These People Need To Be Stopped - Eric Weinstein (4K)

1. 0:00 – 12:02

   Will Trump be Allowed to Become President?

   1. CWChris Williamson0:00

      When we spoke at the start of the year, I said it was way too close to November to switch anybody out. Turns out that I was wrong.

   2. EWEric Weinstein0:10

      Beginner's luck.

   3. CWChris Williamson0:12

      You said, "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 I don't think you know whether he's even going to make it to November?" Debilitating event could have been a d- debilitating public event.

   4. EWEric Weinstein0:30

      I purposely left it vague, and I didn't say the other part of it, which I now feel comfortable saying, which is, I don't, I don't know whether, I don't know whether Donald Trump will be allowed to become president.

   5. CWChris Williamson0:49

      What'd you mean by that?

   6. EWEric Weinstein0:53

      I think that there's a, a remarkable story, and we're in a, a funny game, which is, are we allowed to say what that story is? Because to say it, to analyze it, to name it, is to bring it, uh, into view. I think we don't understand why the censorship is behaving the way it is. We don't understand why it's in the shadows. We don't understand why our news is acting in a bizarre fashion. So let's just set the stage, given that that was in February. Um... There is something th- that I think Mike Benz has just referred to as the rules-based international order. It's an interlocking series of agreements, tacit understandings, explicit understandings, clandestine understandings, about how the most important structures keep the world free of war and keep markets open. And there has been a system in place, whether understood e- explicitly or, um, behind the scenes, or implicitly, that says that the purpose of the two American parties is to prune the field of populist candidates so that whatever two candidates, uh, uh, exist in a face-off, are both acceptable to that world order. So what you're trying to do from the proi- point of view... Let's take it from the point of view of, let's say, the State Department, the intelligence community, the Defense Department, and, um, major corporations that are, have to do with, uh, international issues from arms trade to, oh, I don't know, food. They have a series of agreements that are fragile and could be overturned if a president entered the Oval Office who didn't agree with them and the mood of the country was, "Why do we pay taxes into these structures? Why are we hamstrung? Why aren't we a free people?" So what the two parties would do is that they would run primaries. You'd have Populist candidates and you'd pre-commit the Populist candidates to support the candidates who won the primaries. As long as that took place and you had two candidates that were both acceptable to the international order, that is, that they aren't gonna rethink NAFTA or NATO or what have you, we called that democracy. And so democracy was the illusion of choice, what's, what's called magician's choice, where the choice is not actually... You know, pick a card, any card, but somehow the magician makes sure that the card that you pick is the one that he knows. Uh, in that situation, you have magician's choice in the primaries and then you'd have the duopoly field, two candidates, either of which was acceptable, and you could actually afford to hold an election, and the populists would vote. And that way, the international order wasn't put at risk every four years because you can't have alliances that are subject to the whim of, um, the people in plebiscites. So i- under that structure, everything was going fine until 2016, and then the first candidate ever to not hold, um, any position in the military nor position in government, uh, in the history of the Republic to enter the Oval Office, Donald Trump, broke through the primary structure. So then there was a full-court press, okay, we only have one candidate that's acceptable to the international order. Donald Trump will be under, um, constant pressure that he's a loser, he's a wild man, he's an idiot, and, and he's under the control of the Russians, and then he was going to be a, you know, a, a 20 to 1 underdog, and then he wins. And there was no precedent for this. They learned their lesson. You cannot afford to have candidates who are not acceptable to the international order and continue to have these alliances. This is an unsolved problem. So I don't have a particular dog in this fight. I, one, believe in democracy. I also believe in international agreements. And it is the job of the State Department, and the intelligence community, and the Defense Department to bring this problem in front of the American people and say, "We have a problem. You don't know everything that's going on and if you start voting in populist candidates, you're going to end up knocking out load-bearing walls that you don't understand."

   7. CWChris Williamson5:17

      But Trump was in office for four years.

   8. EWEric Weinstein5:20

      Mm-hmm.

   9. CWChris Williamson5:20

      Did he turn the entire table upside down?

   10. EWEric Weinstein5:22

       He risked doing that.

   11. CWChris Williamson5:25

       Say more.

   12. EWEric Weinstein5:26

       Y- you remember that there was this, uh, uncomfortable, uh, accommodation given to the Central Intelligence Agency at the beginning of his actual term. There was a question about, um, was he going to question the... I have a very different point of view than most of my friends, uh, who are also, you know, at least nominally Democrats, which is, it was a very immoral thing that was done to him. He was asked the question, "Will you pre-commit that you will accept the results of an election?" Now if you were going to rig an election, you would ask somebody that to begin with, and that's part of the game. And he says, "Well, you know, we'll see." So you have this very strange thing going on where democracy is the greatest threat......to democracy. Now, how can that be? It's two different concepts of democracy. One concept of democracy is the will of the people, you hold plebiscites, and even if you do it with an electoral college or political parties, the idea is that the people are all, uh, you know, by and of and for the people. The other idea of democracy is that democracy i- is about institutions that sprang from democracy once upon a time, and that those institutions have to be kept strong. Those are two completely different concepts that are overloaded to the same word. Under that circumstance, we have a- a paradox, which is, how do we keep the electorate from overturning the, you know, the- the type A democracy from overturning the type B democracy? And that's the unsolved problem that they will not bring in front of the people. So what you have is a situation in which I believe that there are many people in Washington, DC who think that Donald Trump cannot become president because he can now go for broke. He's also not going to try to run for el- re-election.

   13. CWChris Williamson7:08

       Mm-hmm.

   14. EWEric Weinstein7:09

       He's relatively unconstrained. He's wealthy. He's, uh, he's learned how to play a lot of these games.

   15. CWChris Williamson7:17

       And maybe got a little bit of an ax to grind as well after the last six years.

   16. EWEric Weinstein7:21

       No kidding. And he's a wild card. You know, there, there are three people who are doing amazing versions of the drunken boxing game... Kanye, who's probably, uh, the first one to really fail, Elon, and Donald Trump. And all three of them tried to do something where you couldn't pin them down, you couldn't figure out, like, what they were gonna do next, and that's what the order is kee- keeps trying to do. Like, will you commit to this? Will you say this? Will- will you mouth these words? And none of these people would play the game. Uh, I- I find this all... You- you ever see Emmanuel Augustus, or... this boxer who actually, you know, I think, uh, Floyd May- uh, Mayweather said was- was his toughest opponent because he just... he wouldn't fight in a style that anyone could recognize.

   17. CWChris Williamson8:09

       Mm-hmm.

   18. EWEric Weinstein8:09

       Probably the most ent-

   19. CWChris Williamson8:10

       Unpredictable.

