Bret Weinstein: Truth, Science, and Censorship in the Time of a Pandemic
生物与进化技术与编程AI 与机器学习音乐与艺术政治与社会
🤖
AI 智能总结
布雷特·韦恩斯坦谈疫情时代的真相、科学与审查
这是 Lex Fridman 与进化生物学家、「Dark Horse」播客主持人 Bret Weinstein 的深度对话。韦恩斯坦以「不情愿的激进分子」自居，探讨了 COVID-19 疫情中的科学争议、学术界的审查问题，以及进化生物学对人类行为的深刻洞见。
COVID-19科学审查进化生物学学术自由言论自由主流媒体批判
Bret Weinstein 是进化生物学家，曾任常青州立学院教授，因坚持学术原则被迫离职后，与妻子 Heather Heying 共同主持「Dark Horse」播客，成为独立媒体领域的重要声音。
📌 核心观点
- COVID-19 的科学争议：韦恩斯坦是早期质疑 COVID-19 官方叙事的科学家之一，他对病毒起源、疫苗安全性和治疗方案（如伊维菌素）提出了质疑。他认为科学界和媒体对这些问题的处理方式存在严重问题。
- 学术界的审查：韦恩斯坦因在常青州立学院的「种族日」事件中坚持原则而被迫离职，他认为这是学术界意识形态化的典型案例，真正的学术自由正在受到威胁。
- 进化生物学的洞见：韦恩斯坦认为进化生物学是理解人类行为和社会现象的最重要框架，许多当代社会问题（从性别差异到政治极化）都可以从进化的角度得到更深刻的理解。
- 「不情愿的激进分子」：韦恩斯坦不认为自己是激进分子，他只是在坚持科学诚信和言论自由的原则。他认为当这些原则受到威胁时，沉默就是共谋。
- 对主流媒体的批判：韦恩斯坦认为主流媒体已经失去了追求真相的能力，它们更多地服务于特定的政治和商业利益，这对民主社会是严重的威胁。
✨ 金句摘录
韦恩斯坦：我是一个不情愿的激进分子——我只是在坚持科学诚信和言论自由的原则。
韦恩斯坦：进化生物学是理解人类行为的最重要框架——许多当代社会问题都可以从进化的角度得到更深刻的理解。
韦恩斯坦：当科学界和媒体对质疑声音进行审查时，这不是在保护科学，而是在破坏科学。
📋 章节目录
暂无章节信息
🔑 关键词
dongoingbetterideashumanevidencevirusdoingdoesnyoutubesaidvaccinecoviddidnlabtalksomebodydonepossibleevolutionary
💬 精彩语录
暂无语录
🎙️ 完整对话（4110 条）
Lex Fridman (00:00.000)
The following is a conversation with Brett Weinstein,
以下是与布雷特·韦恩斯坦的对话，
Lex Fridman (00:03.120)
evolutionary biologist, author, cohost
进化生物学家、作家、共同主持人
Lex Fridman (00:05.960)
of the Dark Horse podcast, and, as he says,
黑马播客，正如他所说，
Lex Fridman (00:09.240)
reluctant radical.
不情愿的激进。
Lex Fridman (00:11.160)
Even though we've never met or spoken before this,
尽管我们之前从未见过面或交谈过，
Bret Weinstein (00:14.200)
we both felt like we've been friends for a long time,
我们都觉得我们已经是很久的朋友了
Lex Fridman (00:17.440)
I don't agree on everything with Brett,
我并不同意布雷特的一切
Lex Fridman (00:19.680)
but I'm sure as hell happy he exists
但我确信他的存在非常高兴
Lex Fridman (00:22.060)
in this weird and wonderful world of ours.
在我们这个奇怪而奇妙的世界里。
Bret Weinstein (00:25.120)
Quick mention of our sponsors,
快速提及我们的赞助商，
Lex Fridman (00:27.040)
Jordan Harmon's show, ExpressVPN, Magic Spoon,
Jordan Harmon 的节目、ExpressVPN、Magic Spoon、
Lex Fridman (00:30.920)
and Four Sigmatic.
和四西格玛。
Lex Fridman (00:32.480)
Check them out in the description to support this podcast.
在说明中查看它们以支持此播客。
Bret Weinstein (00:35.920)
As a side note, let me say a few words about COVID 19
作为旁注，让我简单说一下有关 COVID 19 的情况
Lex Fridman (00:39.280)
and about science broadly.
以及广泛的科学。
Bret Weinstein (00:41.240)
I think science is beautiful and powerful.
我认为科学是美丽而强大的。
Lex Fridman (00:44.240)
It is the striving of the human mind
这是人类心灵的努力
Bret Weinstein (00:46.600)
to understand and to solve the problems of the world.
去理解和解决世界的问题。
Lex Fridman (00:50.100)
But as an institution,
但作为一个机构，
Bret Weinstein (00:51.520)
it is susceptible to the flaws of human nature,
很容易受到人性缺陷的影响，
Lex Fridman (00:54.260)
to fear, to greed, power, and ego.
Bret Weinstein (00:58.360)
2020 is the story of all of these
Lex Fridman (01:00.600)
that has both scientific triumph and tragedy.
Bret Weinstein (01:04.140)
We needed great leaders and we didn't get them.
Lex Fridman (01:07.260)
What we needed is leaders who communicate
Bret Weinstein (01:09.380)
in an honest, transparent, and authentic way
Lex Fridman (01:12.040)
about the uncertainty of what we know
Lex Fridman (01:14.060)
and the large scale scientific efforts
Lex Fridman (01:16.100)
to reduce that uncertainty and to develop solutions.
Bret Weinstein (01:19.600)
I believe there are several candidates for solutions
Lex Fridman (01:21.840)
that could have all saved hundreds of billions of dollars
Lex Fridman (01:25.340)
and lessened or eliminated
Lex Fridman (01:27.840)
the suffering of millions of people.
Bret Weinstein (01:30.200)
Let me mention five of the categories of solutions.
Lex Fridman (01:33.020)
Masks, at home testing, anonymized contact tracing,
Bret Weinstein (01:37.040)
antiviral drugs, and vaccines.
Lex Fridman (01:39.540)
Within each of these categories,
Bret Weinstein (01:41.280)
institutional leaders should have constantly asked
Lex Fridman (01:44.120)
and answered publicly, honestly,
Bret Weinstein (01:46.880)
the following three questions.
Lex Fridman (01:48.880)
One, what data do we have on the solution
Lex Fridman (01:52.000)
and what studies are we running
Lex Fridman (01:53.280)
to get more and better data?
Bret Weinstein (01:55.160)
Two, given the current data and uncertainty,
Lex Fridman (01:57.920)
how effective and how safe is the solution?
Bret Weinstein (02:01.180)
Three, what is the timeline and cost involved
Lex Fridman (02:04.200)
with mass manufacturing distribution of the solution?
Bret Weinstein (02:07.460)
In the service of these questions,
Lex Fridman (02:09.000)
no voices should have been silenced,
Bret Weinstein (02:11.080)
no ideas left off the table.
Lex Fridman (02:13.120)
Open data, open science,
Bret Weinstein (02:15.040)
open, honest scientific communication and debate
Lex Fridman (02:17.620)
was the way, not censorship.
Bret Weinstein (02:20.280)
There are a lot of ideas out there
Lex Fridman (02:21.960)
that are bad, wrong, dangerous,
Lex Fridman (02:24.840)
but the moment we have the hubris
Lex Fridman (02:26.840)
to say we know which ideas those are
Bret Weinstein (02:29.680)
is the moment we'll lose our ability to find the truth,
Lex Fridman (02:32.500)
to find solutions,
Bret Weinstein (02:33.920)
the very things that make science beautiful and powerful
Lex Fridman (02:37.840)
in the face of all the dangers that threaten the wellbeing
Lex Fridman (02:40.500)
and the existence of humans on Earth.
Lex Fridman (02:43.600)
This conversation with Brett
Bret Weinstein (02:44.880)
is less about the ideas we talk about.
Lex Fridman (02:46.840)
We agree on some, disagree on others.
Bret Weinstein (02:49.000)
It is much more about the very freedom to talk,
Lex Fridman (02:52.280)
to think, to share ideas.
Bret Weinstein (02:54.960)
This freedom is our only hope.
Lex Fridman (02:57.320)
Brett should never have been censored.
Bret Weinstein (03:00.040)
I asked Brett to do this podcast to show solidarity
Lex Fridman (03:03.360)
and to show that I have hope for science and for humanity.
Bret Weinstein (03:08.200)
This is the Lex Friedman podcast
Lex Fridman (03:10.160)
and here's my conversation with Brett Weinstein.
Lex Fridman (03:13.400)
What to you is beautiful about the study of biology,
Lex Fridman (03:18.080)
the science, the engineering, the philosophy of it?
Bret Weinstein (03:21.000)
It's a very interesting question.
Lex Fridman (03:22.320)
I must say at one level, it's not a conscious thing.
Bret Weinstein (03:27.520)
I can say a lot about why as an adult
Lex Fridman (03:30.700)
I find biology compelling,
Lex Fridman (03:32.100)
but as a kid I was completely fascinated with animals.
Lex Fridman (03:36.720)
I loved to watch them and think about why they did
Lex Fridman (03:40.280)
what they did and that developed into a very conscious
Lex Fridman (03:44.920)
passion as an adult.
Lex Fridman (03:46.520)
But I think in the same way that one is drawn to a person,
Lex Fridman (03:51.760)
I was drawn to the never ending series of near miracles
Bret Weinstein (03:59.320)
that exists across biological nature.
Lex Fridman (04:02.440)
When you see a living organism,
Lex Fridman (04:03.840)
do you see it from an evolutionary biology perspective
Lex Fridman (04:08.160)
of like this entire thing that moves around
Bret Weinstein (04:10.080)
in this world or do you see from an engineering perspective
Lex Fridman (04:14.200)
that first principles almost down to the physics,
Bret Weinstein (04:18.000)
like the little components that build up hierarchies
Lex Fridman (04:21.200)
that you have cells, the first proteins and cells
Lex Fridman (04:24.760)
and organs and all that kind of stuff.
Lex Fridman (04:27.160)
So do you see low level or do you see high level?
Bret Weinstein (04:30.820)
Well, the human mind is a strange thing
Lex Fridman (04:32.760)
and I think it's probably a bit like a time sharing machine
Bret Weinstein (04:37.760)
in which I have different modules.
Lex Fridman (04:40.360)
We don't know enough about biology for them to connect.
Lex Fridman (04:43.360)
So they exist in isolation and I'm always aware
Lex Fridman (04:46.240)
that they do connect, but I basically have to step
Bret Weinstein (04:48.880)
into a module in order to see the evolutionary dynamics
Lex Fridman (04:53.760)
of the creature and the lineage that it belongs to.
Bret Weinstein (04:56.940)
I have to step into a different module to think
Lex Fridman (04:59.040)
of that lineage over a very long time scale,
Bret Weinstein (05:02.240)
a different module still to understand
Lex Fridman (05:04.400)
what the mechanisms inside would have to look like
Bret Weinstein (05:06.940)
to account for what we can see from the outside.
Lex Fridman (05:11.080)
And I think that probably sounds really complicated,
Lex Fridman (05:15.960)
but one of the things about being involved
Lex Fridman (05:20.680)
in a topic like biology and doing so for one,
Bret Weinstein (05:25.160)
really not even just my adult life for my whole life
Lex Fridman (05:27.480)
is that it becomes second nature.
Lex Fridman (05:29.400)
And when we see somebody do an amazing parkour routine
Lex Fridman (05:34.400)
or something like that, we think about what they must
Bret Weinstein (05:38.920)
be doing in order to accomplish that.
Lex Fridman (05:41.440)
But of course, what they are doing is tapping
Lex Fridman (05:43.720)
into some kind of zone, right?
Lex Fridman (05:46.280)
They are in a zone in which they are in such command
Bret Weinstein (05:51.420)
of their center of gravity, for example,
Lex Fridman (05:53.660)
that they know how to hurl it around a landscape
Lex Fridman (05:56.840)
so that they always land on their feet.
Lex Fridman (05:59.000)
And I would just say for anyone who hasn't found a topic
Bret Weinstein (06:04.960)
on which they can develop that kind of facility,
Lex Fridman (06:08.780)
it is absolutely worthwhile.
Bret Weinstein (06:11.500)
It's really something that human beings are capable
Lex Fridman (06:13.700)
of doing across a wide range of topics,
Bret Weinstein (06:16.280)
many things our ancestors didn't even have access to.
Lex Fridman (06:19.560)
And that flexibility of humans,
Bret Weinstein (06:21.980)
that ability to repurpose our machinery
Lex Fridman (06:26.120)
for topics that are novel means really,
Bret Weinstein (06:29.980)
the world is your oyster.
Lex Fridman (06:30.940)
You can figure out what your passion is
Lex Fridman (06:32.900)
and then figure out all of the angles
Lex Fridman (06:34.780)
that one would have to pursue to really deeply understand it.
Lex Fridman (06:38.140)
And it is well worth having at least one topic like that.
Lex Fridman (06:42.820)
You mean embracing the full adaptability
Bret Weinstein (06:45.700)
of both the body and the mind.
Lex Fridman (06:49.360)
So like, I don't know what to attribute the parkour to,
Bret Weinstein (06:53.440)
like biomechanics of how our bodies can move,
Lex Fridman (06:56.580)
or is it the mind?
Bret Weinstein (06:58.020)
Like how much percent wise,
Lex Fridman (07:00.120)
is it the entirety of the hierarchies of biology
Bret Weinstein (07:04.780)
that we've been talking about,
Lex Fridman (07:06.100)
or is it just all the mind?
Bret Weinstein (07:09.380)
The way to think about creatures
Lex Fridman (07:10.740)
is that every creature is two things simultaneously.
Lex Fridman (07:14.180)
A creature is a machine of sorts, right?
Lex Fridman (07:17.940)
It's not a machine in the,
Lex Fridman (07:20.580)
I call it an aqueous machine, right?
Lex Fridman (07:22.620)
And it's run by an aqueous computer, right?
Lex Fridman (07:24.860)
So it's not identical to our technological machines.
Lex Fridman (07:29.060)
But every creature is both a machine
Bret Weinstein (07:31.900)
that does things in the world
Lex Fridman (07:33.180)
sufficient to accumulate enough resources
Bret Weinstein (07:36.380)
to continue surviving, to reproduce.
Lex Fridman (07:39.600)
It is also a potential.
Lex Fridman (07:41.520)
So each creature is potentially, for example,
Lex Fridman (07:45.580)
the most recent common ancestor
Bret Weinstein (07:47.220)
of some future clade of creatures
Lex Fridman (07:48.800)
that will look very different from it.
Lex Fridman (07:50.500)
And if a creature is very, very good at being a creature,
Lex Fridman (07:53.780)
but not very good in terms of the potential
Bret Weinstein (07:56.240)
it has going forward,
Lex Fridman (07:57.740)
then that lineage will not last very long into the future
Bret Weinstein (08:01.400)
because change will throw at challenges
Lex Fridman (08:04.980)
that its descendants will not be able to meet.
Lex Fridman (08:07.260)
So the thing about humans is we are a generalist platform,
Lex Fridman (08:13.560)
and we have the ability to swap out our software
Bret Weinstein (08:17.500)
to exist in many, many different niches.
Lex Fridman (08:20.740)
And I was once watching an interview
Bret Weinstein (08:24.140)
with this British group of parkour experts
Lex Fridman (08:27.060)
who were being, they were discussing what it is they do
Lex Fridman (08:31.120)
and how it works.
Lex Fridman (08:31.960)
And what they essentially said is,
Lex Fridman (08:33.300)
look, you're tapping into deep monkey stuff, right?
Lex Fridman (08:39.300)
And I thought, yeah, that's about right.
Lex Fridman (08:41.720)
And anybody who is proficient at something
Lex Fridman (08:46.180)
like skiing or skateboarding, you know,
Bret Weinstein (08:49.700)
has the experience of flying down the hill
Lex Fridman (08:54.580)
on skis, for example,
Bret Weinstein (08:56.220)
bouncing from the top of one mogul to the next.
Lex Fridman (08:59.920)
And if you really pay attention,
Bret Weinstein (09:02.520)
you will discover that your conscious mind
Lex Fridman (09:04.360)
is actually a spectator.
Bret Weinstein (09:05.600)
It's there, it's involved in the experience,
Lex Fridman (09:08.160)
but it's not driving.
Bret Weinstein (09:09.060)
Some part of you knows how to ski,
Lex Fridman (09:10.340)
and it's not the part of you that knows how to think.
Lex Fridman (09:12.720)
And I would just say that what accounts
Lex Fridman (09:17.180)
for this flexibility in humans
Bret Weinstein (09:19.900)
is the ability to bootstrap a new software program
Lex Fridman (09:24.040)
and then drive it into the unconscious layer
Bret Weinstein (09:27.120)
where it can be applied very rapidly.
Lex Fridman (09:30.000)
And, you know, I will be shocked
Bret Weinstein (09:31.740)
if the exact thing doesn't exist in robotics.
Lex Fridman (09:36.100)
You know, if you programmed a robot
Bret Weinstein (09:37.920)
to deal with circumstances that were novel to it,
Lex Fridman (09:40.220)
how would you do it?
Bret Weinstein (09:41.060)
It would have to look something like this.
Lex Fridman (09:43.100)
There's a certain kind of magic, you're right,
Bret Weinstein (09:46.180)
with the consciousness being an observer.
Lex Fridman (09:48.620)
When you play guitar, for example, or piano for me,
Bret Weinstein (09:51.620)
music, when you get truly lost in it,
Lex Fridman (09:55.460)
I don't know what the heck is responsible
Bret Weinstein (09:57.740)
for the flow of the music,
Lex Fridman (09:59.100)
the kind of the loudness of the music going up and down,
Bret Weinstein (10:02.820)
the timing, the intricate, like even the mistakes,
Lex Fridman (10:06.280)
all those things,
Bret Weinstein (10:07.120)
that doesn't seem to be the conscious mind.
Lex Fridman (10:09.260)
It is just observing,
Lex Fridman (10:12.020)
and yet it's somehow intricately involved.
Lex Fridman (10:14.540)
More, like, because you mentioned parkour,
Bret Weinstein (10:17.180)
the dance is like that too.
Lex Fridman (10:18.820)
When you start up in tango dancing,
Bret Weinstein (10:20.860)
if when you truly lose yourself in it,
Lex Fridman (10:24.020)
then it's just like you're an observer,
Lex Fridman (10:26.940)
and how the hell is the body able to do that?
Lex Fridman (10:29.060)
And not only that, it's the physical motion
Bret Weinstein (10:31.220)
is also creating the emotion,
Lex Fridman (10:33.900)
the, like, the damn is good to be alive feeling.
Bret Weinstein (10:40.540)
So, but then that's also intricately connected
Lex Fridman (10:44.460)
to the full biology stack that we're operating in.
Bret Weinstein (10:47.660)
I don't know how difficult it is to replicate that.
Lex Fridman (10:50.140)
We're talking offline about Boston Dynamics robots.
Bret Weinstein (10:54.880)
They've recently been, they did both parkour,
Lex Fridman (10:57.980)
they did flips, they've also done some dancing,
Lex Fridman (11:02.180)
and it's something I think a lot about
Lex Fridman (11:03.540)
because what most people don't realize
Bret Weinstein (11:07.940)
because they don't look deep enough
Lex Fridman (11:09.580)
is those robots are hard coded to do those things.
Bret Weinstein (11:13.980)
The robots didn't figure it out by themselves,
Lex Fridman (11:16.940)
and yet the fundamental aspect of what it means to be human
Bret Weinstein (11:20.620)
is that process of figuring out, of making mistakes,
Lex Fridman (11:23.900)
and then there's something about overcoming
Bret Weinstein (11:26.240)
those challenges and the mistakes
Lex Fridman (11:27.940)
and, like, figuring out how to lose yourself
Bret Weinstein (11:30.100)
in the magic of the dancing or just movement
Lex Fridman (11:34.100)
is what it means to be human.
Bret Weinstein (11:35.540)
That learning process, so that's what I want to do
Lex Fridman (11:38.620)
with the, almost as a fun side thing
Bret Weinstein (11:42.260)
with the Boston Dynamics robots,
Lex Fridman (11:44.700)
is to have them learn and see what they figure out,
Bret Weinstein (11:48.400)
even if they make mistakes.
Lex Fridman (11:50.940)
I want to let Spot make mistakes
Lex Fridman (11:55.140)
and in so doing discover what it means to be alive,
Lex Fridman (12:00.060)
discover beauty, because I think
Bret Weinstein (12:02.060)
that's the essential aspect of mistakes.
Lex Fridman (12:05.380)
Boston Dynamics folks want Spot to be perfect
Bret Weinstein (12:09.300)
because they don't want Spot to ever make mistakes
Lex Fridman (12:11.620)
because it wants to operate in the factories,
Bret Weinstein (12:13.540)
it wants to be very safe and so on.
