EVERY SPOKEN WORD
155 min read · 30,773 words- 0:00 – 1:29
Evergreen as a warning sign: authoritarian compliance goes mainstream
- JRJoe Rogan
... uh, if anybody sounded the alarm that all this madness was gonna come to fruition in the real world, it's you, sir. You w- you were the guy. Like, you were the one who was saying this is, what's happening at Evergreen, and if you don't know, go Google it. Bret Weinstein, Evergreen. And now it spills out into the real world.
- BWBret Weinstein
Just like I said it was gonna.
- JRJoe Rogan
You did.
- BWBret Weinstein
I did. I said it-
- JRJoe Rogan
You did.
- BWBret Weinstein
I said it in several different places, and, uh, pretty clearly, you know? It could have been a tiny bit more precision, but it was highly accurate.
- JRJoe Rogan
You were highly accurate, and, uh, often maligned and mocked.
- BWBret Weinstein
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
People didn't think it was a big deal. They think you're ... much ado about nothing. You're making a big deal about some kids that are voicing their opinions on things, but what you recognized early on was that there was an authoritarian aspect of it, a forced compliance aspect of it that's very dangerous.
- BWBret Weinstein
Yeah, it's all about force, and, um, you know, I've started to get calls in the last week or two. The people who, um, who mocked me and others, including you, for making too much of what appeared to be college kids going wild on college campuses, some of them have started to call and say I got it wrong, what do we do now? And actually, I, I appreciate those, those calls and those contacts, because really, that is the question. So somebody's gotta-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes, what do we do now to pull it back?
- BWBret Weinstein
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
How do you get the genie back in the bottle? Or as Douglas Murray says, "How do you put the brakes on this thing?"
- 1:29 – 2:38
Dire outlook and the risk of civil conflict
- BWBret Weinstein
How do you put the brakes on this thing, indeed. Well, I have to tell you, I'm not optimistic. Um, I think that this is actually, the people who are catching up to the fact that Evergreen has now spilled over into the world, um, have not caught up to the fact that this is, um, unstoppable at this point with the current configuration. The absence of leadership is going to prevent us from doing what we should do, and that means that the next set of predictions are far more dire.
- JRJoe Rogan
What is your next set of predictions?
- BWBret Weinstein
Well, I would say we are headed for a collision course with, with history. I mean, we're really staring at many scenarios that end in some kind of civil war. And while I do think it is still possible to avert that outcome, I don't know the name of the force that gets in its way. That's, it's really troubling.
- JRJoe Rogan
What do you think these kids want? Not just kids. What do you, what do you think the people that are facilitating chaos, what do you think they want?
- 2:38 – 4:01
What the chaos coalition wants: Occupy 2.0, anarchism, and BLM fusion
- BWBret Weinstein
Well, I think there's some danger in c- casting them as one thing-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- BWBret Weinstein
... because I think we have several things fused together, and that, u- until you understand what has joined forces with what, you're not gonna, there's no way to answer the question.
- JRJoe Rogan
All right, let's break it down.
- BWBret Weinstein
Okay, so one thing that we're seeing is, and we really have to take this back a number of years to understand why it happened, but we are seeing Occupy 2.0.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- BWBret Weinstein
Now, I participated in Occupy. Originally, Occupy made a lot of sense. It was a complaint about the TARP program and Too Big to Fail and the fact that the American public was, uh, not protected when those who had created the financial collapse were. And that was a legitimate, uh, gripe, and it was also a legitimate gripe at the beginning of the Tea Party movement. Occupy then morphed into a, an anarchist movement that was just simply hostile to civilization, and it became absurd. And so when I say this is Occupy 2.0, this is the anarchist version of Occupy that has now reemerged, and it has fused with Black Lives Matter, which, as I've said lots of different places, if Black Lives Matter just simply meant what those words imply, I'd be on board with it. Um, it doesn't. It means a great deal more than that, and we're beginning to see that in the last couple of weeks, too.
- JRJoe Rogan
What else do you think it means?
- 4:01 – 8:43
‘Abolish/defund the police’: tactics, power vacuums, and reform vs withdrawal
- BWBret Weinstein
Well, let's put it this way. For some reason, it means, uh, abolish the police, which is possibly the stupidest proposal I have ever heard, and it's not like we haven't seen what happens when you do that. I've lived it.
- JRJoe Rogan
Don't you think that that's a, just a fearful response to the obvious police brutality that we saw in Minneapolis? What's the best response? We gotta do something, we need to defund the police, and then everyone's like, "Good job. Great, great first step, at least."
