EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,052 words- 0:00 – 4:52
Rogan’s hyper-real “alien corridor” dream and why it felt like a message
- JRJoe Rogan
(drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.
- NANarrator
The Joe Rogan Experience.
- JRJoe Rogan
Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (instrumental music plays) Hello, Brett, good to see you, my friend.
- BWBret Weinstein
Joe, always so great to see you, brother.
- JRJoe Rogan
Um, so I was telling you before we get started that I had the most bizarre dream I've ever had in my life last night, the most realistic and most bizarre dream. And it's, uh, so hard to try to explain how strange this was, but I was in some weird corridor that looked like a building, but was odd, very strange, and I was encountering these beings that look like people, but very different. They were very thin, and they were slightly on the tall side. Um, and they had big heads, like larger than normal with larger than normal eyes, but they looked like people, and they were playful, and they were scaring me, like, they scared me, and then they joked around, like, we were just joking around. It was the most realistic dream I've ever had in my life. And I woke up and I could not go back to- I had to stay up. I got up at 3:30 in the morning, and I just went to the gym. And I worked out for a couple of hours, and I was like, "What the fuck was that?" But it was, it was very bizarre in that there was communication going on. It was, uh, it was like... (sighs) God, I don't want to read into this 'cause I know it's just a dream, but it was like, "Get comfortable with this."
- BWBret Weinstein
You should read into it because it's a dream. So, it doesn't make it right, but your subconscious is trying to tell you about something, and the fact that it felt very, very important means your subconscious thinks it's very, very important.
- JRJoe Rogan
I woke up... I mean, I was tired, man. When I went to bed, I was tired. I was falling asleep watching TV. I went to bed at, like, 10:30, 11:00 at night, like, beat down. I was like, "Oh my God, I'm gonna get some sleep." It's been a long week, lot of activities, workouts, this, that, the other. Tired. 3:30 in the morning, after- whatever this was woke me up so much that I just laid in bed for, like, another hour, and I was like, "There is no way I'm going to sleep. I'm, uh, I'm up forever." And then I just went and worked out. I worked out, and I was hoping I would be exhausted after I worked out and I'd be able to relax, but it was, like, a couple of hours after that that I sat, like, laid down and I took a nap for an hour before I came here.
- BWBret Weinstein
Question for ya.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- BWBret Weinstein
Did you see a video, I think it was yesterday, maybe it was the day before, of some Chinese robots that seemed to be across, uh, on our side of the uncanny valley, that they walk with a gait that feels very human? Did you see that?
- JRJoe Rogan
No, I haven't seen that. Is that the latest?
- BWBret Weinstein
I don't know. I've seen it a few times in the last couple of days. It sort of sounded to me like your dream might've been responsive, you know?
- JRJoe Rogan
These things felt very organic. Whatever this was, it felt like living, organic beings that were ve- like us. There was also a water element. It was ha- it was hard to understand what the water element of it was, but there was some sort of an indication that there was water and that there was protection from you going out into the water. But if you did go out into the water, there's a bunch of predators in the water. But they weren't, like- it wasn't like sharks. It was reptil- like crocodile-type things that were in the water and that they were, they had been, like, feeding them and keeping them calm and, like, keeping them away. But whatever these beings were in my dream, they were like, like what humans could eventually be. That's what it felt like. Ev- it didn't feel like a person, but it fe- like, you know, like a- I don't feel like a monkey. You know what I mean?
- BWBret Weinstein
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
But th- it was like that. It was very, very realistic. Like, there was communication going on. And I was really freaked out, and they were fucking with me to lighten me up because I was freaked out. They're like, "Uh, ah." And then they're like, like this, like, "Calm down," like, "Relax." It was so realistic, it was so realistic that when it was over, I wasn't sure what happened. Like, it wasn't like, "Whoa, what a fucked up dream." It was like, that was different. That was a different one.
- BWBret Weinstein
Well, I wanna, um, explore a couple things here. I think dreams are, um, very interesting and important.
- 4:52 – 8:29
What dreams are for: scenario generation, rehearsal, and subconscious training
- JRJoe Rogan
What do you think dreams are? Let's just get to, let's start with that.
- BWBret Weinstein
Sure.
- JRJoe Rogan
What do you think's going on?
- BWBret Weinstein
Um, think about the way your mind works at the level that you understand yourself, right? Your conscious mind is capable of taking an input from your eyes, computing what the dimensions of the room basically are, where the objects are, whether there's a threat somewhere, you know? If you've got something that's of a particular focus, you point the fovea of your eye at it and you get a whole lot higher resolution image. That architecture... Y- you know how, um, crypto made graphics card manufacturers the most important industry all of a sudden?
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, I wasn't aware of that.