Lex Fridman (12:16.580)
For me, if you construct the environment,
Bret Weinstein (12:19.060)
if you construct a safe space for robots
Lex Fridman (12:22.300)
and allow them to make mistakes,
Bret Weinstein (12:24.360)
something beautiful might be discovered,
Lex Fridman (12:26.740)
but that requires a lot of brain power.
Lex Fridman (12:29.820)
So Spot is currently very dumb
Lex Fridman (12:32.060)
and I'm gonna give it a brain.
Lex Fridman (12:34.300)
So first make it see, currently it can't see,
Lex Fridman (12:36.740)
meaning computer vision, it has to understand
Bret Weinstein (12:39.220)
its environment, it has to see all the humans,
Lex Fridman (12:41.340)
but then also has to be able to learn,
Bret Weinstein (12:43.900)
learn about its movement, learn how to use its body
Lex Fridman (12:47.480)
to communicate with others, all those kinds of things
Bret Weinstein (12:49.940)
that dogs know how to do well,
Lex Fridman (12:51.820)
humans know how to do somewhat well.
Bret Weinstein (12:54.960)
I think that's a beautiful challenge,
Lex Fridman (12:56.540)
but first you have to allow the robot to make mistakes.
Bret Weinstein (13:00.380)
Well, I think your objective is laudable,
Lex Fridman (13:03.820)
but you're gonna realize
Bret Weinstein (13:04.860)
that the Boston Dynamics folks are right
Lex Fridman (13:07.380)
the first time Spot poops on your rug.
Bret Weinstein (13:11.580)
I hear the same thing about kids and so on.
Lex Fridman (13:13.900)
I still wanna have kids.
Bret Weinstein (13:14.980)
No, you should, it's a great experience.
Lex Fridman (13:18.060)
So let me step back into what you said
Bret Weinstein (13:19.780)
in a couple of different places.
Lex Fridman (13:21.260)
One, I have always believed that the missing element
Bret Weinstein (13:24.740)
in robotics and artificial intelligence
Lex Fridman (13:27.940)
is a proper development, right?
Bret Weinstein (13:30.420)
It is no accident, it is no mere coincidence
Lex Fridman (13:33.620)
that human beings are the most dominant species
Bret Weinstein (13:36.400)
on planet Earth and that we have the longest childhoods
Lex Fridman (13:38.880)
of any creature on Earth by far, right?
Bret Weinstein (13:42.020)
The development is the key to the flexibility.
Lex Fridman (13:44.860)
And so the capability of a human at adulthood
Bret Weinstein (13:49.860)
is the mirror image, it's the flip side
Lex Fridman (13:53.780)
of our helplessness at birth.
Lex Fridman (13:57.300)
So I'll be very interested to see what happens
Lex Fridman (13:59.900)
in your robot project if you do not end up
Bret Weinstein (14:03.260)
reinventing childhood for robots,
Lex Fridman (14:05.420)
which of course is foreshadowed in 2001 quite brilliantly.
Lex Fridman (14:10.820)
But I also wanna point out,
Lex Fridman (14:12.140)
you can see this issue of your conscious mind
Bret Weinstein (14:16.580)
becoming a spectator very well
Lex Fridman (14:18.780)
if you compare tennis to table tennis, right?
Bret Weinstein (14:24.740)
If you watch a tennis game, you could imagine
Lex Fridman (14:28.640)
that the players are highly conscious as they play.
Bret Weinstein (14:32.500)
You cannot imagine that
Lex Fridman (14:33.900)
if you've ever played ping pong decently.
Bret Weinstein (14:36.680)
A volley in ping pong is so fast
Lex Fridman (14:39.440)
that your conscious mind, if your reactions
Bret Weinstein (14:42.200)
had to go through your conscious mind,
Lex Fridman (14:43.740)
you wouldn't be able to play.
Lex Fridman (14:44.980)
So you can detect that your conscious mind,
Lex Fridman (14:47.140)
while very much present, isn't there.
Lex Fridman (14:49.740)
And you can also detect where consciousness
Lex Fridman (14:52.140)
does usefully intrude.
Bret Weinstein (14:54.540)
If you go up against an opponent in table tennis
Lex Fridman (14:57.760)
that knows a trick that you don't know how to respond to,
Bret Weinstein (15:01.780)
you will suddenly detect that something
Lex Fridman (15:03.500)
about your game is not effective,
Lex Fridman (15:06.260)
and you will start thinking about what might be,
Lex Fridman (15:08.220)
how do you position yourself so that move
Bret Weinstein (15:10.220)
that puts the ball just in that corner of the table
Lex Fridman (15:12.460)
or something like that doesn't catch you off guard.
Lex Fridman (15:15.440)
And this, I believe, is we highly conscious folks,
Lex Fridman (15:22.160)
those of us who try to think through things
Bret Weinstein (15:23.900)
very deliberately and carefully,
Lex Fridman (15:26.060)
mistake consciousness for the highest kind of thinking.
Lex Fridman (15:30.280)
And I really think that this is an error.
Lex Fridman (15:33.120)
Consciousness is an intermediate level of thinking.
Lex Fridman (15:36.280)
What it does is it allows you,
Lex Fridman (15:37.720)
it's basically like uncompiled code.
Lex Fridman (15:40.120)
And it doesn't run very fast.
Lex Fridman (15:42.620)
It is capable of being adapted to new circumstances.
Lex Fridman (15:45.400)
But once the code is roughed in,
Lex Fridman (15:48.460)
it gets driven into the unconscious layer,
Lex Fridman (15:50.500)
and you become highly effective at whatever it is.
Lex Fridman (15:52.860)
And from that point, your conscious mind
Bret Weinstein (15:55.260)
basically remains there to detect things
Lex Fridman (15:57.260)
that aren't anticipated by the code you've already written.
Lex Fridman (16:00.040)
And so I don't exactly know how one would establish this,
Lex Fridman (16:05.340)
how one would demonstrate it.
Lex Fridman (16:07.220)
But it must be the case that the human mind
Lex Fridman (16:10.580)
contains sandboxes in which things are tested, right?
Bret Weinstein (16:15.400)
Maybe you can build a piece of code
Lex Fridman (16:16.840)
and run it in parallel next to your active code
Lex Fridman (16:19.880)
so you can see how it would have done comparatively.
Lex Fridman (16:23.600)
But there's gotta be some way of writing new code
Lex Fridman (16:26.480)
and then swapping it in.
Lex Fridman (16:28.000)
And frankly, I think this has a lot to do
Bret Weinstein (16:29.720)
with things like sleep cycles.
Lex Fridman (16:31.240)
Very often, when I get good at something,
Bret Weinstein (16:34.100)
I often don't get better at it while I'm doing it.
Lex Fridman (16:36.720)
I get better at it when I'm not doing it,
Bret Weinstein (16:38.680)
especially if there's time to sleep and think on it.
Lex Fridman (16:41.720)
So there's some sort of new program
Bret Weinstein (16:44.440)
swapping in for old program phenomenon,
Lex Fridman (16:46.940)
which will be a lot easier to see in machines.
Bret Weinstein (16:50.880)
It's gonna be hard with the wetware.
Lex Fridman (16:53.800)
I like, I mean, it is true,
Bret Weinstein (16:55.520)
because somebody that played,
Lex Fridman (16:56.760)
I played tennis for many years,
Bret Weinstein (16:58.760)
I do still think the highest form of excellence in tennis
Lex Fridman (17:01.880)
is when the conscious mind is a spectator.
Lex Fridman (17:05.200)
So the compiled code is the highest form of being human.
Lex Fridman (17:11.600)
And then consciousness is just some specific compiler.
Bret Weinstein (17:16.360)
You used to have like Borland C++ compiler.
Lex Fridman (17:19.760)
You could just have different kind of compilers.
Bret Weinstein (17:22.160)
Ultimately, the thing that by which we measure
Lex Fridman (17:28.560)
the power of life, the intelligence of life
Bret Weinstein (17:30.600)
is the compiled code.
Lex Fridman (17:31.800)
And you can probably do that compilation all kinds of ways.
Bret Weinstein (17:34.880)
Yeah, I'm not saying that tennis is played consciously
Lex Fridman (17:37.780)
and table tennis isn't.
Bret Weinstein (17:38.880)
I'm saying that because tennis is slowed down
Lex Fridman (17:41.460)
by the just the space on the court,
Bret Weinstein (17:43.760)
you could imagine that it was your conscious mind playing.
Lex Fridman (17:47.080)
But when you shrink the court down,
Bret Weinstein (17:48.840)
It becomes obvious.
Lex Fridman (17:49.680)
It becomes obvious that your conscious mind
Bret Weinstein (17:51.400)
is just present rather than knowing where to put the paddle.
Lex Fridman (17:54.760)
And weirdly for me,
Bret Weinstein (17:58.560)
I would say this probably isn't true
Lex Fridman (17:59.740)
in a podcast situation.
Lex Fridman (18:01.760)
But if I have to give a presentation,
Lex Fridman (18:03.960)
especially if I have not overly prepared,
Bret Weinstein (18:06.960)
I often find the same phenomenon
Lex Fridman (18:08.760)
when I'm giving the presentation.
Bret Weinstein (18:10.080)
My conscious mind is there watching
Lex Fridman (18:11.600)
some other part of me present,
Bret Weinstein (18:13.600)
which is a little jarring, I have to say.
Lex Fridman (18:17.440)
Well, that means you've gotten good at it.
Bret Weinstein (18:20.680)
Not let the conscious mind get in the way
Lex Fridman (18:22.520)
of the flow of words.
Bret Weinstein (18:24.720)
Yeah, that's the sensation to be sure.
Lex Fridman (18:27.120)
And that's the highest form of podcasting too.
Bret Weinstein (18:29.040)
I mean, that's what it looks like
Lex Fridman (18:32.240)
when a podcast is really in the pocket,
Bret Weinstein (18:34.200)
like Joe Rogan, just having fun
Lex Fridman (18:38.640)
and just losing themselves.
Lex Fridman (18:39.880)
And that's something I aspire to as well,
Lex Fridman (18:41.860)
just losing yourself in conversation.
Bret Weinstein (18:43.500)
Somebody that has a lot of anxiety with people,
Lex Fridman (18:45.680)
like I'm such an introvert.
Bret Weinstein (18:47.200)
I'm scared.
Lex Fridman (18:48.040)
I was scared before you showed up.
Bret Weinstein (18:49.280)
I'm scared right now.
Lex Fridman (18:50.920)
There's just anxiety.
Bret Weinstein (18:52.080)
There's just, it's a giant mess.
Lex Fridman (18:55.200)
It's hard to lose yourself.
Bret Weinstein (18:56.600)
It's hard to just get out of the way of your own mind.
Lex Fridman (19:00.700)
Yeah, actually, trust is a big component of that.
Bret Weinstein (19:04.960)
Your conscious mind retains control
Lex Fridman (19:08.080)
if you are very uncertain.
Lex Fridman (19:11.080)
But when you do get into that zone when you're speaking,
Lex Fridman (19:14.280)
I realize it's different for you
Bret Weinstein (19:15.440)
with English as a second language,
Lex Fridman (19:16.740)
although maybe you present in Russian and it happens.
Lex Fridman (19:20.280)
But do you ever hear yourself say something
Lex Fridman (19:22.560)
and you think, oh, that's really good, right?
Bret Weinstein (19:25.080)
Like you didn't come up with it,
Lex Fridman (19:26.980)
some other part of you that you don't exactly know
Lex Fridman (19:30.160)
came up with it?
Lex Fridman (19:31.000)
I don't think I've ever heard myself in that way
Bret Weinstein (19:36.240)
because I have a much louder voice
Lex Fridman (19:38.180)
that's constantly yelling in my head at,
Lex Fridman (19:41.360)
why the hell did you say that?
Lex Fridman (19:43.520)
There's a very self critical voice that's much louder.
Lex Fridman (19:47.360)
So I'm very, maybe I need to deal with that voice,
Lex Fridman (19:51.320)
but it's been like, what is it called?
Bret Weinstein (19:53.160)
Like a megaphone just screaming
Lex Fridman (19:54.640)
so I can't hear the other voice that says,
Bret Weinstein (19:56.600)
good job, you said that thing really nicely.
Lex Fridman (19:58.600)
So I'm kind of focused right now on the megaphone person
Lex Fridman (1:00:02.980)
is to set a terrible precedent, right?
Lex Fridman (1:00:05.740)
You're demonizing people for using the scientific method
Bret Weinstein (1:00:08.420)
to evaluate evidence that is available to us in the world.
Lex Fridman (1:00:11.980)
What a terrible crime it is to teach that lesson, right?
Bret Weinstein (1:00:16.020)
Thou shalt not use scientific tools.
Lex Fridman (1:00:18.060)
No, I'm sorry.
Bret Weinstein (1:00:19.300)
Whatever your license to lie is, it doesn't extend to that.
Lex Fridman (1:00:22.540)
Yeah, I've seen the attacks on you,
Bret Weinstein (1:00:25.420)
the pressure on you has a very important effect
Lex Fridman (1:00:29.540)
on thousands of world class biologists actually.
Bret Weinstein (1:00:36.380)
At MIT, colleagues of mine, people I know,
Lex Fridman (1:00:40.020)
there's a slight pressure to not be allowed
Bret Weinstein (1:00:44.140)
to one, speak publicly and two, actually think.
Lex Fridman (1:00:51.500)
Like do you even think about these ideas?
Bret Weinstein (1:00:53.620)
It sounds kind of ridiculous,
Lex Fridman (1:00:55.020)
but just in the privacy of your own home,
Bret Weinstein (1:00:58.720)
to read things, to think, it's many people,
Lex Fridman (1:01:03.100)
many world class biologists that I know
Bret Weinstein (1:01:06.940)
will just avoid looking at the data.
Lex Fridman (1:01:10.740)
There's not even that many people
Bret Weinstein (1:01:12.180)
that are publicly opposing gain of function research.
Lex Fridman (1:01:15.340)
They're also like, it's not worth it.
Bret Weinstein (1:01:18.860)
It's not worth the battle.
Lex Fridman (1:01:20.140)
And there's many people that kind of argue
Bret Weinstein (1:01:21.720)
that those battles should be fought in private,
Lex Fridman (1:01:27.100)
with colleagues in the privacy of the scientific community
Bret Weinstein (1:01:31.300)
that the public is somehow not maybe intelligent enough
Lex Fridman (1:01:35.500)
to be able to deal with the complexities
Bret Weinstein (1:01:38.300)
of this kind of discussion.
Lex Fridman (1:01:39.780)
I don't know, but the final result
Bret Weinstein (1:01:41.420)
is combined with the bullying of you
Lex Fridman (1:01:44.100)
and all the different pressures
Bret Weinstein (1:01:47.100)
in the academic institutions is that
Lex Fridman (1:01:49.060)
it's just people are self censoring
Lex Fridman (1:01:51.260)
and silencing themselves
Lex Fridman (1:01:53.420)
and silencing the most important thing,
Bret Weinstein (1:01:55.220)
which is the power of their brains.
Lex Fridman (1:01:58.260)
Like these people are brilliant.
Lex Fridman (1:02:01.560)
And the fact that they're not utilizing their brain
Lex Fridman (1:02:04.540)
to come up with solutions
Bret Weinstein (1:02:06.740)
outside of the conformist line of thinking is tragic.
Lex Fridman (1:02:11.520)
Well, it is.
Bret Weinstein (1:02:12.580)
I also think that we have to look at it
Lex Fridman (1:02:15.900)
and understand it for what it is.
Bret Weinstein (1:02:17.780)
For one thing, it's kind of a cryptic totalitarianism.
Lex Fridman (1:02:20.900)
Somehow people's sense of what they're allowed
Bret Weinstein (1:02:23.540)
to think about, talk about, discuss
Lex Fridman (1:02:25.780)
is causing them to self censor.
Lex Fridman (1:02:27.380)
And I can tell you it's causing many of them to rationalize,
Lex Fridman (1:02:30.380)
which is even worse.
Bret Weinstein (1:02:31.280)
They're blinding themselves to what they can see.
Lex Fridman (1:02:34.660)
But it is also the case, I believe,
Bret Weinstein (1:02:37.900)
that what you're describing about what people said,
Lex Fridman (1:02:40.180)
and a great many people understood
Bret Weinstein (1:02:43.060)
that the lab leak hypothesis
Lex Fridman (1:02:45.060)
could not be taken off the table,
Lex Fridman (1:02:47.060)
but they didn't say so publicly.
Lex Fridman (1:02:48.900)
And I think that their discussions with each other
Bret Weinstein (1:02:52.800)
about why they did not say what they understood,
Lex Fridman (1:02:55.700)
that's what capture sounds like on the inside.
Bret Weinstein (1:02:59.180)
I don't know exactly what force captured the institutions.
Lex Fridman (1:03:02.940)
I don't think anybody knows for sure out here in public.
Bret Weinstein (1:03:07.980)
I don't even know that it wasn't just simply a process.
Lex Fridman (1:03:10.060)
But you have these institutions.
Bret Weinstein (1:03:13.660)
They are behaving towards a kind of somatic obligation.
Lex Fridman (1:03:19.000)
They have lost sight of what they were built to accomplish.
Lex Fridman (1:03:22.820)
And on the inside, the way they avoid
Lex Fridman (1:03:26.180)
going back to their original mission
Bret Weinstein (1:03:28.460)
is to say things to themselves,
Lex Fridman (1:03:30.140)
like the public can't have this discussion.
Bret Weinstein (1:03:32.620)
It can't be trusted with it.
Lex Fridman (1:03:34.220)
Yes, we need to be able to talk about this,
Lex Fridman (1:03:35.780)
but it has to be private.
Lex Fridman (1:03:36.780)
Whatever it is they say to themselves,
Bret Weinstein (1:03:38.140)
that is what capture sounds like on the inside.
Lex Fridman (1:03:40.300)
It's a institutional rationalization mechanism.
Lex Fridman (1:03:44.460)
And it's very, very deadly.
Lex Fridman (1:03:46.460)
And at the point you go from lab leak to repurposed drugs,
Bret Weinstein (1:03:50.620)
you can see that it's very deadly in a very direct way.
Lex Fridman (1:03:54.700)
Yeah, I see this in my field with things
Bret Weinstein (1:03:59.500)
like autonomous weapon systems.
Lex Fridman (1:04:01.740)
People in AI do not talk about the use of AI
Bret Weinstein (1:04:04.500)
in weapon systems.
Lex Fridman (1:04:05.900)
They kind of avoid the idea that AI's use them
Bret Weinstein (1:04:08.700)
in the military.
Lex Fridman (1:04:09.820)
It's kind of funny, there's this like kind of discomfort
Lex Fridman (1:04:13.100)
and they're like, they all hurry,
Lex Fridman (1:04:14.460)
like something scary happens and a bunch of sheep
Bret Weinstein (1:04:17.900)
kind of like run away.
Lex Fridman (1:04:19.300)
That's what it looks like.
Lex Fridman (1:04:21.340)
And I don't even know what to do about it.
Lex Fridman (1:04:23.660)
And then I feel this natural pull
Bret Weinstein (1:04:26.460)
every time I bring up autonomous weapon systems
Lex Fridman (1:04:29.260)
to go along with the sheep.
Bret Weinstein (1:04:30.740)
There's a natural kind of pull towards that direction
Lex Fridman (1:04:33.660)
because it's like, what can I do as one person?
Bret Weinstein (1:04:37.140)
Now there's currently nothing destructive happening
Lex Fridman (1:04:40.260)
with autonomous weapon systems.
Lex Fridman (1:04:42.060)
So we're in like in the early days of this race
Lex Fridman (1:04:44.980)
that in 10, 20 years might become a real problem.
Bret Weinstein (1:04:48.180)
Now where the discussion we're having now,
Lex Fridman (1:04:50.500)
we're now facing the result of that in the space of viruses,
Bret Weinstein (1:04:55.420)
like for many years avoiding the conversations here.
Lex Fridman (1:05:00.500)
I don't know what to do that in the early days,
Lex Fridman (1:05:03.580)
but I think we have to, I guess, create institutions
Lex Fridman (1:05:05.980)
where people can stand out.
Bret Weinstein (1:05:08.300)
People can stand out and like basically be individual
Lex Fridman (1:05:12.100)
thinkers and break out into all kinds of spaces of ideas
Bret Weinstein (1:05:16.580)
that allow us to think freely, freedom of thought.
Lex Fridman (1:05:19.620)
And maybe that requires a decentralization of institutions.
Bret Weinstein (1:05:22.900)
Well, years ago, I came up with a concept
Lex Fridman (1:05:26.060)
called cultivated insecurity.
Lex Fridman (1:05:28.820)
And the idea is, let's just take the example
Lex Fridman (1:05:31.700)
of the average Joe, right?
Bret Weinstein (1:05:34.140)
The average Joe has a job somewhere
Lex Fridman (1:05:37.660)
and their mortgage, their medical insurance,
Bret Weinstein (1:05:42.300)
their retirement, their connection with the economy
Lex Fridman (1:05:46.940)
is to one degree or another dependent
Bret Weinstein (1:05:49.660)
on their relationship with the employer.
