Speaking About Things You’re Not Supposed To Speak About - Eric Weinstein (4K)

1. 0:00 – 11:02

   The Downfall of Harvard

   1. CWChris Williamson0:00

      You got your PhD from Harvard. How do you feel, given the most recent fallout?

   2. EWEric Weinstein0:07

      (laughs) These opener questions are incredible. Um... It's... Uh... It's amazing. It's amazing that it came to this and, um, as a person I know studying at Harvard said, "I wonder if we are the last generation who will continue to see Harvard as this shining, um, city on a hill." Uh... And that's, you know, that's somebody who's there now. Um, I, I think it's a disgrace and we can't talk about it, which is the fascinating part. That we're effectively losing our society because we're afraid to say certain things, because we're being made afraid (laughs) to say certain things.

   3. CWChris Williamson0:55

      What do you mean?

   4. EWEric Weinstein0:57

      Well... Okay, so as a Harvard alum, you get the Harvard Magazine and this, this thing is incredible because it's just always, uh, Harvard people promoting other Harvard people, in, in this sort of PR, um...

   5. CWChris Williamson1:11

      The nepotism magazine.

   6. EWEric Weinstein1:12

      Yeah. Uh, the PR fest. And I think I remember that the article introducing Claudine Gay was entitled A Scholar's Scholar, and I knew from the get go that this was not going to go well, because... You know, I don't think people understand what Harvard is and how it functions and why it's different. Um, Harvard is really the fusion of two separate institutions. Um, one is about brilliance and one is about power, so you can think about this as the sharpest minds and the sharpest elbows. And the sharp mind crowd gets, uh, tons of resources because the sharp elbow crowd makes sure that power is used to perpetuate Harvard's place of privilege. And the sharp mind crowd contributes, um, prestige to the sharp elbow crowd, and so by virtue of the fact that you can't de-conflate the sharp minds and the sharp elbows, Harvard continues to have this very special place. Now, what is this special place? Why isn't it just a university like any other? Um... I think sort of two or three principal reasons. One of which is that, uh, Harvard is sort of an extension of the U.S. government. The government department, which is sort of Harvard's version of PolySci, is kind of this, an extension of the State Department at times. The economics department, uh, ends up setting economic policy in many ways for the United States. And above all, there is this concept that in every field, there's usually one institution that sets the narrative. So for example, in journalism, The New York Times is different than all other newspapers and news organs because of its focus on what we sometimes hear of as narrative-driven journalism. Now, people now talk a lot more about narrative, but 15 years ago, I don't think this was common knowledge. That the editorial room at The New York Times is a place where people thought about what the long arcs of stories were, and you figured out what the arc of the story was before the facts came in. So for example, Hillary is inevitable, uh, was a long arc in narrative-driven journalism. It wasn't true, but all the information that came in when Hillary was running against, uh, Donald Trump, um, was fed through this prism of the inevitability of Hillary Clinton. In the same way Harvard practices narrative-driven academics. It tells you what is happening, what the grand arcs are, and those, just like the 2016 election, are very often untrue. And so that's a way in which Harvard serves power. It, it, uh, it brings people in who are brilliant and then it takes the ones of those who are willing to play ball with the engines of power, and it, uh, it enters into the storytelling mode in which Harvard sets the tone for everyone. Um, so when you lose Harvard, it's very important and very different, but the last thing that I would say that really distinguishes Harvard is that Harvard, um... There's the open part of Harvard, the classrooms, and there's the closed part of Harvard that you can't see at all. And it's sort of a system of star chambers. Um, and I don't think people who have not tangled with Harvard would, would comprehend how much of what Harvard gets done, it gets done behind closed doors because it can't be done in the open. So-

   7. CWChris Williamson5:21

      What like? What do you mean?

   8. EWEric Weinstein5:23

      I'll give you a, a crazy example. Uh, I was not allowed to attend my own thesis defense. Now, it, you're, you're not an academic by training. If you tell this to an academic, they don't even understand what you're saying. They think that you're making a joke or you must not have understood something or maybe you were sick that day and you had to zoom in or who knows what, but I don't mean that at all. I mean, when I tried to get my PhD, the Harvard math department instituted a rule that said you could not attend your own thesis defense, you could not-... determine who would, uh, present your thesis, your dissertation. So basically what happened is, um, if you had an advisor, which almost everyone did, your advisor presented your thesis behind closed doors. Nobody's ever heard of this in the history of academics.

   9. CWChris Williamson6:28

      Is this how Claudine Gay got away with it?

   10. EWEric Weinstein6:29

       No, I don't know. Claudine Gay was taken down for two different reasons. Uh, one reason she was taken down was for not having crisper statements about the uniformity of application of rules of codes of contact when it came to, uh, Jewish students. Um, so it's one thing whether you have a free speech policy, or maybe you have a, um, code of conduct where you say we can't tolerate certain kinds of speech. Whatever that is, there's certainly a question about the differential application of that on behalf of different groups. So that was one of the ways that she got into trouble. The other way she got into trouble was the vulnerability of plagiarism and a weak academic record. And, you know, let me just say this early and you'll come, everyone will come to it late, plagiarism is the tip of the iceberg of, uh, attribution bullying, where effectively you have these people who determine who did what in the narrative-driven storytelling that is academic, and what, what papers get cited, which papers don't, what discoveries are named for certain people is determined largely by a tiny number of institutions, Harvard preeminent among them. And so Harvard just plays games morning, noon, and night with writing stories that put Harvard at the center, and particular individuals, um, at the top, whether or not those individuals have earned it or not. And what's hard for me is, most people are now thinking, "Okay, Harvard is just full of it." But it, it isn't. It's half full of it and half the best place on Earth to do anything important. And tho- that tension is n-, is what's not recognized. Now, power has to take a back seat to academics and to discovery and to brilliance if this game is to be maintained. You can't constantly just exercise power and tell stories. So in, in my history with this university, I've tried to figure out why does it behave so differently than every other institution of, of research?

   11. CWChris Williamson8:55

       Is DEI the boogeyman that everyone is worried about?

   12. EWEric Weinstein9:02

       You know, I'm... This is so hard to, to even get into it. Our universities won World War II, uh, in large measure. I mean, when... If you need codes broken, if you need new weapons developed, you're supposed to have SEAL Team Six of the human mind that you can call on, and that's supposed to be MIT, Caltech, Princeton, Harvard. It's a very small number of super prestigious universities. Um, part of the problem is, if you think about... I don't know how to say this exactly. If you think about a university as akin to a, an exotic car, a lot of people buy a McLaren or a Lamborghini or Ferrari because they like the styling, status, but the soul of all of those cars is racing, right? You, you... And the people who buy the cars for the racing sometimes are really annoyed by the fact that the cars are status symbols, and that's what a research university is to me. I'm interested in the racing, and other people are interested because it, it sort of, uh, what you do to show that you got a $2 million bonus, uh, from your investment banking job. Uh, if you don't race it, I don't know what you're doing there and I'd prefer that you'd leave. Um, the purpose of a university is not teaching. The purpose of a great university is training and research, and we can't afford to lose that. I, I don't think people have any idea how important it is to be able to call on your own nation's top academics when you need the truth, you need something done, you need help. And so whatever it is that is denaturing our universities, that's turning this into a nightclub where you, the whole trick is to get past the bouncer for the cool kids, uh, has to be stopped.

   13. CWChris Williamson11:01

       But what does it say

2. 11:02 – 22:14

   Is This the End of DEI?

   1. CWChris Williamson11:02

      that the ex-president of Harvard is someone whose academic bona fides were found out to be plagiarized largely?

   2. EWEric Weinstein11:14

      Uh, I'm trying to say the balance between the sharp elbows and the sharp minds is wildly off. And, and why is it? Nobody wants to say what everybody is thinking, which is, "This person is not fit to be the president of Harvard University." And why is that? Because they're gonna get called a name. This was made all about race. Oh, uh, what, you can't tolerate scholarship of this quality from a Black female? It's like, uh, you're starting... I, I wasn't even questioning this before, but now you're saying a scholar's scholar? Methinks that does protest too much.