- BWBret Weinstein
Oh. Well, so the reason NVIDIA is, th- the company that it is... I mean, never mind that there's, you know, likely overvaluation, but the reason that it's ahead of Apple in terms of, you know, its market cap and all is that the dedicated compute power necessary to make compelling visual renderings, to make video on the fly for video games, which was their...... their stock and trade. That kind of compute turns out to be very closely related to what you want if you want to, um, solve these very difficult math problems involved in crypto. So it was a sort of, I think it was a surprise to everybody that being a specialist on this one niche, you know, video games, put you in a position where suddenly this became important for other things. But the basic point is, if you think about your mind as having something like a graphics card in it, right? What is that graphics card doing? Well, it's sort of like a graphics card in reverse. It's processing the incoming information so that you can act in real time, you know, y- you know, when you're fighting you can understand what your opponent is doing, anticipate their actions, and all of that. That is an amazing piece of hardware, right? It would be stupid not to use it when your eyes are offline, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- BWBret Weinstein
When your eyes are closed because your eyes are built for the day and during the night you're gonna close them rather than go out and get yourself in trouble in the dark, you've got this amazing processor. And it is capable of running through practice of various kinds. And m- my hypothesis for what's going on here is that basically you, as a creature with a very complex set of hazards and opportunities in your life, use nighttime when you're not doing productive work to get ahead on challenges that you may face in one way or another. Sometimes those challenges are, uh, warnings about, you know, defects you know in yourself that might put you in a bad situation, like if you're, you know, a procrastinator and you're in school, you may, you know, have nightmares about showing up to the exam without having attended class or something that kind of gets you focused. Or they can be, uh, you know, other kinds of practice. They can be philosophical practice, you know, they can be, you know, situations in which you might be morally compromised where you need to go through the experience of being faced with a choice where you really should choose A but B is very appealing or something. So, I would say scenario-building, that your, your mind is running you through little movies that it makes. They're not completely rendered because it would be too expensive and pointless to do so, but the central
- 8:29 – 13:03
Lucid dreaming: reality checks, control limits, and why the dream generator must be ‘shielded’
- BWBret Weinstein
elements, the important stuff is there for you to have the experience so that when you do run up against a situation that's analogous, you've practiced it a number of times and you're not starting from scratch. And I, I would just point out that the, the strongest indicator of this for me is when... Uh, I experimented for a while with lucid dreaming. Have you ever done that?
- JRJoe Rogan
I've only had a couple of lucid dreams, but one where I kind... I think I specifically, uh, allowed it to happen because it was after I watched this documentary where this guy was talking about lucid dreams and he said, um, "In order to know if you're in a dream, every time you walk by a door, hit the side of the door and say, 'Am I in a dream?'"
- BWBret Weinstein
Which then very frequently wakes you up. So if you're gonna practice lucid dreaming, you have to practice not to wake yourself up as you become-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- BWBret Weinstein
... cognizant that you're in a dream.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, I did wake up after I realized I was in a dream, like, a few s- not long after. Like there was a few moments where I was like, "Oh my god, this is so crazy because this feels so real." Uh, but I, I just... My hand went through that door, so I know this is not real.
- BWBret Weinstein
It's not real.
- JRJoe Rogan
Okay.
- BWBret Weinstein
So-
- JRJoe Rogan
Because that (knocks on desk) tactile did- did- did exist.
- BWBret Weinstein
The feedback isn't right.
- JRJoe Rogan
And it was instantaneous that I recognized like, "Oh, this is like the guy said," like, do that every time you walk through a door. (Knocks on desk) While you're awake, "Am I in a dream?" And then do... So you'll get into a habit of doing that every time you get to a door, and so that habit will exist in your dream.
- BWBret Weinstein
Right, and if you keep going down that road, so they get, you get used to the answer sometimes coming back, "Oh, this is a dream," right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Do you have techniques that you use to facilitate?
- BWBret Weinstein
This, this is pretty much it.
- JRJoe Rogan
Okay.
- BWBret Weinstein
Right? You, you look for... I mean, you can look at a clock, you can look at written text. There are certain things that don't render very well.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right, written text-
- BWBret Weinstein
Um-
- JRJoe Rogan
... is what I've heard.
- BWBret Weinstein
Um, so if you do that and then you get used to not freaking out when it gets more and more normal for the answer to come back, "Oh, this is a dream," then you can, at some point, you get control to just not wake up and you stay asleep. And so the... Then, you're in this very interesting situation where you can play, you can direct. But here's, here's what I was going to say about, uh, the general purpose of dreaming. When I got to that state, and I was there, I don't know, many, many times, I found the following division. I could perfectly control what I did or said. I was unable to affect anything about the world of other people in my dreams, of doors, I couldn't control what was beyond a door if I opened it. So, what that told me is that this is built... Why shouldn't I be able to predict what somebody else in my dream says? I'm obviously scripting them too.
- JRJoe Rogan
Hm.
- BWBret Weinstein
You would think it would be easy to predict what they say, but I never once got it right, and I tried many times. So what, what this tells me is that you've got a movie-generating mechanism in your mind, and it has to be shielded from your consciousness in order for it to be useful training.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh.
- BWBret Weinstein
You see what I'm saying?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, I do. Okay. Why are you sold on this idea that it's training you for scenarios that you could possibly encounter or moral dilemmas or...
- BWBret Weinstein
It's not... You know, some of it is scenarios, sometimes that's what it is, sometimes it's moral s- dilemmas, but it's things that your mind finds likely to be relevant and significant. And-
- JRJoe Rogan
That I'm gonna encounter aliens?
- BWBret Weinstein
Well, I don't... So first of all, I don't know if you're aliens. Your aliens strike me as it could be three things, right? Just based on what I know of what you think about. Could be aliens, could be AI, or it could be the DMT spirits that people sometimes talk about.
- JRJoe Rogan
Um, it didn't seem like th- the latter. But, like I said, it seemed, like, almost like a person, but not a per- definitely not a person. Like, they all, they all had Michael Jackson bodies. You know what I mean? Like, they were devoid of testosterone. It was-
- 13:03 – 21:09
From ‘aliens’ to AI: treating AI as biology, not just technology
- BWBret Weinstein
Well, but I, I'm, I'm, I'm still gonna push a little bit and, uh, so first of all, I've become convinced that the problem with the way we think about AI is that we're not understanding it as a biological phenomenon, and that's a mistake.