Lex Fridman (1:05:54.060)
That means that there is a strong incentive,
Bret Weinstein (1:05:57.420)
especially in any industry where it's not easy to move
Lex Fridman (1:06:00.780)
from one employer to the next.
Bret Weinstein (1:06:02.100)
There's a strong incentive to stay
Lex Fridman (1:06:05.140)
in your employer's good graces, right?
Lex Fridman (1:06:07.100)
So it creates a very top down dynamic,
Lex Fridman (1:06:09.260)
not only in terms of who gets to tell other people
Lex Fridman (1:06:13.740)
what to do, but it really comes down to
Lex Fridman (1:06:16.220)
who gets to tell other people how to think.
Lex Fridman (1:06:18.860)
So that's extremely dangerous.
Lex Fridman (1:06:21.260)
The way out of it is to cultivate security
Bret Weinstein (1:06:25.540)
to the extent that somebody is in a position
Lex Fridman (1:06:28.380)
to go against the grain and have it not be a catastrophe
Bret Weinstein (1:06:32.500)
for their family and their ability to earn,
Lex Fridman (1:06:34.980)
you will see that behavior a lot more.
Lex Fridman (1:06:36.620)
So I would argue that some of what you're talking about
Lex Fridman (1:06:38.780)
is just a simple predictable consequence
Bret Weinstein (1:06:41.980)
of the concentration of the sources of wellbeing
Lex Fridman (1:06:48.100)
and that this is a solvable problem.
Bret Weinstein (1:06:51.540)
You got a chance to talk with Joe Rogan yesterday.
Lex Fridman (1:06:55.340)
Yes, I did.
Lex Fridman (1:06:56.540)
And I just saw the episode was released
Lex Fridman (1:06:59.300)
and Ivermectin is trending on Twitter.
Bret Weinstein (1:07:04.060)
Joe told me it was an incredible conversation.
Lex Fridman (1:07:06.020)
I look forward to listening to it today.
Bret Weinstein (1:07:07.380)
Many people have probably, by the time this is released,
Lex Fridman (1:07:10.660)
have already listened to it.
Bret Weinstein (1:07:13.100)
I think it would be interesting to discuss a postmortem.
Lex Fridman (1:07:18.540)
How do you feel how that conversation went?
Lex Fridman (1:07:21.060)
And maybe broadly, how do you see the story
Lex Fridman (1:07:25.580)
as it's unfolding of Ivermectin from the origins
Lex Fridman (1:07:30.420)
from before COVID 19 through 2020 to today?
Lex Fridman (1:07:34.980)
I very much enjoyed talking to Joe
Lex Fridman (1:07:36.820)
and I'm undescribably grateful
Lex Fridman (1:07:41.380)
that he would take the risk of such a discussion,
Bret Weinstein (1:07:44.380)
that he would, as he described it,
Lex Fridman (1:07:46.460)
do an emergency podcast on the subject,
Bret Weinstein (1:07:49.420)
which I think that was not an exaggeration.
Lex Fridman (1:07:52.060)
This needed to happen for various reasons
Bret Weinstein (1:07:55.420)
that he took us down the road of talking about
Lex Fridman (1:07:59.780)
the censorship campaign against Ivermectin,
Bret Weinstein (1:08:01.940)
which I find utterly shocking
Lex Fridman (1:08:04.860)
and talking about the drug itself.
Lex Fridman (1:08:07.180)
And I should say we talked, we had Pierre Corey available.
Lex Fridman (1:08:10.900)
He came on the podcast as well.
Bret Weinstein (1:08:12.780)
He is, of course, the face of the FLCCC,
Lex Fridman (1:08:17.100)
the Frontline COVID 19 Critical Care Alliance.
Bret Weinstein (1:08:20.500)
These are doctors who have innovated ways
Lex Fridman (1:08:23.780)
of treating COVID patients and they happened on Ivermectin
Lex Fridman (1:08:26.780)
and have been using it.
Lex Fridman (1:08:29.580)
And I hesitate to use the word advocating for it
Bret Weinstein (1:08:32.980)
because that's not really the role of doctors or scientists,
Lex Fridman (1:08:36.180)
but they are advocating for it in the sense
Bret Weinstein (1:08:38.300)
that there is this pressure not to talk about
Lex Fridman (1:08:41.620)
its effectiveness for reasons that we can go into.
Lex Fridman (1:08:44.900)
So maybe step back and say, what is Ivermectin
Lex Fridman (1:08:48.660)
and how much studies have been done
Lex Fridman (1:08:52.060)
to show its effectiveness?
Lex Fridman (1:08:54.500)
So Ivermectin is an interesting drug.
Bret Weinstein (1:08:56.460)
It was discovered in the 70s
Lex Fridman (1:08:58.940)
by a Japanese scientist named Satoshi Omura
Lex Fridman (1:09:03.380)
and he found it in soil near a Japanese golf course.
Lex Fridman (1:09:08.180)
So I would just point out in passing
Bret Weinstein (1:09:10.500)
that if we were to stop self silencing
Lex Fridman (1:09:12.980)
over the possibility that Asians will be demonized
Bret Weinstein (1:09:17.300)
over the possible lab leak in Wuhan
Lex Fridman (1:09:20.020)
and to recognize that actually the natural course
Bret Weinstein (1:09:22.620)
of the story has a likely lab leak in China,
Lex Fridman (1:09:27.620)
it has a unlikely hero in Japan,
Bret Weinstein (1:09:32.780)
the story is naturally not a simple one.
Lex Fridman (1:09:36.820)
But in any case, Omura discovered this molecule.
Bret Weinstein (1:09:40.900)
He sent it to a friend who was at Merck,
Lex Fridman (1:09:45.540)
scientist named Campbell.
Bret Weinstein (1:09:46.860)
They won a Nobel Prize for the discovery
Lex Fridman (1:09:50.460)
of the Ivermectin molecule in 2015.
Bret Weinstein (1:09:54.980)
Its initial use was in treating parasitic infections.
Lex Fridman (1:09:58.580)
It's very effective in treating the worm
Bret Weinstein (1:10:02.460)
that causes river blindness,
Lex Fridman (1:10:04.900)
the pathogen that causes elephantitis, scabies.
Bret Weinstein (1:10:08.700)
It's a very effective anti parasite drug.
Lex Fridman (1:10:10.860)
It's extremely safe.
Bret Weinstein (1:10:11.980)
It's on the WHO's list of essential medications.
Lex Fridman (1:10:14.620)
It's safe for children.
Bret Weinstein (1:10:16.860)
It has been administered something like 4 billion times
Lex Fridman (1:10:20.100)
in the last four decades.
Bret Weinstein (1:10:22.260)
It has been given away in the millions of doses
Lex Fridman (1:10:25.420)
by Merck in Africa.
Bret Weinstein (1:10:27.780)
People have been on it for long periods of time.
Lex Fridman (1:10:30.740)
And in fact, one of the reasons
Bret Weinstein (1:10:32.500)
that Africa may have had less severe impacts from COVID 19
Lex Fridman (1:10:36.700)
is that Ivermectin is widely used there to prevent parasites
Lex Fridman (1:10:40.740)
and the drug appears to have a long lasting impact.
Lex Fridman (1:10:43.140)
So it's an interesting molecule.
Bret Weinstein (1:10:45.500)
It was discovered some time ago apparently
Lex Fridman (1:10:49.340)
that it has antiviral properties.
Lex Fridman (1:10:50.940)
And so it was tested early in the COVID 19 pandemic
Lex Fridman (1:10:54.660)
to see if it might work to treat humans with COVID.
Bret Weinstein (1:10:58.540)
It turned out to have very promising evidence
Lex Fridman (1:11:02.060)
that it did treat humans.
Bret Weinstein (1:11:03.420)
It was tested in tissues.
Lex Fridman (1:11:04.940)
It was tested at a very high dosage, which confuses people.
Bret Weinstein (1:11:08.700)
They think that those of us who believe
Lex Fridman (1:11:10.860)
that Ivermectin might be useful in confronting this disease
Bret Weinstein (1:11:14.620)
are advocating those high doses, which is not the case.
Lex Fridman (1:11:17.380)
But in any case, there have been quite a number of studies.
Bret Weinstein (1:11:20.580)
A wonderful meta analysis was finally released.
Lex Fridman (1:11:23.780)
We had seen it in preprint version,
Lex Fridman (1:11:25.420)
but it was finally peer reviewed and published this last week.
Lex Fridman (1:11:29.580)
It reveals that the drug, as clinicians have been telling us,
Bret Weinstein (1:11:34.060)
those who have been using it,
Lex Fridman (1:11:35.060)
it's highly effective at treating people with the disease,
Bret Weinstein (1:11:37.620)
especially if you get to them early.
Lex Fridman (1:11:39.420)
And it showed an 86% effectiveness as a prophylactic
Bret Weinstein (1:11:43.300)
to prevent people from contracting COVID.
Lex Fridman (1:11:46.300)
And that number, 86%, is high enough
Bret Weinstein (1:11:49.780)
to drive SARS CoV2 to extinction if we wished to deploy it.
Lex Fridman (1:11:55.340)
First of all, the meta analysis,
Bret Weinstein (1:11:58.340)
is this the Ivermectin for COVID 19
Lex Fridman (1:12:01.540)
real time meta analysis of 60 studies?
Bret Weinstein (1:12:04.300)
Or there's a bunch of meta analysis there.
Lex Fridman (1:12:06.300)
Because I was really impressed by the real time meta analysis
Bret Weinstein (1:12:09.180)
that keeps getting updated.
Lex Fridman (1:12:11.340)
I don't know if it's the same kind of thing.
Lex Fridman (1:12:12.420)
The one at ivmmeta.com?
Lex Fridman (1:12:18.060)
Well, I saw it at c19ivermeta.com.
Bret Weinstein (1:12:21.780)
No, this is not that meta analysis.
Lex Fridman (1:12:24.020)
So that is, as you say, a living meta analysis
Bret Weinstein (1:12:26.140)
where you can watch as evidence rolls in.
Lex Fridman (1:12:27.780)
Which is super cool, by the way.
Bret Weinstein (1:12:29.100)
It's really cool.
Lex Fridman (1:12:29.940)
And they've got some really nice graphics
Lex Fridman (1:12:32.220)
that allow you to understand, well, what is the evidence?
Lex Fridman (1:12:35.100)
It's concentrated around this level of effectiveness,
Bret Weinstein (1:12:37.620)
et cetera.
Lex Fridman (1:12:38.460)
So anyway, it's a great site, well worth paying attention to.
Bret Weinstein (1:12:40.900)
No, this is a meta analysis.
Lex Fridman (1:12:43.540)
I don't know any of the authors but one.
Bret Weinstein (1:12:46.380)
Second author is Tess Lorry of the BIRD group.
Lex Fridman (1:12:49.380)
BIRD being a group of analysts and doctors in Britain
Bret Weinstein (1:12:55.620)
that is playing a role similar to the FLCCC here in the US.
Lex Fridman (1:13:00.540)
So anyway, this is a meta analysis
Bret Weinstein (1:13:02.020)
that Tess Lorry and others did
Lex Fridman (1:13:06.220)
of all of the available evidence.
Lex Fridman (1:13:08.100)
And it's quite compelling.
Lex Fridman (1:13:10.700)
People can look for it on my Twitter.
Bret Weinstein (1:13:12.820)
I will put it up and people can find it there.
Lex Fridman (1:13:15.100)
So what about dose here?
Bret Weinstein (1:13:18.860)
In terms of safety, what do we understand
Lex Fridman (1:13:22.260)
about the kind of dose required
Lex Fridman (1:13:23.780)
to have that level of effectiveness?
Lex Fridman (1:13:26.820)
And what do we understand about the safety
Lex Fridman (1:13:29.140)
of that kind of dose?
Lex Fridman (1:13:30.180)
So let me just say, I'm not a medical doctor.
Bret Weinstein (1:13:32.540)
I'm a biologist.
Lex Fridman (1:13:34.420)
I'm on ivermectin in lieu of vaccination.
Bret Weinstein (1:13:39.180)
In terms of dosage, there is one reason for concern,
Lex Fridman (1:13:42.500)
which is that the most effective dose for prophylaxis
Bret Weinstein (1:13:45.740)
involves something like weekly administration.
Lex Fridman (1:13:49.460)
And because that is not a historical pattern of use
Bret Weinstein (1:13:53.660)
for the drug, it is possible
Lex Fridman (1:13:56.380)
that there is some longterm implication
Bret Weinstein (1:13:58.020)
of being on it weekly for a long period of time.
Lex Fridman (1:14:02.460)
There's not a strong indication of that.
Bret Weinstein (1:14:04.100)
The safety signal that we have over people using the drug
Lex Fridman (1:14:07.660)
over many years and using it in high doses.
Bret Weinstein (1:14:10.020)
In fact, Dr. Corey told me yesterday
Lex Fridman (1:14:13.500)
that there are cases in which people
Bret Weinstein (1:14:15.340)
have made calculation errors
Lex Fridman (1:14:17.660)
and taken a massive overdose of the drug
Lex Fridman (1:14:19.820)
and had no ill effect.
Lex Fridman (1:14:21.420)
So anyway, there's lots of reasons
Bret Weinstein (1:14:23.300)
to think the drug is comparatively safe,
Lex Fridman (1:14:24.860)
but no drug is perfectly safe.
Lex Fridman (1:14:27.060)
And I do worry about the longterm implications
Lex Fridman (1:14:29.700)
of taking it.
Bret Weinstein (1:14:30.740)
I also think it's very likely
Lex Fridman (1:14:32.580)
that because the drug is administered
Bret Weinstein (1:14:37.900)
in a dose something like, let's say 15 milligrams
Lex Fridman (1:14:42.220)
for somebody my size once a week
Bret Weinstein (1:14:44.860)
after you've gone through the initial double dose
Lex Fridman (1:14:48.540)
that you take 48 hours apart,
Bret Weinstein (1:14:51.340)
it is apparent that if the amount of drug in your system
Lex Fridman (1:14:55.340)
is sufficient to be protective at the end of the week,
Bret Weinstein (1:14:58.300)
then it was probably far too high
Lex Fridman (1:15:00.140)
at the beginning of the week.
Lex Fridman (1:15:01.300)
So there's a question about whether or not
Lex Fridman (1:15:03.340)
you could flatten out the intake
Lex Fridman (1:15:05.940)
so that the amount of ivermectin goes down,
Lex Fridman (1:15:09.780)
but the protection remains.
Bret Weinstein (1:15:10.940)
I have little doubt that that would be discovered
Lex Fridman (1:15:13.180)
if we looked for it.
Lex Fridman (1:15:15.180)
But that said, it does seem to be quite safe,
Lex Fridman (1:15:18.900)
highly effective at preventing COVID.
Bret Weinstein (1:15:21.020)
The 86% number is plenty high enough
Lex Fridman (1:15:23.980)
for us to drive SARS CoV2 to extinction
Bret Weinstein (1:15:27.700)
in light of its R0 number of slightly more than two.
Lex Fridman (1:15:33.140)
And so why we are not using it is a bit of a mystery.
Lex Fridman (1:15:36.660)
So even if everything you said now
Lex Fridman (1:15:39.140)
turns out to be not correct,
Bret Weinstein (1:15:42.740)
it is nevertheless obvious that it's sufficiently promising
Lex Fridman (1:15:46.860)
and it always has been in order to merit rigorous
Bret Weinstein (1:15:50.500)
scientific exploration, investigation,
Lex Fridman (1:15:53.340)
doing a lot of studies and certainly not censoring
Bret Weinstein (1:15:57.860)
the science or the discussion of it.
Lex Fridman (1:16:00.260)
So before we talk about the various vaccines for COVID 19,
Bret Weinstein (1:16:06.020)
I'd like to talk to you about censorship.
Lex Fridman (1:16:08.180)
Given everything you're saying,
Lex Fridman (1:16:10.100)
why did YouTube and other places
Lex Fridman (1:16:14.740)
censor discussion of ivermectin?
Bret Weinstein (1:16:19.740)
Well, there's a question about why they say they did it
Lex Fridman (1:16:21.940)
and there's a question about why they actually did it.
Bret Weinstein (1:16:24.620)
Now, it is worth mentioning
Lex Fridman (1:16:27.260)
that YouTube is part of a consortium.
Bret Weinstein (1:16:31.540)
It is partnered with Twitter, Facebook, Reuters, AP,
Lex Fridman (1:16:36.980)
Financial Times, Washington Post,
Bret Weinstein (1:16:40.180)
some other notable organizations.
Lex Fridman (1:16:42.780)
And that this group has appointed itself
Bret Weinstein (1:16:46.780)
the arbiter of truth.
Lex Fridman (1:16:48.620)
In effect, they have decided to control discussion
Bret Weinstein (1:16:53.140)
ostensibly to prevent the distribution of misinformation.
Lex Fridman (1:16:57.620)
Now, how have they chosen to do that?
Bret Weinstein (1:16:59.220)
In this case, they have chosen to simply utilize
Lex Fridman (1:17:03.420)
the recommendations of the WHO and the CDC
Lex Fridman (1:17:06.780)
and apply them as if they are synonymous
Lex Fridman (1:17:09.020)
with scientific truth.
Bret Weinstein (1:17:11.180)
Problem, even at their best,
Lex Fridman (1:17:14.260)
the WHO and CDC are not scientific entities.
Bret Weinstein (1:17:17.340)
They are entities that are about public health.
Lex Fridman (1:17:20.900)
And public health has this, whether it's right or not,
Lex Fridman (1:17:24.700)
and I believe I disagree with it,
Lex Fridman (1:17:26.780)
but it has this self assigned right to lie
Bret Weinstein (1:17:34.660)
that comes from the fact that there is game theory
Lex Fridman (1:17:36.740)
that works against, for example,
Bret Weinstein (1:17:38.580)
a successful vaccination campaign.
Lex Fridman (1:17:40.580)
That if everybody else takes a vaccine
Lex Fridman (1:17:44.660)
and therefore the herd becomes immune through vaccination
Lex Fridman (1:17:48.260)
and you decide not to take a vaccine,
Bret Weinstein (1:17:50.540)
then you benefit from the immunity of the herd
Lex Fridman (1:17:52.980)
without having taken the risk.
Lex Fridman (1:17:55.060)
So people who do best are the people who opt out.
Lex Fridman (1:17:58.620)
That's a hazard.
Lex Fridman (1:17:59.660)
And the WHO and CDC as public health entities
Lex Fridman (1:18:02.340)
effectively oversimplify stories in order to make sense
Bret Weinstein (1:18:07.340)
of oversimplify stories in order that that game theory
Lex Fridman (1:18:11.620)
does not cause a predictable tragedy of the commons.
Bret Weinstein (1:18:15.620)
With that said, once that right to lie exists,
Lex Fridman (1:18:19.260)
then it turns out to serve the interests of,
Bret Weinstein (1:18:23.020)
for example, pharmaceutical companies,
Lex Fridman (1:18:25.100)
which have emergency use authorizations
Bret Weinstein (1:18:27.140)
that require that there not be a safe
Lex Fridman (1:18:28.860)
and effective treatment and have immunity from liability
Bret Weinstein (1:18:31.980)
for harms caused by their product.
Lex Fridman (1:18:34.780)
So that's a recipe for disaster, right?
Bret Weinstein (1:18:37.420)
You don't need to be a sophisticated thinker
Lex Fridman (1:18:40.980)
about complex systems to see the hazard
Bret Weinstein (1:18:43.140)
of immunizing a company from the harm of its own product
Lex Fridman (1:18:48.300)
at the same time that that product can only exist
Bret Weinstein (1:18:51.620)
in the market if some other product that works better
Lex Fridman (1:18:55.180)
somehow fails to be noticed.
Lex Fridman (1:18:57.100)
So somehow YouTube is doing the bidding of Merck and others.
Lex Fridman (1:19:02.380)
Whether it knows that that's what it's doing,
Bret Weinstein (1:19:03.980)
I have no idea.
Lex Fridman (1:19:05.020)
I think this may be another case of an autopilot
Bret Weinstein (1:19:08.380)
that thinks it's doing the right thing
Lex Fridman (1:19:09.660)
because it's parroting the corrupt wisdom
Bret Weinstein (1:19:12.980)
of the WHO and the CDC,
Lex Fridman (1:19:14.340)
but the WHO and the CDC have been wrong again and again
Bret Weinstein (1:19:17.020)
in this pandemic.
Lex Fridman (1:19:18.100)
And the irony here is that with YouTube coming after me,
Bret Weinstein (1:19:22.260)
well, my channel has been right where the WHO and CDC
Lex Fridman (1:19:25.620)
have been wrong consistently over the whole pandemic.
Lex Fridman (1:19:29.060)
So how is it that YouTube is censoring us
Lex Fridman (1:19:32.980)
because the WHO and CDC disagree with us
Bret Weinstein (1:19:35.140)
when in fact, in past disagreements,
Lex Fridman (1:19:36.940)
we've been right and they've been wrong?
Bret Weinstein (1:19:38.620)
There's so much to talk about here.