- BWBret Weinstein
Well, no.
- JRJoe Rogan
No?
- BWBret Weinstein
It's a dishonest presentation, and I'm concerned that there i- as I've also said in many places, the proposals that are coming out of this movement are quite foolish. The strategy is incredibly smart, and so that is confusing to people, because when you hear folks in the street demanding that we abolish the police, you think, "Well, okay, that's never gonna happen. If it even started to happen, it would be so complex to make it happen that it can't possibly be. They just need to blow off some steam." Nope, that's not right. The fact is, the police, in some places, can effectively be halted in their tracks, and really, if there's one most important lesson out of the whole Evergreen fiasco, it's that the police can be withdrawn from a situation and chaos takes a matter of hours to emerge, which we're also seeing in Seattle.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. Um, the defunding of the police, which is happening in Minneapolis, what are they doing in replacement of the police?
- BWBret Weinstein
Well, I don't know, and I will say that the thing that is trotted out as the example that tells us that, defund the police, which doesn't really mean defund the police, it means abolish the police, we are told that that's safe on the basis of something like the Camden example.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, Camden just, they, they, they sort of broke the police down, but then built up a new version of the police, right?
- BWBret Weinstein
Yeah, they shifted it to a different jurisdiction, and look, I'm not arguing that we don't need massive police reform, and frankly, I'd be up for a discussion of a total rethink of the way we do policing, but the idea that you could withdraw the police first is...Absolutely insane.
- JRJoe Rogan
Marc Lamont Hill had a, uh, a w- a very good point about the guy who was killed. What d- what is the gentleman's name that was killed in the drive-in, drive-through, uh, fast food place?
- NANarrator
Rashard Brooks.
- JRJoe Rogan
Rashard?
- NANarrator
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Is that how you say his name? Um, who was just drunk and compliant and peaceful until they were telling him they were going to arrest him. Even said, "Get me an Uber." And what his point was, it was a very good point, why were the police even called for that? This is a non-violent person who just happened to be drunk. Was he doing something he shouldn't have been doing? Yes. But obviously compliant, polite, speaking l- just, like, very reasonably, until it escalated into this tussle and then he lost his life. If they had just had some sort of a program where they could... "We're gonna park your car, sir, or we'll have someone drive your car to your house. We're gonna call you an Uber or we're gonna take you home and we're gonna just write you a ticket and work this out in court. You're not gonna go to jail, you don't have to be arrested, you don't have to be handcuffed, you're not gonna be treated like a monster. You fucked up, you made a mistake, but you're not a bad person. You're not as- a person who's trying to hurt people." The police should be there for r- robbers, murderers, rapists. That's- that's what we need the police for and this is another... n- none of those things. This is just a guy who fucked up and he got drunk and he... an- and then as they were speaking to him, clear, real clear, not a bad guy, like the way he was talking to the cops, just talking to them very reasonably. Even asked for an Uber.
- BWBret Weinstein
Well, look, I am no fan of this aggressive style of policing.
- JRJoe Rogan
No.
- BWBret Weinstein
I'm not a fan of the militarization of the police. I've actually... I mean, I've had run-ins with the police. I've been hit twice by cops. So, I- it's not that I-
- JRJoe Rogan
W- what happened?
- BWBret Weinstein
Uh, well, one of these is a long story that goes back to, um, my first research gig in Jamaica and the other one was, uh, I was participating in a protest. I mean, I was very young. I was probably 20, um, and there was a protest about homelessness in Berkeley and frankly, it happened without my awareness that there was gonna be a protest, but I happened to be nearby and I was sympathetic. And so I joined it, and I was coming down the street with the protest and a cop, uh, hit me with a- with a baton.
- JRJoe Rogan
(scoffs)
- BWBret Weinstein
Knocked me down. So anyway, I- I'm no fan of this stuff.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- BWBret Weinstein
I'm not defending it. But that's not what this movement is really about, and even if it is to the extent that it is what this movement is really about, it doesn't deal with the root cause. We're dealing with a symptom and it's not a symptom that you can treat in isolation.