   20. EWEric Weinstein8:10

       Yeah, and the most entertaining boxer I've ever seen in my life. I mean, just check out any highlight reel and you won't even believe this is real. It- i- it doesn't seem possible. So that's what Donald Trump is. He's a guy who's got formulas that confuse people like Sam Harris. You know, Sam and I have been debating this for years. I think that Trump is an incredibly intelligent man and that there's incredible method in his tweets, uh, o- of old. You can just... you could put them into a dataset and you say that there are five or six different types of tweets and that t- the left falls for every one of them every time. So i- in this situation, you have a question. How is it that Donald Trump and RFK Jr. cannot possibly reach the Oval Office and we have to have a candidate who is pre-subscribed to perpetuating these institutions, these agreements, and these orders? And there's only one out of three, uh, who- who has that character, and that person has not won a primary. Right now, we have no idea who's running the United States of America. Um, I just, uh, came here in a Tesla and I did not steer once, and I would say America is in full self-driving mode and we don't know what the AI is that's running the Oval Office, and that's really bizarre given that we have something like six minutes to make a decision about nuclear launches. Uh, we have no idea what the United States government in the executive branch ac- actually is, but it can't be Joe Biden.

   21. CWChris Williamson9:40

       Every time it seems that an election has happened over the last decade or so, it's always been, "This one is different. This is the most important. This is the most important." Is there something different about the one that we're about to go into? How- how should we think about this election?

   22. EWEric Weinstein9:53

       As World War II unraveling. The order that has produced the illusion of peace for this length of time... Imagine that you were, let's say, in the 2000s, that you had this thing called the Great Moderation, and there was a story that we had finally banished volatility from the markets. None of that was true. What you were doing was you were going farther and farther into a regime without understanding that sooner or later the Jenga tower has to collapse. The- the order that was put in place at the end of World War II, none of its architects are still alive. Very few pieces of information were passed down about what it actually is or how it functions because it's secret. And I think what you can say is that, um, we are now living on the fumes built from that victory. Uh, that is what is unraveled. You're about to head towards a multipolar world where the game theory in a, in a dyadic g- uh, game of two players doesn't look remotely like the game theory in a, in a five or 10 player game. So Kamala is essentially the youngest boomer possible, and she's tied to the last silent generation president we'll ever have, which was a bizarre thing to begin with, and she's pre-committed to trying to continue that order, uh, in the guise of a, uh, alternatively woke, Wall Street-friendly, Indian, Black, folksy... I- I don't even know what she is. Uh, t- to quote the great Chris Williamson, "She's a meme of a meme of a meme." Uh, that was from our last talk. And I- I would say this is probably the most insane election we've ever seen by- by a comfortable margin. I would say that there's no one in second place. Uh, I can't think of another election that is even close to this bizarre, including the attempted assassination on, uh, Donald Trump.

2. 12:02 – 16:48

   MSNBC’s Editing of Joe Rogan to Support Kamala

   1. CWChris Williamson12:02

      Yeah. The- there's so many things all coalescing at the same time.From what's happening with the media to AI to discontent to fake news and cheap fakes and c- c- construed, constructed. Did he-

   2. EWEric Weinstein12:21

      But ch- ch- sorry. Fake news was a fake story. If you look at the, um, Google Trends, fake news was a tiny story during the 2016 cycle that blew up immediately afterwards. It was the placeholder as the intelligence community or the blob figured out what it was going to do next to try to take control of the international order. You have to realize that that's the first real surprise in presidential history, where they lost control of the process.

   3. CWChris Williamson12:50

      Well, I've got a surprise for you. I told you not to watch this before we get to do this. Uh-

   4. EWEric Weinstein12:55

      I actually listened.

   5. CWChris Williamson12:57

      Did you?

   6. EWEric Weinstein12:58

      Well, it's weird-

   7. CWChris Williamson12:58

      I told you not to do it.

   8. EWEric Weinstein12:59

      Well, it's... I know. It's like pouring sugar on a picnic to keep ants away.

   9. CWChris Williamson13:02

      Okay, okay. So, uh, for the people who haven't seen it, um, we'll just do a quick re- recap.

   10. NANarrator13:08

       MSNBC was exposed today for yet another set of lies. They deceptively edited together this video of different Joe Rogan comments to make it appear that he was singing the praises of Kamala Harris.

   11. She's gonna win.

   12. No, she's not.

   13. She can win. She is a strong woman. She is, uh, a person who served overseas twice. She... In a medical unit. She was a congresswoman for eight years.

   14. Yeah.

   15. She is a person of color. She's everything you want. She's gonna win.

   16. No, she's not.

   17. She can win. They just want no Trump, no matter what.

   18. CWChris Williamson13:43

       What do you make of that? That's the most brazen cutting together of something that millions of people have seen.

   19. EWEric Weinstein13:54

       They don't really... Whatever it is, is not really trying to fool you, it's trying to instruct you. You... You're allowed to see the truth. They can make it difficult to find the truth, but it's hard to shut up Joe Rogan. They've settled for something else, which is... Think about MSNBC and CNN, the New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Reuters, AP, et cetera, as a set of instructions for how to keep your job. You're allowed to disagree. We'll set the boundaries of the disagreement. We'll set the topics of the disagreement. You may not even watch any of these things, but we'll make sure that it filters through to the people that you are watching so that they're outraged. And you're given a choice. You can choose to understand whatever you want, and you can choose to say whatever you want, but if you say what you understand to be true, you can know what the consequences are. You may lose your marriage. You may lose your job. You may lose your friends. And so in essence, we all know that, um, if you question the war in Ukraine or if you, uh, say, "Look, I detest Donald Trump, but I'm voting for him because what's going on in the Democratic Party is unholy and insane," you're signing up for whatever Thanksgiving dinner, um, we have planned for you. W- we're talking to your uncle. We're talking to your spouse. And in essence, this is a lot like Caligula installing his horse as a senator. No one's fooled that the horse is an ordinary human senator. The choice is, do you wish to say something?

   20. CWChris Williamson15:44

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3. 16:48 – 31:07

   The Media’s Gaslighting of Modern Politics

   1. CWChris Williamson16:48

      I've been trying to find this term for a while that I'd learned through film critics online, uh, people like Critical Drinker, who's a sweary Scottish, uh, film critic, uh, and retroactive continuity.

   2. EWEric Weinstein17:02

      Retcon.

   3. CWChris Williamson17:03

      Yeah. I... But I didn't know what retroactive continu- I didn't know that that's what retconning w-... I just knew it as retcon. So, retroactive continuity is a literary device in which facts in the world of a fictional work that have been established through the narrative itself are adjusted, ignored, supplemented, or contradicted by subsequently published work that recontextualizes or breaks continuity with the former. So, the question is, is, is what we're seeing just the Star Wars cinematic universe-

   4. EWEric Weinstein17:31

      Yeah.