Lex Fridman (1:19:41.500)
So I've heard this many times actually
Bret Weinstein (1:19:47.060)
on the inside of YouTube and with colleagues
Lex Fridman (1:19:49.820)
that I've talked with is they kind of in a very casual way
Bret Weinstein (1:19:55.540)
say their job is simply to slow
Lex Fridman (1:19:59.620)
or prevent the spread of misinformation.
Lex Fridman (1:20:03.820)
And they say like, that's an easy thing to do.
Lex Fridman (1:20:06.940)
Like to know what is true or not is an easy thing to do.
Lex Fridman (1:20:11.780)
And so from the YouTube perspective,
Lex Fridman (1:20:14.300)
I think they basically outsource of the task
Bret Weinstein (1:20:21.180)
of knowing what is true or not to public institutions
Lex Fridman (1:20:25.340)
that on a basic Google search claim
Bret Weinstein (1:20:29.260)
to be the arbiters of truth.
Lex Fridman (1:20:32.980)
So if you were YouTube who are exceptionally profitable
Lex Fridman (1:20:38.780)
and exceptionally powerful in terms of controlling
Lex Fridman (1:20:43.300)
what people get to see or not, what would you do?
Bret Weinstein (1:20:46.980)
Would you take a stand, a public stand
Lex Fridman (1:20:49.820)
against the WHO, CDC?
Lex Fridman (1:20:54.020)
Or would you instead say, you know what?
Lex Fridman (1:20:57.460)
Let's open the dam and let any video on anything fly.
Lex Fridman (1:21:02.940)
What do you do here?
Lex Fridman (1:21:04.900)
Say you were put, if Brent Weinstein was put in charge
Bret Weinstein (1:21:08.420)
of YouTube for a month in this most critical of times
Lex Fridman (1:21:13.180)
where YouTube actually has incredible amounts of power
Bret Weinstein (1:21:16.100)
to educate the populace, to give power of knowledge
Lex Fridman (1:21:20.900)
to the populace such that they can reform institutions.
Lex Fridman (1:21:24.260)
What would you do?
Lex Fridman (1:21:25.100)
How would you run YouTube?
Bret Weinstein (1:21:26.820)
Well, unfortunately, or fortunately,
Lex Fridman (1:21:29.540)
this is actually quite simple.
Bret Weinstein (1:21:32.380)
The founders, the American founders,
Lex Fridman (1:21:34.700)
settled on a counterintuitive formulation
Bret Weinstein (1:21:37.900)
that people should be free to say anything.
Lex Fridman (1:21:41.100)
They should be free from the government
Bret Weinstein (1:21:43.340)
blocking them from doing so.
Lex Fridman (1:21:45.380)
They did not imagine that in formulating that right,
Bret Weinstein (1:21:48.620)
that most of what was said would be of high quality,
Lex Fridman (1:21:51.460)
nor did they imagine it would be free of harmful things.
Lex Fridman (1:21:54.500)
What they correctly reasoned was that the benefit
Lex Fridman (1:21:57.660)
of leaving everything so it can be said exceeds the cost,
Bret Weinstein (1:22:02.460)
which everyone understands to be substantial.
Lex Fridman (1:22:05.740)
What I would say is they could not have anticipated
Bret Weinstein (1:22:09.620)
the impact, the centrality of platforms
Lex Fridman (1:22:13.580)
like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, et cetera.
Bret Weinstein (1:22:16.980)
If they had, they would not have limited
Lex Fridman (1:22:20.140)
the First Amendment as they did.
Bret Weinstein (1:22:21.980)
They clearly understood that the power of the federal
Lex Fridman (1:22:24.820)
government was so great that it needed to be limited
Bret Weinstein (1:22:29.820)
by granting explicitly the right of citizens
Lex Fridman (1:22:32.900)
to say anything.
Bret Weinstein (1:22:34.820)
In fact, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook may be more powerful
Lex Fridman (1:22:39.940)
in this moment than the federal government
Bret Weinstein (1:22:42.100)
of their worst nightmares could have been.
Lex Fridman (1:22:44.140)
The power that these entities have to control thought
Lex Fridman (1:22:47.620)
and to shift civilization is so great
Lex Fridman (1:22:50.300)
that we need to have those same protections.
Bret Weinstein (1:22:52.420)
It doesn't mean that harmful things won't be said,
Lex Fridman (1:22:54.500)
but it means that nothing has changed
Bret Weinstein (1:22:56.380)
about the cost benefit analysis
Lex Fridman (1:22:59.020)
of building the right to censor.
Lex Fridman (1:23:01.060)
So if I were running YouTube,
Lex Fridman (1:23:03.260)
the limit of what should be allowed
Lex Fridman (1:23:06.100)
is the limit of the law, right?
Lex Fridman (1:23:08.380)
If what you are doing is legal,
Bret Weinstein (1:23:10.580)
then it should not be YouTube's place
Lex Fridman (1:23:12.420)
to limit what gets said or who gets to hear it.
Bret Weinstein (1:23:15.620)
That is between speakers and audience.
Lex Fridman (1:23:18.060)
Will harm come from that? Of course it will.
Lex Fridman (1:23:20.420)
But will net harm come from it?
Lex Fridman (1:23:22.940)
No, I don't believe it will.
Bret Weinstein (1:23:24.260)
I believe that allowing everything to be said
Lex Fridman (1:23:26.220)
does allow a process in which better ideas
Bret Weinstein (1:23:29.100)
do come to the fore and win out.
Lex Fridman (1:23:31.060)
So you believe that in the end,
Bret Weinstein (1:23:33.820)
when there's complete freedom to share ideas,
Lex Fridman (1:23:37.580)
that truth will win out.
Lex Fridman (1:23:39.780)
So what I've noticed, just as a brief side comment,
Lex Fridman (1:23:44.020)
that certain things become viral
Bret Weinstein (1:23:48.300)
irregardless of their truth.
Lex Fridman (1:23:51.020)
I've noticed that things that are dramatic and or funny,
Bret Weinstein (1:23:55.900)
like things that become memes are not,
Lex Fridman (1:23:58.540)
don't have to be grounded in truth.
Lex Fridman (1:24:00.740)
And so that what worries me there
Lex Fridman (1:24:03.140)
is that we basically maximize for drama
Bret Weinstein (1:24:08.420)
versus maximize for truth in a system
Lex Fridman (1:24:10.380)
where everything is free.
Lex Fridman (1:24:12.820)
And that is worrying in the time of emergency.
Lex Fridman (1:24:16.260)
Well, yes, it's all worrying in time of emergency,
Bret Weinstein (1:24:18.900)
to be sure.
Lex Fridman (1:24:19.740)
But I want you to notice that what you've happened on
Bret Weinstein (1:24:22.300)
is actually an analog for a much deeper and older problem.
Lex Fridman (1:24:26.740)
Human beings are the, we are not a blank slate,
Lex Fridman (1:24:31.500)
but we are the blankest slate that nature has ever devised.
Lex Fridman (1:24:34.060)
And there's a reason for that, right?
Bret Weinstein (1:24:35.540)
It's where our flexibility comes from.
Lex Fridman (1:24:39.340)
We have effectively, we are robots
Bret Weinstein (1:24:42.500)
in which a large fraction of the cognitive capacity
Lex Fridman (1:24:47.060)
has been, or of the behavioral capacity,
Bret Weinstein (1:24:50.500)
has been offloaded to the software layer,
Lex Fridman (1:24:52.500)
which gets written and rewritten over evolutionary time.
Bret Weinstein (1:24:57.060)
That means effectively that much of what we are,
Lex Fridman (1:25:00.980)
in fact, the important part of what we are
Bret Weinstein (1:25:02.700)
is housed in the cultural layer and the conscious layer
Lex Fridman (1:25:06.340)
and not in the hardware hard coding layer.
Lex Fridman (1:25:08.900)
So that layer is prone to make errors, right?
Lex Fridman (1:25:14.300)
And anybody who's watched a child grow up
Lex Fridman (1:25:17.740)
knows that children make absurd errors all the time, right?
Lex Fridman (1:25:20.660)
That's part of the process, as we were discussing earlier.
Bret Weinstein (1:25:24.220)
It is also true that as you look across
Lex Fridman (1:25:26.540)
a field of people discussing things,
Bret Weinstein (1:25:29.580)
a lot of what is said is pure nonsense, it's garbage.
Lex Fridman (1:25:33.020)
But the tendency of garbage to emerge
Lex Fridman (1:25:37.500)
and even to spread in the short term
Lex Fridman (1:25:39.820)
does not say that over the long term,
Lex Fridman (1:25:41.900)
what sticks is not the valuable ideas.
Lex Fridman (1:25:45.900)
So there is a high tendency for novelty
Bret Weinstein (1:25:49.780)
to be created in the cultural space,
Lex Fridman (1:25:51.300)
but there's also a high tendency for it to go extinct.
Lex Fridman (1:25:54.020)
And you have to keep that in mind.
Lex Fridman (1:25:55.300)
It's not like the genome, right?
Bret Weinstein (1:25:57.100)
Everything is happening at a much higher rate.
Lex Fridman (1:25:59.460)
Things are being created, they're being destroyed.
Lex Fridman (1:26:01.500)
And I can't say that, I mean, obviously,
Lex Fridman (1:26:04.620)
we've seen totalitarianism arise many times,
Lex Fridman (1:26:08.060)
and it's very destructive each time it does.
Lex Fridman (1:26:10.620)
So it's not like, hey, freedom to come up
Bret Weinstein (1:26:13.100)
with any idea you want hasn't produced a whole lot of carnage.
Lex Fridman (1:26:16.460)
But the question is, over time,
Lex Fridman (1:26:18.580)
does it produce more open, fairer, more decent societies?
Lex Fridman (1:26:23.100)
And I believe that it does.
Bret Weinstein (1:26:24.580)
I can't prove it, but that does seem to be the pattern.
Lex Fridman (1:26:27.620)
I believe so as well.
Bret Weinstein (1:26:29.660)
The thing is, in the short term, freedom of speech,
Lex Fridman (1:26:35.100)
absolute freedom of speech can be quite destructive.
Lex Fridman (1:26:38.740)
But you nevertheless have to hold on to that,
Lex Fridman (1:26:42.580)
because in the long term, I think you and I, I guess,
Bret Weinstein (1:26:46.860)
are optimistic in the sense that good ideas will win out.
Lex Fridman (1:26:51.500)
I don't know how strongly I believe that it will work,
Lex Fridman (1:26:54.780)
but I will say I haven't heard a better idea.
Lex Fridman (1:26:56.620)
I would also point out that there's something
Bret Weinstein (1:27:01.780)
very significant in this question of the hubris involved
Lex Fridman (1:27:06.340)
in imagining that you're going to improve the discussion
Bret Weinstein (1:27:08.980)
by censoring, which is the majority of concepts
Lex Fridman (1:27:14.540)
at the fringe are nonsense.
Bret Weinstein (1:27:18.300)
That's automatic.
Lex Fridman (1:27:19.580)
But the heterodoxy at the fringe,
Bret Weinstein (1:27:23.260)
which is indistinguishable at the beginning
Lex Fridman (1:27:25.980)
from the nonsense ideas, is the key to progress.
Lex Fridman (1:27:30.340)
So if you decide, hey, the fringe is 99% garbage,
Lex Fridman (1:27:34.220)
let's just get rid of it, right?
Bret Weinstein (1:27:35.860)
Hey, that's a strong win.
Lex Fridman (1:27:36.900)
We're getting rid of 99% garbage for 1% something or other.
Lex Fridman (1:27:40.620)
And the point is, yeah, but that 1% something or other
Lex Fridman (1:27:42.740)
is the key.
Bret Weinstein (1:27:43.820)
You're throwing out the key.
Lex Fridman (1:27:45.500)
And so that's what YouTube is doing.
Bret Weinstein (1:27:48.380)
Frankly, I think at the point that it started censoring
Lex Fridman (1:27:50.900)
my channel, in the immediate aftermath
Bret Weinstein (1:27:53.900)
of this major reversal over LabLeak,
Lex Fridman (1:27:56.660)
it should have looked at itself and said,
Lex Fridman (1:27:57.900)
well, what the hell are we doing?
Lex Fridman (1:27:59.500)
Who are we censoring?
Lex Fridman (1:28:00.340)
We're censoring somebody who was just right, right?
Lex Fridman (1:28:03.260)
In a conflict with the very same people
Lex Fridman (1:28:05.300)
on whose behalf we are now censoring, right?
Lex Fridman (1:28:07.540)
That should have caused them to wake up.
Lex Fridman (1:28:09.380)
So you said one approach, if you're on YouTube,
Lex Fridman (1:28:11.420)
is this basically let all videos go
Bret Weinstein (1:28:15.540)
that do not violate the law.
Lex Fridman (1:28:16.900)
Well, I should fix that, okay?
Bret Weinstein (1:28:18.500)
I believe that that is the basic principle.
Lex Fridman (1:28:20.700)
Eric makes an excellent point about the distinction
Bret Weinstein (1:28:23.460)
between ideas and personal attacks,
Lex Fridman (1:28:26.740)
doxxing, these other things.
Lex Fridman (1:28:28.420)
So I agree, there's no value in allowing people
Lex Fridman (1:28:31.420)
to destroy each other's lives,
Bret Weinstein (1:28:33.180)
even if there's a technical legal defense for it.
Lex Fridman (1:28:36.780)
Now, how you draw that line, I don't know.
Lex Fridman (1:28:39.100)
But what I'm talking about is,
Lex Fridman (1:28:41.620)
yes, people should be free to traffic in bad ideas,
Lex Fridman (1:28:44.060)
and they should be free to expose that the ideas are bad.
Lex Fridman (1:28:47.140)
And hopefully that process results
Bret Weinstein (1:28:49.020)
in better ideas winning out.
Lex Fridman (1:28:50.620)
Yeah, there's an interesting line between ideas,
Bret Weinstein (1:28:55.260)
like the earth is flat,
Lex Fridman (1:28:56.620)
which I believe you should not censor.
Lex Fridman (1:28:59.980)
And then you start to encroach on personal attacks.
Lex Fridman (1:29:04.380)
So not doxxing, yes, but not even getting to that.
Bret Weinstein (1:29:08.460)
There's a certain point where it's like,
Lex Fridman (1:29:10.700)
that's no longer ideas, that's more,
Bret Weinstein (1:29:15.380)
that's somehow not productive, even if it's wrong.
Lex Fridman (1:29:18.460)
It feels like believing the earth is flat
Bret Weinstein (1:29:20.900)
is somehow productive,
Lex Fridman (1:29:22.380)
because maybe there's a tiny percent chance it is.
Bret Weinstein (1:29:27.420)
It just feels like personal attacks, it doesn't,
Lex Fridman (1:29:31.380)
well, I'm torn on this
Bret Weinstein (1:29:33.420)
because there's assholes in this world,
Lex Fridman (1:29:36.060)
there's fraudulent people in this world.
Lex Fridman (1:29:37.780)
So sometimes personal attacks are useful to reveal that,
Lex Fridman (1:29:41.780)
but there's a line you can cross.
Bret Weinstein (1:29:44.780)
There's a comedy where people make fun of others.
Lex Fridman (1:29:48.460)
I think that's amazing, that's very powerful,
Lex Fridman (1:29:50.820)
and that's very useful, even if it's painful.
Lex Fridman (1:29:53.180)
But then there's like, once it gets to be,
Bret Weinstein (1:29:57.420)
yeah, there's a certain line,
Lex Fridman (1:29:58.460)
it's a gray area where you cross,
Bret Weinstein (1:30:00.140)
where it's no longer in any possible world productive.
Lex Fridman (1:30:04.940)
And that's a really weird gray area
Bret Weinstein (1:30:07.660)
for YouTube to operate in.
Lex Fridman (1:30:09.260)
And that feels like it should be a crowdsource thing,
Bret Weinstein (1:30:12.620)
where people vote on it.
Lex Fridman (1:30:13.820)
But then again, do you trust the majority to vote
Lex Fridman (1:30:16.540)
on what is crossing the line and not?
Lex Fridman (1:30:19.060)
I mean, this is where,
Bret Weinstein (1:30:21.100)
this is really interesting on this particular,
Lex Fridman (1:30:24.180)
like the scientific aspect of this.
Lex Fridman (1:30:27.220)
Do you think YouTube should take more of a stance,
Lex Fridman (1:30:30.980)
not censoring, but to actually have scientists
Bret Weinstein (1:30:35.780)
within YouTube having these kinds of discussions,
Lex Fridman (1:30:39.020)
and then be able to almost speak out in a transparent way,
Bret Weinstein (1:30:42.180)
this is what we're going to let this video stand,
Lex Fridman (1:30:45.180)
but here's all these other opinions.
Bret Weinstein (1:30:47.580)
Almost like take a more active role
Lex Fridman (1:30:49.820)
in its recommendation system,
Bret Weinstein (1:30:52.460)
in trying to present a full picture to you.
Lex Fridman (1:30:55.420)
Right now they're not,
Bret Weinstein (1:30:57.180)
the recommender systems are not human fine tuned.
Lex Fridman (1:31:01.020)
They're all based on how you click,
Lex Fridman (1:31:03.100)
and there's this clustering algorithms.
Lex Fridman (1:31:05.460)
They're not taking an active role
Bret Weinstein (1:31:07.180)
on giving you the full spectrum of ideas
Lex Fridman (1:31:09.580)
in the space of science.
Bret Weinstein (1:31:11.060)
They just censor or not.
Lex Fridman (1:31:12.980)
Well, at the moment,
Bret Weinstein (1:31:15.020)
it's gonna be pretty hard to compel me
Lex Fridman (1:31:17.260)
that these people should be trusted
Bret Weinstein (1:31:18.820)
with any sort of curation or comment
Lex Fridman (1:31:22.500)
on matters of evidence,
Bret Weinstein (1:31:24.700)
because they have demonstrated
Lex Fridman (1:31:26.060)
that they are incapable of doing it well.
Bret Weinstein (1:31:29.340)
You could make such an argument,
Lex Fridman (1:31:30.900)
and I guess I'm open to the idea of institutions
Bret Weinstein (1:31:34.260)
that would look something like YouTube,
Lex Fridman (1:31:36.300)
that would be capable of offering something valuable.
Bret Weinstein (1:31:39.060)
I mean, and even just the fact of them
Lex Fridman (1:31:41.300)
literally curating things and putting some videos
Bret Weinstein (1:31:43.700)
next to others implies something.
Lex Fridman (1:31:47.580)
So yeah, there's a question to be answered,
Lex Fridman (1:31:49.540)
but at the moment, no.
Lex Fridman (1:31:51.700)
At the moment, what it is doing
Bret Weinstein (1:31:53.300)
is quite literally putting not only individual humans
Lex Fridman (1:31:57.300)
in tremendous jeopardy by censoring discussion
Bret Weinstein (1:32:00.700)
of useful tools and making tools that are more hazardous
Lex Fridman (1:32:04.460)
than has been acknowledged seem safe, right?
Lex Fridman (1:32:07.420)
But it is also placing humanity in danger
Lex Fridman (1:32:10.540)
of a permanent relationship with this pathogen.
Bret Weinstein (1:32:13.580)
I cannot emphasize enough how expensive that is.
Lex Fridman (1:32:16.820)
It's effectively incalculable.
Bret Weinstein (1:32:18.820)
If the relationship becomes permanent,
Lex Fridman (1:32:20.500)
the number of people who will ultimately suffer
Lex Fridman (1:32:23.100)
and die from it is indefinitely large.
Lex Fridman (1:32:26.100)
Yeah, currently the algorithm is very rabbit hole driven,
Bret Weinstein (1:32:30.220)
meaning if you click on Flat Earth videos,
Lex Fridman (1:32:35.220)
that's all you're going to be presented with
Lex Fridman (1:32:38.580)
and you're not going to be nicely presented
Lex Fridman (1:32:40.980)
with arguments against the Flat Earth.
Lex Fridman (1:32:42.900)
And the flip side of that,
Lex Fridman (1:32:46.740)
if you watch like quantum mechanics videos
Bret Weinstein (1:32:48.580)
or no, general relativity videos,
Lex Fridman (1:32:50.820)
it's very rare you're going to get a recommendation.
Lex Fridman (1:32:53.180)
Have you considered the Earth is flat?
Lex Fridman (1:32:54.980)
And I think you should have both.
Bret Weinstein (1:32:57.540)
Same with vaccine.
Lex Fridman (1:32:58.980)
Videos that present the power and the incredible
Bret Weinstein (1:33:01.660)
like biology, genetics, virology about the vaccine,
Lex Fridman (1:33:06.700)
you're rarely going to get videos
Bret Weinstein (1:33:09.820)
from well respected scientific minds
Lex Fridman (1:33:14.420)
presenting possible dangers of the vaccine.
Lex Fridman (1:33:16.700)
And the vice versa is true as well,
Lex Fridman (1:33:19.140)
which is if you're looking at the dangers of the vaccine
Bret Weinstein (1:33:22.060)
on YouTube, you're not going to get the highest quality
Lex Fridman (1:33:25.620)
of videos recommended to you.
