Joe Rogan Experience #1494 - Bret Weinstein

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   ... uh, if anybody…

   1. JRJoe Rogan0:00

      ... 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.

   2. BWBret Weinstein0:23

      Just like I said it was gonna.

   3. JRJoe Rogan0:24

      You did.

   4. BWBret Weinstein0:25

      I did. I said it-

   5. JRJoe Rogan0:26

      You did.

   6. BWBret Weinstein0:26

      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.

   7. JRJoe Rogan0:33

      You were highly accurate, and, uh, often maligned and mocked.

   8. BWBret Weinstein0:38

      Yeah.

   9. JRJoe Rogan0:38

      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.

   10. BWBret Weinstein0:54

       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-

   11. JRJoe Rogan1:22

       Yes, what do we do now to pull it back?

   12. BWBret Weinstein1:25

       Yeah.

   13. JRJoe Rogan1:25

       How do you get the genie back in the bottle? Or as Douglas Murray says, "How do you put the brakes on this thing?"

   14. BWBret Weinstein1:29

       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.

   15. JRJoe Rogan1:59

       What is your next set of predictions?

   16. BWBret Weinstein2:01

       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.

   17. JRJoe Rogan2:27

       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?

   18. BWBret Weinstein2:38

       Well, I think there's some danger in c- casting them as one thing-

   19. JRJoe Rogan2:42

       Right.

   20. BWBret Weinstein2:42

       ... 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.

   21. JRJoe Rogan2:52

       All right, let's break it down.

   22. BWBret Weinstein2:53

       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.

   23. JRJoe Rogan3:04

       Mm-hmm.

   24. BWBret Weinstein3:04

       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.

   25. JRJoe Rogan3:59

       What else do you think it means?

   26. BWBret Weinstein4:01

       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.

   27. JRJoe Rogan4:15

       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."

   28. BWBret Weinstein4:29

       Well, no.

   29. JRJoe Rogan4:30

       No?

   30. BWBret Weinstein4:30

       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.
2. 15:00 – 30:00

   And a lot of…

   1. BWBret Weinstein15:00

      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.

   2. JRJoe Rogan15:16

      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?

   3. BWBret Weinstein15:48

      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?

   4. JRJoe Rogan16:47

      Mm-hmm.

   5. BWBret Weinstein16:47

      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?

   6. JRJoe Rogan17:56

      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.

   7. BWBret Weinstein20:03

      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.

   8. JRJoe Rogan20:44

      Yeah.

   9. BWBret Weinstein20:45

      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.

   10. JRJoe Rogan21:46

       W- where do you think this escalates to? Do you have a, a map in your mind of where the territory is?

   11. BWBret Weinstein21:54

       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-

   12. JRJoe Rogan22:52

       Mm.

   13. BWBret Weinstein22:52

       ... that Nazi Germany cannot happen here.

   14. JRJoe Rogan22:54

       Right.

   15. BWBret Weinstein22:55

       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 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-

   16. JRJoe Rogan24:19

       How so?

   17. BWBret Weinstein24:21

       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.

   18. JRJoe Rogan24:40

       What?

   19. BWBret Weinstein24:41

       Oh, yeah.

   20. JRJoe Rogan24:42

       No. I'm not aware of this at all.

   21. BWBret Weinstein24:43

       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-

   22. JRJoe Rogan24:52

       There's too much going on.

   23. BWBret Weinstein24:53

       It was so thoroughly all over my feed though-

   24. JRJoe Rogan24:55

       Mm-hmm.

   25. BWBret Weinstein24:55

       ... 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-

   26. JRJoe Rogan25:01

       Well, here's the thing-

   27. BWBret Weinstein25:02

       Yeah?

   28. JRJoe Rogan25:02

       ... I don't read my feed.

   29. BWBret Weinstein25:03

       Well, you don't read your Twitter feed, but you're plugged into enough people. You have enough-

   30. JRJoe Rogan25:06

       Yeah.
3. 30:00 – 45:00

   Is there any debate…

   1. BWBret Weinstein30:00

      which couldn't possibly be more dangerous. Because to the extent that, uh, the, the argument more or less is that the sciences are unfairly biased in favor of those who are currently successful, and that that bias is actually preventing people who are not succeeding under current conditions from getting there, and therefore, um, we need to hobble these disciplines to level the playing field. Well, imagine...... that America surrendered its advantage in the sciences in order to, um ... even if you could level the playing field inside of the US by doing that, which you can't, but even if you could, this would so hobble us in the world that it would be an insane, uh, policy to pursue.