   3. CWChris Williamson11:59

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   4. EWEric Weinstein13:13

      Look, we need to bring back exclusion. We're talking way too much about inclusion. Inclusion and exclusion are two halves of a normal process. Claudine Gay needed to be excluded from that office, not included. Now, if you told me that Condoleezza Rice was the president of Harvard, she's Black, she's female, and I don't agree with her politically, but I don't think many people would have a qualification issue with Condoleezza Rice, or let's say James Gates is a Black man, a distinguished physicist. This has to do with people coming from weaker subjects, particularly activist subjects, subjects that didn't exist before the late '60s, early '70s when all of these things were created. You know, t- to an extent, when you had... I don't know if you recall the f- the pictures of, it was Willard Straight Hall at Cornell with the Black students emerging with weapons, um, you know, there was a revolutionary fervor at the end of the '60s, early '70s, and you have people creating women's studies, uh, you know, Black studies, African American studies, and these, these, departments were basically born of activism more than scholarship. I'm not saying no scholarship gets done there, but scholarship and activism are essentially fused, and many of us think activism is great, just don't do it next to our physics and math and computer science and music departments, you know? I- i- if what you're really there to do is to ignore certain things and accentuate others and not search for the truth, um, that's not an ignoble pursuit. It's just, that's not what scholarship is. Scholarship is about understanding things and getting them right, and w- we've b- we've gone down a terrible turn, but, you know, just consider... I think your listeners, uh, might enjoy googling the string, um, "cook, cook something up to ease him out." That was a phrase that was used, uh, internally in documents within Harvard when, um, a Kenyan was ejected from the Harvard Economics Department, um, back in the '60s- And what had really happened is this guy had, had passed all of his exams, he was fully qualified, he was working on his dissertation to become a Harvard PhD in economics, and the university, I think, decided that it didn't like an African man sleeping with white women in, in America, and it got rid of him, even though he was in good standing. That... The only reason we know about that is that turned out to be Barack Obama Sr. So Harvard conspired 100% with the State Department to destroy the career of Barack Obama Sr., and that's how Harvard worked. In the star chambers, it cooks. And what does it do? It cooks things up. It cooks up stories, it cooks up, um, attribution, it gives people credit for things that they didn't do first, it takes credit away from other people. Um, I was there in the mid-'90s when it destroyed my wife's career, um, through something a star chamber called the Harvard Jobs, uh, Market Meeting, and all the economists go into a closed room, they lock the door, and they say, "Who's got a good student?" And my wife was the student of a Nobel, uh, award winner in economics, and she had, um, done something which was to bring an entirely new kind of mathematics into economic theory to replace something called the marginal revolution, a new form of differential calculus called gauge theory, and a guy named Dale Jorgenson, who recently died, said, "Nope." So even though a Nobel-level economist was promoting her and saying, "This is great stuff. She should go anywhere in the country, a woman of color from the developing world," um, an old white guy just said, "Nope." And, you know, in a second, uh, she, her position in the world is reordered in the pile. And why were they doing this? Because they wanted to fix the CPI. Uh, and I don't mean fix as in cure it, I mean fix as in fixing a baseball game, um, because the CPI is used to transfer wealth.

   5. CWChris Williamson18:05

      What's CPI?

   6. EWEric Weinstein18:06

      The consumer price index. And the reason it's important is that mostly what the government does after its military is-...uh, entitlements, Social Security payments, Medicare payments. And those are indexed to inflation. And the way in which it takes in money is through taxes, and those tax brackets are indexed to inflation. So it's very funny, everybody focuses on, like, central banking and the Fed, but the Bureau of Labor Statistics maintains a statistic that transfers billions and billions of dollars. And if the CPI is overstated, uh, it pays out a lot of money and takes in very little money. And if it's, if you can get it to be understated, uh, then you get to take in much more money. You don't have to pay old and sick people. And that's what the Harvard department was doing.

   7. CWChris Williamson18:52

      So there's a single figure that mediates everything that gets squeezed through, how funny.

   8. EWEric Weinstein18:57

      And, and so what we, we were doing, uh, as a collaboration, was showing the right mathematical framework to calculate the CPI.

   9. CWChris Williamson19:06

      But that would've allowed less fuckery.

   10. EWEric Weinstein19:07

       It would've allowed less f- yeah, to use the technical terms there.

   11. CWChris Williamson19:12

       (laughs) So, um-

   12. EWEric Weinstein19:13

       But, but the point being that the Harvard jobs market meeting inside of the Harvard Economics department is a star chamber the way the, uh, immigration, um, status of Obama's father was a star chamber, as was the way in which my PhD was... Over and over again, Harvard closes its doors, and it makes stuff up.

   13. CWChris Williamson19:34

       This sounds unsalvageable, as somebody-

   14. EWEric Weinstein19:36

       No, no, no. No, no, no.

   15. CWChris Williamson19:37

       It sounds like, it sounds like we've got the people leading it have gotten in through some combination of diversity, equity, inclusion, nepotism, game-playing, harsh elbows. Seems like the people that-

   16. EWEric Weinstein19:47

       They just hired a guy named Daniel S. Freed, who's one of the greatest mathematicians alive in my area. Um, Dan and I might disagree about string theory. We can have scholarly disagreements. Just had lunch with him in Austin, Texas. Um, that guy's a scholar through and through. I can disagree with him, I can fight with him, uh, I can, I can have my differences. I would support him 100% as a scholar to take over, uh, you know, as a, as a provost or dean if they were interested. There's no shortage of absolutely fantastic people at Harvard, and-

   17. CWChris Williamson20:23

       But if they're unable or unwilling to play the political games in or- that are required, unless they're prepared to file their elbows down to a sharp point...

   18. EWEric Weinstein20:33

       Well, this is what Bill Ackman is doing that's so confusing. I just, I have the feeling... I don't know this guy at all, don't have positive, negative feel-

   19. CWChris Williamson20:40

       I thought you would've crossed paths with him at some point.

   20. EWEric Weinstein20:41

       You would think. There are various people who I don't cross paths with for whatever reason. Um, I don't even think we follow each other. Or maybe I follow him, but I don't think he follows me. Um, I think that the problem is, is that a lot of these people don't know how the research game works. They think about this in terms of the Harvard Business School, the Law School, the undergraduate alumni network. They don't see the part of Harvard that actually produces the mystique, you know, the analog of the racing for the exotic car. And I, I worry that the right thing to do right now is to appoint a curmudgeonly, research-oriented person in a super rigorous field. It doesn't even have to be STEM. Like, music is an incredibly rigorous field. But what we need right now is rigor. We don't need another person from, uh, the social sciences at this moment. We need somebody to reestablish that Harvard is an intolerant place, that it has the highest possible standards, it's unabashedly elitist, it's unabashedly American, and i- it cannot live with DEI. DEI is a parasitization of our best hopes and dreams, and we have to recognize that DEI has to be destroyed so that goals like diversity and getting the right people into the room are not sacrificed on the altar of mediocrity and lack of ethics.

3. 22:14 – 29:58

   Are Legacy Admissions a Bad Thing?

   1. CWChris Williamson22:14

      It's interesting that at places like Yale, they had made some changes to the ways that grades and diversity account for admissions, but they didn't get rid of legacy admissions, which kind of tells you everything that you need to know about what's being protected.

   2. EWEric Weinstein22:33

      No, I don't think it does.

   3. CWChris Williamson22:36

      Is this not another way to ensure that the people... Just to ensure that power is, is held in the people who already have it?

   4. EWEric Weinstein22:45

      But very soon this thing isn't gonna be worth very much.

   5. CWChris Williamson22:48

      I don't think that people care. I think this is the same as looking at why Marvel are going downhill.