Lex Fridman (1:33:27.140)
And I'm not talking about like manually inserted CDC videos
Lex Fridman (1:33:30.860)
that are like the most untrustworthy things
Bret Weinstein (1:33:33.700)
you can possibly watch about how everybody
Lex Fridman (1:33:35.980)
should take the vaccine, it's the safest thing ever.
Bret Weinstein (1:33:38.380)
No, it's about incredible, again, MIT colleagues of mine,
Lex Fridman (1:33:42.060)
incredible biologists, virologists that talk about
Bret Weinstein (1:33:45.300)
the details of how the mRNA vaccines work
Lex Fridman (1:33:49.100)
and all those kinds of things.
Bret Weinstein (1:33:50.500)
I think maybe this is me with the AI hat on,
Lex Fridman (1:33:55.460)
is I think the algorithm can fix a lot of this
Lex Fridman (1:33:58.100)
and YouTube should build better algorithms
Lex Fridman (1:34:00.500)
and trust that to a couple of complete freedom of speech
Bret Weinstein (1:34:06.340)
to expand what people are able to think about,
Lex Fridman (1:34:10.860)
present always varied views,
Bret Weinstein (1:34:12.500)
not balanced in some artificial way, hard coded way,
Lex Fridman (1:34:16.300)
but balanced in a way that's crowdsourced.
Bret Weinstein (1:34:18.740)
I think that's an algorithm problem that can be solved
Lex Fridman (1:34:21.500)
because then you can delegate it to the algorithm
Bret Weinstein (1:34:25.460)
as opposed to this hard code censorship
Lex Fridman (1:34:29.580)
of basically creating artificial boundaries
Bret Weinstein (1:34:34.300)
on what can and can't be discussed,
Lex Fridman (1:34:36.140)
instead creating a full spectrum of exploration
Bret Weinstein (1:34:39.860)
that can be done and trusting the intelligence of people
Lex Fridman (1:34:43.220)
to do the exploration.
Bret Weinstein (1:34:45.340)
Well, there's a lot there.
Lex Fridman (1:34:47.060)
I would say we have to keep in mind
Bret Weinstein (1:34:49.260)
that we're talking about a publicly held company
Lex Fridman (1:34:53.660)
with shareholders and obligations to them
Lex Fridman (1:34:55.900)
and that that may make it impossible.
Lex Fridman (1:34:57.860)
And I remember many years ago,
Bret Weinstein (1:35:01.540)
back in the early days of Google,
Lex Fridman (1:35:03.820)
I remember a sense of terror at the loss of general search.
Bret Weinstein (1:35:10.780)
It used to be that Google, if you searched,
Lex Fridman (1:35:14.220)
came up with the same thing for everyone
Lex Fridman (1:35:16.100)
and then it got personalized and for a while
Lex Fridman (1:35:19.260)
it was possible to turn off the personalization,
Bret Weinstein (1:35:21.460)
which was still not great
Lex Fridman (1:35:22.780)
because if everybody else is looking
Bret Weinstein (1:35:24.140)
at a personalized search and you can tune into one
Lex Fridman (1:35:26.780)
that isn't personalized, that doesn't tell you
Lex Fridman (1:35:30.460)
why the world is sounding the way it is.
Lex Fridman (1:35:33.020)
But nonetheless, it was at least an option.
Lex Fridman (1:35:34.740)
And then that vanished.
Lex Fridman (1:35:35.940)
And the problem is I think this is literally deranging us.
Bret Weinstein (1:35:40.020)
That in effect, I mean, what you're describing
Lex Fridman (1:35:43.420)
is unthinkable.
Bret Weinstein (1:35:44.380)
It is unthinkable that in the face of a campaign
Lex Fridman (1:35:48.180)
to vaccinate people in order to reach herd immunity
Bret Weinstein (1:35:51.780)
that YouTube would give you videos on hazards of vaccines
Lex Fridman (1:35:59.060)
when this is, how hazardous the vaccines are
Bret Weinstein (1:36:02.140)
is an unsettled question.
Lex Fridman (1:36:04.020)
Why is it unthinkable?
Bret Weinstein (1:36:06.020)
That doesn't make any sense from a company perspective.
Lex Fridman (1:36:09.580)
If intelligent people in large amounts are open minded
Lex Fridman (1:36:16.380)
and are thinking through the hazards
Lex Fridman (1:36:19.100)
and the benefits of a vaccine, a company should find
Bret Weinstein (1:36:23.500)
the best videos to present what people are thinking about.
Lex Fridman (1:36:28.740)
Well, let's come up with a hypothetical.
Bret Weinstein (1:36:30.780)
Okay, let's come up with a very deadly disease
Lex Fridman (1:36:34.820)
for which there's a vaccine that is very safe,
Bret Weinstein (1:36:37.780)
though not perfectly safe.
Lex Fridman (1:36:40.060)
And we are then faced with YouTube trying to figure out
Lex Fridman (1:36:43.940)
what to do for somebody searching on vaccine safety.
Lex Fridman (1:36:47.300)
Suppose it is necessary in order to drive
Bret Weinstein (1:36:50.140)
the pathogen to extinction, something like smallpox,
Lex Fridman (1:36:53.140)
that people get on board with the vaccine.
Lex Fridman (1:36:57.180)
But there's a tiny fringe of people who thinks
Lex Fridman (1:36:59.740)
that the vaccine is a mind control agent.
Lex Fridman (1:37:05.460)
So should YouTube direct people to the only claims
Lex Fridman (1:37:11.340)
against this vaccine, which is that it's a mind control
Bret Weinstein (1:37:13.780)
agent when in fact the vaccine is very safe,
Lex Fridman (1:37:20.980)
whatever that means.
Bret Weinstein (1:37:22.380)
If that were the actual configuration of the puzzle,
Lex Fridman (1:37:25.500)
then YouTube would be doing active harm,
Bret Weinstein (1:37:28.020)
pointing you to this other video potentially.
Lex Fridman (1:37:33.060)
Now, yes, I would love to live in a world where people
Bret Weinstein (1:37:36.340)
are up to the challenge of sorting that out.
Lex Fridman (1:37:39.100)
But my basic point would be, if it's an evidentiary
Bret Weinstein (1:37:42.780)
question, and there is essentially no evidence
Lex Fridman (1:37:45.820)
that the vaccine is a mind control agent,
Lex Fridman (1:37:48.180)
and there's plenty of evidence that the vaccine is safe,
Lex Fridman (1:37:50.780)
then while you look for this video,
Lex Fridman (1:37:52.700)
we're gonna give you this one, puts it on a par, right?
Lex Fridman (1:37:55.340)
So for the mind that's tracking how much thought
Bret Weinstein (1:37:59.140)
is there behind it's safe versus how much thought
Lex Fridman (1:38:01.740)
is there behind it's a mind control agent
Bret Weinstein (1:38:04.340)
will result in artificially elevating this.
Lex Fridman (1:38:07.740)
Now in the current case, what we've seen is not this at all.
Bret Weinstein (1:38:11.060)
We have seen evidence obscured in order to create
Lex Fridman (1:38:15.380)
a false story about safety.
Lex Fridman (1:38:18.060)
And we saw the inverse with ivermectin.
Lex Fridman (1:38:22.060)
We saw a campaign to portray the drug as more dangerous
Lex Fridman (1:38:27.780)
and less effective than the evidence
Lex Fridman (1:38:29.260)
clearly suggested it was.
Lex Fridman (1:38:30.940)
So we're not talking about a comparable thing,
Lex Fridman (1:38:33.900)
but I guess my point is the algorithmic solution
Bret Weinstein (1:38:36.060)
that you point to creates a problem of its own,
Lex Fridman (1:38:39.740)
which is that it means that the way to get exposure
Bret Weinstein (1:38:42.820)
is to generate something fringy.
Lex Fridman (1:38:44.700)
If you're the only thing on some fringe,
Bret Weinstein (1:38:46.860)
then suddenly YouTube would be recommending those things,
Lex Fridman (1:38:49.700)
and that's obviously a gameable system at best.
Bret Weinstein (1:38:53.140)
Yeah, but the solution to that,
Lex Fridman (1:38:54.900)
I know you're creating a thought experiment,
Bret Weinstein (1:38:57.580)
maybe playing a little bit of a devil's advocate.
Lex Fridman (1:39:00.780)
I think the solution to that is not to limit the algorithm
Bret Weinstein (1:39:03.900)
in the case of the super deadly virus.
Lex Fridman (1:39:05.860)
It's for the scientists to step up
Lex Fridman (1:39:08.260)
and become better communicators, more charismatic,
Lex Fridman (1:39:11.700)
fight the battle of ideas, sort of create better videos.
Bret Weinstein (1:39:16.580)
Like if the virus is truly deadly,
Lex Fridman (1:39:19.220)
you have a lot more ammunition, a lot more data,
Bret Weinstein (1:39:22.060)
a lot more material to work with
Lex Fridman (1:39:23.700)
in terms of communicating with the public.
Lex Fridman (1:39:26.660)
So be better at communicating and stop being,
Lex Fridman (1:39:30.940)
you have to start trusting the intelligence of people
Lex Fridman (1:39:33.740)
and also being transparent
Lex Fridman (1:39:35.260)
and playing the game of the internet,
Lex Fridman (1:39:37.140)
which is like, what is the internet hungry for, I believe?
Lex Fridman (1:39:40.900)
Authenticity, stop looking like you're full of shit.
Bret Weinstein (1:39:46.220)
The scientific community,
Lex Fridman (1:39:47.500)
if there's any flaw that I currently see,
Bret Weinstein (1:39:50.500)
especially the people that are in public office,
Lex Fridman (1:39:53.060)
that like Anthony Fauci,
Bret Weinstein (1:39:54.500)
they look like they're full of shit
Lex Fridman (1:39:56.180)
and I know they're brilliant.
Lex Fridman (1:39:57.860)
Why don't they look more authentic?
Lex Fridman (1:39:59.900)
So they're losing that game
Lex Fridman (1:40:01.380)
and I think a lot of people observing this entire system now,
Lex Fridman (1:40:05.100)
younger scientists are seeing this and saying,
Bret Weinstein (1:40:09.420)
okay, if I want to continue being a scientist
Lex Fridman (1:40:12.580)
in the public eye and I want to be effective at my job,
Bret Weinstein (1:40:16.100)
I'm gonna have to be a lot more authentic.
Lex Fridman (1:40:18.140)
So they're learning the lesson,
Bret Weinstein (1:40:19.300)
this evolutionary system is working.
Lex Fridman (1:40:22.460)
So there's just a younger generation of minds coming up
Bret Weinstein (1:40:25.220)
that I think will do a much better job
Lex Fridman (1:40:27.100)
in this battle of ideas
Bret Weinstein (1:40:28.620)
that when the much more dangerous virus comes along,
Lex Fridman (1:40:32.780)
they'll be able to be better communicators.
Bret Weinstein (1:40:34.620)
At least that's the hope.
Lex Fridman (1:40:36.820)
Using the algorithm to control that is,
Bret Weinstein (1:40:40.380)
I feel like is a big problem.
Lex Fridman (1:40:41.820)
So you're going to have the same problem with a deadly virus
Bret Weinstein (1:40:45.140)
as with the current virus
Lex Fridman (1:40:46.940)
if you let YouTube draw hard lines
Bret Weinstein (1:40:50.340)
by the PR and the marketing people
Lex Fridman (1:40:52.780)
versus the broad community of scientists.
Bret Weinstein (1:40:56.180)
Well, in some sense you're suggesting something
Lex Fridman (1:40:59.540)
that's close kin to what I was saying
Bret Weinstein (1:41:01.300)
about freedom of expression ultimately
Lex Fridman (1:41:05.700)
provides an advantage to better ideas.
Lex Fridman (1:41:07.700)
So I'm in agreement broadly speaking,
Lex Fridman (1:41:10.700)
but I would also say there's probably some sort of,
Bret Weinstein (1:41:13.620)
let's imagine the world that you propose
Lex Fridman (1:41:15.540)
where YouTube shows you the alternative point of view.
Bret Weinstein (1:41:19.740)
That has the problem that I suggest,
Lex Fridman (1:41:21.340)
but one thing you could do is you could give us the tools
Lex Fridman (1:41:24.700)
to understand what we're looking at, right?
Lex Fridman (1:41:27.500)
You could give us,
Lex Fridman (1:41:28.340)
so first of all, there's something I think myopic,
Lex Fridman (1:41:32.900)
solipsistic, narcissistic about an algorithm
Bret Weinstein (1:41:37.260)
that serves shareholders by showing you what you want to see
Lex Fridman (1:41:40.980)
rather than what you need to know, right?
Bret Weinstein (1:41:42.820)
That's the distinction is flattering you,
Lex Fridman (1:41:45.820)
playing to your blind spot
Bret Weinstein (1:41:47.620)
is something that algorithm will figure out,
Lex Fridman (1:41:49.700)
but it's not healthy for us all
Bret Weinstein (1:41:51.020)
to have Google playing to our blind spot.
Lex Fridman (1:41:53.460)
It's very, very dangerous.
Lex Fridman (1:41:54.660)
So what I really want is analytics that allow me
Lex Fridman (1:41:59.940)
or maybe options and analytics.
Bret Weinstein (1:42:02.260)
The options should allow me to see
Lex Fridman (1:42:05.260)
what alternative perspectives are being explored, right?
Lex Fridman (1:42:09.180)
So here's the thing I'm searching
Lex Fridman (1:42:10.660)
and it leads me down this road, right?
Lex Fridman (1:42:12.260)
Let's say it's ivermectin, okay?
Lex Fridman (1:42:14.300)
I find all of this evidence that ivermectin works.
Bret Weinstein (1:42:16.380)
I find all of these discussions
Lex Fridman (1:42:17.540)
and people talk about various protocols and this and that.
Lex Fridman (1:42:20.340)
And then I could say, all right, what is the other side?
Lex Fridman (1:42:24.260)
And I could see who is searching, not as individuals,
Lex Fridman (1:42:28.860)
but what demographics are searching alternatives.
Lex Fridman (1:42:32.340)
And maybe you could even combine it
Bret Weinstein (1:42:33.900)
with something Reddit like where effectively,
Lex Fridman (1:42:37.340)
let's say that there was a position that, I don't know,
Bret Weinstein (1:42:40.940)
that a vaccine is a mind control device
Lex Fridman (1:42:44.260)
and you could have a steel man this argument competition
Bret Weinstein (1:42:48.940)
effectively and the better answers that steel man
Lex Fridman (1:42:51.180)
and as well as possible would rise to the top.
Lex Fridman (1:42:53.340)
And so you could read the top three or four explanations
Lex Fridman (1:42:56.460)
about why this really credibly is a mind control product.
Lex Fridman (1:43:01.220)
And you can say, well, that doesn't really add up.
Lex Fridman (1:43:03.420)
I can check these three things myself
Lex Fridman (1:43:05.100)
and they can't possibly be right, right?
Lex Fridman (1:43:07.260)
And you could dismiss it.
Lex Fridman (1:43:08.220)
And then as an argument that was credible,
Lex Fridman (1:43:10.060)
let's say plate tectonics before
Bret Weinstein (1:43:12.740)
that was an accepted concept,
Lex Fridman (1:43:15.100)
you'd say, wait a minute,
Bret Weinstein (1:43:16.860)
there is evidence for plate tectonics.
Lex Fridman (1:43:19.420)
As crazy as it sounds that the continents
Bret Weinstein (1:43:21.220)
are floating around on liquid,
Lex Fridman (1:43:23.380)
actually that's not so implausible.
Bret Weinstein (1:43:26.060)
We've got these subduction zones,
Lex Fridman (1:43:27.940)
we've got a geology that is compatible,
Bret Weinstein (1:43:30.500)
we've got puzzle piece continents
Lex Fridman (1:43:31.940)
that seem to fit together.
Bret Weinstein (1:43:33.180)
Wow, that's a surprising amount of evidence
Lex Fridman (1:43:35.580)
for that position.
Lex Fridman (1:43:36.420)
So I'm gonna file some Bayesian probability with it
Lex Fridman (1:43:39.100)
that's updated for the fact that actually
Lex Fridman (1:43:40.780)
the steel man arguments better than I was expecting, right?
Lex Fridman (1:43:43.580)
So I could imagine something like that
Bret Weinstein (1:43:45.060)
where A, I would love the search to be indifferent
Lex Fridman (1:43:48.020)
to who's searching, right?
Bret Weinstein (1:43:49.540)
The solipsistic thing is too dangerous.
Lex Fridman (1:43:51.940)
So the search could be general,
Lex Fridman (1:43:53.540)
so we would all get a sense
Lex Fridman (1:43:54.620)
for what everybody else was seeing too.
Lex Fridman (1:43:56.980)
And then some layer that didn't have anything to do
Lex Fridman (1:43:59.420)
with what YouTube points you to or not,
Lex Fridman (1:44:01.940)
but allowed you to see, you know,
Lex Fridman (1:44:04.300)
the general pattern of adherence
Bret Weinstein (1:44:08.060)
to searching for information.
Lex Fridman (1:44:11.740)
And again, a layer in which those things could be defended.
Lex Fridman (1:44:14.740)
So you could hear what a good argument sounded like
Lex Fridman (1:44:17.020)
rather than just hear a caricatured argument.
Bret Weinstein (1:44:19.260)
Yeah, and also reward people,
Lex Fridman (1:44:21.220)
creators that have demonstrated
Bret Weinstein (1:44:23.860)
like a track record of open mindedness
Lex Fridman (1:44:26.300)
and correctness as much as it could be measured
Bret Weinstein (1:44:29.540)
over a long term and sort of,
Lex Fridman (1:44:33.460)
I mean, a lot of this maps
Bret Weinstein (1:44:36.860)
to incentivizing good longterm behavior,
Lex Fridman (1:44:41.860)
not immediate kind of dopamine rush kind of signals.
Bret Weinstein (1:44:50.340)
I think ultimately the algorithm on the individual level
Lex Fridman (1:44:55.860)
should optimize for personal growth,
Bret Weinstein (1:45:00.140)
longterm happiness, just growth intellectually,
Lex Fridman (1:45:04.780)
growth in terms of lifestyle personally and so on,
Bret Weinstein (1:45:07.580)
as opposed to immediate.
Lex Fridman (1:45:10.420)
I think that's going to build a better society,
Bret Weinstein (1:45:12.300)
not even just like truth,
Lex Fridman (1:45:13.500)
because I think truth is a complicated thing.
Bret Weinstein (1:45:16.180)
It's more just you growing as a person,
Lex Fridman (1:45:19.300)
exploring the space of ideas, changing your mind often,
Bret Weinstein (1:45:23.220)
increasing the level to which you're open minded,
Lex Fridman (1:45:25.380)
the knowledge base you're operating from,
Bret Weinstein (1:45:28.020)
the willingness to empathize with others,
Lex Fridman (1:45:31.340)
all those kinds of things the algorithm should optimize for.
Bret Weinstein (1:45:34.140)
Like creating a better human at the individual level
Lex Fridman (1:45:37.060)
that you're, I think that's a great business model
Bret Weinstein (1:45:40.340)
because the person that's using this tool
Lex Fridman (1:45:44.780)
will then be happier with themselves for having used it
Lex Fridman (1:45:47.340)
and will be a lifelong quote unquote customer.
Lex Fridman (1:45:50.780)
I think it's a great business model
Bret Weinstein (1:45:53.380)
to make a happy, open minded, knowledgeable,
Lex Fridman (1:45:57.020)
better human being.
Bret Weinstein (1:45:58.460)
It's a terrible business model under the current system.
Lex Fridman (1:46:02.420)
What you want is to build the system
Bret Weinstein (1:46:04.300)
in which it is a great business model.
Lex Fridman (1:46:05.620)
Why is it a terrible model?
Bret Weinstein (1:46:07.660)
Because it will be decimated by those
Lex Fridman (1:46:10.580)
who play to the short term.
Bret Weinstein (1:46:12.980)
I don't think so.
Lex Fridman (1:46:14.340)
Why?
Bret Weinstein (1:46:15.180)
I mean, I think we're living it.
Lex Fridman (1:46:16.220)
We're living it.
Bret Weinstein (1:46:17.340)
Well, no, because if you have the alternative
Lex Fridman (1:46:19.480)
that presents itself,
Bret Weinstein (1:46:21.020)
it points out the emperor has no clothes.
Lex Fridman (1:46:24.020)
I mean, it points out that YouTube is operating in this way,
Bret Weinstein (1:46:27.340)
Twitter is operating in this way,
Lex Fridman (1:46:29.220)
Facebook is operating in this way.
Lex Fridman (1:46:30.720)
How long term would you like the wisdom to prove at?
Lex Fridman (1:46:35.020)
Well, even a week is better when it's currently happening.
Bret Weinstein (1:46:40.020)
Right, but the problem is,
Lex Fridman (1:46:42.180)
if a week loses out to an hour, right?
Lex Fridman (1:46:45.540)
And I don't think it loses out.