   2. JRJoe Rogan30:46

      Is there any debate going on about this? Uh, uh, c- clearly what they're saying is if you're looking at the vast majority of the scientists they represent, what, I mean, what is it? Europe- European Jews are a lot of them. There's a lot of various people of European ancestry, uh, Asian folks, less African Americans, less Africans. So they're saying that because of this, this is clear, this is clear evidence of racism.

   3. BWBret Weinstein31:15

      Yeah.

   4. JRJoe Rogan31:15

      What is-

   5. BWBret Weinstein31:16

      Which is total nonsense.

   6. JRJoe Rogan31:18

      What is it evidence of?

   7. BWBret Weinstein31:19

      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-

   8. JRJoe Rogan31:44

      Mm-hmm.

   9. BWBret Weinstein31:44

      ... 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.

   10. JRJoe Rogan32:06

       But we- I think we have to cover them though, just to sort of take the legs out from under this racism argument-

   11. BWBret Weinstein32:11

       Sure.

   12. JRJoe Rogan32:11

       ... when it comes to representation.

   13. BWBret Weinstein32:13

       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-

   14. JRJoe Rogan33:56

       Is it really?

   15. BWBret Weinstein33:57

       That would be like one in 20.

   16. JRJoe Rogan33:58

       Really?

   17. BWBret Weinstein33:59

       Yeah. S-

   18. JRJoe Rogan34:00

       Because there's only so many positions, and every year you're graduating hundreds and hundreds of people with those degrees.

   19. BWBret Weinstein34:07

       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.

   20. JRJoe Rogan35:49

       Mm-hmm.

   21. BWBret Weinstein35:50

       So in that-

   22. JRJoe Rogan35:51

       Oh. See, I wasn't aware of that at all. I didn't know how it works.

   23. BWBret Weinstein35:53

       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.

   24. JRJoe Rogan35:59

       Mm-hmm.

   25. BWBret Weinstein36:00

       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.

   26. JRJoe Rogan36:39

       Mm-hmm.

   27. BWBret Weinstein36:39

       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.

   28. JRJoe Rogan37:14

       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?

   29. BWBret Weinstein37:32

       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-

   30. JRJoe Rogan37:43

       Okay.
4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

   And actual scientists that…

   1. BWBret Weinstein45:00

      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.

   2. JRJoe Rogan45:18

      And actual scientists that are in disciplines that are legit, like evolutionary biology, went along with them?

   3. BWBret Weinstein45:28

      Well, you know, I contacted Richard Dawkins as this was happening.

   4. JRJoe Rogan45:31

      Mm-hmm.

   5. BWBret Weinstein45:32

      Because I didn't see anything on his feed that suggested, you know, h- he hadn't made a statement, and I thought it would be powerful him to d- for him to do it. He was totally unaware it was going on.

   6. JRJoe Rogan45:41

      Mm-hmm.

   7. BWBret Weinstein45:41

      Right? So you have the most important institutions broadcasting this thing. Something about our environment is not calling it to the attention of people who might be in a position to say something. And, uh, the whole thing is, uh, it's setting us up. We're in, we're in tremendous danger.

   8. JRJoe Rogan45:58

      And what, what do you think their motivation is?

   9. BWBret Weinstein46:02

      Power.

   10. JRJoe Rogan46:02

       Power.

   11. BWBret Weinstein46:03

       Well, again, we have to be careful about they.

   12. JRJoe Rogan46:03

       So what happens if they get through? They shut down STEM. Then what do they do? How do ... You know, do they, are they thinking this far ahead? They're not playing this long game.

   13. BWBret Weinstein46:14

       Um, okay. Uh, I would just r- ... I would tell people who aren't aware of me and what I think and believe, that I am very progressive. I am very interested in making a fair system. That is a-

   14. JRJoe Rogan46:29

       As am I. As am I.

   15. BWBret Weinstein46:30

       I, I n- ... I know you, I know you are. So what I'm about to say sounds like one of those right-wing crazy things.