- 8:43 – 11:58
Training and incentives: Jocko’s policing critique meets ‘feature not bug’ argument
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, I had Jocko Willink on the podcast on Monday, and he had a great point. Obviously, Jocko was a Navy SEAL commander and worked with, uh, the Navy SEALS to create programs for training. And what he said is that these cops have the- the minimal amount of training. It's a- the tiniest amount of training and then they send them on the street. He goes, "20% of their time should be spent training." 20%. It should be s- de-escalation drills, simulation drills, g- educating them on how to communicate with people in various situations, educating them as h- if one cop is in a confrontation with someone, the next cop should step in and say, "Let's- let's just calm down. Mike, why don't you go- go, uh, deal with this over there and I'm gonna handle this. And, uh, sir, let's- let's, uh, let's take this from scratch. Like, let's work- let's work this out." And that having higher qualified police officers, better trained police officers, more- well, better compensated police forces so they're not taxed out is really the answer to all this. And these people are... They're- they're, you know, nobody wants to be a cop right now, so who's doing this, right? Who- who's s- the new generation from now out, when- when people sign up to be a police officer, who's gonna do this? This- it's a... You have a few that are gonna answer that call because they feel like it's a- they have a duty, but you're gonna have a lot of people that just, they can't get other jobs and so they choose that and maybe they're not the cream of the crop. And-
- BWBret Weinstein
And so-
- JRJoe Rogan
... that's very bad for people with guns that tell other people what to do.
- BWBret Weinstein
I- I hear two things in what you're saying, and one of them I- I fully agree with. Um, the implication of what you just said is that less funding isn't the solution. If anything, more funding is so that we get be- better qualified people and then we-
- JRJoe Rogan
Better training.
- BWBret Weinstein
... train them, right? We get people who are better suited to the job in the first place and then we train them better so they know what to do. And I agree with that. The part that I'm worried about is that I also, I think I hear you grasping at straws, and frankly, they're familiar. I hear everybody grasping at straws here, and what I think is not getting said is that brutal policing is a feature, not a bug. All right? This is part of a system that is about something else. And to the extent that I think we can all recognize that there is something absolutely organic about the anger that has caused people to spill into the streets in large numbers, that anger is the result of a process that does not begin with policing. It begins with economic phenomena and political phenomena. And one of the things that spooks me is this movement, in part because it is leaderless and I would argue rudderless, it is not correctly addressing the actual problem. It is lashing out at things that it can see. It's lashing out-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm.
- BWBret Weinstein
... at anecdotes. But the only solution here, the only proper solution that actually saves the republic is a solution that addresses the core problem.
- JRJoe Rogan
Economic despair, communities that are filled with crime and violence and gangs, and the people that come out of these communities with very little hope and all the models that they operate under, the- what- what they model themselves on is what they see around them, which is all this crime, and they- they don't have this s- sense that there's a very clear path out of this.
- 11:58 – 17:56
How the system reproduces inequality: opportunity hoarding and political realignment
- BWBret Weinstein
Well, let's, um... I- I wanna step back to something that will sound too remote to be useful, but I'm sure it isn't. I would claim that this actually goes back to a shift in the Democratic Party during the Clinton administration.During the Clinton administration, the Democratic Party effectively switched. It took up the Republican Party's business model, moving away from defending the interests of common people as its, uh, reason for gaining power, and that created a problem. So during the Clinton administration, we saw, uh, the end to aid with family- uh, to families with dependent children. We saw NAFTA. We saw basically an abandonment of the core raison d'être for the Democratic Party. Now, the Republican Party, at that point, was the party of business, but that doesn't really mean the party of business. What the Republican Party was, was the party of well-established large businesses, which frequently meant, as it was catering to their interest, that it was preventing small businesses from rising up that would threaten its constituents. Now, the Democrats took up this model. They went into influence peddling as well during the Clinton administration, and they became the party of other businesses. So now you have two parties that are basically dealing with competing business interests vying for power. But what that does is it excludes the interests of regular folks, and so regular folks have been getting the shaft ever since. Nobody is representing their interests. They're getting wise to it, and they're feeling the effects on the street. They are feeling the system is rigged. It's rigged against them. It's not even evenly rigged against them. So, you know, in Black communities, there's a perception it's specifically rigged against us and you know what? It is. But the way it is, is very subtle, right? It's not a matter of racism being ubiquitous, you know, inside every white head. It's not like that. It's- this has very little to do with modern racism, but what it has to do with is a property of our system. So, you know, um, there's a cybernetic principle. The purpose of a system is what it does. It means that, don't listen to what somebody says that the system is for. Look at what it accomplishes. That's what it's for.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- BWBret Weinstein
And our system basically has two things that it accomplishes. Um, it basically keeps real change from happening, and the reason it keeps real change from happening is because people who are winning in the present system will continue to win if the system continues to do what it does, and they may lose if the system changes and starts doing something else. So, it creates what I would argue is a kind of organic conservatism. Those with power don't want change because it threatens them. And the other thing that our system does is it reproduces present, uh, patterns of distribution into the future. And what that means is racism that has almost died out is still alive and well in a sense, because all you have to do is take people who are born into a neighborhood that is, uh, devoid of opportunity and continue that pattern. If no opportunity shows up, then people who were oppressed are now going to continue to be oppressed. And so it feels personal, but it isn't. It's just reproducing an existing pattern.