   5. CWChris Williamson17:31

      ... equivalent?

   6. EWEric Weinstein17:32

      Yeah, this is... Uh, this is Sherlock Holmes and, and Professor Moriarty, uh, where-

   7. CWChris Williamson17:37

      Falls off a ledge.

   8. EWEric Weinstein17:38

      And yet, here he is again, um-

   9. CWChris Williamson17:40

      It's every episode of South Park when Kenny's died.

   10. EWEric Weinstein17:42

       (laughs) So, it's very important to understand the back of house in everything that you're doing. So, uh, you know, w- when you go to a hotel, um, there's an entirely secondary structure of floors, elevators, entrances, cafes that are necessary to support the front of house, uh, which is the illusion of, uh, the hotel that you're staying at. And the same thing is true for screenwriting and the creative arts. I, I think everyone should, for example, read Save the Cat! Uh, it's a book on screenwriting that points out that films aren't broken into scenes so much as they're broken into beats. There are about 40 beats in a film.... and The beats have names. And so y- if you read this book, you'll- one, one is called The Bad Guys Close In, and another beat is called All Hope Is Lost. And these are mainstays, and you're programmed client side at a su- a subliminal level to be able to follow a film based on the idea that your brain is already tooled, uh, to absorb this stuff. There's a concept called spackle in Hollywood, where it costs a couple of lines to make something that makes no sense make sense. I think it's referenced in Thank You For Smoking, where they're smoking in space and there's an issue with product placement. Uh, how does it make sense to have cigarettes smoking in space after sex? And, you know, whatever. "Oh, it'll cost us two lines of spackle." And so every once-

   11. CWChris Williamson19:13

       Oh, interesting.

   12. EWEric Weinstein19:13

       ... every once in a while, the craft pokes through. And so this is the back- retcon is a back of house concept and the, the issue, again, really comes back to professional wrestling. The smark is a smart mark, a person who is being duped and agrees to be duped, but has a metacognitive perch from which to watch his or her own deception. So you're both a consumer of the story. Like, y- when you go to a movie, you know it's fictional. You don't sit there saying, "This is such BS." You know? The, the old thing I used to say is, you, you don't scream, "Don't you understand? It's just photons projected on a wall." Um, we are complicit in our own deception. Otherwise, we'll never be seduced, and there's nothing more wonderful than a, than a s- a seduction to which we are willing and eager. But this is an unwanted seduction. This is coercive. This is based on a lot of carrot being taken away and more or left- less all- all what you have is stick.

   13. CWChris Williamson20:22

       It's strange, in a world where everything that everybody does and says on the internet is permanently recorded on some version of a blockchain that's kept in screenshots even if it's not actually, even if it then gets deleted from Twitter, uh, it just seems odd to me that there is so much retconning of this. You spoke about managed reality-

   14. EWEric Weinstein20:40

       Sure.

   15. CWChris Williamson20:40

       ... last time. Uh, you know, a, a good example, a nice simple example of this is Kamala Harris was never called the Border Czar. Like, we have... They, they went back and changed the old articles from three years ago.

   16. EWEric Weinstein20:59

       Here's my question. When did you wake up to this? Because in my situ- Pe- Peter Thiel, who I used to work for, uh, said this to me. He's like, "Eric, how did you get there earlier?" And I said, "Well, I was in the university system." And academics has a faster glide path into the ground than everything else. You could see it there-

   17. CWChris Williamson21:18

       Mm.

   18. EWEric Weinstein21:19

       ... in the 1980s.

   19. CWChris Williamson21:21

       I don't know. I think it, it, it has taken a b- a little bit of time. Um, maybe moving to America, seeing these things closer up-

   20. EWEric Weinstein21:27

       Yeah.

   21. CWChris Williamson21:27

       ... has been part of it. Uh, I have a strong non-conspiratorial disposition, so I will always attribute to incompetence or negligence or, uh, fear of losing your job, cowardice, uh-

   22. EWEric Weinstein21:42

       You're running the packet.

   23. CWChris Williamson21:44

       Sorry.

   24. EWEric Weinstein21:46

       There's the lefty enervation packet, and it's something that you're sort of obligated to run, um, if you're going to be a member in good standing of the American left. So one part of it would say that correlation does not imply causation. Uh, data is not the plural of anecdote. Uh, never explain by malice, uh, what can be understood through incompetence. There's a large sequence of things that you're expected to say if you want the pat on the back from your colleagues. A random walk down Wall Street. Nobody can beat the market. Y- you know that there are rich people three doors down who got that way from investing, but they're simply lucky idiots. Uh, all of these things you're expected to run if you're part of the expert class so that the expert class doesn't turn on their masters. And what it is... You see? I was about to do the double copula. Is, is. I always do that.

   25. CWChris Williamson22:49

       (laughs)

   26. EWEric Weinstein22:50

       Um, what it is, in my opinion, um... I'm gonna have to do it. I can't-

   27. CWChris Williamson22:55

       Hit it.

   28. EWEric Weinstein22:55

       ... can't get out of it. What it is is a, uh, a collection of safeties so that you don't use the tools of data, let's say, on your masters and attempt to convict them.

   29. CWChris Williamson23:09

       Give an example.

   30. EWEric Weinstein23:12

       Uh, for example, let's imagine that you have a high number of deaths around a vaccine or i- injuries. Uh, that could lead to questions about under what re- l- what legal regime the vaccine manufacturers achieved immunity. And so you say, "Oh, no, no, no. That's just, uh, correlation does not imply causation." Uh, of, of course there are going to be runs in poker. Of course there are going to be clusters of data. Uh, this is what being fooled by randomness is all about. So if you think about what those things, how they function inside of your mind, they tend to keep you from seeking remedies. You're not gonna put somebody in jail if you believe all these things. You're not gonna go poking into the intelligence community. If y- if, if a conspiracy theorist makes you think about a lunatic, you're not a lunatic. You're a grownup. It's first order sophistication. You ever see a, a film called Victor Victoria?
4. 31:07 – 43:03

   Is Google Influencing the Election?

   1. CWChris Williamson31:07

      research.

   2. EWEric Weinstein31:08

      Yeah.

   3. CWChris Williamson31:08

      Tech company employee donations to mid-term candidates by party, well over 90% in favor of Democrat. There is a 33% gap between Republicans and Democrats in self-described party affiliations of US journalists in 2022. And there was this recent Google furor

   4. NANarrator31:29

      Yeah.

   5. CWChris Williamson31:30

      ... a couple, they're being popped for monopoly, unfair competition practices.

   6. EWEric Weinstein31:33

      Sure.