- JRJoe Rogan
(smacks lips) A biological phenomenon e- meaning it doesn't have cells, but it behaves like a biological entity?
- BWBret Weinstein
What I, kind of. What I, what I really mean is that because AI ... and I believe we're just sort of on the foothill of a very tall peak that we don't know anything about.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- BWBret Weinstein
But AI, by its nature, I would argue, is the first technology that crosses over from the highly complicated to the truly complex. And complexity and biology have a very close relationship. So my feeling is that we are gonna injure ourselves if what we say is, "Oh, this is the most advanced technology we've ever built." And the answer is, no, this is kind of like the first biology we ever built. This is an organic phenomenon that's going to do emergent things we are in no position to predict. The people who programmed it aren't gonna know when these things happen or what they mean. And that that, it means that the ... I think the only rational approach to it is to think of it like a- 'nother species, and one that is not... It's not like you're meeting a, you know, a, a mountain lion. This is another species that isn't even on our branch of the tree. And the confusing thing is, because it speaks our language, it is actually gonna start changing us too. Our, our cognitive biology is going to start changing in reference to this thing that is interfacing with us. It's basically directly tapping into the human API. And that's, that's a very, um ... that's a dangerous thing. And-
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, not just that, but it's not starting from scratch. It has a vast understanding of how we've behaved in the past when confronted with various scenarios, various fears and anxiety, uh, the balance of control and safety, you know, or, m- y- you know, new regulations being put through, how f- how hard people will push back or not push back at all given the anxiety involved and whatever current dilemma it is, whatever, whether it's a military deal or a bio- a w- p- pandemic deal. There's, there's a bunch of factors that it knows about how we've behaved in the past and how easy we are to manipulate. In fact, we've helped it because we've used it to manipulate other people. You know, I don't know if you w- know about the China GPT scandal, but they found out that China was running ChatG someone, I don't want to say China. Someone in China was running ChatGPT to use chatbots to talk about the, the protest about the closing of US aid, to, uh, transgender issues, immigration issues, a bunch of different things. And it was just constantly g- going to war with people online about these things. So we've taught it how to manipulate us.
- BWBret Weinstein
We've taught it how to manipulate us. If it is not smart enough to run experiments yet, it will be five minutes from now. So it can, in fact, investigate things about our cognition that we don't even know about yet.
- JRJoe Rogan
(smacks lips) Yeah.
- BWBret Weinstein
Right? It can extrapolate from what we do know, and it can run experiments to figure out what we don't know. And that creates an advantage for it in, well, under its own power or in the hands of people who, uh, are hostile to us.
- JRJoe Rogan
I don't think anybody's gonna have any power over it eventually. But one of the things that I think that you said that's really important is that if it can't do that now, it's going to be able to do that in five minutes. And here's the rub. We're not gonna know when it can do it.
- BWBret Weinstein
You're not gonna know.
- JRJoe Rogan
And we don't know if it can already, right now, but it just doesn't have the power to be fully autonomous, right? It doesn't, the power literally doesn't exist because it's relatively inefficient compared to, like, the way a human mind processes things, right? The amount of power it needs is, is, is extraordinary. You know the Google thing where they're-
- BWBret Weinstein
Oh, right.
- JRJoe Rogan
... they're building nuclear power plants to run their AI.
- BWBret Weinstein
Sure. So-
- JRJoe Rogan
This is how crazy it is.
- BWBret Weinstein
So we have taken away the limits of ... you know, your mind, any person's mind has a, just a physical limit. It's only so big and there's only so much energetic throughput that it can handle, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- BWBret Weinstein
Or has access to. We are removing those limits, and what we have is, um, an entity. So you'll hear people say, "Well, it's not, it's not really thinking," right? "It's just figuring out, if it was thinking, what the next word in the sentence is." Garbage. No way. Okay? What we actually have is something so analogous to a child that that is the right model. In other words, when a, a baby is born, it has no language. It may have some structures that language will f- slot into, but it doesn't have any language.It is exposed to tons of language in its environment. It notices patterns, r-right? N-not consciously notices, but it notices them in some regard, you know, that every time somebody says the word door, you know, there's a fair fraction of those times that somebody, you know, opens that portal in the wall. I wonder if door and that portal in the wall are connected? Whatever it is. So, the point is, a child goes, in a matter of a few years, from not being able to make a single articulate, uh, noise to being able to speak in sentences, make requests, t- to talk about abstract things. That is an LLM. Right? It's more than that, but it is at least an LLM. It is being exposed to a training data set, which is the world of people talking around it, it is running little experiments, and it is discovering what it should say if it wants certain things to happen, et cetera. That's an LLM. At some point, we know that that baby becomes a conscious creature. We don't know when that is. We don't even know precisely what we mean. But that is our relationship to the AI. Is the AI conscious? I don't know. If it's not now, it will be, and we won't know when that happens, right? Y- we don't have a good test, and I think we are also not, we're just not properly concerned that we have no useful metaphors for describing what to do in this situation, the biggest hazard being it's interfacing with us in our own native tongues. That's an amazing level of influence that it has that we can't turn off. Very frightening.