- JRJoe Rogan
And a lot of that emanates from these communities that have been disenfranchised and economically distraught from slavery, like literally from that... where we're dealing with the echoes of slavery, and it doesn't get addressed. And when people do bring it up and they start talking about reparations, people roll their eyes and people go, "Oh, that was so long ago." But the results of that are still alive today in the South. They're st- still alive today in many communities that were redlined, uh, as recently as the 1960s, right?
- BWBret Weinstein
That's exactly right. And so it- we basically have set ourselves up for a confused response because there is a subtlety, the fact that ancient racism, people who are dead, their racism still haunts us today through mechanisms of the reproduction of patterns of distribution. And mind you, when people hear distribution, they freak out because they think you're talking about wealth. I'm not talking about wealth. And we can talk about why I wouldn't bother, but what we're talking about is opportunity. Opportunity has been hoarded. It has been concentrated in some zip codes and almost totally excluded from other zip codes. And so you're right. The, uh, patterns of slavery moved into Jim Crow, and now they've moved into a phase where they are very subtly infused in- into our system. And so it is causing people to have the sense that there is an enemy and it is out to get me when it's not exactly an enemy that's out to get you. It's a pattern, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- BWBret Weinstein
It's a pattern that definitely needs to be addressed. And so the natural place would have been the Democratic Party. But the Democratic Party, because it has taken up with big business, is not going to do it, even though it would be a winning political strategy. The Democratic Party is more interested in serving the political- the, um, economic interests of its actual constituents than it is serving the interests of its nominal constituents. And so why are you seeing something that looks, uh, like a communist revolution beginning in the streets? For the natural reason, which is that people are feeling excluded from, uh, from their share. And they are being excluded. But this revolution that is beginning in our streets is no more coherent or desirable than, you know, than Maoism. And it's going to be brutal in- in the Maoist way or possibly the way that it unfolded in the French Revolution or maybe it'll be some, you know, unique version and it'll get its own name. But if we want the republic to survive, we're going to have to prevent this from happening, and because it's a leaderless movement, who do you even talk to? Who do you reason with?
- 17:56 – 23:56
Leaderless movements, influencer culture, and revolutionary drift
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, that's what's fascinating about it, right? Because it's emerging not just in America, but it's also in England and it's in all parts of the world, people are protesting. And in many ways, I think that's- it's probably because, love it or hate it, America sort of takes the cultural lead for the world in a lot of ways, uh, when it comes to, uh, movements and particularly art and-... and, and, you know, expression. And I see this leaderless movement, and it, it seems so attractive to young people that do feel disenfranchised by the system. So, I, I watch them. I mean, I've seen so many videos of these people out there screaming and cheering and chanting, and they feel like they're a part of something, right? And they are, right? But what is that thing that they're a part of? Like, what's the end goal? That doesn't seem to have been really clear. Espe- like, there's kids out in, uh, they were out in, um, Woodland Hills, out there, chanting, "No justice, no peace." And I'm like, "W- uh, okay, what justice are you talking about? Are you talking about George Floyd?" Well, that, in that case, it seems like that guy's gonna go to jail for the rest of his life. And I, I don't know if that's justice or not. That police department has been disbanded. I don't know if that's justice or not. But what is justice and what is peace? It's just a slogan, but they feel good saying it. "No justice, no peace." But what ... I don't know what you're saying. But you feel very passionate about what you're saying. And I gr- I think if you pulled one of those kids aside and said, "What's your message and what are you trying to do?" I think a lot of them would have nothing to say. And that's what's, that's very concerning to me. I'm very concerned about that because it seems like they're very enthusiastic and passionate about an invisible enemy. An e- an enemy that they can't, they can't put on a scale. They can't tangibly describe it in a way that I, I understand it completely. It just seems like the structure of things, they feel like is, is unjust.