   7. CWChris Williamson31:34

      On top of, are they putting their finger on the scale and editorializing? If you search for Donald Trump's name, you get negative stories about Donald Trump and positive stories about Kamala Harris. If you search Kamala Harris's name, you just get positive stories about Kamala Harris.

   8. EWEric Weinstein31:47

      Okay, but how, how many, how many-

   9. CWChris Williamson31:49

      Let me, let me f- let me keep going.

   10. EWEric Weinstein31:50

       Sure.

   11. CWChris Williamson31:50

       Let me keep going. So I don't think, I'm not saying that Google isn't, but I don't think that Google needs to editorialize the search results if there is such an unbalanced original content pool that they're pulling from. If you have this huge sway in terms of tech, if you have this huge sway in terms of the people that are writing the articles, I don't think you need Google to put their finger on the pulse. You're already, it's 90% in one direction. If you take from that pool representatively, it's going to move in that direction.

   12. EWEric Weinstein32:24

       So that you've, you've now once again, uh, evidenced the same basic idea, which is, uh, we'll just chalk it up to emergence. These are all emergent effects.

   13. CWChris Williamson32:36

       Mm-hmm.

   14. EWEric Weinstein32:36

       That way you never have to posit intent, you never have to say that there's a finger on the scale.

   15. CWChris Williamson32:41

       Mm-hmm.

   16. EWEric Weinstein32:42

       Great, you're out of it. Well done.

   17. CWChris Williamson32:44

       (laughs) Yeah.

   18. EWEric Weinstein32:45

       That's insane, Chris.

   19. CWChris Williamson32:46

       I pulled the rip cord and got out of it. So here's the thing that I thought that was really interesting.

   20. EWEric Weinstein32:50

       Wait, wait, wait, wait, but I wanna understand something.

   21. CWChris Williamson32:51

       Mm-hmm.

   22. EWEric Weinstein32:52

       How do you think you get to these levels of bias among employees? Do you think that something about being in tech makes you Democrat-friendly?

   23. CWChris Williamson33:00

       I think m- my working hypothesis is that it's cowardice, that-

   24. EWEric Weinstein33:05

       Say more.

   25. CWChris Williamson33:07

       ... in order to keep your job, you need to toe the party line, and the party line is somehow dictated top down, not bottom up.

   26. EWEric Weinstein33:14

       Maybe it's emergent from the Great Society programs of the 1960s. Maybe the idea that the hiring practices, not being allowed to discriminate in various ways and the interpretation through the courts means that the HR departments, uh, have to do things that make it impossible to be, uh, almost impossible to be a vocal Republican in a, in a-

   27. CWChris Williamson33:39

       Mm-hmm.

   28. EWEric Weinstein33:39

       ... large workplace.

   29. CWChris Williamson33:40

       So one of the interesting things about that graph, the 33% gap between, uh, Democrats and Republicans, if you go to about 1970 is when it really begins to diverge, but what you also see is that, uh, self-described independents move at almost the exact same rate as Republicans going down, so you get a bit of a gain for Democrats, a large loss for Republicans, and also a gain for independents. So how many of these people are, uh, Republicans masquerading as independents when they do their self-report? What h- go, "What if this gets-"

   30. EWEric Weinstein34:09

       Well, this-
5. 43:03 – 52:40

   How Physics Became Boring & Safe

   1. EWEric Weinstein43:03

      There were two cases in the 1970s. One at Princeton and one at The Progressive Magazine. I probably should've done the Princeton one first. There was a guy named, I think it was, like, John Aristotle who was a- he was the Princeton mascot, like the tiger.

   2. NANarrator43:21

      Okay, illustrious.

   3. EWEric Weinstein43:22

      And he was a shitty, shitty, uh, physics student, and he said, "You know what? I'm gonna use the fact that I'm a shitty physics student, like below average..." At, at you know, Princeton's like one of the greatest physics departments of all time. And he said, "I'm gonna approach Freeman Dyson at the Institute for Advanced Study and see whether I can work out how to make a fission bomb that would actually work." So Freeman Dyson said, "I will give you no information, uh, that is classified, but I will tell you whether, whatever you come up with will work or not." And the guy did it, and as a result, he turned it in. That is not to be found in the Princeton archives where all the junior theses are kept, and page 20 of it, I believe, is redacted because it was a working design for a fission bomb. And then the much more dangerous one was the Progressive magazine versus the United States, where the United States... Do you know about the Atomic, uh, Energy Acts of 1946 and '54?

   4. NANarrator44:19

      Perhaps surprisingly, no.

   5. EWEric Weinstein44:21

      Welcome to my world.

   6. NANarrator44:22

      (laughs)

   7. EWEric Weinstein44:23

      Um, there is a category called restricted data that is almost never discussed, which is the only place in law where if you and I were to work at a table at a café and I were to show you something that could influence nuclear weaponry, the government doesn't need to classify it. It is born secret the instant my pen touches the paper and writes it down. No-

   8. NANarrator44:51

      How is it defined?

   9. EWEric Weinstein44:54

      Anything that impinges o- on nuclear weapons, including just pl- information. So you don't have a Q clearance, I don't have a Q clearance. We don't work for the government. All we're doing-

   10. NANarrator45:07

       So simply by creating it.

   11. EWEric Weinstein45:08

       All we're doing is physics.

   12. NANarrator45:09

       Wow.

   13. EWEric Weinstein45:10

       Yeah. And this has been around since, I don't know, '46, '54. It's the only place in law. It's never been tested in courts. And if you couple that to the 1917 Espionage Act, which ha- carries capital punishment, I believe that it is illegal to seek information at a Q level if you don't have an access to it. So there is a question, which is if you're any good at physics, are you potentially committing a capital crime by advancing the field if it could influence nuclear weapons? We have no idea whether it would be found constitutional, but what happened was when the Progressive magazine showed that at least a reporter, through basically archeology in like Los Alamos library and things-

   14. NANarrator45:58

       Hmm.

   15. EWEric Weinstein46:00

       ...um, could find this and, and put it together, then the only thing keeping the proliferation of weapons is the difficulty of producing fissile nuclear material. There is no nuclear secret per se. I mean, you can say what it is. You've got a chemical sphere that implodes radioactive material that reaches critical mass. You have a fission explosion. And now the problem is you're using a nuclear bomb, like Hiroshima and Nagasaki level bomb, as just the detonator.

   16. NANarrator46:30

       Trigger, yeah.

   17. EWEric Weinstein46:31

       So it's gonna rip apart this casing. How do you keep it from, um, destroying the mechanism that's supposed to do the fusing?

   18. NANarrator46:40

       Yeah.

   19. EWEric Weinstein46:40

       Well, the only thing faster than the other particles is light. You've gotta use light from this reflector to actually do the fusion in the final stage.