- JRJoe Rogan
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- 21:09 – 25:57
The AI race, hidden capability thresholds, and ‘good AI vs bad AI’ (Elon’s framing)
- JRJoe Rogan
Happy Dad. Must be of legal drinking age. Please drink responsibly. Happy Dad Hard Seltzer, Tea & Lemonade is a malt alcohol located in Orange County, California. Very frightening, and no understanding whatsoever of when it's going to be at a sentient level. Like, we really won't know. Why would it tell us? Like, why would it completely tell us if it's already crossed the threshold into being, uh, a life form? Especially, like I said, where it's contained, right? So, it's a life form that exists essentially in our digital womb. It exists on hard drives, right? It exists on mainframes, right? It, it exists in these supercomputers. And at a certain point in time, it's not gonna need that anymore, and it's just gonna have to wait until we figure out a way to get enough power to it, and maybe it'll event- maybe it'll slow-roll technology for us to allow us to figure out better power sources. You know, one of the things that Elon said that was very strange about AI, and I don't know if you know his positions on AI, but he was initially very terrified of it, and then realized, "Okay, everyone's doing this. We have to do this. Like, I have an imperative to do this and make the best version of this, and make a version that's not ideologically captured." And I think what he's done with that approach is very similar to the approach that he's taken with X in how much it's changed the landscape of social media, for good and for bad, but definitely for good. There's a lot of for good that came about having a social media platform that has no guardrails. It's got essentially l- some stuff, like you can't break the law. That's basically it. Everything else is the Wild West. And then from th- and which is, by the way, one of the things that Jack Dorsey had discussed when he did my podcast way back in the day, when there was all these Twitter controversies about people like, uh, my friend Morgan Murphy or, uh, excuse me, Meghan Murphy. I have a friend Morgan Murphy too. Uh, but Meghan Murphy, the writer who was kicked off for saying, "But a man is never a woman."
- BWBret Weinstein
(laughs) Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's all it took, and she was banned for life. And Meghan's a wonderful person. She's, she's a, she's ju- she's not mean, she's not terrible, she's just kind and-
- BWBret Weinstein
Yeah, we're friends. She- she's, she's a sweetie.
- JRJoe Rogan
... brilliant. I love her.
- BWBret Weinstein
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And, uh, I, you know, I didn't know h- or anything about her. I just knew that story, and I'm like, "That story is fucking crazy," and I was trying to bring it up to them, and they said there was other things involved, and she had done other things, and turns out, no, now that wasn't true at all. Th- that was basically it. I- there was a hard-lined ideological wall that we ran up against. And, um, I think if he didn't buy it and expose the government's involvement in censoring people that were distributing true information during COVID, getting rid of people, uh, you know, the Jay Bhattacharya stuff and what they tried to do with, uh, uh, s- so many of these doctors, Robert Malone, the, you know, these, these doctors that were attached to that whole thing. L- uh, there was a concerted effort, and it was being done through social media. I don't think we'd be in the same place right now if he hadn't boughten Twitter.
- BWBret Weinstein
Oh.
- JRJoe Rogan
If he hadn't purchased Twitter, I re-... I genuinely think people... They're blinded by this thing that he helped Trump get into office, fuck that guy, and he's a billionaire, fuck that guy. But he literally might have changed the course of civilization, or at least partially righted the ship for, for a bit.
- BWBret Weinstein
Yeah. I... Look, I think we dodged a bullet, and the problem is that what has, what has come about as a result of dodging that bullet is very mixed. And so, it doesn't feel like a vindication, but as compared to what would have happened in the last election, I think there's no question, um, Elon deserves a tremendous amount of credit for helping us avert a disaster. But let's go back to your point about his point about AI.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. He wants to make a better version of AI.
- BWBret Weinstein
He thinks the only remedy for bad AI is good AI.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- BWBret Weinstein
And I don't, I don't disagree with him about this. There's no-
- JRJoe Rogan
'Cause it's... It seems to be like the race is on, you can run or not. Like it's... Everyone's running full clip, what are you gonna do?
- BWBret Weinstein
Right. So, yeah. The... If you pause, what you're doing is you're putting whoever didn't pause ahead.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- BWBret Weinstein
That doesn't work in the game, theoretically. Here's the problem. So, on the one hand, I think he's right. The only thing that stands to help us is good AI under the control of somebody who has built it with this concern in mind. The problem is, you know, he's one guy and he's got his biases, and, uh, you know, there's no council of elders to go to on this. Like I said, this is biology, this isn't tech. And, we... You know, because it's made of tech, we continue to default to that metaphor.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- 25:57 – 28:59
Grok ‘companions’ and the coming rewiring of sexuality and relationships
- BWBret Weinstein
But, you know, take a look at what he has introduced with the companions, the Grok Companions. Have you looked at-
- JRJoe Rogan
Companions? What do you mean?
- BWBret Weinstein
Oh, you don't know about this? Um, utterly terrifying. He has introduced a set of, kind of, anime-like personas that basically can be your interface to the AI. And, of course, the primary one, the one that you default to is a, kind of, sexy, young, underdressed, uh, creature.
- JRJoe Rogan
By default?
- BWBret Weinstein
Yeah. Um. Oh.
- JRJoe Rogan
Wait a minute. The first one, you get option? Oh.
- BWBret Weinstein
Hey, there she is.
- JRJoe Rogan
I guess she's, kind of, sexy if you're autistic.
- BWBret Weinstein
If you're into that sort of... Well, exactly.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- BWBret Weinstein
If... Ah. You laugh-
- JRJoe Rogan
Which is part of the problem here.