- BWBret Weinstein
It is, unfortunately, a zombified collective fighting a boogeyman that they have invented, which again, doesn't mean that their frustration is not about something very real that does require a solution. But to the extent that these people have de-individuated and they've become a true mob, and they are pushing policies that make no sense and endanger us all. I mean, there is no neighborhood in the US that is going to be safer for the absence of the police. And it really doesn't even matter how corrupt the police are. The absence of the police is going to create a power vacuum, and we're gonna get warlords, as we're already seeing in miniature in Seattle, as we already saw at Evergreen.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- BWBret Weinstein
So, it's not a coherent proposal. But, uh, I have a concern that the reason that this is leaderless is, that something, uh, that I think is unrelated, I really think it's unintentional, but there is something about the way that influence happens in this era that has taken all of the would-be leaders and it has trapped them in the gig economy. And so, we have a lot of people who would be in an excellent position to steer this justifiable anger at an enemy that is actually worth attacking, to curb the violence and to make this a, a moment of useful and necessary change. I would argue overdue change. But those people are, instead of being leaders, what they are is influencers. And influencers don't have the kind of power necessary to shape a movement, and they don't have the position to negotiate on its behalf, and this is very dangerous.
- JRJoe Rogan
W- where do you think this escalates to? Do you have a, a map in your mind of where the territory is?
- BWBret Weinstein
Yeah. I mean, I would say there are several ways it could go. But unfortunately, the dynamics look almost unresolvable if somebody does not speak for the movement. And with it being unresolvable, you've got a conflict between rural people and urban people. You have a conflict between, um, Blacks and those who are self-declared allies, and ally doesn't really mean ally, but, uh, foot soldiers on behalf of this movement and people who won't go along with it. And w- what I'm trying to raise people's awareness of right now is that there's something in us, being raised in the US, there's something in us that thinks that The Great Leap Forward in China cannot happen here, that what happened in Cambodia cannot happen here-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm.
- BWBret Weinstein
... that Nazi Germany cannot happen here.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- BWBret Weinstein
Um, and, you know, the Soviet Union couldn't happen here. I don't know what characteristic it is that people think makes it impossible. I don't think it's impossible. I think if there is a characteristic that makes it unlikely, it is the structure, it is the Constitution, which I would argue is showing its age. But nonetheless, the values that America aspires to, the reason that the world does pay attention to us and still, even with all of our brokenness, allows us to lead it, that reason is that the values that were described were honorable, even if they, even if we didn't meet them. But what we aspired to be was great. And, uh, I, you know, I resent Trump's, uh, Make America Great Again because there are populations for whom it has simply never been great, right? So I, I think that last A in MAGA is just a finger in the eye for people, and it was designed to be. But the structure, what it aspires to be is great and heading in the direction in which it could be great for everybody
- 23:56 – 31:19
Critical theory vs Enlightenment values: shutdownSTEM and the anti-science turn
- BWBret Weinstein
is obviously the right thing to do. But what we are now doing, and the thing that troubles me most about this movement, is that if you listen to it closely, and I have listened to it very closely, it is explicitly about disassembling the very things that make the West marvelous, right? It is anti-science, right? It does not want policy based on science. In fact, you want-
- JRJoe Rogan
How so?
- BWBret Weinstein
Well, I mean-You saw last week, presumably, that it got, uh, Nature, the journal, Nature, Science Magazine, uh, CalTech. It got all of these, uh, just absolutely top level scientific institutions to broadcast the hashtag shutdownSTEM.
- JRJoe Rogan
What?
- BWBret Weinstein
Oh, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
No. I'm not aware of this at all.
- BWBret Weinstein
Oh. Well, and this is another thing, we're losing our minds because to me, the idea that you would be unaware of this is hard to imagine because it was so-
- JRJoe Rogan
There's too much going on.
- BWBret Weinstein
It was so thoroughly all over my feed though-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- BWBret Weinstein
... but I'm discovering this, there's stuff absent from my feed too that I should know about, and I'm finding the same thing. So-
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, here's the thing-
- BWBret Weinstein
Yeah?
- JRJoe Rogan
... I don't read my feed.
- BWBret Weinstein
Well, you don't read your Twitter feed, but you're plugged into enough people. You have enough-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- BWBret Weinstein
... conversations in this room.
- JRJoe Rogan
Things have to be, like, almost nuclear before I'm paying attention to them these days, just for my own personal sanity.
- BWBret Weinstein
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
I, I, I've stepped away from almost all social media other than posting.
