaky particle that was, um, spiriting away some of the energy of the system that couldn't be seen because it didn't interact, uh, electromagnetically, and it didn't inter- interact according to the strong force. The only thing you could use to trap it would be the weak force, and the weak force was so weak that it was very hard to see it. Okay, well there's no neutrino that I know of left to find. There's no thing that's missing in our standard model, and it... I'm just not satisfied, nobody's satisfied that the play is over.

Episode duration: 3:51:46