   6. EWEric Weinstein22:54

      Yeah. Say more.

   7. CWChris Williamson22:58

      There are a lot of movies coming out at the moment. I think the most recent Star Wars director openly said, "I enjoy making movies that make men feel uncomfortable."

   8. EWEric Weinstein23:06

      To Jon Stewart.

   9. CWChris Williamson23:08

      Star Wars.

   10. EWEric Weinstein23:09

       Yeah.

   11. CWChris Williamson23:11

       Maybe one of the most male-dominated audience movies that I can think of.

   12. EWEric Weinstein23:19

       Yes, it's self-destructive. So what I'm trying to say is, is that you can, you can say, "Oh, we're gonna keep things open for legacy admissions," right? But very soon you're not gonna wanna be associated with... I mean, already Yale has mismanaged its research university for years. It made a very bad decision not to go hard on, on sciences and STEM, uh, and focused, in my opinion, too much on, on softer fields. Um, you know, so what happens when Harvard is no longer that prestigious? If people start laughing at Harvard-

   13. CWChris Williamson23:52

       Hmm.

   14. EWEric Weinstein23:53

       ...uh, what good is it going to be that you can get your kid in?

   15. CWChris Williamson23:56

       I don't disagree, but I think people are so out of touch. The people who are in power, uh, unable or unwilling to see just how, just how quickly the stock price is plummeting, I don't think that they're able to see this. Thinking about it, especially using the, the Marvel example again or some of the things that are coming out of Disney...You have a quantifiable figure. What was the opening weekend at the box office?

   16. EWEric Weinstein24:29

       Yeah.

   17. CWChris Williamson24:29

       You know exactly where this is. M- there are fewer places to hide when it comes to that. "Here's the number. What did it cost? What did you make opening weekend?"

   18. EWEric Weinstein24:39

       Right.

   19. CWChris Williamson24:39

       And you have projections and you have targets, presumably, that you want to hit. If that number doesn't cause people to think, "Maybe we don't need another narrative about an all-female cast that is better than the men without overcoming any challenges..."

   20. EWEric Weinstein24:54

       Sure, but what you're not looking at is, um, you know, if you look at Mike Hopkins' work on the convar- Krivalev variant in the mathematics department, that's like opening, opening weekend statistics. Man, great stuff happens at Harvard. Ha- make no mistake about it, Harvard is an amazing and horrible place, and we're gonna all now focus on how dumb it is and how horrible it is, and like...

   21. CWChris Williamson25:24

       Yeah.

   22. EWEric Weinstein25:24

       Then you're not seeing the tragedy. You're not seeing... Look, I didn't have an advisor. I'm one of the only people you'll ever meet with a PhD that had no advisor. Um, but the guy who saved me was named Raoul Bott, and Raoul Bott discovered something that's so important, called Bott periodicity, that if I could convey it to you, your mind would be, uh, you'd, you'd think DMT was for children. Uh, it has to do with the fact that there are only four systems of numbers that have particular property, and one of those sets of numbers spins a merry-go-round with the other three, with an eightfold sort of symmetry. Who knew that this thing was even possible? It's just, it's an incredible fact about the world. Um, I associate him with Harvard. That's unfudgeable. There's no, there's no one in the world who can tell me that Bott periodicity wasn't o- one of the most important things that happened in the 20th century. And to have a person like that, you know, just feet from John Tate, uh, uh, uh, I could go on and on about all the real things that happened at Harvard. What we need right now... Look, I would love to run for president of Harvard. If Claudine Gay can be president of Harvard, so can I, and what we need is somebody who's been wronged by Harvard. You need somebody who has not been on this kind of escalator to power, who's constantly shown love by the system. There are all sorts of people that represent what I call black sheep Harvard. You've got white sheep Harvard and black sheep Harvard, and black sheep Harvard is no less important, but it's the people who are not loved by the system, who don't know when to shut up, the people who will take a stand and who will zig when everyone else zags.

   23. CWChris Williamson27:15

       Why would that be useful?

   24. EWEric Weinstein27:17

       Because we've gotta purge the university of the things that don't work, and it's gonna be ugly. It's gonna be unpleasant. It's gonna be a civil war on the faculty.

   25. CWChris Williamson27:32

       I was learning about an idea, the Abilene paradox. It's one of my, one of my-

   26. EWEric Weinstein27:36

       Tell me about it.

   27. CWChris Williamson27:36

       ... one of my favorite ideas from last year. The Abilene paradox is a situation in which a group makes a decision that is contrary to the desires of the group's members because each member assumes the others approve of it. It explains how a number of accurate individuals can become idiots when they get together, kind of like the emperor's new clothes. An acquaintance invites you to his wedding despite not wanting you there because he thinks you want to attend. You attend despite not wanting to because you think he wants you there. At a business meeting, someone suggests an idea that he thinks the others will like, recruiting a trans influencer as the face of the brand. Each member has misgivings about this, but assumes the others will consider them transphobic if they speak out, so everyone appro- approves of the idea despite no one liking it. Abilene paradox.

   28. EWEric Weinstein28:18

       Yeah. Um, I like it. Uh, it has a lot to do with Timur Kuran's theory of preference falsification. I think that that's not exactly how it happens.

   29. CWChris Williamson28:29

       How so?

   30. EWEric Weinstein28:30

       Most of the way these things work is that you're afraid to speak up. Like, l- l- let's predict what's going to be said when this debuts. Sour grapes, uh, grifter, charlatan, uh, Eric doesn't like women, Eric doesn't like Black people, "Oh, uh, such snobbery. What has he ever done?" You know, we know what every action brings about in terms of its response, and that's kind of why we don't speak up. It's just not worth it.
4. 29:58 – 38:45

   Why Stephen Hawking is in the Epstein Documents

   1. EWEric Weinstein29:58

   2. CWChris Williamson29:58

      What do you make of the most release of Epstein documents?

   3. EWEric Weinstein30:01

      You tell me.

   4. CWChris Williamson30:03

      Oh, man. I mean, surprising to see Stephen Hawking on there in some ways, but-

   5. EWEric Weinstein30:07

      Why?

   6. CWChris Williamson30:12

      I wouldn't know what Jeffrey Epstein would want with Stephen Hawking.

   7. EWEric Weinstein30:18

      What are you assuming is so terrible about Stephen Hawking being in these documents?

   8. CWChris Williamson30:24

      I didn't say that it was terrible.

   9. EWEric Weinstein30:25

      Okay.

   10. CWChris Williamson30:27

       I'm surp-

   11. EWEric Weinstein30:28

       I like that answer. That's interesting.

   12. CWChris Williamson30:29

       ... I'm surprised that Jeffrey Epstein would have an interest in Stephen Hawking beyond him being somebody that is well-known, influential, powerful, and potentially leverageable, which is... That makes me think, what... He took an interest in physics, and I don't know why, and you do. At least, you have an idea about why he took an interest in physics, Jeffrey. But I don't know why. I don't know why Jeffrey Epstein was interested in physics.

   13. EWEric Weinstein31:04

       Well, w- what would you guess?

   14. CWChris Williamson31:06

       There's some special mathematics there that allows him to... or the people that he is associated with, to better be able to predict things, to be able to use it in some sort of a way around financial markets, around new technology that's emerging, to just be able to see the direction that the future of technology is moving in, perhaps.

   15. EWEric Weinstein31:27

       Hmm.

   16. CWChris Williamson31:31

       You know more about this than me. Go on.