- BWBret Weinstein
Yeah. It's actually, uh, uh... If I can say something perfectly weird. I don't really aspire to great wealth. I never have, but there is part of me that wants to be wealthy enough that I can afford to ignore my feeds.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- BWBret Weinstein
Right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- BWBret Weinstein
I can't now. I have to be-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- BWBret Weinstein
... plugged in. But, um, but anyway, the, uh, the thing that, that's really concerning here, and I, you know, I, I don't want this podcast to be all about concern. There's-
- JRJoe Rogan
Here it is, "Thousands of scientists go on strike to protest systemic racism in STEM. More than 5,000 scientists and two prominent scientific journals shut down operations and pledged to use the day to address racial inequalities in S- in science. The strike follows two weeks of demonstrations spurred by the police killing of George Floyd, a Black man who died after a white police officer..." Um, "People on social media are spreading word about the strike with the hashtag shutdownacademia-"
- BWBret Weinstein
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
"...shutdownSTEM, and strikeforblacklives." Shutdownacademia is terrifying. ShutdownSTEM is equally terrifying. But I mean, like, what takes its place? What do you expect?
- 31:19 – 41:22
Inside academia’s incentives: representation claims and the PhD ‘racket’
- BWBret Weinstein
Um, it is ... Well, it's evidence of a number of things. And, you know, I find myself, uh, in two places on a lot of these arguments. On the one hand, somehow I'm sitting here on your podcast defending academia, when on any normal day, I would be telling you academia was so incredibly broken, and science has been so incredible- incredibly corrupted by its contact with the market, that we have to fix these things, because that is in and of itself a threat, you know-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- BWBret Weinstein
... to the West. Here, I find myself saying, "Wait a second. These people are actually telling you what they think. They think science is the enemy, and instead of democratizing the tools of science and giving them to the people who need them most, they want to end science." So, the problems are several. Unfortunately, they're not tremendously interesting. They're sort of dry, inside-baseball stuff.
- JRJoe Rogan
But we- I think we have to cover them though, just to sort of take the legs out from under this racism argument-
- BWBret Weinstein
Sure.
- JRJoe Rogan
... when it comes to representation.
- BWBret Weinstein
Sure. So first of all, let me just say, academia is tremendously liberal, and that ... Uh, I mean that in both senses. Let's take the honorable part of it, right? Inside of a university, there is every desire to bring people who do not look like the old White guys that have done so much of the past work in science. There is a desire to, uh, to broaden, you know. So, it is not true that privately scientists are harboring racist views and talking about them and then, you know, behaving themselves when they're around people who are of a different color. It's not like that. Okay? There is a desire to have those people show up, uh, and get the job, because for one thing, it takes the pressure off. To the extent that departments don't look like the demographics of the country in which these departments are housed, you know, that raises questions. And so there's a desire to bring in anybody who, um, makes it clear that that's not going on. However, let's say that you were, uh, you were Black and you grew up in a neighborhood where the odds were stacked against you, and you made it. Let's say that, um, you know, you, you had people who, uh, said wise things to you, and they got you to focus on the right stuff, and you managed to dodge the stuff that captures so many, and you made it, right? Let's say y- you got into Harvard. You got a, a really good quality degree in a, in a, in a proper science. Well, what are you going to do with it? Are you going to go into academia? That would be insane, because I don't know what the numbers are. I don't know what fraction of people who get PhDs actually get the job that they've trained for, but it's tiny. It is-
- JRJoe Rogan
Is it really?
- BWBret Weinstein
That would be like one in 20.
- JRJoe Rogan
Really?
- BWBret Weinstein
Yeah. S-
- JRJoe Rogan
Because there's only so many positions, and every year you're graduating hundreds and hundreds of people with those degrees.
- BWBret Weinstein
Well, but there's also a very good reason for this. I mean, it's a terrible reason, but there's a very easily comprehended reason. So universities are fueled in large measure by what's called overhead, uh, the grants. So if you get a million-dollar grant, half or more will go to your university, right? So that's what builds the buildings and fuels the place. So the university has an incentive to get as many people to file grant applications as they can, and they have an incentive to hire people whose grant applications will be large rather than small. So this, for example, is one of the reasons that science has taken up arms against theory, that is to say proper scientific theoreticians like me, and it has instead hired people who run big expensive experiments, because big expensive experiments have big grants, and those big grants bring in money. But if you were a university and what you wanted was to have people writing big expensive grants who were capable of getting them, then what you would want to do is you would want to free those people from teaching, and you would want to get people who weren't so, uh, expensive to do the work of the university. And the way you do that is you bring them on as graduate students, and you pay them, uh, an appalling wage. You claim, you claim that they are not actually workers, that they are students. And they, they do most of the teaching, and they do a lot of the work of the university for incredibly, uh, l- low amounts of money. They live under poor conditions, and increasingly, uh, they have to come from abroad where they are in some sense getting a deal that still makes sense. But this means that we overproduce PhDs. We give people degrees instead of money to do the work of the university in order that the people who are capable of getting the grants spend almost full time doing that job, and it's a racket.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- BWBret Weinstein
So in that-
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh. See, I wasn't aware of that at all. I didn't know how it works.