   20. NANarrator46:50

       Wow.

   21. EWEric Weinstein46:50

       And that's what he figured out. Now, the reason you haven't heard about this is that we've been undoing the Streisand effect. We've been making physics boring. Physics isn't interesting. Physics isn't scary. We've got tons of, I don't know, Chinese, Iranians, people from all over the world studying irrelevant theories that aren't going to go boom. How did that happen? We don't know. And I don't know whether you've seen (laughs) the Marc Andreessen-Ben Horowitz video where they're talking about their visit to the White House in AI.

   22. NANarrator47:20

       Tell me.

   23. EWEric Weinstein47:22

       Oh, I really wish we were doing this over Negronis or old fashioneds. Um-

   24. NANarrator47:27

       I'm sure that we could get one ordered.

   25. EWEric Weinstein47:29

       (laughs)

   26. NANarrator47:29

       Could we?

   27. EWEric Weinstein47:29

       No, no, no, that, that, that's too Rogan.

   28. NANarrator47:31

       Okay, all right, all right, all right.

   29. EWEric Weinstein47:32

       Um-

   30. NANarrator47:33

       Yeah, we'll just stick to experimental nootropics and high doses of caffeine.
6. 52:40 – 1:03:44

   Is String Theory Just a Shiny Distraction?

   1. CWChris Williamson52:40

      I think the implication, which is pretty interesting for me, that you were hinting at there is that there is a potential of the obsession with string theory being a red herring, very tempting, shiny, sparkly red herring, popular one, that has curtailed physicists from looking elsewhere for quite a while. You're giving me that look. You're giving me- you're giving me a look as if I'm close, but not close enough.

   2. EWEric Weinstein53:15

      No, no, no.

   3. CWChris Williamson53:16

      When I say shiny, what I mean is popular. Shown out front, dangled and made to be glitzy, and the core-

   4. EWEric Weinstein53:23

      To the public, but-

   5. CWChris Williamson53:24

      But also internally it seemed to me. Did Ed Witten, did you not tell me the last time that you were on here there are no- there are no other theories, just words? Is that not the guy from which everybody else is downstream?

   6. EWEric Weinstein53:34

      That is not shiny. That is saying everything else is crap and dangerous. In other words, it's string theory can't sell itself as physics by any telling of the story. String theory is the most failed theory in the history of- of- of physics. If you look at the number of papers, the amount of money, the number of people, the number of PhDs, number of conferences, achievements in physics proper per investment or size of effort, it is the most failed theory in the history of physics. And the way in which it survives is by hunting and destroying its enemies and making its enemies dependent on them. We all have a circuit in our brain that we're gonna run to the string theorist to talk about the problem with string theory because of peer review. It's like when I wanna report the police department for being corrupt, well, you should go to the police with that. Uh, wait, you're not understanding. I, it- it's the... So that's the problem. If I were-

   7. CWChris Williamson54:38

      I think we're in- I think we're on the same page.

   8. EWEric Weinstein54:38

      Okay.

   9. CWChris Williamson54:39

      I think we are. Uh...

   10. EWEric Weinstein54:40

       Well, I- I think I'm just trying to say it's the problem with string theory, not the equations, not the shininess, not the advertising campaign, the problem is look at how they treat everyone else. Everyone who is not a string theorist who is trying to do stuff that could end up as a deemed export or as restricted data is covered and splattered in shit.

   11. CWChris Williamson55:03

       Lawrence Krauss and Leonard Susskind caused quite a ruckus with this not long ago. I didn't know that it had happened. In my defense, I hadn't seen this podcast, and it only came out like a few days ago.

   12. EWEric Weinstein55:15

       Absolutely.

   13. CWChris Williamson55:16

       So this is Lawrence Krauss and Leonard Susskind, Susskind being one of the best theoretical physicists ever.

   14. EWEric Weinstein55:24

       No.

   15. CWChris Williamson55:25

       No? Why is he somebody worth listening to then?

   16. EWEric Weinstein55:30

       Um, he's very, very smart and he's one of the most important string theorists ever, and he writes exceptionally clear and correct introductory books.

   17. CWChris Williamson55:40

       Okay.

   18. EWEric Weinstein55:41

       But he is not a leading physicist.

   19. CWChris Williamson55:44

       But is somebody at the forefront of string theory?

   20. EWEric Weinstein55:47

       Absolutely.

   21. CWChris Williamson55:48

       And he said, quote, "I can tell you with absolute certainty, string theory is not the theory of the real world. I can tell you that 100%. My strong feelings are exactly that string theory is definitely not the theory of the real world." Is that taking it out of context? Is that him framing it somewhere else? Or does that encapsulate the fact that he thinks string theory is a dead end that doesn't describe the world?

   22. EWEric Weinstein56:12

       He's playing a game that I would, I would say is logomachy, an argument over words, where he says that big S string theory is not the theory of the real world, which is the theory that was used to destroy all of its competitors, and that little S string theory exists. I don't... Th- th- this is basically the attempt, uh, to take a school massacre and plead to a parking ticket. And no, uh, I think that the prosecution should decline the offer, uh, from the good doctor, Susskind, and say, "No, no, no, you have 40 years of the destruction of your colleagues to answer for. You've chosen to be, um, words failing, an asshole, uh, to just about everyone who came up with a competitor theory." And I've dealt with Leonard directly. He can be charming, he's a great raconteur, he's very brilliant, and he chooses to be a Wolfgang Pauli without achievement. He's taken a massive advance on a future career which he will never have at age 85. So this is a person who wishes you to think of him as a leading physicist. He absolutely categorically, by the standards of physics known to our elders, is not. And Leonard Susskind is playing a game. He's saying... You saw Kill Bill. One of the great romantic scenes of all time is filmed between Beatrix Kiddo and Bill at the very end of the film. He's absolutely destroyed her life. He's killed her husband, fiance, the father of her child, f- forced an abortion, she's been raped. Every indignity on earth has been suffered by this woman. And then in the end, she wants to know, "How could you do that to me?" And what are his words? He says, "I overreacted." And, and you see in the film, if I recall correctly, she leans forward and she says, "Y- you overreacted? Is that your explanation?" Like, how can that be that my life has been turned upside down and your offering to me is, 'I overreacted'?" So these people, and I, and I wanna specifically call out the most aggressive of them, Lubos, Lubos Motl, Michio Kaku, Leonard Susskind, uh, Jeff Harvey, Michael Duff, uh, Andy Strominger, Cumrun Vafa, have been on a tear that nothing else exists, destroying 40 years of competitors. And what does the bride say to Bill? Said, "You and I have unfinished business." That's where we are right now. Your explanation to me, Eric Weinstein, is, (laughs) "You overreacted, Leonard Susskind?" (laughs) You and I have un- unfinished business.