Lex Fridman (1:46:48.220)
It loses out in the short term.
Bret Weinstein (1:46:49.660)
That's my point.
Lex Fridman (1:46:50.500)
At least you're a great communicator
Lex Fridman (1:46:52.060)
and you basically say, look, here's the metrics.
Lex Fridman (1:46:55.860)
And a lot of it is like how people actually feel.
Bret Weinstein (1:46:59.260)
Like this is what people experience with social media.
Lex Fridman (1:47:02.540)
They look back at the previous month and say,
Bret Weinstein (1:47:06.300)
I felt shitty on a lot of days because of social media.
Lex Fridman (1:47:09.140)
Right.
Bret Weinstein (1:47:11.100)
If you look back at the previous few weeks and say,
Lex Fridman (1:47:14.660)
wow, I'm a better person because of that month happened.
Bret Weinstein (1:47:18.500)
That's, they immediately choose the product
Lex Fridman (1:47:20.780)
that's going to lead to that.
Bret Weinstein (1:47:22.220)
That's what love for products looks like.
Lex Fridman (1:47:24.540)
If you love, like a lot of people love their Tesla car,
Bret Weinstein (1:47:28.300)
like that's, or iPhone or like beautiful design.
Lex Fridman (1:47:31.940)
That's what love looks like.
Bret Weinstein (1:47:33.060)
You look back, I'm a better person
Lex Fridman (1:47:35.340)
for having used this thing.
Bret Weinstein (1:47:36.540)
Well, you got to ask yourself the question though,
Lex Fridman (1:47:38.340)
if this is such a great business model,
Lex Fridman (1:47:40.260)
why isn't it devolving?
Lex Fridman (1:47:42.620)
Why don't we see it?
Bret Weinstein (1:47:44.380)
Honestly, it's competence.
Lex Fridman (1:47:46.300)
It's like people are just, it's not easy to build new,
Bret Weinstein (1:47:50.740)
it's not easy to build products, tools, systems
Lex Fridman (1:47:55.540)
on new ideas.
Bret Weinstein (1:47:57.660)
It's kind of a new idea.
Lex Fridman (1:47:59.100)
We've gone through this, everything we're seeing now
Bret Weinstein (1:48:02.900)
comes from the ideas of the initial birth of the internet.
Lex Fridman (1:48:06.260)
There just needs to be new sets of tools
Bret Weinstein (1:48:08.180)
that are incentivizing long term personal growth
Lex Fridman (1:48:12.460)
and happiness.
Bret Weinstein (1:48:13.420)
That's it.
Lex Fridman (1:48:14.260)
Right, but what we have is a market
Lex Fridman (1:48:16.540)
that doesn't favor this, right?
Lex Fridman (1:48:18.260)
I mean, for one thing, we had an alternative to Facebook,
Bret Weinstein (1:48:23.580)
right, that looked, you owned your own data,
Lex Fridman (1:48:25.900)
it wasn't exploitative and Facebook bought
Bret Weinstein (1:48:29.820)
a huge interest in it and it died.
Lex Fridman (1:48:32.460)
I mean, who do you know who's on diaspora?
Bret Weinstein (1:48:34.860)
The execution there was not good.
Lex Fridman (1:48:37.460)
Right, but it could have gotten better, right?
Bret Weinstein (1:48:40.340)
I don't think that the argument that why hasn't somebody
Lex Fridman (1:48:43.820)
done it a good argument for it's not going to completely
Bret Weinstein (1:48:47.300)
destroy all of Twitter and Facebook when somebody does it
Lex Fridman (1:48:51.060)
or Twitter will catch up and pivot to the algorithm.
Bret Weinstein (1:48:54.660)
This is not what I'm saying.
Lex Fridman (1:48:56.340)
There's obviously great ideas that remain unexplored
Bret Weinstein (1:48:59.820)
because nobody has gotten to the foothill
Lex Fridman (1:49:01.700)
that would allow you to explore them.
Bret Weinstein (1:49:03.060)
That's true, but you know, an internet
Lex Fridman (1:49:05.460)
that was non predatory is an obvious idea
Lex Fridman (1:49:08.700)
and many of us know that we want it
Lex Fridman (1:49:10.900)
and many of us have seen prototypes of it
Lex Fridman (1:49:13.460)
and we don't move because there's no audience there.
Lex Fridman (1:49:15.580)
So the network effects cause you to stay
Bret Weinstein (1:49:17.680)
with the predatory internet.
Lex Fridman (1:49:19.860)
But let me just, I wasn't kidding about build the system
Bret Weinstein (1:49:24.460)
in which your idea is a great business plan.
Lex Fridman (1:49:28.700)
So in our upcoming book, Heather and I in our last chapter
Bret Weinstein (1:49:32.620)
explore something called the fourth frontier
Lex Fridman (1:49:34.780)
and fourth frontier has to do with sort of a 2.0 version
Bret Weinstein (1:49:38.340)
of civilization, which we freely admit
Lex Fridman (1:49:40.500)
we can't tell you very much about.
Bret Weinstein (1:49:42.420)
It's something that would have to be,
Lex Fridman (1:49:44.060)
we would have to prototype our way there.
Bret Weinstein (1:49:45.660)
We would have to effectively navigate our way there.
Lex Fridman (1:49:48.220)
But the result would be very much
Bret Weinstein (1:49:49.760)
like what you're describing.
Lex Fridman (1:49:51.020)
It would be something that effectively liberates humans
Bret Weinstein (1:49:54.740)
meaningfully and most importantly,
Lex Fridman (1:49:57.860)
it has to feel like growth without depending on growth.
Bret Weinstein (1:50:02.220)
In other words, human beings are creatures
Lex Fridman (1:50:05.140)
that like every other creature
Lex Fridman (1:50:07.140)
is effectively looking for growth, right?
Lex Fridman (1:50:09.700)
We are looking for underexploited
Bret Weinstein (1:50:11.580)
or unexploited opportunities and when we find them,
Lex Fridman (1:50:14.860)
our ancestors for example, they happen into a new valley
Bret Weinstein (1:50:18.260)
that was unexplored by people.
Lex Fridman (1:50:20.660)
Their population would grow until it hit carrying capacity.
Lex Fridman (1:50:23.300)
So there would be this great feeling of there's abundance
Lex Fridman (1:50:25.660)
until you hit carrying capacity, which is inevitable
Lex Fridman (1:50:27.940)
and then zero sum dynamics would set in.
Lex Fridman (1:50:30.500)
So in order for human beings to flourish longterm,
Bret Weinstein (1:50:34.040)
the way to get there is to satisfy the desire for growth
Lex Fridman (1:50:37.900)
without hooking it to actual growth,
Bret Weinstein (1:50:39.680)
which only moves and fits and starts.
Lex Fridman (1:50:42.420)
And this is actually, I believe the key
Bret Weinstein (1:50:45.340)
to avoiding these spasms of human tragedy
Lex Fridman (1:50:48.940)
when in the absence of growth,
Bret Weinstein (1:50:50.660)
people do something that causes their population
Lex Fridman (1:50:54.100)
to experience growth, which is they go and make war on
Bret Weinstein (1:50:57.780)
or commit genocide against some other population,
Lex Fridman (1:50:59.980)
which is something we obviously have to stop.
Bret Weinstein (1:51:02.960)
By the way, this is a hunter gatherers guide
Lex Fridman (1:51:06.080)
to the 21st century coauthored.
Bret Weinstein (1:51:08.420)
That's right.
Lex Fridman (1:51:09.260)
With your wife, Heather, being released in September.
Bret Weinstein (1:51:11.220)
I believe you said you're going to do
Lex Fridman (1:51:13.620)
a little bit of a preview videos on each chapter
Bret Weinstein (1:51:16.100)
leading up to the release.
Lex Fridman (1:51:17.260)
So I'm looking forward to the last chapter
Bret Weinstein (1:51:19.740)
as well as all the previous ones.
Lex Fridman (1:51:23.140)
I have a few questions on that.
Lex Fridman (1:51:24.620)
So you generally have faith to clarify that technology
Lex Fridman (1:51:30.340)
could be the thing that empowers this kind of future.
Bret Weinstein (1:51:36.380)
Well, if you just let technology evolve,
Lex Fridman (1:51:40.540)
it's going to be our undoing, right?
Bret Weinstein (1:51:43.580)
One of the things that I fault my libertarian friends for
Lex Fridman (1:51:48.280)
is this faith that the market is going to find solutions
Bret Weinstein (1:51:51.360)
without destroying us.
Lex Fridman (1:51:52.580)
And my sense is I'm a very strong believer in markets.
Bret Weinstein (1:51:56.220)
I believe in their power
Lex Fridman (1:51:57.700)
even above some market fundamentalists.
Lex Fridman (1:52:00.280)
But what I don't believe is that they should be allowed
Lex Fridman (1:52:03.980)
to plot our course, right?
Bret Weinstein (1:52:06.400)
Markets are very good at figuring out how to do things.
Lex Fridman (1:52:09.940)
They are not good at all about figuring out
Lex Fridman (1:52:12.140)
what we should do, right?
Lex Fridman (1:52:13.660)
What we should want.
Bret Weinstein (1:52:14.900)
We have to tell markets what we want
Lex Fridman (1:52:16.660)
and then they can tell us how to do it best.
Lex Fridman (1:52:19.060)
And if we adopted that kind of pro market
Lex Fridman (1:52:22.980)
but in a context where it's not steering,
Bret Weinstein (1:52:25.780)
where human wellbeing is actually the driver,
Lex Fridman (1:52:28.900)
we can do remarkable things.
Lex Fridman (1:52:30.920)
And the technology that emerges
Lex Fridman (1:52:32.300)
would naturally be enhancing of human wellbeing.
Lex Fridman (1:52:35.420)
Perfectly so?
Lex Fridman (1:52:36.340)
No, but overwhelmingly so.
Lex Fridman (1:52:38.720)
But at the moment, markets are finding
Lex Fridman (1:52:40.860)
our every defective character and exploiting them
Lex Fridman (1:52:43.660)
and making huge profits
Lex Fridman (1:52:44.940)
and making us worse to each other in the process.
Bret Weinstein (1:52:49.760)
Before we leave COVID 19,
Lex Fridman (1:52:52.500)
let me ask you about a very difficult topic,
Bret Weinstein (1:52:57.580)
which is the vaccines.
Lex Fridman (1:53:00.380)
So I took the Pfizer vaccine, the two shots.
Bret Weinstein (1:53:05.300)
You did not.
Lex Fridman (1:53:07.160)
You have been taking ivermectin.
Bret Weinstein (1:53:10.500)
Yep.
Lex Fridman (1:53:12.580)
So one of the arguments
Bret Weinstein (1:53:15.060)
against the discussion of ivermectin
Lex Fridman (1:53:17.540)
is that it prevents people
Bret Weinstein (1:53:21.140)
from being fully willing to get the vaccine.
Lex Fridman (1:53:24.980)
How would you compare ivermectin
Lex Fridman (1:53:27.820)
and the vaccine for COVID 19?
Lex Fridman (1:53:31.660)
All right, that's a good question.
Bret Weinstein (1:53:33.380)
I would say, first of all,
Lex Fridman (1:53:34.620)
there are some hazards with the vaccine
Bret Weinstein (1:53:37.100)
that people need to be aware of.
Lex Fridman (1:53:38.500)
There are some things that we cannot rule out
Lex Fridman (1:53:41.300)
and for which there is some evidence.
Lex Fridman (1:53:44.420)
The two that I think people should be tracking
Bret Weinstein (1:53:46.780)
is the possibility, some would say a likelihood,
Lex Fridman (1:53:50.780)
that a vaccine of this nature,
Bret Weinstein (1:53:53.640)
that is to say very narrowly focused on a single antigen,
Lex Fridman (1:53:58.940)
is an evolutionary pressure
Bret Weinstein (1:54:02.380)
that will drive the emergence of variants
Lex Fridman (1:54:05.100)
that will escape the protection
Bret Weinstein (1:54:06.620)
that comes from the vaccine.
Lex Fridman (1:54:08.740)
So this is a hazard.
Bret Weinstein (1:54:11.660)
It is a particular hazard in light of the fact
Lex Fridman (1:54:14.020)
that these vaccines have a substantial number
Bret Weinstein (1:54:16.800)
of breakthrough cases.
Lex Fridman (1:54:18.900)
So one danger is that a person who has been vaccinated
Bret Weinstein (1:54:22.520)
will shed viruses that are specifically less visible
Lex Fridman (1:54:27.620)
or invisible to the immunity created by the vaccines.
Lex Fridman (1:54:31.900)
So we may be creating the next pandemic
Lex Fridman (1:54:34.260)
by applying the pressure of vaccines
Bret Weinstein (1:54:37.340)
at a point that it doesn't make sense to.
Lex Fridman (1:54:40.720)
The other danger has to do with something called
Bret Weinstein (1:54:42.580)
antibody dependent enhancement,
Lex Fridman (1:54:45.260)
which is something that we see in certain diseases
Bret Weinstein (1:54:47.200)
like dengue fever.
Lex Fridman (1:54:48.760)
You may know that dengue, one gets a case,
Lex Fridman (1:54:51.680)
and then their second case is much more devastating.
Lex Fridman (1:54:54.100)
So break bone fever is when you get your second case
Bret Weinstein (1:54:57.260)
of dengue, and dengue effectively utilizes
Lex Fridman (1:55:00.760)
the immune response that is produced by prior exposure
Bret Weinstein (1:55:04.620)
to attack the body in ways that it is incapable
Lex Fridman (1:55:06.900)
of doing before exposure.
Lex Fridman (1:55:08.860)
So this is apparently, this pattern has apparently blocked
Lex Fridman (1:55:12.020)
past efforts to make vaccines against coronaviruses.
Bret Weinstein (1:55:17.420)
Whether it will happen here or not,
Lex Fridman (1:55:19.240)
it is still too early to say.
Lex Fridman (1:55:20.460)
But before we even get to the question
Lex Fridman (1:55:22.780)
of harm done to individuals by these vaccines,
Bret Weinstein (1:55:26.940)
we have to ask about what the overall impact is going to be.
Lex Fridman (1:55:29.660)
And it's not clear in the way people think it is
Bret Weinstein (1:55:32.260)
that if we vaccinate enough people, the pandemic will end.
Lex Fridman (1:55:35.460)
It could be that we vaccinate people
Lex Fridman (1:55:37.040)
and make the pandemic worse.
Lex Fridman (1:55:38.700)
And while nobody can say for sure
Bret Weinstein (1:55:40.600)
that that's where we're headed,
Lex Fridman (1:55:42.080)
it is at least something to be aware of.
Lex Fridman (1:55:43.860)
So don't vaccines usually create
Lex Fridman (1:55:46.160)
that kind of evolutionary pressure
Lex Fridman (1:55:48.940)
to create deadlier, different strains of the virus?
Lex Fridman (1:55:55.160)
So is there something particular with these mRNA vaccines
Lex Fridman (1:55:58.740)
that's uniquely dangerous in this regard?
Lex Fridman (1:56:01.380)
Well, it's not even just the mRNA vaccines.
Bret Weinstein (1:56:03.440)
The mRNA vaccines and the adenovector DNA vaccine
Lex Fridman (1:56:07.140)
all share the same vulnerability,
Bret Weinstein (1:56:09.060)
which is they are very narrowly focused
Lex Fridman (1:56:11.220)
on one subunit of the spike protein.
Lex Fridman (1:56:14.180)
So that is a very concentrated evolutionary signal.
Lex Fridman (1:56:18.180)
We are also deploying it in mid pandemic
Lex Fridman (1:56:20.900)
and it takes time for immunity to develop.
Lex Fridman (1:56:23.460)
So part of the problem here,
Bret Weinstein (1:56:25.760)
if you inoculated a population before encounter
Lex Fridman (1:56:29.740)
with a pathogen, then there might be substantially
Bret Weinstein (1:56:32.940)
enough immunity to prevent this phenomenon from happening.
Lex Fridman (1:56:37.300)
But in this case, we are inoculating people
Bret Weinstein (1:56:40.440)
as they are encountering those who are sick with the disease.
Lex Fridman (1:56:43.980)
And what that means is the disease is now faced
Bret Weinstein (1:56:47.320)
with a lot of opportunities
Lex Fridman (1:56:48.560)
to effectively evolutionarily practice escape strategies.
Lex Fridman (1:56:52.420)
So one thing is the timing,
Lex Fridman (1:56:54.660)
the other thing is the narrow focus.
Bret Weinstein (1:56:56.780)
Now in a traditional vaccine,
Lex Fridman (1:56:58.360)
you would typically not have one antigen, right?
Bret Weinstein (1:57:01.200)
You would have basically a virus full of antigens
Lex Fridman (1:57:04.300)
and the immune system would therefore
Bret Weinstein (1:57:06.100)
produce a broader response.
Lex Fridman (1:57:08.100)
So that is the case for people who have had COVID, right?
Bret Weinstein (1:57:11.860)
They have an immunity that is broader
Lex Fridman (1:57:13.360)
because it wasn't so focused
Bret Weinstein (1:57:14.860)
on one part of the spike protein.
Lex Fridman (1:57:17.060)
So anyway, there is something unique here.
Lex Fridman (1:57:19.220)
So these platforms create that special hazard.
Lex Fridman (1:57:21.820)
They also have components that we haven't used before
Bret Weinstein (1:57:25.300)
in people.
Lex Fridman (1:57:26.140)
So for example, the lipid nanoparticles
Bret Weinstein (1:57:28.240)
that coat the RNAs are distributing themselves
Lex Fridman (1:57:32.580)
around the body in a way that will have unknown consequences.
Lex Fridman (1:57:37.500)
So anyway, there's reason for concern.
Lex Fridman (1:57:40.180)
Is it possible for you to steel man the argument
Lex Fridman (1:57:45.020)
that everybody should get vaccinated?
Lex Fridman (1:57:48.020)
Of course.
Bret Weinstein (1:57:49.060)
The argument that everybody should get vaccinated
Lex Fridman (1:57:51.380)
is that nothing is perfectly safe.
Bret Weinstein (1:57:54.660)
Phase three trials showed good safety for the vaccines.
Lex Fridman (1:57:59.580)
Now that may or may not be actually true,
Lex Fridman (1:58:01.980)
but what we saw suggested high degree of efficacy
Lex Fridman (1:58:05.980)
and a high degree of safety for the vaccines
Bret Weinstein (1:58:09.780)
that inoculating people quickly
Lex Fridman (1:58:11.780)
and therefore dropping the landscape of available victims
Bret Weinstein (1:58:15.700)
for the pathogen to a very low number
Lex Fridman (1:58:19.400)
so that herd immunity drives it to extinction
Bret Weinstein (1:58:22.020)
requires us all to take our share of the risk
Lex Fridman (1:58:25.540)
and that because driving it to extinction
Bret Weinstein (1:58:30.380)
should be our highest priority that really
Lex Fridman (1:58:32.460)
people shouldn't think too much about the various nuances
Bret Weinstein (1:58:36.680)
because overwhelmingly fewer people will die
Lex Fridman (1:58:39.700)
if the population is vaccinated from the vaccine
Bret Weinstein (1:58:43.180)
than will die from COVID if they're not vaccinated.
Lex Fridman (1:58:45.340)
And with the vaccine as it currently is being deployed,
Bret Weinstein (1:58:48.180)
that is a quite a likely scenario
Lex Fridman (1:58:51.300)
that everything, you know, the virus will fade away.
Bret Weinstein (1:58:58.340)
In the following sense that the probability
Lex Fridman (1:59:01.500)
that a more dangerous strain will be created is nonzero,
Lex Fridman (1:59:05.980)
but it's not 50%, it's something smaller.
Lex Fridman (1:59:10.140)
And so the most likely, well, I don't know,
Bret Weinstein (1:59:11.900)
maybe you disagree with that,
Lex Fridman (1:59:12.800)
but the scenario we're most likely to see now
Bret Weinstein (1:59:15.620)
that the vaccine is here is that the virus,
Lex Fridman (1:59:19.140)
the effects of the virus will fade away.
Bret Weinstein (1:59:21.620)
First of all, I don't believe that the probability
Lex Fridman (1:59:23.520)
of creating a worse pandemic is low enough to discount.
Bret Weinstein (1:59:27.380)
I think the probability is fairly high
Lex Fridman (1:59:29.420)
and frankly, we are seeing a wave of variants
Bret Weinstein (1:59:32.900)
that we will have to do a careful analysis
Lex Fridman (1:59:37.140)
to figure out what exactly that has to do
Bret Weinstein (1:59:39.060)
with campaigns of vaccination,
Lex Fridman (1:59:40.740)
where they have been, where they haven't been,
Bret Weinstein (1:59:42.340)
where the variants emerged from.
Lex Fridman (1:59:43.940)
But I believe that what we are seeing is a disturbing pattern
Bret Weinstein (1:59:47.100)
that reflects that those who were advising caution
Lex Fridman (1:59:50.860)
may well have been right.
Bret Weinstein (1:59:51.860)
The data here, by the way, and the small tangent is terrible.