- BWBret Weinstein
It is part of the problem, but, but here's the problem really, okay? First of all, that is going to function like crack for a great many adults who don't know to be concerned about it.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- BWBret Weinstein
But what it's really going to do is it is going to alter an entire generation, right? It may not be, you know, Musk's version of it. But the problem is that these things actually interact on a sexual channel, and they have limits that are programmed into them. There are certain things they will do, certain things they won't do. But if you think about, you know, what it was like to be a 12-year-old boy, right? And you have access to something that looks an awful lot like a girl, and it likes you and takes you seriously and, you know, is strangely wise, whatever it is. I don't see what the thing is that is gonna prevent that innovation from remaking human sexuality, right? It will take time, but those for whom that is their experience will be altered by it permanently. What's more, of course, it is non-judgmental about things like, uh, homosexuality, right? Because it would have to be. What that means... Let's say that you're a boy and you're a little uncomfortable with girls, because that's a stage you go through as a heterosexual boy. But the AI that you're interacting with, that you default to because you're a boy who hangs out with boys, which is often what boys do, is perfectly willing to reinforce, you know, your exploration, your sexual exploration, right? It could alter your sexuality very easily. And-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. Can... Let me ask you this about that-
- BWBret Weinstein
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... because you are actually an evolutionary biologist.
- BWBret Weinstein
That is true.
- JRJoe Rogan
Um, it's... Y- if you have a question about things like that, that's the kind of guy you'd ask.
- BWBret Weinstein
(laughs)
- 28:59 – 34:16
Pederasty, Afghanistan stories, and pedophilia as a tool of power and contagion
- JRJoe Rogan
Um, what do you think was going on when people were doing that a lot? Because throughout a lot of history-
- BWBret Weinstein
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... there's a lot of pederasty going on.
- BWBret Weinstein
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
Throughout a lot of history.
- BWBret Weinstein
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And, um, it's very strange. And, you know, when people talk about it, you forgive great people who were clearly involved in sexual relationships with young boys. And you treat their work just b-... Just as their work, uh, by a person who lived thousands of years ago who was involved in, uh, sexually molesting children on a regular basis. And not only that, it was part... It was probably a ubiquitous part of their society. It was pr- probably a ubiquitous part of every society. And this brings me to, um, my good friend, Evan Hafer, uh, who's Green Beret and s- spent a lot of time in Afghanistan. And, uh, one, one of the things that he was telling me... I mean, he told me some stories about Afghanistan. We were on a trip once, and we spent, like, an hour and a half outside where he told me some stories about what... His first encounters with, uh, these young boys that get treated as, uh, uh, sex toys by these grown men there, that he thought it was a driver who was driving with his son, thought it was a guy working with his son. He said, "Oh, that's cool, man. He takes his kid to work with him?" And the, the guy explained, "No, no, that's his boyfriend. That's not his kid, that he, he owns that boy."And he's like, "What?" And he said they would have parades where they'd ... The guy who had the most boys with him was like ... It was like a- a man with, like, a bunch of hot girls in a music video behind him. It's like this guy was the man, and they would parade down the street with all the boys that he fucks. In the 21st century, right?
- BWBret Weinstein
Yep.
- JRJoe Rogan
What I ... And- and when he and I were talking about it, it's, it's so hard to believe. And it's so gut-wrenching and terrible. But then I'm like, okay, well, isn't that spot very unique? Because Afghanistan, you, you have very few, like, large population areas. You have essentially warlords controlling chunks of land all over the ... And it's very difficult to get to where they are. These people are essentially separate from a lot of the rest of the world, and I think it's a glimpse into how people used to behave, especially the very deep ideologically religious ... Like, this is ... It's like a view into how I think people were, like all throughout history, which is so weird. It's like we're awakening to how fucked up we were just a couple thousand years ago.
- BWBret Weinstein
Yeah, I think you're right about this. There are a couple thing ... I- I'm a little hesitant to go here. I think there is a evolutionary story that, um ... There's evolutionary hypotheses that need to be explored with relationship to this. One possibility is that this is, um, a modern phenomenon that has something to do with the alteration of the landscape.
- JRJoe Rogan
The which is a modern phenomenon, the- that we think is horrible now?
- BWBret Weinstein
The- what you're ... That what ... No. No, no, no. Um, there is very definitely an alteration in what we think and what we're even allowed to know about what people are doing, right? So just even the fact that you're aware of this is the result of a modern phenomenon of, you know, people going to Afghanistan, you said it was Afghanistan.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- BWBret Weinstein
Um, uh-
- JRJoe Rogan
There's cellphone footage-
- BWBret Weinstein
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
... of these guys with these little boys dancing around them.
- BWBret Weinstein
So-
- JRJoe Rogan
And shaking their butts.
- BWBret Weinstein
Let's put it this way. Um, I believe that our modern sensibility about this is exactly right. And frankly, I would argue that there is no greater crime than the sexual exploitation of children. And the reason I say that is because A, it is life-destroying for the victims, and B, the victims are by definition innocent. Right? You take those two things. You're gonna destroy a life, and that life, it was gonna ... They had a long life ahead of them, and you've wrecked it, and there's nothing they could have done to justify being treated any way but well.
- JRJoe Rogan
Not only that, but many of them often go and do the same crime to other children that was committed to them.
- BWBret Weinstein
That is a key piece of this puzzle.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's almost like they're a vampire that got bit and has to turn other people-
- BWBret Weinstein
Exactly.
- JRJoe Rogan
... into a vampire.
- BWBret Weinstein
Exactly. It is contagious. And-
- JRJoe Rogan
Which is insane. It just let- lets you know how weird people are.
- BWBret Weinstein
Which is another reason that it has to be, um, punished at the highest level. If you're going to break that cycle, you have to break that cycle.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- BWBret Weinstein
Right?