   23. CWChris Williamson59:04

       What happens next?

   24. EWEric Weinstein59:06

       Oh, that's gonna get interesting. You're watching the beginning of the collapse. You're watching people running for the exits. We're not yet at the Lehman Brothers September 15 moment with AIG looming in the background. But right now, all of these guys are trying to plead to, "Oh, well, it's not string theory proper, we meant. Ha ha ha ha ha. We meant, uh, something related to string theory. Yeah, that's it." You know, it's like that moment comically when somebody is caught red-handed. We're, we're in the middle of Shaggy's, "It wasn't me."

   25. CWChris Williamson59:39

       It's theoretical retconning.

   26. EWEric Weinstein59:41

       Yeah. And, uh, you know, there's this beautiful offering that Hector makes to Achilles, "We will give each other the honor of a proper burial." Achilles isn't interested. "Let's do this thing."

   27. CWChris Williamson1:00:02

       What does that mean?

   28. EWEric Weinstein1:00:05

       Well, hopefully somebody will come up with some money to hold a conference to get these people in the same room with the people they've tormented, whose careers they've ended, whose funds they've stolen, the stolen valor of actual achievements in real attempts to change physics. And wouldn't it be delicious and fun to see Michio Kaku, Ed Witten, Lenny Susskind, Michael Duff, Jeff Harvey actually have to face people who know what they're talking about and have a discussion of, "What did we just do for 40 years? Did we, are, are we protecting the American public from restricted data?" I have no idea. But I can tell you this, nobody in their right mind gives a startup 40 years of runway with never a call with investors, nor a, even a basic MVP, most, you know, minimal viable product. The... We've been playing weekend at Biden's, and now we're also playing (laughs) weekend at Lenny's.

   29. CWChris Williamson1:01:12

       (laughs)

   30. EWEric Weinstein1:01:12

       (laughs) This is really funny.
7. 1:03:44 – 1:07:41

   Why String Theory Still Gets Funded

   1. CWChris Williamson1:03:44

      Is this too far gone for string theory now? Is it, the mask is beginning to slip to the point where even Ed Dutton's going to have to eat his words within the next decade?

   2. EWEric Weinstein1:03:55

      They'll never eat their words. They'll just keep lying. Lying is a way of life. Lying to the public as... I mean, I think Susskind somewhere else in this interview says something like, "We have to keep interest in physics high." I- Look, science... is fine. What we have now learned to call The Science™... is an abomination. And one of the things people don't learn about from regular investing, retail investing, is what's called relative value trades. Uh... People say, "Oh, I, I'm bullish on tech. I'm staying out of the tech market." Be- if you don't have the ability to go short, you don't know what a relative value trade is. Relative value trade says, uh, "I think Microsoft, uh, has the right idea over at OpenAI, and Google's Gemini, uh, has too much political encumbrance, so I'm gonna go long Microsoft and I'm gonna fund it by going short Google." And therefore, whatever tech does, they'll both go up or both go down as the sec- in- within the sector, as the sector rises and falls. But you're betting on the relative-

   3. CWChris Williamson1:05:07

      A cross-trade hedge, kind of.

   4. EWEric Weinstein1:05:08

      Exactly. The right trade at the moment is go long science, because it's been beaten up with its association with The Science™. So short The Science™, long science, uh, I think is the multi-billion dollar trade for smart countries at the moment. You have to hunt out The Science™, which lives inside of the journals, lives inside of the funding agencies, lives inside of the departmental defense mechanisms, lives inside of the CIA, DTRA, all of these sorts of, um, blob-related, um, agencies that get their paws into science. And by the way, I, I absolutely want the military to pick up the funding of basic research. We have to overturn something called the Mansfield Amendment, which a previous generation was obsessed by and modern academicians don't even know exists. That was when the military was funding basic research, they were our best friends, they stayed out of our hair, they were just paying a retainer so that they could call on us in times of emergency. And we stupidly gave away that funding source, and it's time to get it back and it's probably time to allow physicists, mathematicians, biologists intellectual property rights over basic... research, not just technologies. Because what, right now what we're doing is you're impoverishing the people who provide your safety and your prosperity. You're not letting them participate in the very society that they're funding.

   5. CWChris Williamson1:06:40

      I've been using my Eight Sleep mattress for years and I absolutely love it. I used to find myself waking up in the middle of the night because I was too hot, and this has been completely neutralized by the magic that is Eight Sleep. It is time to upgrade your sleep game with Eight Sleep's newest generation pod, the Pod 4 Ultra. It can cool down each side of the bed to 20 degrees below room temperature. And for those who snore heavily, it can detect your snoring and automatically lift your head a few degrees to improve airflow and stop it. And it is clinically proven to give you up to one hour more of quality sleep every night. Best of all, they have a 30-day sleep trial so you can buy it, try it, and if you do not like it after 30 days, they will give you your money back. Plus, they ship internationally. Right now, you can get $350 off the Pod 4 Ultra by going to the link in the description below or heading to EightSleep.com/ModernWisdom and using the code MODERNWISDOM at checkout. That's E-I-G-H-T Sleep.com/ModernWisdom, and MODERNWISDOM.... a checkout. Is this indicative of a broader problem

8. 1:07:41 – 1:13:45

   Science’s Big Problems

   1. CWChris Williamson1:07:41

      in all of science? Is physics the tip of the spear, or is there anything even further down?

   2. EWEric Weinstein1:07:47

      S- science used to be dominated by physics and mathematics in a certain sense, after the atomic weapons proved their mettle, and then the physicists showed that they could do things that nobody could imagine. For example, molecular biology's basically founded by physicists. World Wide Web comes out of CERN. Semiconductors come out of, you know, Stanford and the, the actual silicon that was in Silicon Valley. Um, so then it became, uh, biology focused. So right now, when you say science, most people think biology rather than in previous years where most people thought the physicists who could do everything. Uh... We need hearings and we need to basically rid the National Academy of Sciences, the National Science Foundation, the National Science Board, the National Research Council, um, the journals, Lancet, Nature, Science, publishing houses of all of the science. We've gotta get rid of the science. The science is infecting us. We need, we need lawyers, guns, and money, and-

   3. CWChris Williamson1:08:54

      It does seem like a fantastically asymmetric trade. You know, I think I, I hear this all the time in the world of trading, look for limited downside and unlimited upside.

   4. EWEric Weinstein1:09:04

      I think we could make fantastic progress with- within theoretical physics within five years, and I can promise you nobody's interested in funding it. What does it mean when academicians go after Harvard, MIT-

   5. CWChris Williamson1:09:21

      Is it academicians, though?