Lex Fridman (1:59:55.260)
Terrible, right.
Lex Fridman (1:59:56.500)
And why is it terrible is another question, right?
Lex Fridman (1:59:59.700)
This is where I started getting angry.
Bret Weinstein (20:02.320)
in the audience versus the positive,
Lex Fridman (20:05.320)
but that's definitely something to think about.
Bret Weinstein (20:07.200)
It's been productive, but the place where I find gratitude
Lex Fridman (20:12.960)
and beauty and appreciation of life is in the quiet moments
Bret Weinstein (20:16.960)
when I don't talk, when I listen to the world around me,
Lex Fridman (20:20.360)
when I listen to others, when I talk,
Bret Weinstein (20:23.880)
I'm extremely self critical in my mind.
Lex Fridman (20:26.800)
When I produce anything out into the world
Bret Weinstein (20:29.640)
that originated with me,
Lex Fridman (20:32.000)
like any kind of creation, extremely self critical.
Bret Weinstein (20:35.040)
It's good for productivity,
Lex Fridman (20:37.440)
for always striving to improve and so on.
Bret Weinstein (20:40.760)
It might be bad for just appreciating
Lex Fridman (20:45.040)
the things you've created.
Bret Weinstein (20:46.160)
I'm a little bit with Marvin Minsky on this
Lex Fridman (20:49.600)
where he says the key to a productive life
Bret Weinstein (20:54.600)
is to hate everything you've ever done in the past.
Lex Fridman (20:57.980)
I didn't know he said that.
Bret Weinstein (20:59.300)
I must say, I resonate with it a bit.
Lex Fridman (21:01.260)
And unfortunately, my life currently has me putting
Bret Weinstein (21:06.580)
a lot of stuff into the world,
Lex Fridman (21:08.660)
and I effectively watch almost none of it.
Bret Weinstein (21:12.020)
I can't stand it.
Lex Fridman (21:15.020)
Yeah, what do you make of that?
Bret Weinstein (21:16.780)
I don't know.
Lex Fridman (21:18.020)
I just yesterday read Metamorphosis by Kafka,
Bret Weinstein (21:21.700)
we read Metamorphosis by Kafka
Lex Fridman (21:23.620)
where he turns into a giant bug
Bret Weinstein (21:25.820)
because of the stress that the world puts on him.
Lex Fridman (21:29.060)
His parents put on him to succeed.
Lex Fridman (21:31.620)
And I think that you have to find the balance
Lex Fridman (21:35.500)
because if you allow the self critical voice
Bret Weinstein (21:39.620)
to become too heavy, the burden of the world,
Lex Fridman (21:41.780)
the pressure that the world puts on you
Bret Weinstein (21:44.140)
to be the best version of yourself and so on to strive,
Lex Fridman (21:47.340)
then you become a bug and that's a big problem.
Lex Fridman (21:51.780)
And then the world turns against you because you're a bug.
Lex Fridman (21:56.700)
You become some kind of caricature of yourself.
Bret Weinstein (21:59.760)
I don't know, you become the worst version of yourself
Lex Fridman (22:03.900)
and then thereby end up destroying yourself
Lex Fridman (22:07.940)
and then the world moves on.
Lex Fridman (22:09.580)
That's the story.
Bret Weinstein (22:10.420)
That's a lovely story.
Lex Fridman (22:12.460)
I do think this is one of these places,
Lex Fridman (22:14.820)
and frankly, you could map this onto
Lex Fridman (22:17.700)
all of modern human experience,
Lex Fridman (22:19.500)
but this is one of these places
Lex Fridman (22:20.820)
where our ancestral programming
Bret Weinstein (22:23.300)
does not serve our modern selves.
Lex Fridman (22:25.620)
So I used to talk to students
Bret Weinstein (22:27.240)
about the question of dwelling on things.
Lex Fridman (22:30.740)
Dwelling on things is famously understood to be bad
Lex Fridman (22:35.300)
and it can't possibly be bad.
Lex Fridman (22:36.700)
It wouldn't exist, the tendency toward it
Bret Weinstein (22:38.300)
wouldn't exist if it was bad.
Lex Fridman (22:40.300)
So what is bad is dwelling on things
Bret Weinstein (22:42.700)
past the point of utility.
Lex Fridman (22:45.360)
And that's obviously easier to say than to operationalize,
Lex Fridman (22:49.660)
but if you realize that your dwelling is the key, in fact,
Lex Fridman (22:53.300)
to upgrading your program for future well being
Lex Fridman (22:57.940)
and that there's a point, presumably,
Lex Fridman (23:00.100)
from diminishing returns, if not counter productivity,
Bret Weinstein (23:03.780)
there is a point at which you should stop
Lex Fridman (23:05.620)
because that is what is in your best interest,
Bret Weinstein (23:08.340)
then knowing that you're looking for that point is useful.
Lex Fridman (23:12.140)
This is the point at which it is no longer useful
Bret Weinstein (23:14.100)
for me to dwell on this error I have made.
Lex Fridman (23:16.900)
That's what you're looking for.
Lex Fridman (23:17.980)
And it also gives you license, right?
Lex Fridman (23:20.940)
If some part of you feels like it's punishing you
Bret Weinstein (23:23.820)
rather than searching, then that also has a point
Lex Fridman (23:27.980)
at which it's no longer valuable
Lex Fridman (23:29.700)
and there's some liberty in realizing,
Lex Fridman (23:32.420)
yep, even the part of me that was punishing me
Bret Weinstein (23:35.260)
knows it's time to stop.
Lex Fridman (23:37.340)
So if we map that onto compiled code discussion,
Bret Weinstein (23:40.460)
as a computer science person, I find that very compelling.
Lex Fridman (23:43.220)
You know, when you compile code, you get warnings sometimes.
Lex Fridman (23:48.700)
And usually, if you're a good software engineer,
Lex Fridman (23:54.100)
you're going to make sure there's no,
Bret Weinstein (23:56.500)
you know, you treat warnings as errors.
Lex Fridman (23:58.900)
So you make sure that the compilation produces no warnings.
Lex Fridman (24:02.260)
But at a certain point, when you have a large enough system,
Lex Fridman (24:05.180)
you just let the warnings go.
Bret Weinstein (24:06.820)
It's fine.
Lex Fridman (24:07.860)
Like, I don't know where that warning came from,
Bret Weinstein (24:10.380)
but, you know, just ultimately you need to compile the code
Lex Fridman (24:15.140)
and run with it and hope nothing terrible happens.
Bret Weinstein (24:19.180)
Well, I think what you will find, and believe me,
Lex Fridman (24:21.620)
I think what you're talking about
Bret Weinstein (24:24.500)
with respect to robots and learning
Lex Fridman (24:27.700)
is gonna end up having to go to a deep developmental state
Lex Fridman (24:31.900)
and a helplessness that evolves into hyper competence
Lex Fridman (24:34.940)
and all of that.
Lex Fridman (24:36.020)
But I live, I noticed that I live by something
Lex Fridman (24:41.460)
that I, for lack of a better descriptor,
Bret Weinstein (24:44.140)
call the theory of close calls.
Lex Fridman (24:47.140)
And the theory of close calls says that people
Bret Weinstein (24:50.900)
typically miscategorize the events in their life
Lex Fridman (24:55.820)
where something almost went wrong.
Bret Weinstein (24:58.940)
And, you know, for example, if you,
Lex Fridman (25:01.060)
I have a friend who, I was walking down the street
Bret Weinstein (25:04.740)
with my college friends and one of my friends
Lex Fridman (25:06.740)
stepped into the street thinking it was clear
Lex Fridman (25:08.700)
and was nearly hit by a car going 45 miles an hour,
Lex Fridman (25:12.060)
would have been an absolute disaster, might have killed her,
Bret Weinstein (25:14.940)
certainly would have permanently injured her.
Lex Fridman (25:18.500)
But she didn't, you know, car didn't touch her, right?
Bret Weinstein (25:21.700)
Now you could walk away from that and think nothing of it
Lex Fridman (25:25.220)
because, well, what is there to think?
Bret Weinstein (25:26.660)
Nothing happened.
Lex Fridman (25:28.220)
Or you could think, well, what is the difference
Lex Fridman (25:30.660)
between what did happen and my death?
Lex Fridman (25:33.540)
The difference is luck.
Lex Fridman (25:35.100)
I never want that to be true, right?
Lex Fridman (25:37.340)
I never want the difference between what did happen
Lex Fridman (25:40.020)
and my death to be luck.
Lex Fridman (25:41.620)
Therefore, I should count this as very close to death
Lex Fridman (25:45.260)
and I should prioritize coding
Lex Fridman (25:47.620)
so it doesn't happen again at a very high level.
Lex Fridman (25:50.420)
So anyway, my basic point is
Lex Fridman (25:53.820)
the accidents and disasters and misfortune
Bret Weinstein (25:58.700)
describe a distribution that tells you
Lex Fridman (26:02.180)
what's really likely to get you in the end.
Lex Fridman (26:04.420)
And so personally, you can use them to figure out
Lex Fridman (26:10.020)
where the dangers are so that you can afford
Bret Weinstein (26:12.020)
to take great risks because you have a really good sense
Lex Fridman (26:14.380)
of how they're gonna go wrong.
Lex Fridman (26:15.780)
But I would also point out civilization has this problem.
Lex Fridman (26:19.060)
Civilization is now producing these events
Bret Weinstein (26:22.900)
that are major disasters,
Lex Fridman (26:24.420)
but they're not existential scale yet, right?
Bret Weinstein (26:27.500)
They're very serious errors that we can see.
Lex Fridman (26:30.100)
And I would argue that the pattern is
Bret Weinstein (26:32.140)
you discover that we are involved in some industrial process
Lex Fridman (26:35.140)
at the point it has gone wrong, right?
Lex Fridman (26:37.900)
So I'm now always asking the question,
Lex Fridman (26:40.780)
okay, in light of the Fukushima triple meltdown,
Bret Weinstein (26:44.860)
the financial collapse of 2008,
Lex Fridman (26:46.980)
the Deepwater Horizon blowout, COVID 19,
Lex Fridman (26:51.660)
and its probable origins in the Wuhan lab,
Lex Fridman (26:55.340)
what processes do I not know the name of yet
Bret Weinstein (26:58.820)
that I will discover at the point
Lex Fridman (27:00.460)
that some gigantic accident has happened?
Lex Fridman (27:03.060)
And can we talk about the wisdom or lack thereof
Lex Fridman (27:06.180)
of engaging in that process before the accident, right?
Bret Weinstein (27:09.060)
That's what a wise civilization would be doing.
Lex Fridman (27:11.460)
And yet we don't.
Bret Weinstein (27:12.900)
I just wanna mention something that happened
Lex Fridman (27:15.100)
a couple of days ago.
Bret Weinstein (27:17.140)
I don't know if you know who JB Straubel is.
Lex Fridman (27:20.020)
He's the co founder of Tesla,
Bret Weinstein (27:21.780)
CTO of Tesla for many, many years.
Lex Fridman (27:24.060)
His wife just died.
Bret Weinstein (27:26.340)
She was riding a bicycle.
Lex Fridman (27:28.580)
And in the same thin line between death and life
Bret Weinstein (27:35.260)
that many of us have been in,
Lex Fridman (27:37.460)
where you walk into the intersection
Lex Fridman (27:39.540)
and there's this close call.
Lex Fridman (27:41.820)
Every once in a while, you get the short straw.
Bret Weinstein (27:50.900)
I wonder how much of our own individual lives
Lex Fridman (27:54.980)
and the entirety of the human civilization
Bret Weinstein (27:57.540)
rests on this little roll of the dice.
Lex Fridman (28:00.860)
Well, this is sort of my point about the close calls
Lex Fridman (28:03.300)
is that there's a level at which we can't control it, right?
Lex Fridman (28:06.780)
The gigantic asteroid that comes from deep space
Bret Weinstein (28:11.100)
that you don't have time to do anything about.
Lex Fridman (28:13.060)
There's not a lot we can do to hedge that out,
Bret Weinstein (28:15.620)
or at least not short term.
Lex Fridman (28:17.900)
But there are lots of other things.
Bret Weinstein (28:20.420)
Obviously, the financial collapse of 2008
Lex Fridman (28:23.780)
didn't break down the entire world economy.
Bret Weinstein (28:27.060)
It threatened to, but a Herculean effort
Lex Fridman (28:28.900)
managed to pull us back from the brink.
Bret Weinstein (28:31.100)
The triple meltdown at Fukushima was awful,
Lex Fridman (28:34.380)
but every one of the seven fuel pools held,
Bret Weinstein (28:37.380)
there wasn't a major fire that made it impossible
Lex Fridman (28:39.580)
to manage the disaster going forward.
Bret Weinstein (28:41.660)
We got lucky.
Lex Fridman (28:44.620)
We could say the same thing about the blowout
Bret Weinstein (28:47.820)
at the Deepwater Horizon,
Lex Fridman (28:49.580)
where a hole in the ocean floor large enough
Bret Weinstein (28:52.460)
that we couldn't have plugged it, could have opened up.
Lex Fridman (28:54.340)
All of these things could have been much, much worse, right?
Lex Fridman (28:57.500)
And I think we can say the same thing about COVID,
Lex Fridman (28:59.140)
as terrible as it is.
Lex Fridman (29:00.980)
And we cannot say for sure that it came from the Wuhan lab,
Lex Fridman (29:04.740)
but there's a strong likelihood that it did.
Lex Fridman (29:06.980)
And it also could be much, much worse.
Lex Fridman (29:10.300)
So in each of these cases, something is telling us,
Bret Weinstein (29:13.820)
we have a process that is unfolding
Lex Fridman (29:16.340)
that keeps creating risks where it is luck
Bret Weinstein (29:18.600)
that is the difference between us
Lex Fridman (29:19.900)
and some scale of disaster that is unimaginable.
Lex Fridman (29:22.700)
And that wisdom, you can be highly intelligent
Lex Fridman (29:26.700)
and cause these disasters.
Lex Fridman (29:28.900)
To be wise is to stop causing them, right?
Lex Fridman (29:31.780)
And that would require a process of restraint,
Bret Weinstein (29:36.580)
a process that I don't see a lot of evidence of yet.
Lex Fridman (29:38.880)
So I think we have to generate it.
Lex Fridman (29:41.880)
And somehow, at the moment,
Lex Fridman (29:45.540)
we don't have a political structure
Bret Weinstein (29:47.460)
that would be capable of taking
Lex Fridman (29:51.540)
a protective algorithm and actually deploying it, right?
Bret Weinstein (29:55.740)
Because it would have important economic consequences.
Lex Fridman (29:57.780)
And so it would almost certainly be shot down.
Bret Weinstein (2:00:01.280)
Yes.
Lex Fridman (2:00:02.120)
It's like, there's an obvious opportunity
Bret Weinstein (2:00:04.160)
for exceptionally good data, for exceptionally rigorous,
Lex Fridman (2:00:07.660)
like even the self, like the website for self reporting,
Bret Weinstein (2:00:10.580)
side effects for, not side effects,
Lex Fridman (2:00:12.580)
but negative effects, right?
Bret Weinstein (2:00:14.180)
Adverse events.
Lex Fridman (2:00:15.020)
Adverse events, sorry, for the vaccine.
Bret Weinstein (2:00:18.540)
Like, there's many things I could say
Lex Fridman (2:00:20.560)
from both the study perspective,
Lex Fridman (2:00:22.240)
but mostly, let me just put on my hat of like HTML
Lex Fridman (2:00:27.460)
and like web design.
Bret Weinstein (2:00:29.840)
Like, it's like the worst website.
Lex Fridman (2:00:32.700)
It makes it so unpleasant to report.
Bret Weinstein (2:00:34.800)
It makes it so unclear what you're reporting.
Lex Fridman (2:00:37.100)
If somebody actually has serious effect,
Bret Weinstein (2:00:38.860)
like if you have very mild effects,
Lex Fridman (2:00:40.640)
what are the incentives for you to even use
Bret Weinstein (2:00:43.280)
that crappy website with many pages and forms
Lex Fridman (2:00:46.420)
that don't make any sense?
Bret Weinstein (2:00:47.660)
If you have adverse effects,
Lex Fridman (2:00:49.200)
what are the incentives for you to use that website?
Lex Fridman (2:00:53.180)
What is the trust that you have
Lex Fridman (2:00:55.100)
that this information will be used well?
Bret Weinstein (2:00:56.980)
All those kinds of things.
Lex Fridman (2:00:58.220)
And the data about who's getting vaccinated,
Bret Weinstein (2:01:01.140)
anonymized data about who's getting vaccinated,
Lex Fridman (2:01:04.180)
where, when, with what vaccine,
Bret Weinstein (2:01:06.940)
coupled with the adverse effects,
Lex Fridman (2:01:09.040)
all of that we should be collecting.
Bret Weinstein (2:01:10.940)
Instead, we're completely not.
Lex Fridman (2:01:13.340)
We're doing it in a crappy way
Lex Fridman (2:01:14.980)
and using that crappy data to make conclusions
Lex Fridman (2:01:18.040)
that you then twist.
Bret Weinstein (2:01:19.620)
You're basically collecting in a way
Lex Fridman (2:01:21.160)
that can arrive at whatever conclusions you want.
Lex Fridman (2:01:25.700)
And the data is being collected by the institutions,
Lex Fridman (2:01:29.500)
by governments, and so therefore,
Bret Weinstein (2:01:31.460)
it's obviously they're going to try
Lex Fridman (2:01:33.020)
to construct any kind of narratives they want
Bret Weinstein (2:01:35.540)
based on this crappy data.
Lex Fridman (2:01:36.660)
Reminds me of much of psychology, the field that I love,
Lex Fridman (2:01:39.740)
but is flawed in many fundamental ways.
Lex Fridman (2:01:42.620)
So rant over, but coupled with the dangers
Bret Weinstein (2:01:46.780)
that you're speaking to,
Lex Fridman (2:01:47.620)
we don't have even the data to understand the dangers.
Bret Weinstein (2:01:52.160)
Yeah, I'm gonna pick up on your rant and say,
Lex Fridman (2:01:55.660)
we, estimates of the degree of underreporting in VAERS
Bret Weinstein (2:02:00.660)
are that it is 10% of the real to 100%.
Lex Fridman (2:02:05.660)
And that's the system for reporting.
Bret Weinstein (2:02:08.020)
Yeah, the VAERS system is the system
Lex Fridman (2:02:10.020)
for reporting adverse events.
Lex Fridman (2:02:11.140)
So in the US, we have above 5,000 unexpected deaths
Lex Fridman (2:02:18.180)
that seem in time to be associated with vaccination.
Bret Weinstein (2:02:22.000)
That is an undercount, almost certainly,
Lex Fridman (2:02:24.460)
and by a large factor.
Bret Weinstein (2:02:27.940)
We don't know how large.
Lex Fridman (2:02:29.020)
I've seen estimates, 25,000 dead in the US alone.
Bret Weinstein (2:02:34.020)
Now, you can make the argument that, okay,
Lex Fridman (2:02:37.880)
that's a large number,
Lex Fridman (2:02:39.280)
but the necessity of immunizing the population
Lex Fridman (2:02:42.860)
to drive SARS CoV2 to extinction
Bret Weinstein (2:02:45.420)
is such that it's an acceptable number.
Lex Fridman (2:02:47.960)
But I would point out
Bret Weinstein (2:02:48.860)
that that actually does not make any sense.
Lex Fridman (2:02:51.000)
And the reason it doesn't make any sense
Bret Weinstein (2:02:52.680)
is actually there are several reasons.
Lex Fridman (2:02:54.280)
One, if that was really your point,
Bret Weinstein (2:02:57.180)
that yes, many, many people are gonna die,
Lex Fridman (2:02:59.940)
but many more will die if we don't do this.
Bret Weinstein (2:03:02.080)
Were that your approach,
Lex Fridman (2:03:05.140)
you would not be inoculating people who had had COVID 19,
Bret Weinstein (2:03:08.660)
which is a large population.
Lex Fridman (2:03:10.620)
There's no reason to expose those people to danger.
Bret Weinstein (2:03:13.260)
Their risk of adverse events
Lex Fridman (2:03:14.860)
in the case that they have them is greater.
Lex Fridman (2:03:18.280)
So there's no reason that we would be allowing
Lex Fridman (2:03:20.580)
those people to face a risk of death
Bret Weinstein (2:03:22.300)
if this was really about an acceptable number of deaths
Lex Fridman (2:03:25.620)
arising out of this set of vaccines.
Bret Weinstein (2:03:29.180)
I would also point out
Lex Fridman (2:03:30.500)
there's something incredibly bizarre.
Lex Fridman (2:03:32.800)
And I struggle to find language that is strong enough
Lex Fridman (2:03:37.940)
for the horror of vaccinating children in this case
Bret Weinstein (2:03:43.260)
because children suffer a greater risk of longterm effects
Lex Fridman (2:03:48.180)
because they are going to live longer.
Lex Fridman (2:03:49.820)
And because this is earlier in their development,
Lex Fridman (2:03:51.900)
therefore it impacts systems that are still forming.