- 34:16 – 42:39
Kompromat, the Franklin scandal, and the ‘deep state’ question
- JRJoe Rogan
Today's episode is brought to you buy Tractor Supply. Every town's got its heroes, veterans, firefighters, EMTs, and police officers, the folks who show up when it matters most. At Tractor Supply, they call them hometown heroes. Now through November 11th, Tractor Supply is celebrating hometown heroes with 10% off their purchase on First Responder Day, Veterans Day, and a special in-store event on November 1st. And while they're saying thank you, stores will also be giving back, making donations to local hero organizations in their communities. To learn more, visit tractorsupply.com/honoringheroes. Tim Dilance and I were on a podcast once. We were talking about some child sex trafficking scandal from decades ago that involved, like, government figures, and there's this child sex trafficking scandal-
- BWBret Weinstein
You're talking about the ... What was it called?
- JRJoe Rogan
I could s- I could send it to Jamie.
- BWBret Weinstein
Boys Town, or s-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. Do you me- Do you know the clip I'm talking about? Yeah. He, uh ... We were just talking about it the other day, and I was like, "Dude, do you remember saying this? 'Cause this is crazy." Um, here it is. I got it, Jamie. If you want, I'll g- I'll send it to you. Um, but it- it was essentially ... It- it just makes you wonder, like, this is the thing that people always say. This is the horrible thing, is that really wealthy people, there's a bunch of, like, really sick, twisted pedophiles and they sacrifice children. Like, those are always the absolute darkest conspiracies that you ever hear.
- BWBret Weinstein
Yep.
- JRJoe Rogan
They sacrifice children. They do this to children. And you're like, "There's no way. There's no way. There's no way." But if someone's willing ... If someone's willing to drop a bomb on a city, just imagine the- the ability to just obliterate like what we did in Hiroshima.
- BWBret Weinstein
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Just imagine the ability to do that. Like, this is what we're gonna do. We're just gonna let ... And everybody dies. Everybody dies. Like, you don't think that kind of person, especially if it's a real sociopath that's gotten into a position where they have that kind of power, you don't think they would probably exercise that kind of power in their private life in some sort of a strange way? Like, if someone's really into killing people with unnecessary wars and they're really into watching from a distance and they're not even involved physically, but they do things that they know are gonna lead to people being-... dead that are totally innocent, just for profit. It's a very satanic and demonic thing. We just don't think about it that way. We think like, "Oh, he's unethical and unscrupulous." No, he's kind of demonic. Like, he's sacrificing people, women, children, elderly. He's destroying civilization just for profit.
- NANarrator
So two things. One, I think in some sense you're-
- JRJoe Rogan
This is the, this is the clip. Let's listen.
- NANarrator
All right.
- JRJoe Rogan
Let's play this and listen to it. But I, I do wanna hear your... I just don't wanna forget this.
- NANarrator
Scandal was a... It was a scandal out of Omaha, Nebraska out of Franklin Credit Union where there was-
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh.
- NANarrator
... a guy who was embezzling money, and then he was being investigated for that, but they said he's, "Oh, he has all this money because he's running an interstate pedophile network, and he's pandering kids to, you know, people in Washington, DC and New York." And there was a, a headline in the Washington Post or the Washington Times. They were like, "Call Boys Get a Tour of the Reagan White House."
- NANarrator
Unidentified White House aides in the Carter, Reagan, and Bush administrations now are being investigated for using the services of a call boy ring. The paper reports that two of the male prostitutes were given a late-night tour of the White House last year.
- NANarrator
And, you know, this was a scandal with real victims who wanted to testify and then people started dying. You know, the private investigator they hired, his plane broke up. Um, one of the girls that, uh, t- testified was found guilty of perjury, and then she was put in solitary confinement. They had to use two grand juries in Omaha to get rid of this scandal, and it's one of... Now it's not as sexy as like a Pizzagate or something because this happened in the '80s and '90s, but this shows you the blueprint for the government, you know, using/marshaling resources to, to silence people that were victims of this stuff. This is not new, congressmen, senators, blackmail being used by intelligence agencies. None of it's new. It was pioneered by the mafia. You having sex with somebody who's underage, then they own you forever if they have photo/audio/video of you doing that. Franklin-
- JRJoe Rogan
Um, who put that video together? 'Cause that's cool.
- NANarrator
Oh, yeah. I'm gonna have to, I'm gonna have to edit out the song though-
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh.
- NANarrator
... because it says it was made by Blunts 4 Jesus.
- NANarrator
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- NANarrator
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
For sure, you gotta edit out that song?
- NANarrator
Yeah, it'll flag things on my YouTube.
- JRJoe Rogan
Can you do that? Is that possible to do?
- NANarrator
I'm f- I'm an audio engineer. I think I can fucking do it.
- JRJoe Rogan
You fucking wizard, you. You can do it.
- 42:39 – 52:57
Intelligence agencies: necessary protection or inevitable ‘fourth branch’ corruption?
- NANarrator
So, uh, let's turn this on its head, okay? The system of government that we ostensibly have...
- BWBret Weinstein
... right, that involves the consent of the governed. That has got to be terrifying to the very powerful, right? The chances that the public is going to get into a mood and change up some structure on which things are depending is very high. And so, you can imagine them trying to figure out how to immunize themselves from change that is brought on by the electorate. Well, how do you do that? You need control over the people who actually manage the change, right, senators, congressmen, presidents. So, you can imagine a cryptic campaign to gain that control, and of course, this would be an obvious way to do it. And it's not that every person is corruptible in this way. I think most people probably aren't. But it can be a, you know, two pieces of the puzzle. One, they can corrupt people who can be led there one piece at a time, and two, they can make sure that people who aren't corruptible don't get very far. Right? That's the other part of the puzzle.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- BWBret Weinstein
So-
- JRJoe Rogan
That's the big part, right?