   6. EWEric Weinstein1:09:22

      Yeah, it's p- oh, it's trolls with PhDs. There's an entire community of, um, trolls hunting people who dissent. Like I bet Sabine Hossenfelder has people who are just sitting around trying to destroy her.

   7. CWChris Williamson1:09:39

      Yeah.

   8. EWEric Weinstein1:09:40

      And the same is true for-

   9. CWChris Williamson1:09:41

      It's also, it, it's magnified I think not just by the dissent but also by, uh, the platform.

   10. EWEric Weinstein1:09:47

       Same one.

   11. CWChris Williamson1:09:47

       Exposure, people get jealous of exposure and they-

   12. EWEric Weinstein1:09:50

       I don't think it's that.

   13. CWChris Williamson1:09:51

       Oh, I think that it is very, very obvious that if somebody gets attention and someone else feels that it's undeserving in one form or another, that guy's a phony, and look at all of the whatever they get.

   14. EWEric Weinstein1:10:02

       I think there's some of that, but I think to think that that's what it is is mistaken.

   15. CWChris Williamson1:10:06

       Not entirely, but I think that it's a, uh, a really big, uh, leverage function on top of it.

   16. EWEric Weinstein1:10:10

       I don't think that's true. Right now, we have a country with no president, and we've moved on, and what's Taylor Swift doing?

   17. CWChris Williamson1:10:20

       (laughs)

   18. EWEric Weinstein1:10:21

       Right? So my claim is, is that anti-interesting, once you understand what anti-interesting is, like assu- assume that you actually wanted just to humiliate people. You'd give them a talk. If you can't play the piano-

   19. CWChris Williamson1:10:39

       Mm-hmm.

   20. EWEric Weinstein1:10:40

       ... um, and I wanna humiliate you because you say you're a piano player-

   21. CWChris Williamson1:10:44

       Away you go.

   22. EWEric Weinstein1:10:45

       ... I'll, I'll get you a grand piano and a stage and an audience.

   23. CWChris Williamson1:10:48

       Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

   24. EWEric Weinstein1:10:49

       No, no, this isn't that. This is something really interesting and... Because it's also, it's cheap. It's free. Why don't we find out whether somebody has something to say? I'm, I'm telling you right now I believe I can explain where the particle spectrum comes from. I can explain the origin of, this is my claim, uh, the 16 particles that make up the first generation of matter not coming from particle theory, but coming from general relativity. It, the most natural thing in the world is to say that's a really bold claim. There's no known explanation for the particle spectrum in terms of general relativity. What is that guy talking about? Let's get him in here. Let's get him on video. We'll humiliate him. This will be fun. We'll take away his audience. Never happens. Instead what it is is that there's this constant sort of whisper campaign against somebody like Sabine. Oh, she's a popularizer. She's not serious. She's-

   25. CWChris Williamson1:11:45

       Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   26. EWEric Weinstein1:11:45

       She doesn't know her stuff. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

   27. CWChris Williamson1:11:47

       Mm-hmm.

   28. EWEric Weinstein1:11:47

       It's a-

   29. CWChris Williamson1:11:48

       Actually, uh, they sold out of, uh, pop, pop musicians. I like their old stuff.

   30. EWEric Weinstein1:11:53

       Well, di- did you see this thing with Sean Carroll and, uh, Curt Jaimungal?
9. 1:13:45 – 1:26:19

   The Danger of Criticism Capture

   1. CWChris Williamson1:13:45

      Uh, so I had an idea that I really wanted to teach you about, and I think-

   2. EWEric Weinstein1:13:50

      I love this part of our interaction.

   3. CWChris Williamson1:13:52

      (laughs) Well, I, I, here's something I prepared earlier. Um, so- You'll be familiar with the term audience capture, which is when you begin feeding red meat to your audience. You start to say what they want or expect you to say, rather than what you truly believe because you've been positively reinforced to do so by plays and comments, and potentially money. There is a-

   4. EWEric Weinstein1:14:15

      You, you know that I brought that up in the article on the international- uh, on the intellectual dark web that Barry Weiss?

   5. CWChris Williamson1:14:23

      No, I didn't. So, there is a new idea-

   6. EWEric Weinstein1:14:28

      Yeah.

   7. CWChris Williamson1:14:29

      ... which I love-

   8. EWEric Weinstein1:14:29

      Yeah.

   9. CWChris Williamson1:14:29

      ... called criticism capture.

   10. EWEric Weinstein1:14:31

       Tell me about it. I don't know about it.

   11. CWChris Williamson1:14:32

       So, this is, uh, Ethan Strauss. And I'm relating this to your idea of an accuracy budget as well.

   12. EWEric Weinstein1:14:38

       Okay.

   13. CWChris Williamson1:14:39

       And I think this maybe pieces together. So, let's see what you think. "Criticism capture is more dangerous than audience capture. Most people have occupations where they get criticized in private. To have it take place in public, as happens in media, is a different dynamic, especially in this era. I happen to think one's response to criticism is important and almost defining in this field."

   14. EWEric Weinstein1:15:01

       Mm-hmm.

   15. CWChris Williamson1:15:01

       "The game isn't just what you do, it's what you do after what you're doing gets defined by people who hate it. I've contemplated hypothetically ideal replies when getting ripped at scale. Some are cruel, some are nice, some are strategic, some are impulsive. In a way, they're almost all dishonest. Nearly everybody in this situation attempts to seem above the fray they're fighting, like the Wojak of the happy face in front of the rage tears. That's why you see so many public figures on the internet starting off with 'lol' when what they really mean is, 'Fuck you.' In most instances, whatever you come up with is only marginally better than, 'I know you are but what am I?'" The basic theory is that people are more unhinged when addressing their criticisms, not their compliments.

   16. EWEric Weinstein1:15:49

       I call this the Streisand squeeze in a slightly different context. So, the idea is that a, a low value human becomes obsessed with you because what they get out of it, um, is if you react to them, they want the attention and the portion of your audience that dislikes you to become their audience. And if you answer the criticism, like intellectually, you're fundamentally playing into a gambit. So, you try not answering the criticism and then it becomes, "Why won't he answer his critics?" And then you're saying, "Well, are you applying this criticism, um, uniformly? Are you..." It, it's, it's an absolutely diabolical situation.

   17. CWChris Williamson1:16:45

       So, the point that I find interesting is not... although it is what is the motivation of the criticizer is interesting to me. But what is the response of the criticized is much more interesting to me.

   18. EWEric Weinstein1:16:59

       What are the options? I, I, I'm actually just interested, what do you see as the options that are possible? 'Cause I, I can't-

   19. CWChris Williamson1:17:05

       Well-

   20. EWEric Weinstein1:17:05

       This is a problem that I can't solve.