   17. EWEric Weinstein31:34

       Uh, well, I... Look, I, I go back to this conference that he held, and I think it's 2006 or 2004, called Confronting Gravity. So, he holds a conference. I don't think he holds it on this island, on his island. I think he holds it on, uh, Saint Thomas, maybe? Um, and this is entirely consonant with an earlier meeting that he had with me, where he wanted to know about what I was doing with mathematical physics. And... I have to say... Look, w- why gravity? Gravity is, in some sense, about the fabric of space-time, and if there are things about the fabric of space-time that you can unlock, that are not contained in general relativity nor in the standard model, how much power do you think is in that? You saw what the neutron did to unlock the strong force. Um, you can take out a city with a little bit of physics. I'm gonna turn this around, Chris, 'cause, uh, we had a great dynamic the last time, and I wa- I wanna see you play with ideas, too. Um, tell me what you imagine might be the power beyond the standard model in general relativity. If we can already destroy all of humanity, uh, albeit with some com- complications, you have to engineer a bomb, what do you think might be on the other side of the next great discoveries?

   18. CWChris Williamson33:14

       Well, I mean, this gets into sci-fi and, and speculation around th- that probably fits the next Marvel series. They should use this as the, as the tagline. I would guess things to do with being able to move across space.

   19. EWEric Weinstein33:29

       Okay.

   20. CWChris Williamson33:30

       Wormholes, time. If there are other higher dimensions, if that allows you to access... if the multiverse theory holds, uh, if that allows you to access different universes and to move between them.

   21. EWEric Weinstein33:49

       It might be limitless power. It could be limitless power in the form of energy. It could be limitless power in the form of travel. Um, what if, what if it allows you to control neutrinos in a new way? I mean, like, people don't think about neutrinos. It's very hard to send a particle through planet Earth unscathed, but neutrinos do it. Right? So, in some sense, if you were a, a sovereign nation, wouldn't you be focused on physics? I mean, loo- look, here's the thing that I just don't understand, I'll be totally honest about it: who isn't interested in this stuff? You have to be crazy to do what we're doing with physics. We're running physics into the ground. Physics is... Y- you'll go to a Marvel movie about some guy trying to collect rings or stones to get infinite power over the universe. That's physics. That's not stones. When you see somebody talking about limitless power, think physics. Don't think money, think physics. Physics is the source of infinite power.

   22. CWChris Williamson34:59

       And is Jeffrey Epstein sufficiently versed in physics to know that he needs to be at the forefront of this?

   23. EWEric Weinstein35:04

       No. But this is what we dealt with last time. So, kids, if you haven't seen last time's episode, I don't think it was Jeffrey Epstein.

   24. CWChris Williamson35:14

       Hmm.

   25. EWEric Weinstein35:14

       I don't understand why we're so focused on this man. Why aren't we focused on, on whatever created him? Like, this is really weird. We can't think. Take half of all the time you spend thinking about Jeffrey Epstein, talking about Jeffrey Epstein, everybody talking about him, and spend half of that time saying, "What do we, what do we think about whoever was behind Jeffrey Epstein?" Whatever was behind Jeffrey Epstein is what I think cared about gravity, cared about space-time, cared about physics.

   26. CWChris Williamson35:53

       And you get to use this supposed financier as a wedge to be able to start to break this open?

   27. EWEric Weinstein35:59

       Well, this is the thing. If I'm looking... Y- you know, there, there's a picture of Lisa Randall at this conference. Nobody's worried about the sexual depravity of Lisa Randall. This is stupid. Lisa Randall's an amazing physicist. He was interested in physics. Jeffrey Epstein, whatever he represented, cared about physics.

   28. CWChris Williamson36:23

       Does that make you more or less nervous?

   29. EWEric Weinstein36:27

       Well, you have to appreciate, I have no idea...... why my country, the United States of America, doesn't care about physics anymore. It canceled the SSC in 1993. So the-

   30. CWChris Williamson36:38

       SSC?
5. 38:45 – 52:45

   The Problem With String Theory

   1. CWChris Williamson38:45

      Can you explain in an accessible way what the problem is with string theory?

   2. EWEric Weinstein38:51

      Sure. It doesn't work.

   3. CWChris Williamson38:56

      We can go a tiny bit more that level-

   4. EWEric Weinstein38:58

      All right.

   5. CWChris Williamson38:58

      ... of advancement. A little bit further.

   6. EWEric Weinstein38:59

      Explain it to me as if I'm two.

   7. CWChris Williamson39:01

      Yeah, yeah.

   8. EWEric Weinstein39:01

      (laughs)

   9. CWChris Williamson39:02

      Or, or a, or a high IQ golden retriever.

   10. EWEric Weinstein39:05

       Um, the problem with string theory is its sociology, not its equations. The sociology of a string theorist, um... Do you mind if I play you a recording?

   11. CWChris Williamson39:28

       Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

   12. EWEric Weinstein39:30

       The following, uh, clip is from, uh, a podcast which probably has the highest IQ guests of any podcast on Planet Earth called The Universe Speaks in Numbers. Nobody listens to this podcast. But this, uh, this is Edward Witten, um, and he is, uh, talking about, um, he's being asked about string theory by Graham Farmelo.

   13. CWChris Williamson40:01

       Go back to string theory. Do you see that as one among several candidates or the preeminent candidate or what? I mean, where do you see the status of that framework in the landscape-

   14. EWEric Weinstein40:10

       Well-

   15. CWChris Williamson40:10

       ... of mathematical physics?

   16. EWEric Weinstein40:11

       I'd say that string/M theory is the only really interesting direction we have for going beyond the established framework of physics-

   17. CWChris Williamson40:18

       Mm-hmm.

   18. EWEric Weinstein40:19

       By which I mean quantum field theory at the quantum level-

   19. CWChris Williamson40:21

       Mm-hmm.

   20. EWEric Weinstein40:22

       ... and classical general relativity-

   21. CWChris Williamson40:24

       Mm-hmm.

   22. EWEric Weinstein40:24

       ... at the macroscopic scale.

   23. CWChris Williamson40:26

       Mm-hmm.

   24. EWEric Weinstein40:26

       So, where we've made progress, it's been in the string/M theory framework. There are a lot of interesting things that have been discovered. I'd say that there's a-

   25. CWChris Williamson40:33

       Mm-hmm.

   26. EWEric Weinstein40:33

       ... lot of interesting things we don't understand at all.

   27. CWChris Williamson40:35

       Mm-hmm. But you've never been tempted down the other routes of other options for-

   28. EWEric Weinstein40:38

       I'm not even sure what you would mean by other routes.

   29. CWChris Williamson40:40

       Uh, loop quantum gravity and-

   30. EWEric Weinstein40:43

       Those are just words.
6. 52:45 – 56:00

   When Will it Be Time to Put String Theory Down?

   1. EWEric Weinstein52:45

   2. CWChris Williamson52:45

      How long can the world of physics be captured by an idea that no meaningful progress is made inside of before more people say, "It's time to look at something else?"

   3. EWEric Weinstein52:55

      Um, that's an interesting question. The problem is that, um, there isn't gonna be much of physics left when this group dies. Ed just retired, I believe, from the Institute for Advanced Study because it has a capped re- age of 70, and he was born in 1951. Um, no, I, I... There isn't much physics left. People have forgotten what the original problems are. He swapped out one set of problems that we all agreed on, "Why is nature left/right asymmetric, why are there three copies of matter rather than only one, why the particular set of symmetries that, uh, generate the strong, weak, and electromagnetic forces," uh, all of these problems that are all about the physical world in which we live, and he swapped them out for different problems like, "How do we quantize gravity?" As if that's definitely what we have to do. Those were sort of mathematical analytic problems rather than physical problems, and so as a result, two generations of physicists have been brainwashed into not caring about the physical world and being, th- they're totally devoted to various, uh, abstract areas of mathematics.

   4. CWChris Williamson54:09

      How long can the legacy of that continue for?

   5. EWEric Weinstein54:11

      Well, how do you rebuild theoretical physics when almost nobody's doing theoretical physics? And I don't mean... Look, there's some technical wiggle words that if I don't say them, um, my colleagues will go crazy, but in the field of fundamental physics beyond general relativity and the standard model, there isn't much of a field left. You go on a random day to the archive where people post papers, and the papers aren't really about charmed quarks or muons or realistic models of the universe. They're about weird esoteric topics and mathematics-And that has to-- everything to do with, uh, transition between 1980 f-- actually '83 through '86, '87, where the field lost its mind.