   16. JRJoe Rogan46:38

       Uh-oh.

   17. BWBret Weinstein46:39

       What they want ... Well, imagine the following. Look, first of all, let's talk about reparations for a second.

   18. JRJoe Rogan46:44

       Okay.

   19. BWBret Weinstein46:45

       Okay? I am not a fan of the idea of reparations. I think it would be a terrible failure. It would be a disaster. But I do believe that something of very substantial magnitude is justified. I just don't think reparations is the answer.

   20. JRJoe Rogan46:59

       I completely agree.

   21. BWBret Weinstein46:59

       Okay.

   22. JRJoe Rogan47:00

       I think reform, in terms of communities, I think, uh, spending massive amounts of money to rebuild communities and give people hope.

   23. BWBret Weinstein47:08

       Yes. Uh-

   24. JRJoe Rogan47:09

       E- economic opportunities.

   25. BWBret Weinstein47:10

       Massive investment-

   26. JRJoe Rogan47:11

       Yes.

   27. BWBret Weinstein47:12

       ... in communities that have been systematically frozen out.

   28. JRJoe Rogan47:14

       Yes.

   29. BWBret Weinstein47:14

       And I would put, uh, I would put American Blacks and American Indians at the top of the list-

   30. JRJoe Rogan47:19

       Yes.
5. 1:00:00 – 1:15:00

   Agrees. …

   1. BWBret Weinstein1:00:00

      surgically. 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.

   2. JRJoe Rogan1:00:37

      Agrees.

   3. BWBret Weinstein1:00:38

      I'm not sure that that's actually what is supposed to happen.

   4. JRJoe Rogan1:00:42

      Why is that?

   5. BWBret Weinstein1:00:44

      Okay. The question is-

   6. JRJoe Rogan1:00:48

      (sniffs) .

   7. BWBret Weinstein1:00:48

      Did you witness a murder? Are you sure you saw a murder?

   8. JRJoe Rogan1:00:52

      What do you mean by that?

   9. BWBret Weinstein1:00:53

      Well, murder is a crime.

   10. JRJoe Rogan1:00:55

       Yes.

   11. BWBret Weinstein1:00:56

       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-

   12. JRJoe Rogan1:01:10

       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.

   13. BWBret Weinstein1:01:24

       Yep.

   14. JRJoe Rogan1:01:24

       And he and George Floyd worked as bouncers in the same establishment.

   15. BWBret Weinstein1:01:28

       Yep. And-

   16. JRJoe Rogan1:01:28

       That's the, the, the, that's the, the word.

   17. BWBret Weinstein1:01:31

       Well, from the point of view of the wellbeing of the world and from-

   18. JRJoe Rogan1:01:34

       Mm-hmm.

   19. BWBret Weinstein1:01:34

       ... the point of view of us all processing this-

   20. JRJoe Rogan1:01:36

       Right.

   21. BWBret Weinstein1:01:36

       ... in some sense, I mean, w- you know, with the understanding that there is nothing that could possibly happen in an-

   22. JRJoe Rogan1:01:41

       Mm-hmm.

   23. BWBret Weinstein1:01:41

       ... investigation or in a court that's gonna bring George Floyd back.

   24. JRJoe Rogan1:01:45

       Right.

   25. BWBret Weinstein1:01:45

       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-

   26. JRJoe Rogan1:01:53

       Right. But what makes-

   27. BWBret Weinstein1:01:54

       ... we can do away with it.

   28. JRJoe Rogan1:01:54

       ... you think that it's not murder? This is what's confusing to me.

   29. BWBret Weinstein1:01:56

       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.

   30. JRJoe Rogan1:02:01

       Why is that?
6. 1:15:00 – 1:25:39

   Yeah, counterfeit $20 bills.…

   1. BWBret Weinstein1:15:00

      you know, we can say the same thing for George Floyd, right? We're talking about-

   2. JRJoe Rogan1:15:02

      Yeah, counterfeit $20 bills.

   3. BWBret Weinstein1:15:04

      The counterfeit-

   4. JRJoe Rogan1:15:04

      Nothing.

   5. BWBret Weinstein1:15:04

      Yeah, right. The ... But, I wanna go back to what I said before. Police brutality is a feature, not a bug.