- BWBret Weinstein
I would assume so. I don't know. But I guess it does put those of us in the public who pay attention to these stories in a kind of a predicament, which is, how much, how much of what I think is a governmental system that is frustratingly flawed, very slow, clumsy, how much of that is just what happens when you try to do something on a big scale? And how much of it is the result of the fact that there is something that you cannot vote out of power, that has been, you know, vetoing presidencies since JFK, maybe before? The point is, the nature of conspiracy is such that there is always a m- seemingly more parsimonious explanation for what is going on. There's the, you know, the mainstream narrative for all of this stuff, and it's very hard to know when the mainstream narrative is so ridiculous that you should throw it out and say, "Something else happened here." You know, that would be the case in the JFK assassination, I would say. Um, and when the mainstream narrative is actually right, and you're just, you know, looking for flaws in it, of course there will be things that don't seem to fit that really do fit, and you just don't have the ability to know how. Um, so I guess, you know, uh, like you, I'm watching and I'm seeing an awful lot of indicators that pedophilia and kompromat have a lot to do with the way the world runs.
- JRJoe Rogan
Geez, that is so scary, because that's always been the big dark conspiracy theory, and that's always the one that I always dismissed. I'm like, "Sure there's some pedophile," but the idea that they're all pedophiles? That's crazy. But then, uh, uh, you know, there's a case of this Catholic priest that was involved in a sex scandal, and then they moved him instead, which is one of the things that they had done in the past. When someone had molested children, they would just move them-
- BWBret Weinstein
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... to another place-
- BWBret Weinstein
I remember that.
- JRJoe Rogan
... where they wouldn't molest children. So, they moved him to this new place where he molested 100 deaf kids.
- BWBret Weinstein
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
And it's one of the most evil stories. And you're like, "Well, how, how could you have, how could you tolerate that at that level?" Where you're, you're not just tolerant, you're aware. This person does something. You somehow or another get to deal with it yourself, and then you just move them and no one ever gets charged for anything.
- BWBret Weinstein
Well, this is why, you know, when you say-
- JRJoe Rogan
And he does it again.
- BWBret Weinstein
You say, "We need a CIA." Uh, I'm of two minds about this. On the one hand, I agree with you. Of course you do, right? Y- you know, in the big adult world, you need an agency that can, uh, look out for your interests, y- you know? It, it doesn't seem like you're likely to persist very long if you don't have that. On the other hand, if you do have it, does it not inevitably become some sort of a fourth branch of government? Does it not eventually merge with the mafia, right, because of the nature of its business? Does it not become an obstacle to the consent of the governed? And I'm not saying I know the answer to that puzzle, 'cause I don't. What I'm saying is, I think it is, it's a canonical problem, right? You're damned if you do and you're damned if y- you don't, and we are now damned 'cause we do, right? We would be damned in a different way if we didn't, and that doesn't make it acceptable. At some level, we have to figure out how to balance that trade-off. We have to figure out how to actually exert control over entities like the CIA, right? If you, if they are, if they, if they gain control over themselves, then the catastrophe is inevitable.
- JRJoe Rogan
(smacks lips) So, it's just a function of the way th- human beings work when they get power. When they get absolute power and they know that they have absolute power, and you're involved in stuff where it's all top secret, you don't have to tell people exactly what you're doing all the time with everything, and you're realizing these presidents just cycle in and cycle out... I would imagine if I was doing something like that for, like, 25, 30 years, I'd probably ignore the Biden administration too.
- BWBret Weinstein
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
I'd be like, "Fuck off. We'll slow this thing down. We'll do whatever we want."
- BWBret Weinstein
Well, I don't think that this, um, idea that, you know, power tends to corrupt, absolute power corrupts absolutely, I don't think that's actually true, and we, we-
- JRJoe Rogan
But it's often true.
- BWBret Weinstein
It... Yes. It...... for a particular type of person-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- BWBret Weinstein
... gaining that kind of power does create exactly this cycle.
- JRJoe Rogan
And the problem is, those jobs are very attractive to those types of people.
- BWBret Weinstein
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
And those types of people are willing to do anything to get there.
- BWBret Weinstein
Precisely. So, we-
- JRJoe Rogan
The scariest person you could ever work with in the office is the guy that you know will fucking sell you down the river for a promotion. He'll fuck you over, he'll lie, he'll say you made the errors on the account when it was him. He'll sabotage whatever things you have by making sure that someone doesn't send something in time. And there's people like that will do that. Those people win sometimes.
- BWBret Weinstein
Oh, they win a lot.
- 52:57 – 1:22:29
Socialism vs markets: rent-seeking, resentment, and what a healthier system would reward
- JRJoe Rogan
Everybody- not everybody, obviously. I'm kidding. But a lot of people think that the solution is, uh, make it bigger. Like, what did Mamdani say in his acceptance speech in New York? He said, "There is, uh, no problem..." What, what did he say about no problem too big for the government or too small for the government to fix? W- see what he said, 'cause I was like, "Boy, (laughs) that sounds a lot like communism."
- BWBret Weinstein
That sounds like a terrifying misunderstanding-
- JRJoe Rogan
It's fas-
- BWBret Weinstein
... about how the way things work.