   6. CWChris Williamson55:02

      Rediscovering the problems of physics can't be as hard as discovering the problems of physics.

   7. EWEric Weinstein55:07

      If you're not paid to work on physics... The way they've got us is by their-- they've got their hands wrapped around our, our wallets. We can't afford to do physics. There's-- it's, it's as if there's a force that says, "If you wanna work on the world's most important problem, we're going to make you poor, we're gonna discredit you." It's almost like there's a force field trying to get us not to unlock this power, and I've been very curious about why that is. And nobody-- like, with all the rich people in the world, nobody's funding the stuff at the level that it needs to be funded. This is the most important funding priority on planet Earth. 'Cause otherwise you're all sharing one atmosphere with a bunch of idiots and really powerful toys.

   8. CWChris Williamson55:59

      So unless we can

7. 56:00 – 1:05:00

   The Current State of Aliens & UFOs

   1. CWChris Williamson56:00

      somehow channel the technology of inter-dimensional space beings.

   2. EWEric Weinstein56:07

      Please never say those words.

   3. CWChris Williamson56:09

      Hey, look, the inter-dimensional-

   4. EWEric Weinstein56:11

      Inter-dimensional space beings?

   5. CWChris Williamson56:13

      Inter-dimensional space beings. David Grusch didn't say extraterrestrial, he said inter-dimensional.

   6. EWEric Weinstein56:17

      Yes, but Eric-- Eric and David talk, and this is not fair to David Grusch. David Grusch knows that he's a physics BA, he knows he's not a PhD. He's repeating things that have been said to him. He had the presence of mind to try to give an example of what inter-dimensional might mean, and he used holography. And so as a result, everyone's making, "Oh, David Grusch says ho- holographic inter-dimensional beings." This is absurd and it's not fair to David Grusch. I'm telling you, I mean, uh, we can call David up right now, and I promise you, he's not going to back this madness and stupidity.

   7. CWChris Williamson56:56

      So what's going on with this most recent update about aliens? You know-

   8. EWEric Weinstein57:00

      Which one?

   9. CWChris Williamson57:01

      Well, I saw this frustration that lawmakers had because they were getting compartmentalized if you don't ask precisely the right person precisely the right question in precisely the right w- right way, you're not allowed to get an answer, you don't get an answer.

   10. EWEric Weinstein57:14

       But you couldn't even a- look, if you don't know what a Riemannian manifold is, if you don't know what a determinant line bundle is, there's no way you can ask intelligent questions about alien visitation. How did they get here? There are no scientists. There are no relevant (laughs) scientists in this story. Does, does anybody find that at all odd? You, even this, the situation with David Grusch is fantastic. Um, he goes into a, a hearing. He says a bunch of completely batshit crazy stuff, right? Can we agree on that? All right. And then weeks later, some representatives go into a SCIF, and they say, "Well, it certainly, uh, seems like it confirms some of what Grusch has been telling us." And you're thinking, "Okay, so you've, you've separated the confirmation, which you did abstractly because it was inside of a SCIF, but you o- you can only talk to people who've emerged from the SCIF who are willing to say vague things, and the crazy claims." Now, what is this really all about? We-- nobody knows. Now, what I've been saying for about four years is there's way more to this story than I had understood. I thought UFOs were total nonsense. I thought this was a waste of time, and I was wrong. I was just wrong.

   11. CWChris Williamson58:38

       Why?

   12. EWEric Weinstein58:39

       What do you mean?

   13. CWChris Williamson58:40

       In what ways were you wrong? Why are you now convinced in a way that you weren't previously?

   14. EWEric Weinstein58:45

       Well, I didn't know... Yeah, I'm not convinced that UFOs, like shiny metal craft, are real at all. What I didn't know is that there almost certainly are large programs inside the federal government that are denied, that are labeled "UFO shh- don't tell anyone." Now, whether those programs contain anything about non-human intelligence or aliens or spacecraft or anything like that is anyone's guess, because I haven't seen anything. However, the programs almost certainly exist.

   15. CWChris Williamson59:20

       What gives you that impression?

   16. EWEric Weinstein59:21

       Talking to four million people who tell r- stunningly similar stories. In other words, there is a weirdness, and the weirdness is tremendous circumstantial evidence that these programs exist, have existed for a long time, and have involved extraordinary, uh, in particular physicists way back in the day. And on the other hand, that there's no credible proof that there are craft or aliens or anything like that.

   17. CWChris Williamson59:55

       How do you square that circle? How would you-

   18. EWEric Weinstein59:58

       I can't.

   19. CWChris Williamson1:00:01

       Look, the coordination problem of all of these people is immense.

   20. EWEric Weinstein1:00:07

       Th- there's that, but secrets have been kept more, much more effectively than people imagine.

   21. CWChris Williamson1:00:14

       Say more.

   22. EWEric Weinstein1:00:15

       I don't want to. (laughs)

   23. CWChris Williamson1:00:19

       (laughs)

   24. EWEric Weinstein1:00:21

       No, but I, I mean that. There are organizations that you cannot Google. There are organizations that have Clubhouses and members that you cannot Google. Um, so I know that secrets are durable. Uh, what we don't know is what these secrets are about. See, l- let's create a decision tree, which is there are little green men, s- shiny spacecrafts, and all this kinda cool stuff, and there aren't. Okay?If there aren't, what's the best explanation for why there's so much energy and activity and so many claims around this? And I would guess, and a- again, this is a g- this is a guess, and not a particularly good one, that there was a clearing house program for everything under the sun. If we needed to retrieve somebody else's plane behind enemy lines, we had a UFO cover story. If we were trying out new aerospace equipment, we had a UFO cover story. Uh, if we were trying to get our rivals to misspend their, uh, precious treasure on weaponry and strategic countermeasures, we had a UFO cover story. Um, if we were up to no good, we had a UF co- oh, cover story. Whatever all these things are, imagine there was a kitchen sink approach, and that's what UFOs are all about. It's about a black SAP, special access program, as waved and bigoted as it could possibly be, that, um, basically was a one-size-fits-all, uh, story for all sorts of things.

   25. CWChris Williamson1:02:07

       It's an... It's an in- uh, extraterrestrial scapegoat.

   26. EWEric Weinstein1:02:10

       Yeah, an extraterrestrial scapegoat program. Okay? (laughs) Now, whatever that is, if you imagine that that leg of the decision tree is real, it's- it's all very funny, because now you're like, all these people have taken it seriously, but it was the Russians and the Chinese and the Iranians who were supposed to take it ser- like, ix- ix nay on the UFOfay, you know? The- it's like people are going to blow this beautiful cover story that we've created for everything. So that's one possibility. Another possibility is that we're on the other leg of the decision tree and that we have no programming for it, and so everything about it seems impossible. Or, i- what's- what you said about physics, physics is science fiction. The physics that you just learned is almost always about science fiction. What if you have, um, multiple time dimensions and people can circle around in time, and if you find out about them, they can circle back to the point where you didn't know it? You have a neuralizer built into the successor to spacetime. Is that real? I don't know. All I know is that physics will always blow your mind. It will always do something that seems impossible, and that's on- that's why it's the coolest subject around. Now, I don't know what's going on, but I can tell you that the circumstantial evidence that there's been a program that has been, um, long running and involved very high level people, it's almost impossible to imagine that this is fake. There's a 1971 Australian document from the, uh, Australian Intelligence Service that has been declassified and made public which clears up all sorts of, uh, mysteries about w- what was going on with physics in the 1950s and '60s. And it names names. It says that Freeman Dyson, John Archibald Wheeler, Pascal Jordan, the Nazi, um, all of these people were working on antigravity, and the only reason to be working on antigravity was is that there was reason to think that something had gone beyond, uh, Einsteinian relativity. In other words, mostly we- we learn about physics from colliding, you know, it's like breaking rocks together. You're gonna smash two rocks and then maybe you'll see a little spark and you'll study that. Except we do it with protons. This would be like some different thing where there was a more advanced species, and you're looking at its machinery to try to figure out, well, what science does it know that you don't?