- BWBret Weinstein
Yeah. It's a racket. And, and the person you should talk to, the person who knows the most about this is actually Eric, my brother.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- BWBret Weinstein
Um, so what he unearthed was actually that there was an explicit conspiracy to game the visa system in order to keep this system running. That in effect- effectively a fake shortage of science students was created to allow the universities to basically flood the market to drive the wages down. But all of these things mean that if you are coming from circumstances that have, uh...... been challenging and you make it, you don't want to go to graduate school in the sciences because it's a dumb move. You're going to take having gotten your head above water, and then you're going to voluntarily drown.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- BWBret Weinstein
That doesn't make any sense. You're much better off, even as bad as, you know, being a doctor has become, it used to be a great job, now it's kind of a sucky job, but you're better off doing that because at least it's a job. You'll pay off your loans. You know, you'll make it. And so basically, what we see is that there are lots of reasons that a rational person, uh, from certain demographics is less likely to go into the sciences. That's not racism in the sciences. It's again one of these echoes of a past, uh, racism or a past indifference that is having huge impacts on the present.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm. Okay. Um, so these people that want to... that- that- that think that STEM is racist and they want to dismantle it, what do they propose? Like, what- what do they propose in replacement of STEM and academia?
- BWBret Weinstein
So I- I... What they want is so strange and preposterous that it damages my credibility to even say it. I- I will, I will answer your question-
- JRJoe Rogan
Okay.
- BWBret Weinstein
... but I know that what I'm saying sounds preposterous.
- JRJoe Rogan
Okay.
- BWBret Weinstein
And the only reason that I am so certain of it is that I've talked to them directly, and I watched this happen at Evergreen.
- JRJoe Rogan
You've talked to them direct- directly, so you know this is actually what they want?
- BWBret Weinstein
Well, I can't say they, because-
- JRJoe Rogan
You're right.
- 41:22 – 1:00:01
Evergreen’s ‘show trial’ logic: coercion, brainwashing analogies, and reparations-as-everything
- BWBret Weinstein
So all I would say is just empirically this is what happens. Now, I will also say, uh, one of the most telling incidents that happened during the Evergreen riots is now finally, it's been covered by PBS, I've talked about it on my podcast. A student of Heather and mine, um, an excellent student, one of the best ones we ever had, was a young woman named Odette. Odette is half Black. Her mom is Afro-Caribbean. She was known to be my student and Heather's student during the riots. And she was actually confronted and physically bullied by the rioters who accused her of being a race traitor for studying science. This actually happened. And what I'm telling you is-
- JRJoe Rogan
What did they say when they say, "You're a race traitor for studying science"? What- what's- what specific discipline?
- BWBret Weinstein
Well, she was studying evolutionary biology with Heather and me.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- BWBret Weinstein
And...
- JRJoe Rogan
And they said you were a race traitor for studying evolutionary biology because?
- BWBret Weinstein
Because science is racist.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yo.
- BWBret Weinstein
It's nonsense. And I, I hear you trying to parse it as if it makes sense. And I think the point is-
- JRJoe Rogan
I just don't understand as a person who spent three years barely paying attention in college, I don't know how it got to that. I don't know how that becomes an actual course. I don't know how that gets funded. I don't know how that, you can get a degree from that.
- BWBret Weinstein
Well, so what I've heard of late, um, and I'm ... It may be James Lindsay who is the originator of, of this phraseology, but there's a term, racism of the gaps. And racism of the gaps is a reference to the god of the gaps hypothesis. Anything we can't explain in science is explained by God, which is obviously-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- BWBret Weinstein
... nonsense. But racism of the gaps is any place where, that we see a success differential, the explanation is inherently racism. So if we see-
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- BWBret Weinstein
... an absence of Black people in math, obviously the answer is racism.
- JRJoe Rogan
Do they apply that in areas where Black people excel?