   6. JRJoe Rogan1:15:11

      Yes.

   7. BWBret Weinstein1:15:12

      Okay?

   8. JRJoe Rogan1:15:12

      I agree with you.

   9. BWBret Weinstein1:15:13

      So what I mean by that is if you are going to freeze people out of their share of the wellbeing that is generated by society, you are going to have to keep them from revolting. And so what you do is you set up some sort of arbitrary administrator of authority that people run in contact with, that they fear, right? You set up some force that disincentivizes misbehavior. And that force isn't just the police. It's obviously the, uh, the, uh, the prison system as well.

   10. JRJoe Rogan1:15:46

       Here's where I'd argue with you ab- about that.

   11. BWBret Weinstein1:15:48

       Okay.

   12. JRJoe Rogan1:15:49

       That is, that only applies if you only see that force exhibited towards poor people and disenfranchised communities, but you don't. What you see with police brutality is you see police brutality being utilized on wealthy people i- if they don't know, uh, y- you see it ... If they d- don't know that they can't get away with it ... Do, do you know the case of the, the young man that was killed in the hotel in Arizona?

   13. BWBret Weinstein1:16:12

       Of course.

   14. JRJoe Rogan1:16:13

       Yeah. It was horrific, horrific. And on video, this guy being forced to crawl on the ground by this cop, and then the cop shoots him in the back 'cause he's trying to reach to pull his pants up.

   15. BWBret Weinstein1:16:24

       Yep.

   16. JRJoe Rogan1:16:25

       There's no threat.

   17. BWBret Weinstein1:16:26

       Right.

   18. JRJoe Rogan1:16:26

       Clearly no threat. No weapon, no nothing. And so you got a monster who just wants to fucking shoot people. And I think it points to what Jocko was saying, a lack of training, a lack of quality people, and a, a lack of a, a process of weeding out people that would be more inclined to use police brutality. And that process, I think, should be similar to BUD/S, like what Navy SEALs have to go through or, or Rangers have to go through. It, it should be something that weeds out people of weak character. So the police should be something that's a very difficult job to get, where you only get the cream of the crop of human beings, of character, of, of, of, uh, emotional stability, people that would not do something like that, who would recognize that man on the ground as being a father and a husband and a, a, a, a human being who's a part of our community. And you don't gun him down just 'cause you're a fucking piece of shit. And that's what that guy did.

   19. BWBret Weinstein1:17:20

       Well, look, I-

   20. JRJoe Rogan1:17:21

       So it's not just a bug that's designed to keep people of disenfranchised communities from speaking out and demanding their fair share. It's a bug of human beings who have power over other human beings. It's when ... You know the Stanford Prison Experience?

   21. BWBret Weinstein1:17:35

       Of course.

   22. JRJoe Rogan1:17:36

       Experiments which, of course, have been sort of discredited in some ways, that they actually probably wanted out of it, so they exp- But the idea behind it makes sense to us, that if you give people power over people, they kinda tend to abuse it. When people have just unchecked authority over folks, they tend to, uh, they tend to use that. It's a, it's a, it's a feature of human beings.

   23. BWBret Weinstein1:17:57

       Oh, believe me. I mean, like I said before, uh, I only told you the, um, the simpler story of my run-in with the cops.

   24. JRJoe Rogan1:18:06

       Right.

   25. BWBret Weinstein1:18:06

       I know that, that putting a badge on somebody and giving them a weapon and giving them all of that power, um, it brings the worst out in many people. And it's very, very, uh, it's very dangerous.

   26. JRJoe Rogan1:18:18

       Yes.

   27. BWBret Weinstein1:18:19

       Um, but I still, uh, I still see something systemic here that isn't being discussed.

   28. JRJoe Rogan1:18:26

       I don't think we disagree on that. I think that's there as well. I think there's multiple factors.

   29. BWBret Weinstein1:18:33

       Well, multiple factors, yes. But let's put it this way. My claim is that opportunity is being hoarded, right? At the top of the economic ladder, opportunity is widespread. You can do very well. The farther you get down the oc- economic ladder, the less opportunity there is and the greater the danger of your falling off the bottom.... right? In some communities, you start off, off the bottom-

   30. JRJoe Rogan1:18:58

       Yes.

Episode duration: 3:06:48