   27. CWChris Williamson1:04:59

       How much truth

8. 1:05:00 – 1:18:29

   Technology Required for Aliens to Come to Earth

   1. CWChris Williamson1:05:00

      do you think is in that? I've seen rumors on the internet of leaps forward in technology throughout the mid-1900s that people suggested was due to reverse engineering of something that had been discovered. Do you think that the technology movements that we made through the 1900s were self-created?

   2. EWEric Weinstein1:05:18

      Look, I'm not clever enough to solve the UFO puzzle. There's almost no topic where I can't generate multiple explanations. This is the only topic I've ever met where I can't generate a single explanation for what the hell's going on. Nothing I can think up makes sense. Look, I'm very focused on this because if- if there are aliens here, I- I might be the only guy who knows how they're here.

   3. CWChris Williamson1:05:52

      How so?

   4. EWEric Weinstein1:05:54

      I don't think it's practical to traverse the cosmos using general relativity in the standard model. You can use time dilation, you can hope for wormholes, you can imagine generation ships. There's a whole bunch of stupid stuff that people talk about when they talk about interdimensional- interdimensional travel and all this kind of nonsense. Why? Because they can see the night sky and they can't get there. So you think, okay, in terms of the science that I've seen Carl Sagan discussing or on Cosmos with Neil deGrasse Tyson, how would I get to a distant planet using the science I know? And then you have to sort of do it with masking tape and, you know, chicken wire, whatever. Uh, whatever that is, um, doesn't really appeal to me. They're not here if they're here using standard physics. Now, I've tried to make a list of everyone on Earth who has a distinct theory of physics-Right? So you have, you know, um, Julian Barbour has a theory, or Stephen Wolfram has a theory, or Peter Woit has a theory. So I go through all of these other theories, and to the best of my knowledge, nobody else does that. Like, we've stopped talking to each other, we've stopped thinking about this. So in the world of theories about how something might be here, there are very few theories of the universe. And why is that? It's because the constraints are so profound. There's no room to move, to imagine, to let, you know, human creativity take over. We're in a straitjacket that is so tight nobody can think. And we're there because our theories are so good. The standard model in general relativity are astounding theories, but they're also a straitjacket. So, I'm very interested in... You know, if you were Obama, you'd just reach out, grab it and kill it in a-

   5. CWChris Williamson1:08:01

      Wip.

   6. EWEric Weinstein1:08:01

      Yeah, exactly. Um...

   7. CWChris Williamson1:08:05

      Hmm.

   8. EWEric Weinstein1:08:09

      Yeah, I'm very interested in this topic specifically, because the universe is either traversable or it isn't. And if it is, it's not surprising that anyone's here. And if it isn't, we die here in short order. So, it's a hugely consequential question. Um, but there are almost no th- no theories. I can't imagine, like look, Chris, in part I, I'm almost reluctant to do podcasts anymore because I don't understand why we're behaving the way we're behaving.

   9. CWChris Williamson1:08:42

      What do you mean when you say "we"?

   10. EWEric Weinstein1:08:45

       No one on planet Earth is behaving rationally with respect to physics and UFOs. You have a claim that is being heard at the highest levels in Congress, that we've lost control of our airspace. You either clear this thing up in an afternoon, or you call in SEAL Team Six.

   11. CWChris Williamson1:09:07

       Yeah, that's a really good point. How is it that we've got such an outlandish claim which is being accepted, uh, not necessarily accepted, which is being received without the justified fanfare? It's like either this is completely crazy and needs to be thrown out, or this is absolutely wild and we need to do something about it. Why is it, why is it the case? That's a really great point. That's a really great point. Why is it the case that (laughs) , that this has made either... It hasn't made more fanfare in terms of people mobilizing, governments and such, or hasn't made way more criticism in terms of it being thrown out?

   12. EWEric Weinstein1:10:00

       I don't know. Why does the diffuse proposal from the EcoHealth Alliance not get properly adjudicated scientifically?

   13. CWChris Williamson1:10:06

       I don't know what that is.

   14. EWEric Weinstein1:10:08

       Um, the EcoHealth Alliance is this group run by a zoologist who got $50 million from the Defense Department to help a lab in China work on coronavirus and making (laughs) them more humanized. I mean, like, we should be able to adjudicate, did we start COVID? But we can't. All of these very simple things, we don't adjudicate. Look, Bureau of Labor Statistics claims that the s- consumer price index is based on a cost of living measure. I claim that's not true. In order for that to be true, you have to take in consumer preference data, and you claim that you don't work with consumer preference data. I'm either right or I'm wrong. It's hugely consequential in terms of billions. I claim that the Bureau of Labor Statistics is completely lying, that it's working on a cost of living framework, and that the academic responsible for it, a guy named Erwin De Weert, uh, his theory of superlive index numbers is hogwash. Doesn't work. It's based on homothetic preferences. That takes an afternoon to adjudicate. I claim that there is no labor shortage of scientists and engineers, despite claims that it's been going on since the '50s, because l- large market economies don't have labor shortages. That's a feature of centrally planned economies. There's no possible way. That's, that's a four-minute discussion. We are just lying. Lying, lying, lying is the substrate of our society. We're lying about physics, we're lying about economics, we're lying about finance, we're lying about coronavirus and biological research. We're lying about, uh, monetary aggregates.

   15. CWChris Williamson1:11:56

       How many different hills are you waging a war on?

   16. EWEric Weinstein1:11:59

       There's only one. It's called managed reality. This is all managed reality.

   17. CWChris Williamson1:12:11

       What's that?

   18. EWEric Weinstein1:12:17

       You know, I have a, I have this image of a, of a tanker that is flipped over on a freeway, and there's uh, bodies scattered and people are bleeding, and the tanker's on fire, and there's a cop, maybe a special forces guy with an automatic weapon who says, "Nothing to see here folks, move along." You know like, nothing to see? There's like a severed hand on the pavement, and you've got a tanker and i- it says, you know, "Danger, flammable hazard," and it's, is it about to blow? And tell m- tell me what's going on. Like, "Nothing to see here, folks." Well, the "nothing to see here, folks" is managed reality. We all know what that is. Policeman is actually saying, "Act as if there is nothing to see here and move along."

   19. CWChris Williamson1:13:05

       Hmm.

   20. EWEric Weinstein1:13:06

       It's an instruction to pretend.So we are being given instructions right now to pretend on everything. "Pretend that you don't understand the CPI, Eric." Oh, okay. "Pretend that you don't understand immigration and labor markets, Eric." Okay. "Prepa- pretend that you don't understand physics. Pretend that you don't understand plagiarism. Pretend that you don't understand, um, biology and gender." Well, the- you c- it's one hill.

   21. CWChris Williamson1:13:40

       But how many-

   22. EWEric Weinstein1:13:40

       It's enfor- it's enforced pretending by a class of people that thinks that i- it is in position to tell us all how to think at this level. Now, I don't disagree that that policeman has a right to say, "Move along, folks, nothing to see." There's a very clear reason why that person is saying that. But when you start to say that your experts, to the hazmat team who's telling you d- you know, "Don- don't put out an electrical fire with water," when you are telling "Nothing to see" to the mother who sees her child on the pavement, when you- when you're constantly telling everybody who has a stake in something, and particularly everybody who has expertise in something, "You're a charlatan, you're a grifter, you're a fake, you're a fraud, you're the..." It's like, shut up. Just shut up. There's one hill.

   23. CWChris Williamson1:14:33

       Are you the only person on that hill, though? Because, uh, as you've said here-

   24. EWEric Weinstein1:14:37

       Oh, no.