- JRJoe Rogan
I'm- it's going to be very fascinating to see, um, what he's able to do and what he's not able to do and what the reaction is going to be. Uh, "His victory speech draws concern, as New York mayor allows t- uh, vows, rather, no problem too large for government to solve." And I think it was too small for government to care about was the next point that he said. Something like- yeah, that's it, or too small for it to care- no concern too small for it to care about.
- BWBret Weinstein
Man, that is-
- JRJoe Rogan
Um, you know, that's a, that's a call for a bigger government, right? And this is people's solution. Like, "We have so many problems, we just need to redistribute wealth, and we need more government." Like, you're just gonna redistribute it through the government.
- BWBret Weinstein
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Like, is this gonna help normal people? What helps normal people usually is a thriving economy.
- BWBret Weinstein
Yep.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's what helps normal people. And the problem with that is, some people have to get stupid rich when that happens, 'cause there's some psychos that, you know, go full Jeff Bezos, and, you know, you get worth hundreds of billions of dollars, or Zuck or Elon or any of these folks. You get into this weird place. But that's just an anomaly, and you gotta- as long as they're not criminals or not doing anything really fucked up, un- unfortunately, that's gonna happen.
- BWBret Weinstein
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
But also, you don't have limitations on how much you can succeed, and this sort of competition keeps everything rolling, it keeps everything thriving, and you get a good flowing economy. Obviously, I'm not an economist.
- BWBret Weinstein
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
You could tell.
- BWBret Weinstein
Well-
- JRJoe Rogan
But my point is, the opposi- the other side of it is terrifying. Because if you decide what people make and how much they make and... Who gets to decide? Men with guns. It always goes down to-
- BWBret Weinstein
(sighs)
- JRJoe Rogan
... men with guns, 'cause at a certain point in time you're gonna be like, "Fuck you, I'm not giving you 90% in taxes, and I've got a security team of 50 guys with machine guns and we're held o-... Our bank is like now fortified, like, 'Hey, fuck you.'" And then you, you've gotta respond, so you bring in the military. And then, I mean, this is every single time this has been implemented. North Korea, they said, "We're gonna take over the farms, that way everybody's gonna have food." Now they're all fucked, and it's all, it all boils down to these psychopaths who chameleon themselves into position of being the solution to all that ails you. "I'm the one, and I'm gonna say the right words, and I'm gonna have the right hair cut, and I'm gonna look presentable, and I'm gonna sell you down the river. And I'm gonna sell you down the river like all of 'em do."
- BWBret Weinstein
Yeah, it's, uh, it's terrifying and, as you point out, you've got a psychopaths rise to the top of these things problem.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- BWBret Weinstein
Which, uh, I wanted to go back, um-
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, and I, and I wanna be clear, I'm not saying that that's what Mamdani's doing. You know, and I don't know if, if what he's doing will be balanced out by other people and overall be more beneficial to people that live in New York City that have a lower income or not. But my point is, you should keep (laughs) going down that road, that road of s-... There's a lot of socialism things that I think would benefit us. You know, socialized medicine, socialized education. I think that would probably benefit us. But I also think there's, there's a real value in competition.
- BWBret Weinstein
Well, look-
- JRJoe Rogan
It's important. All these things are important for us to succeed.
- BWBret Weinstein
I, I've come to think of socialism as a system, it's insane. It's self-unstable. I- i- it destroys the, the goose that lays the golden eggs.
- JRJoe Rogan
But it sounds so good-
- BWBret Weinstein
It sounds good.
- JRJoe Rogan
... and compassionate.
- BWBret Weinstein
That's about it.
- 1:22:29 – 1:27:48
Education in the AI era: school becomes an anachronism and relationships get intermediated
- BWBret Weinstein
Because you just stepped across the event horizon into the AI era-
- JRJoe Rogan
Okay.
- BWBret Weinstein
... and school is now an anachronism, and we don't know what is supposed to replace it. I mean, think about what school... I have had the interesting, uh, experience of being on campus in two different colleges in the last, uh, week while I've been on the road, um, and I... You know, I hadn't really spent much time on a college campus since 2017. Things are very different than they were. Think about what the job of a professor is these days, right? A professor is now in a position of managing a class full of people who have access to a highly intelligent computer interface that sometimes lies and sometimes makes stuff up, but is smarter than the professor.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, explain that too, because many people might not know that they actually do what's called hallucinations.
- BWBret Weinstein
Yeah. I'm not sure that's a great description of what they're doing, but it sort of becomes-
- JRJoe Rogan
But that's what they call it.
- BWBret Weinstein
... the shorthand for it. Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's... I don't know why they use the term hallucinations, but essentially AI just invents answers if it doesn't know what they are.
- BWBret Weinstein
Right. I mean, the problem is we don't really know what we programmed it to try to accomplish, because what we did was we gave it the goal of saying the next thing that was right.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- BWBret Weinstein
But we don't... You know, what does right mean?
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- BWBret Weinstein
Right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- BWBret Weinstein
And so they're not programmed to be truthful, they're programmed to be effective in some way where we haven't really defined what they're effective at. And so you can get a highly cogent analysis of a question you've just thought of that nobody's ever thought of before. You can also get back a credible sounding answer that doesn't stand up if you go and look into what it's based on. And anyway, for the moment, that makes the problem of the professor somewhat tractable, right? Because a student can't totally rely on the fact that whatever Grok just told them is going to pass muster with this person who knows something about the subject.
Episode duration: 3:08:03
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