- BWBret Weinstein
No. Because this is a self-serving, uh, modality.
- JRJoe Rogan
Like hip-hop.
- BWBret Weinstein
Right. And so, l- let's go back to Odette for a second. Trying to parse what they're saying as if it has content, logical content, is a mistake.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- BWBret Weinstein
Trying to parse it as a tactical move makes a lot of sense.
- JRJoe Rogan
Okay.
- BWBret Weinstein
Let's imagine that Odette was not the courageous person that she is, and that she had caved, right? Imagine you're cornered, you know, y- y- y- you're alone. You've got a mob that's actually physically confronting you for studying science. If she was not a person of strong character, she might have signed up with them. If she had signed up with them, then A, now they have a potentially powerful ally, right? A Black person, former student of ... Or, at that point, I guess, current student of Heather and mine, who would say, "Yes. In fact, science is racist. Evolutionary biology particularly so. I was in that class," yada, yada, yada.
- JRJoe Rogan
And people are easily influenced, and that-
- BWBret Weinstein
Many people.
- JRJoe Rogan
... being bullied by that would, would probably cause a lot of people to cave into that and give into that just for conformity, just so that people accept them.
- BWBret Weinstein
Yes. And so, thank goodness that Odette is somebody who is of incredibly strong character, who really got the message of evolutionary biology very deeply, and there's nothing that they could have said or threatened her with that would have caused her to make the move that they wanted her to make. But processing it tactically is important. What they're doing is tactical, and what they did with Shut Down STEM, tactical. They were proving their power, right? They were able to get the most important scientific institutions to broadcast a demand to shut down STEM. That's an amazing level of power.
- JRJoe Rogan
And actual scientists that are in disciplines that are legit, like evolutionary biology, went along with them?
- BWBret Weinstein
Well, you know, I contacted Richard Dawkins as this was happening.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- 1:00:01 – 1:32:24
George Floyd, due process, and the risk of societal ‘sacrifice’ verdicts
- BWBret Weinstein
So I, I really... I'm so afraid to actually go down this next road, but you raised the case of, you know, George Floyd and what we saw on that tape. I want you to think about the question of what you actually saw on that tape and what it actually tells you, what you actually know, and what you don't know. I'm worried... Look, best possible thing from the point of view of the well-being of the world would be that Derek Chauvin is guilty of murder and he is convicted of murder and he is sentenced for the maximum allowable time. That would be the best thing for us.
- JRJoe Rogan
Agrees.
- BWBret Weinstein
I'm not sure that that's actually what is supposed to happen.
- JRJoe Rogan
Why is that?
- BWBret Weinstein
Okay. The question is-
- JRJoe Rogan
(sniffs) .
- BWBret Weinstein
Did you witness a murder? Are you sure you saw a murder?
- JRJoe Rogan
What do you mean by that?
- BWBret Weinstein
Well, murder is a crime.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- BWBret Weinstein
Okay. Presumably ... There was a lot of complaint about the fact that Chauvin wasn't charged with first-degree murder, right? But he didn't ap- ... W- what story would make it sensible that he wanted to kill George Floyd, that that was his purpose? Would-
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, you know, do you know that he knew him? You know he knew him in advance and that they had had words, and they had, they had had problems when they worked together because Derek Chauvin was a shithead to customers, and he was, uh, v- violent to customers.
- BWBret Weinstein
Yep.
- JRJoe Rogan
And he and George Floyd worked as bouncers in the same establishment.
- BWBret Weinstein
Yep. And-
- JRJoe Rogan
That's the, the, the, that's the, the word.
- BWBret Weinstein
Well, from the point of view of the wellbeing of the world and from-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- BWBret Weinstein
... the point of view of us all processing this-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- BWBret Weinstein
... in some sense, I mean, w- you know, with the understanding that there is nothing that could possibly happen in an-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- BWBret Weinstein
... investigation or in a court that's gonna bring George Floyd back.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- BWBret Weinstein
Okay? So with that in mind, the best thing that could happen is that he is actually guilty of something egregious. He's charged with it. He's convicted, and-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right. But what makes-
- BWBret Weinstein
... we can do away with it.
- JRJoe Rogan
... you think that it's not murder? This is what's confusing to me.
- BWBret Weinstein
Oh, I'm not saying it isn't murder. It may well be murder, but I'm saying that what we saw doesn't tell us that it was murder.
- JRJoe Rogan
Why is that?
Episode duration: 3:06:48
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