   25. CWChris Williamson1:14:37

       ... there's a bunch of different... the CPI-

   26. EWEric Weinstein1:14:39

       The pro-

   27. CWChris Williamson1:14:39

       ... the stuff to do with physics, the stuff to do with-

   28. EWEric Weinstein1:14:41

       Yeah.

   29. CWChris Williamson1:14:42

       ... the space travel, it's-

   30. EWEric Weinstein1:14:42

       I, I appreciate what you're saying.
9. 1:18:29 – 1:23:59

   Why Can’t We Say Certain Things?

   1. CWChris Williamson1:18:29

      Milgram questions?

   2. EWEric Weinstein1:18:30

      Tell me about Milgram questions.

   3. CWChris Williamson1:18:31

      This is an-

   4. EWEric Weinstein1:18:32

      Stanley Milgram?

   5. CWChris Williamson1:18:33

      ... an idea from Jay Sanilak. So what makes a woman attractive-

   6. EWEric Weinstein1:18:38

      Mm-hmm.

   7. CWChris Williamson1:18:39

      ... is a Milgram question. In other words, the social penalty for an unflattering answer is much higher than the reward for telling the truth.

   8. EWEric Weinstein1:18:47

      Hmm.

   9. CWChris Williamson1:18:48

      Because of this, we simply can't trust the answers we receive, even if they're coming from friends. The best-known trick question is, "When did you stop beating your wife?" Any conventional answer to the question confirms it's assumption to escape the trap, you need to call out the question. This type of question isn't that common in practice, it's really just a rhetorical gimmick. The most important and most common type of trick question sounds more like, "Do you love Big Brother?"It's a question where an unacceptable re- an- answer, regardless of whether it's true or false, will be punished, and the punishment is greater than the reward for the true answer. I'm going to recall these Milgram questions after the famous psychology experiment where electric shocks were administered for wrong answers. And there's a associated idea called the chilling effect. When punishment for what people say becomes widespread, people stop saying what they really think and instead say whatever is needed to thrive.

   10. EWEric Weinstein1:19:39

       That's closer to the Asch experiment. Yeah.

   11. CWChris Williamson1:19:43

       Thus, limits on speech become limits on sincerity.

   12. EWEric Weinstein1:19:46

       It's an interesting problem. Um, well, tell me about why you brought it up and what do you find interesting on it?

   13. CWChris Williamson1:19:55

       It is one way that explains how a group of people from the outside can look coordinated, but it's actually a common... a common trend, a common motivation working below the surface that motivates them all to behave in a way that appears coordinated from the outside. From the in- the inside, it just looks like perhaps cowardice, perhaps compliance.

   14. EWEric Weinstein1:20:31

       So yeah, I've been very interested in these sorts of issues. Um... I try to tell people why the truth can't work. I mean, people are always confused by this and they say, "Okay, tell me I have mildly bad breath." And some people will say, "You have mildly bad breath." And I say, "Well, you just told me that my breath is so horrendous that you are willing to cross a social chasm that essentially no one ever crosses to tell me that I have mildly bad breath, so obviously my breath must be as bad as the sewer." Um, then they say, "Would you like a stick of gum?" And I say, "Sure," and I show no c- cognition that you've actually told me about... You know, you can't transmit that piece of information easily. It's very akin to this. Um, yes, now our society hinges on these things. On the other hand, there are ways of getting at these, uh, questions through language. So for example, you're not allowed to say that you like cleavage, but you are allowed to say, "That was an incredibly dramatic neckline." Right? And so why is it that one phrase is penalized? It's because there's a Russell conjugation that works-

   15. CWChris Williamson1:21:46

       Correct.

   16. EWEric Weinstein1:21:46

       ... and a Russell conjugation that doesn't.

   17. CWChris Williamson1:21:48

       He sweats. She perspires. They glow.

   18. EWEric Weinstein1:21:50

       Right. And so in such circumstances, the key question, um, is how you are allowed to discuss the truth as well as whether you are allowed to discuss the truth. Many times, there's a penalty for not being skilled. The skilled person is allowed to say something.

   19. CWChris Williamson1:22:13

       Deftly, with the appropriate nuance, with appropriate social graces.

   20. EWEric Weinstein1:22:17

       Yeah, but then- and then the question becomes, why can't you say certain things? And, you know, this is in part... I believe in these social norms, but I believe that it is necessary to create spaces in which you can actually talk about the truth. And w- increasingly what we're doing, this is why inclusion is one of the dumbest ideas I've ever heard in my life, um, is you put somebody to create a low-trust environment in every high-trust environments, uh, discussion group. So diversity is good so far as it goes. Inclusion is good so far as it goes. Equity is a disaster. We can't even discu- discuss it. But the pr- reason that i- inclusion is a b- has become terrible is that we are trying to create a low-trust environment in all previous high-trust environments, and that thing means that we can't actually have any serious discussions. Like, if you have, uh, knowledge about why a venereal disease is spreading, um, it may require that people tell you that they're having sex with animals. Uh, that's a... Y- you can't have somebody who's gonna giggle. You can't have somebody who's gonna shame. You have to have a completely dry-as-dust conversation about how venereal diseases can leap from non-humans to humans. And we need experts, and we need closed doors not to become star chambers.

   21. CWChris Williamson1:23:51

       You mentioned before about being able to have an insight into what was happening in 2016.

   22. EWEric Weinstein1:23:57

       Yeah.

   23. CWChris Williamson1:23:57

       What do you think happens in 2024?

10. 1:23:59 – 1:35:55

    Eric’s Predictions for the 2024 Election

    1. CWChris Williamson1:24:00

    2. EWEric Weinstein1:24:03

       I don't know. I don't know. You know, I- I, um, I met with Robert Kennedy Jr. not too long ago, and he was nice enough to have, uh, my wife and I to his house. And it was very clear that he's trying to hearken back to a previous remembered America through his family, and he's willing to die for it. There's no question that he's willing to die to seek the presidency. I think that Americans are going to have to come to grips with the fact that, um, our two political parties, either one of them could win if they wanted. But the problem is, is that they wanna win as a trough. So in other words, imagine that what America wants is no more troughs. You don't wanna win playing to that aspect of America if it means getting rid of the trough because the trough was your entire reason for running a political party.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:25:02

       What do you mean when you say trough?

    4. EWEric Weinstein1:25:05

       Assume that your party gets into power. Now you get to hire all of your friends into government positions, then they get revolving door contracts with whoever they were regulating or dealing with.So effectively, everybody's gonna pig out and help themselves. Okay, we got Democrats into Congress. Now they can trade their personal accounts and pass legislation and do far better than the market. You know, whatever it is. Imagine what Americans want is like, "Hey, stop the corruption. I don't trust why we're in Ukraine the way we're in Ukraine because I don't trust why Hunter Biden is being given a cushy salary from a, a Ukrainian company." Well, what you're telling, what the, what the population is telling the two political parties is, "End the troughs." And the political parties are saying, "Okay, what else do you want? We can't give you that because that's the whole point of why we do what we do. We're not public-spirited, we're not thinking about America, we're not thinking about the future, we're not thinking about the good of the world or the environment or any of the stupid stuff that we are forced to talk about every four years. We're talking about swimming pools, we're talking about, um, third wives, fourth homes, you know? You're getting in the way of that, so tell us what else you want that doesn't interfere with the trough." And Americans are pretty clear. It's like, "Get rid of the, get rid of the goddamn troughs. You're slop- you know, you're slopping each other. You're, you're pigs at a trough in, in... Now the idea is that since you're not doing anything, I want my ethnic group to be at the trough too." It's like, this has nothing to do with anything. We have to clear these people out. Th- th- they're just bad people.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:26:40

       Well, we're way too close to the 2024 election for anybody to be cleared out now.

    6. EWEric Weinstein1:26:47

       Really?

    7. CWChris Williamson1:26:48

       I mean, what's gonna happen between now and November?