   21. CWChris Williamson1:17:07

       I understand. I think there's a great point that Ethan makes where he says that, "The unraveling usually starts as a rebuttal to some criticism, not the embrace of some inspired followers."

   22. EWEric Weinstein1:17:17

       Say more about that.

   23. CWChris Williamson1:17:18

       "The impact of criticism isn't the impact. Yes, people fear the professional, social, and financial consequences of reputation harm. But often in media, that's not what kills you. Instead, it's your own unforced errors in response to the criticism."

   24. EWEric Weinstein1:17:33

       It's very interesting.

   25. CWChris Williamson1:17:33

       "Some peop- some people change their messaging to avoid the blowback, like a wide receiver shying from necessary contact over the middle. Some disagreeable personalities get their backs up and over-correct."

   26. EWEric Weinstein1:17:43

       Hmm.

   27. CWChris Williamson1:17:43

       "Their content starts to match the fevered pitch of their most aggressive detractors. They almost mirror the derangement regarding criticism itself as a positive indicator." So, I think we've all seen over the last five years, people lean into almost being a, a meme of a meme, being a caricature of themselves. And, you know, I know that you had a... I think you were disheartened by what you didn't see your audience do for you when some criticism came for The Portal. But-

   28. EWEric Weinstein1:18:15

       That wasn't criticism. I can handle criticism. You'll notice that I have a very strong civility issue. I have an anti-stalker, anti-troll policy. For example, I really like Michael Malice as an individual, but when Jay Leno had a bunch of hot oil or something scald his face, Michael chose to make a joke and he said, "Well, Jay, Jay Leno hasn't been hot, this hot in years." And it's not like I don't understand the joke, but it's like, I don't know Jay Leno and the guy just had scald... I just don't do this. I don't like getting energy from hurting people.

   29. CWChris Williamson1:19:02

       Mm-hmm.

   30. EWEric Weinstein1:19:02

       I just did this Terrence Howard thing with Joe Rogan, and I told Joe, "I will not go on a show as a debunker." It, it-
10. 1:26:19 – 1:36:15

    Eric’s Antidote for Cancelling People

    1. CWChris Williamson1:26:20

       my, uh, kiddies' playpen pink fluffy version of Of your terrorism capture?

    2. EWEric Weinstein1:26:25

       Sure.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:26:26

       Can you see the line that I would draw between that and the idea that you have of an accuracy budget, and how one could become perverted by the other?

    4. EWEric Weinstein1:26:33

       Oh, sure. Look-

    5. CWChris Williamson1:26:34

       But I love, I love the accuracy budget thing, and I've not heard of it before, which is why I wanted to give you the opportunity-

    6. EWEric Weinstein1:26:38

       Well, the hypocrisy budget, the accuracy budget-

    7. CWChris Williamson1:26:40

       Can-

    8. EWEric Weinstein1:26:40

       ... all of these budgets t- totally to human life, the inconsistency budget.

    9. CWChris Williamson1:26:43

       Mm-hmm. Yeah, can you explain because it's, it's one of the coolest things that I've learned-

    10. EWEric Weinstein1:26:47

        No, I really appreciate that.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:26:48

        ... recently.

    12. EWEric Weinstein1:26:51

        In order to live a life in public, you're gonna opine on a million different things. You're not gonna be g- be giving full footnotes. You're not gonna be giving, um, oh, I don't know, bibliographies and-

    13. CWChris Williamson1:27:06

        (laughs)

    14. EWEric Weinstein1:27:07

        ... counters, and so in essence, there's sort of a good faith level of hypocrisy and inaccuracy and self-kindness and all of these things that e- every human being exhibits. And if the idea is that we're gonna hold everyone who's expressed inconsistent opinions or who's found a self-serving opinion now and again, and we're gonna call that person a hi- hypocrite or a liar or whatever, we're going to torch all of our best people. What if we took Gregor Mendel and his pea pods where we found out about Mendelian genetics, and we said, "Well, you faked your data, so everything you did is crap," 'cause he did fake his data. But he's also a genius who advanced the field.

    15. CWChris Williamson1:27:55

        Newton and his alchemy.

    16. EWEric Weinstein1:27:56

        Yeah, for sure. And all of... In order to keep good people in the public sphere, the key question isn't have you ever exhibited inconsistency, have you ever been cruel when you shouldn't have been or, you know, self-kind. Like, for example, y- you made the statement in our last meeting, it's way too close to November, uh, for anyone t- uh, to leave the race. Does that mean that we should never listen to Chris Williamson again? Horse shit. In fact, the most important thing is, is that you own that in the first part of the interchange, and so my feeling is, is that not only do you have, uh, a budget for making strong statements that turn out not to be true-

    17. CWChris Williamson1:28:39

        Mm-hmm.

    18. EWEric Weinstein1:28:40

        ... but we also know that you're, like, a really good faith actor, and I would listen more to you the next time you say something like, "Oh, come on, Eric, there's no question that..."

    19. CWChris Williamson1:28:48

        (laughs)

    20. EWEric Weinstein1:28:48

        Whatever it is. You know, so how do we get this idea of, no, no, no, that was hypocritical, but he's way under budget on hypocrisy.

    21. CWChris Williamson1:28:58

        Hmm. Mm-hmm.

    22. EWEric Weinstein1:28:59

        Sh- she's, you know, she got that wrong, um, but on the other hand, uh, you know, she's told us so many things that are right. Sh- her, her, her budget doesn't go to zero. Like, I think Neil deGrasse Tyson is really, really wrong on gender.

    23. CWChris Williamson1:29:15

        Hmm.

    24. EWEric Weinstein1:29:15

        On the other hand, so much of what he says is just true.

    25. CWChris Williamson1:29:19

        Mm-hmm.

    26. EWEric Weinstein1:29:20

        And there's, there's a move. Like, I'm very critical of Neil. But do you wanna cancel a guy who's this good at s- explaining science? Sean Carroll is an absolute ass when it comes to critics of mainstream theory, and, and a diabolical one. But he's civil, he's a great explainer, he really knows physics at a very deep level that many people do not currently, and I don't wanna see Sean Carroll removed from science explanation. I... (laughs) I wanna dance with him on a stage. That would be fun. But that is not a person that needs to be removed because he's got a really bad, nasty streak to him when it comes to the critis- the criticism of mainstream physics.

    27. CWChris Williamson1:30:13

        Hmm.

    28. EWEric Weinstein1:30:13

        You know, I, I just don't understand this, this desire for personal destruction. There's, there's this some-

    29. CWChris Williamson1:30:19

        There's no principle of charity, Evan?

    30. EWEric Weinstein1:30:21

        Well, there are people who don't... No, I should just say it differently. I've become aware that in that community, to show any kind of mercy or charity or generosity-

Episode duration: 3:29:14