    8. EWEric Weinstein1:26:51

       I don't know. I mean, how old is Joe Biden?

    9. CWChris Williamson1:26:55

       I don't know.

    10. EWEric Weinstein1:26:56

        Okay, what are the odds that Joe Biden has a debilitating event between now and November, including death? So he runs a one in 20 chance of dying in any given year or above that. So I, I don't think you know whether he's even gonna make it to November.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:27:15

        81.

    12. EWEric Weinstein1:27:16

        Yeah. You have no idea what... It's, it's a million years between now and November. I don't know whether Donald Trump, Donald Trump is gonna be, you know, facing jail time. I don't know whether there's gonna be an insurrection by MAGA people that, who feel that the Department of Justice is going after a candidate for political reasons. I don't know if people are gonna look at Kamala Harris a- as, uh, you know, the likely Commander in Chief. Why are you laughing?

    13. CWChris Williamson1:27:50

        (laughs) Kam- Kamala Harris is like, she's become a, a meme of a meme of a meme. Just so, so absent from public life as far as I can see that it's, it's hilarious.

    14. EWEric Weinstein1:28:10

        What are you talk-

    15. CWChris Williamson1:28:10

        You don't think it's hilarious?

    16. EWEric Weinstein1:28:12

        Are you... Oh, i- it's hysterically funny. You're talking about Kamala Harris being in charge of the world's greatest nuclear superpower. It's, it's a scream. You're talking about Joe Biden being in charge of... Or Donald Trump.

    17. CWChris Williamson1:28:26

        Well, Trump will be older than Biden on this next reelection than Biden was when he first entered office.

    18. EWEric Weinstein1:28:34

        Well, yeah. Biden began at 29 in the Senate in '72. Look, this whole thing is... Chris, let me, let me just be more forthcoming. People wanna know why I've somewhat retreated from public life. I have no clue how to talk about this stuff. This whole thing is so incredibly stupid. Nobody has ever done this in the United States. We had a election in 1980 because Ronald Reagan was 69 years old, age was central. We've never been in this territory before.

    19. CWChris Williamson1:29:18

        Does that not mean that you should spend more time trying to grapple with ideas if you're not sure about them?

    20. EWEric Weinstein1:29:22

        What does that mean?

    21. CWChris Williamson1:29:23

        That if your concern is... You, you mentioned people have asked why you've stepped back from having more public conversations. One of the reasons is that a lot of the topics that you try to grapple with don't seem to make sense that much anymore. Is that not the time when you're supposed to grapple harder with them?

    22. EWEric Weinstein1:29:42

        If somebody says to you, uh, "Eric, uh, you know, on a previous election, uh, are, are you supportive of the Hillside Strangler or, uh, Ted Bundy? Go."

    23. CWChris Williamson1:29:59

        No one gives a fuck dude.

    24. EWEric Weinstein1:29:59

        "Well, I don't know if Charles Manson might run as a, as a third-party candidate, so it's too early to say." This is all so pathetically, crazily stupid. What am I supposed to do? Just say, "Get off my lawn" every four seconds? I, I, I don't know how to react anymore. There's no part of this world at the moment that looks sane to me. And, and, you know, I, I've done the requisite work, which is if that's the way it feels to you, then you should look at your own sanity. Okay, let's, let's entertain the idea that I've lost my mind. It's like, no, no, this is all completely one problem of managed reality.

    25. CWChris Williamson1:30:46

        One of the things I am concerned about toward the back end of this year is whether or not whoever wins is going to be accepted in even remotely a peaceful way.

    26. EWEric Weinstein1:30:57

        It doesn't mean the same thing as it used to. Look, there's some mystique and some majesty necessary to make these things work. You have to believe that the Supreme Court is a bunch of incredibly smart legal minds.You have to believe that the President of the United States is a- an exalted being who has power to make decisions on the behalf of the country.

    27. CWChris Williamson1:31:30

        Mm-hmm.

    28. EWEric Weinstein1:31:30

        You can't afford Nancy Pelosi's husband trading up a storm like this.

    29. CWChris Williamson1:31:37

        Everything's become Instagram Stories, behind-the-scenes of the Kardashians.

    30. EWEric Weinstein1:31:41

        Nobody trusts experts exist. W- when your kid needs a life-saving surgery, you're gonna find out that all your jawing off on Twitter about, "Screw the experts," doesn't mean anything to you. You're like, "Save my child." We need experts. We need institutions. We need lies. We need fictions. We need stories. We need adult-level, public-spirited fictionalizations of the truth. I'm not claiming we don't. But now you've got this different class of people who says, "Okay, you don't want the truth. We need to have stories. Let's just make up stuff and put stuff in our pockets."
11. 1:35:55 – 1:53:16

    Wanting Fame is Like Wanting to Be on the Titanic

    1. CWChris Williamson1:35:55

       uh, a titanic problem. You could also call it a champagne problem.

    2. EWEric Weinstein1:35:58

       Okay.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:35:59

       Titanic problem is an issue that everyone says you're in such a privileged position to deal with.

    4. EWEric Weinstein1:36:04

       (laughs)

    5. CWChris Williamson1:36:06

       This is an extra-special type of tragedy, a tragedy that unfolds while everyone cheers, like being on the Titanic after the iceberg, water up to your chin, with everyone telling you you're so lucky to be on the greatest steamship of all time. And the Titanic is indeed so huge and wonderful that you can't help but agree, but also, you're feeling a bit cold and wet at the moment and you're not sure why. It's from Adam Mastriani.

    6. EWEric Weinstein1:36:27

       I, uh, I didn't know you had that up your sleeve.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:36:30

       No.

    8. EWEric Weinstein1:36:30

       That's really good. Yeah, yeah, I think... Look, I like my ideas being well-known. There's tons of bar- of being well-known that's fun. But in the aggregate, it's like, somebody tells you you can have, you can have an orgasm every three minutes, but you can't turn it off ever.

    9. CWChris Williamson1:36:46

       There's some, there's some people who have that, isn't there?

    10. EWEric Weinstein1:36:48

        I know. It's a neurological disorder, and... Except it's 30 seconds, right? And you can quickly see that you wouldn't sign up for that, right? And so fame is like that. Is that, do you really want to never know who sees you when you go out in public?

    11. CWChris Williamson1:37:07

        I've been fascinated by the price that people pay to be someone that most of the world admires.

    12. EWEric Weinstein1:37:13

        Mm-hmm.

    13. CWChris Williamson1:37:13

        And Elon was recently on Lex's show, and he said, "My mind is a storm. I don't think most people would want to be me. They may think they would want to be me, but they don't. They don't know. They don't understand."

    14. EWEric Weinstein1:37:25

        I love that.I love that. A friend of mine said to me, um, very dear friend, said, "I'm, Er- Eric, I'm always jealous of where you end up. But then I think about it, and I'm real- I realize I'm never jealous of how you get there." Right? Like, at some level, w- the easiest thing is somebody who's ripped. Wow, that must be awesome. Well, did you just fig- figure in how much work that took? Um, you know, I- I have this guy that I- I think the world of, um, Ryan Williams, who was a scooter kid who then did BMX, and does these crazy tricks, three seconds in air what he can do, it's amazing. And I worry about him. Uh, he's copped me tickets to Nitro Circus, which I very much enjoy. I don't see anybody I know there 'cause it's a different slice of the world, but I think it... I don't understand why we all don't-

    15. CWChris Williamson1:38:35

        Go to Nitro Circus every weekend.

    16. EWEric Weinstein1:38:36

        And Monster Truck, yeah, I'm- I'm- I'm all in. Um, but I look at how many times he fell doing this trick where he got the bike to rotate in an opposite direction, and he and the bike did opposite circles before they came back together. And I said, "That's your Mona Lisa." And they started putting out a reel of, like, how many times he didn't succeed at that trick.

Episode duration: 3:01:13