Bret Weinstein (2:03:55.640)
They tolerate COVID well.
Lex Fridman (2:03:57.860)
And so the benefit to them is very small.
Lex Fridman (2:04:01.420)
And so the only argument for doing this
Lex Fridman (2:04:04.060)
is that they may cryptically be carrying more COVID
Bret Weinstein (2:04:06.420)
than we think, and therefore they may be integral
Lex Fridman (2:04:09.600)
to the way the virus spreads to the population.
Lex Fridman (2:04:11.900)
But if that's the reason that we are inoculating children,
Lex Fridman (2:04:14.260)
and there has been some revision in the last day or two
Bret Weinstein (2:04:16.460)
about the recommendation on this
Lex Fridman (2:04:17.860)
because of the adverse events
Bret Weinstein (2:04:19.780)
that have shown up in children,
Lex Fridman (2:04:20.980)
but to the extent that we were vaccinating children,
Bret Weinstein (2:04:24.160)
we were doing it to protect old, infirm people
Lex Fridman (2:04:28.240)
who are the most likely to succumb to COVID 19.
Lex Fridman (2:04:32.700)
What society puts children in danger,
Lex Fridman (2:04:37.100)
robs children of life to save old, infirm people?
Bret Weinstein (2:04:40.860)
That's upside down.
Lex Fridman (2:04:43.120)
So there's something about the way we are going about
Bret Weinstein (2:04:46.820)
vaccinating, who we are vaccinating,
Lex Fridman (2:04:48.700)
what dangers we are pretending don't exist
Bret Weinstein (2:04:52.300)
that suggests that to some set of people,
Lex Fridman (2:04:55.700)
vaccinating people is a good in and of itself,
Bret Weinstein (2:04:58.660)
that that is the objective of the exercise,
Lex Fridman (2:05:00.460)
not herd immunity.
Lex Fridman (2:05:01.540)
And the last thing, and I'm sorry,
Lex Fridman (2:05:03.060)
I don't wanna prevent you from jumping in here,
Lex Fridman (2:05:05.540)
but the second reason, in addition to the fact
Lex Fridman (2:05:07.500)
that we're exposing people to danger
Bret Weinstein (2:05:09.180)
that we should not be exposing them to.
Lex Fridman (2:05:11.820)
By the way, as a tiny tangent,
Bret Weinstein (2:05:13.700)
another huge part of this soup
Lex Fridman (2:05:16.220)
that should have been part of it
Bret Weinstein (2:05:17.540)
that's an incredible solution is large scale testing.
Lex Fridman (2:05:20.860)
Mm hmm.
Lex Fridman (2:05:22.020)
But that might be another couple hour conversation,
Lex Fridman (2:05:26.440)
but there's these solutions that are obvious
Bret Weinstein (2:05:28.660)
that were available from the very beginning.
Lex Fridman (2:05:30.580)
So you could argue that iveractin is not that obvious,
Lex Fridman (2:05:34.720)
but maybe the whole point is you have aggressive,
Lex Fridman (2:05:38.780)
very fast research that leads to a meta analysis
Lex Fridman (2:05:43.120)
and then large scale production and deployment.
Lex Fridman (2:05:46.140)
Okay, at least that possibility
Bret Weinstein (2:05:49.020)
should be seriously considered,
Lex Fridman (2:05:51.220)
coupled with a serious consideration
Bret Weinstein (2:05:53.620)
of large scale deployment of testing,
Lex Fridman (2:05:55.700)
at home testing that could have accelerated
Bret Weinstein (2:06:00.100)
the speed at which we reached that herd immunity.
Lex Fridman (2:06:07.060)
But I don't even wanna.
Bret Weinstein (2:06:08.660)
Well, let me just say, I am also completely shocked
Lex Fridman (2:06:11.720)
that we did not get on high quality testing early
Lex Fridman (2:06:15.040)
and that we are still suffering from this even now,
Lex Fridman (2:06:19.060)
because just the simple ability to track
Bret Weinstein (2:06:21.580)
where the virus moves between people
Lex Fridman (2:06:23.740)
would tell us a lot about its mode of transmission,
Bret Weinstein (2:06:26.120)
which would allow us to protect ourselves better.
Lex Fridman (2:06:28.860)
Instead, that information was hard won
Lex Fridman (2:06:32.340)
and for no good reason.
Lex Fridman (2:06:33.260)
So I also find this mysterious.
Bret Weinstein (2:06:35.900)
You've spoken with Eric Weinstein, your brother,
Lex Fridman (2:06:39.940)
on his podcast, The Portal,
Bret Weinstein (2:06:41.460)
about the ideas that eventually led to the paper
Lex Fridman (2:06:45.180)
you published titled, The Reserved Capacity Hypothesis.
Bret Weinstein (2:06:50.500)
I think first, can you explain this paper
Lex Fridman (2:06:56.540)
and the ideas that led up to it?
Bret Weinstein (2:06:59.900)
Sure, easier to explain the conclusion of the paper.
Lex Fridman (2:07:05.560)
There's a question about why a creature
Bret Weinstein (2:07:08.340)
that can replace its cells with new cells
Lex Fridman (2:07:11.980)
grows feeble and inefficient with age.
Bret Weinstein (2:07:14.940)
We call that process, which is otherwise called aging,
Lex Fridman (2:07:18.540)
we call it senescence.
Lex Fridman (2:07:20.940)
And senescence, in this paper, it is hypothesized,
Lex Fridman (2:07:26.000)
is the unavoidable downside of a cancer prevention
Bret Weinstein (2:07:32.860)
feature of our bodies.
Lex Fridman (2:07:36.300)
That each cell has a limit on the number of times
Bret Weinstein (2:07:39.820)
it can divide.
Lex Fridman (2:07:40.740)
There are a few cells in the body that are exceptional,
Lex Fridman (2:07:42.980)
but most of our cells can only divide
Lex Fridman (2:07:45.000)
a limited number of times.
Bret Weinstein (2:07:46.060)
That's called the Hayflick limit.
Lex Fridman (2:07:47.860)
And the Hayflick limit reduces the ability
Bret Weinstein (2:07:52.460)
of the organism to replace tissues.
Lex Fridman (2:07:55.740)
It therefore results in a failure over time
Bret Weinstein (2:07:58.780)
of maintenance and repair.
Lex Fridman (2:08:01.340)
And that explains why we become decrepit as we grow old.
Bret Weinstein (2:08:06.180)
The question was why would that be,
Lex Fridman (2:08:09.460)
especially in light of the fact that the mechanism
Bret Weinstein (2:08:12.900)
that seems to limit the ability of cells to reproduce
Lex Fridman (2:08:16.580)
is something called a telomere.
Bret Weinstein (2:08:18.820)
Telomere is a, it's not a gene, but it's a DNA sequence
Lex Fridman (2:08:22.940)
at the ends of our chromosomes
Bret Weinstein (2:08:24.880)
that is just simply repetitive.
Lex Fridman (2:08:26.340)
And the number of repeats functions like a counter.
Lex Fridman (2:08:30.240)
So there's a number of repeats that you have
Lex Fridman (2:08:33.000)
after development is finished.
Lex Fridman (2:08:34.420)
And then each time the cell divides a little bit
Lex Fridman (2:08:36.260)
of telomere is lost.
Lex Fridman (2:08:37.620)
And at the point that the telomere becomes critically short,
Lex Fridman (2:08:40.260)
the cell stops dividing even though it still has
Bret Weinstein (2:08:42.820)
the capacity to do so.
Lex Fridman (2:08:44.660)
Stops dividing and it starts transcribing different genes
Bret Weinstein (2:08:47.420)
than it did when it had more telomere.
Lex Fridman (2:08:50.300)
So what my work did was it looked at the fact
Bret Weinstein (2:08:53.900)
that the telomeric shortening was being studied
Lex Fridman (2:08:56.700)
by two different groups.
Bret Weinstein (2:08:57.900)
It was being studied by people who were interested
Lex Fridman (2:09:00.820)
in counteracting the aging process.
Lex Fridman (2:09:03.460)
And it was being studied in exactly the opposite fashion
Lex Fridman (2:09:06.540)
by people who were interested in tumorigenesis and cancer.
Bret Weinstein (2:09:10.500)
The thought being because it was true that when one looked
Lex Fridman (2:09:13.300)
into tumors, they always had telomerase active.
Bret Weinstein (2:09:16.700)
That's the enzyme that lengthens our telomeres.
Lex Fridman (2:09:19.040)
So those folks were interested in bringing about a halt
Bret Weinstein (2:09:24.520)
to the lengthening of telomeres
Lex Fridman (2:09:25.700)
in order to counteract cancer.
Lex Fridman (2:09:27.540)
And the folks who were studying the senescence process
Lex Fridman (2:09:30.640)
were interested in lengthening telomeres
Bret Weinstein (2:09:32.280)
in order to generate greater repair capacity.
Lex Fridman (2:09:35.780)
And my point was evolutionarily speaking,
Bret Weinstein (2:09:38.660)
this looks like a pleiotropic effect
Lex Fridman (2:09:42.900)
that the genes which create the tendency of the cells
Bret Weinstein (2:09:49.980)
to be limited in their capacity to replace themselves
Lex Fridman (2:09:53.340)
are providing a benefit in youth,
Bret Weinstein (2:09:55.580)
which is that we are largely free of tumors and cancer
Lex Fridman (2:09:59.320)
at the inevitable late life cost that we grow feeble
Lex Fridman (2:10:02.300)
and inefficient and eventually die.
Lex Fridman (2:10:04.840)
And that matches a very old hypothesis in evolutionary theory
Bret Weinstein (2:10:10.260)
by somebody I was fortunate enough to know, George Williams,
Lex Fridman (2:10:13.540)
one of the great 20th century evolutionists
Bret Weinstein (2:10:16.620)
who argued that senescence would have to be caused
Lex Fridman (2:10:19.760)
by pleiotropic genes that cause early life benefits
Bret Weinstein (2:10:23.780)
at unavoidable late life costs.
Lex Fridman (2:10:26.160)
And although this isn't the exact nature of the system,
Bret Weinstein (2:10:29.220)
he predicted it matches what he was expecting
Lex Fridman (2:10:32.740)
in many regards to a shocking degree.
Bret Weinstein (2:10:35.880)
That said, the focus of the paper is about the,
Lex Fridman (2:10:41.480)
well, let me just read the abstract.
Bret Weinstein (2:10:43.880)
We observed that captive rodent breeding protocols designed,
Lex Fridman (2:10:47.460)
this is the end of the abstract.
Bret Weinstein (2:10:49.060)
We observed that captive rodent breeding protocols
Lex Fridman (2:10:51.500)
designed to increase reproductive output,
Bret Weinstein (2:10:53.660)
simultaneously exert strong selection
Lex Fridman (2:10:55.780)
against reproductive senescence
Lex Fridman (2:10:58.040)
and virtually eliminate selection
Lex Fridman (2:11:00.140)
that would otherwise favor tumor suppression.
Bret Weinstein (2:11:03.260)
This appears to have greatly elongated
Lex Fridman (2:11:05.740)
the telomeres of laboratory mice.
Bret Weinstein (2:11:07.940)
With their telomeric failsafe effectively disabled,
Lex Fridman (2:11:10.780)
these animals are unreliable models
Bret Weinstein (2:11:12.620)
of normal senescence and tumor formation.
Lex Fridman (2:11:15.300)
So basically using these mice is not going to lead
Bret Weinstein (2:11:19.660)
to the right kinds of conclusions.
Lex Fridman (2:11:21.500)
Safety tests employing these animals
Bret Weinstein (2:11:24.180)
likely overestimate cancer risks
Lex Fridman (2:11:26.700)
and underestimate tissue damage
Lex Fridman (2:11:29.020)
and consequent accelerated senescence.
Lex Fridman (2:11:32.780)
So I think, especially with your discussion with Eric,
Bret Weinstein (2:11:38.180)
the conclusion of this paper has to do with the fact that,
Lex Fridman (2:11:43.500)
like we shouldn't be using these mice to test the safety
Bret Weinstein (2:11:48.500)
or to make conclusions about cancer or senescence.
Lex Fridman (2:11:53.300)
Is that the basic takeaway?
Bret Weinstein (2:11:55.060)
Like basically saying that the length of these telomeres
Lex Fridman (2:11:57.820)
is an important variable to consider.
Bret Weinstein (2:12:00.100)
Well, let's put it this way.
Lex Fridman (2:12:01.980)
I think there was a reason that the world of scientists
Bret Weinstein (2:12:05.780)
who was working on telomeres
Lex Fridman (2:12:07.540)
did not spot the pleiotropic relationship
Bret Weinstein (2:12:10.920)
that was the key argument in my paper.
Lex Fridman (2:12:16.300)
The reason they didn't spot it was that there was a result
Bret Weinstein (2:12:19.580)
that everybody knew, which seemed inconsistent.
Lex Fridman (2:12:22.060)
The result was that mice have very long telomeres,
Lex Fridman (2:12:26.980)
but they do not have very long lives.
Lex Fridman (2:12:30.260)
Now, we can talk about what the actual meaning
Bret Weinstein (2:12:32.480)
of don't have very long lives is,
Lex Fridman (2:12:34.560)
but in the end, I was confronted with a hypothesis
Bret Weinstein (2:12:39.220)
that would explain a great many features
Lex Fridman (2:12:41.580)
of the way mammals and indeed vertebrates age,
Lex Fridman (2:12:44.780)
but it was inconsistent with one result.
Lex Fridman (2:12:46.660)
And at first I thought,
Bret Weinstein (2:12:48.340)
maybe there's something wrong with the result.
Lex Fridman (2:12:50.020)
Maybe this is one of these cases
Bret Weinstein (2:12:51.340)
where the result was achieved once
Lex Fridman (2:12:54.380)
through some bad protocol and everybody else
Bret Weinstein (2:12:56.460)
was repeating it, didn't turn out to be the case.
Lex Fridman (2:12:58.760)
Many laboratories had established
Bret Weinstein (2:13:00.440)
that mice had ultra long telomeres.
Lex Fridman (2:13:02.860)
And so I began to wonder whether or not
Bret Weinstein (2:13:05.320)
there was something about the breeding protocols
Lex Fridman (2:13:09.580)
that generated these mice.
Lex Fridman (2:13:11.220)
And what that would predict is that the mice
Lex Fridman (2:13:13.860)
that have long telomeres would be laboratory mice
Lex Fridman (2:13:16.940)
and that wild mice would not.
Lex Fridman (2:13:18.700)
And Carol Greider, who agreed to collaborate with me,
Bret Weinstein (2:13:23.180)
tested that hypothesis and showed that it was indeed true,
Lex Fridman (2:13:27.620)
that wild derived mice, or at least mice
Bret Weinstein (2:13:29.900)
that had been in captivity for a much shorter period of time
Lex Fridman (2:13:32.700)
did not have ultra long telomeres.
Bret Weinstein (2:13:35.180)
Now, what this implied though, as you read,
Lex Fridman (2:13:38.660)
is that our breeding protocols
Bret Weinstein (2:13:41.100)
generate lengthening of telomeres.
Lex Fridman (2:13:43.080)
And the implication of that is that the animals
Bret Weinstein (2:13:45.700)
that have these very long telomeres
Lex Fridman (2:13:47.400)
will be hyper prone to create tumors.
Bret Weinstein (2:13:50.500)
They will be extremely resistant to toxins
Lex Fridman (2:13:54.420)
because they have effectively an infinite capacity
Bret Weinstein (2:13:56.900)
to replace any damaged tissue.
Lex Fridman (2:13:58.940)
And so ironically, if you give one of these
Bret Weinstein (2:14:02.660)
ultra long telomere lab mice a toxin,
Lex Fridman (2:14:06.460)
if the toxin doesn't outright kill it,
Bret Weinstein (2:14:08.320)
it may actually increase its lifespan
Lex Fridman (2:14:10.840)
because it functions as a kind of chemotherapy.
Lex Fridman (2:14:14.300)
So the reason that chemotherapy works
Lex Fridman (2:14:16.940)
is that dividing cells are more vulnerable
Bret Weinstein (2:14:19.180)
than cells that are not dividing.
Lex Fridman (2:14:21.100)
And so if this mouse has effectively
Bret Weinstein (2:14:23.540)
had its cancer protection turned off,
Lex Fridman (2:14:26.280)
and it has cells dividing too rapidly,
Lex Fridman (2:14:28.500)
and you give it a toxin, you will slow down its tumors
Lex Fridman (2:14:31.420)
faster than you harm its other tissues.
Lex Fridman (2:14:33.980)
And so you'll get a paradoxical result
Lex Fridman (2:14:35.700)
that actually some drug that's toxic
Bret Weinstein (2:14:38.300)
seems to benefit the mouse.
Lex Fridman (2:14:40.460)
Now, I don't think that that was understood
Bret Weinstein (2:14:43.140)
before I published my paper.
Lex Fridman (2:14:44.720)
Now I'm pretty sure it has to be.
Lex Fridman (2:14:46.820)
And the problem is that this actually is a system
Lex Fridman (2:14:50.700)
that serves pharmaceutical companies
Bret Weinstein (2:14:53.180)
that have the difficult job of bringing compounds to market,
Lex Fridman (2:14:57.180)
many of which will be toxic.
Bret Weinstein (2:14:59.420)
Maybe all of them will be toxic.
Lex Fridman (2:15:01.780)
And these mice predispose our system
Bret Weinstein (2:15:04.780)
to declare these toxic compounds safe.
Lex Fridman (2:15:07.580)
And in fact, I believe we've seen the errors
Bret Weinstein (2:15:10.460)
that result from using these mice a number of times,
Lex Fridman (2:15:12.940)
most famously with Vioxx, which turned out
Bret Weinstein (2:15:15.540)
to do conspicuous heart damage.
Lex Fridman (2:15:18.180)
Why do you think this paper and this idea
Lex Fridman (2:15:20.700)
has not gotten significant traction?
Lex Fridman (2:15:23.700)
Well, my collaborator, Carol Greider,
Bret Weinstein (2:15:27.580)
said something to me that rings in my ears to this day.
Lex Fridman (2:15:32.180)
She initially, after she showed that laboratory mice
Bret Weinstein (2:15:35.780)
have anomalously long telomeres
Lex Fridman (2:15:37.380)
and that wild mice don't have long telomeres,
Bret Weinstein (2:15:39.980)
I asked her where she was going to publish that result
Lex Fridman (2:15:42.300)
so that I could cite it in my paper.
Lex Fridman (2:15:44.500)
And she said that she was going to keep the result in house
Lex Fridman (2:15:47.460)
rather than publish it.
Lex Fridman (2:15:49.780)
And at the time, I was a young graduate student.
Lex Fridman (2:15:54.020)
I didn't really understand what she was saying.
Lex Fridman (2:15:56.780)
But in some sense, the knowledge that a model organism
Lex Fridman (2:16:01.420)
is broken in a way that creates the likelihood
Bret Weinstein (2:16:04.780)
that certain results will be reliably generateable,
Lex Fridman (2:16:08.260)
you can publish a paper and make a big splash
Bret Weinstein (2:16:10.700)
with such a thing, or you can exploit the fact
Lex Fridman (2:16:13.300)
that you know how those models will misbehave
Lex Fridman (2:16:16.100)
and other people don't.
Lex Fridman (2:16:17.660)
So there's a question, if somebody is motivated cynically
Lex Fridman (2:16:22.300)
and what they want to do is appear to have deeper insight
Lex Fridman (2:16:25.540)
into biology because they predict things
Bret Weinstein (2:16:27.580)
better than others do, knowing where the flaw is
Lex Fridman (2:16:31.100)
so that your predictions come out true is advantageous.
Bret Weinstein (2:16:34.940)
At the same time, I can't help but imagine
Lex Fridman (2:16:38.900)
that the pharmaceutical industry,
Bret Weinstein (2:16:40.100)
when it figured out that the mice were predisposed
Lex Fridman (2:16:42.660)
to suggest that drugs were safe,
Bret Weinstein (2:16:45.700)
didn't leap to fix the problem because in some sense,
Lex Fridman (2:16:49.040)
it was the perfect cover for the difficult job
Bret Weinstein (2:16:51.740)
of bringing drugs to market and then discovering
Lex Fridman (2:16:55.460)
their actual toxicity profile, right?
Bret Weinstein (2:16:57.820)
This made things look safer than they were
Lex Fridman (2:16:59.500)
and I believe a lot of profits
Bret Weinstein (2:17:01.220)
have likely been generated downstream.
Lex Fridman (2:17:04.020)
So to kind of play devil's advocate,
Bret Weinstein (2:17:06.700)
it's also possible that this particular,
Lex Fridman (2:17:10.380)
the length of the telomeres is not a strong variable
Bret Weinstein (2:17:12.500)
for the drug development and for the conclusions
Lex Fridman (2:17:16.180)
that Carol and others have been studying.
Lex Fridman (2:17:18.500)
Is it possible for that to be the case?
Lex Fridman (2:17:22.820)
So one reason she and others could be ignoring this
Bret Weinstein (2:17:27.100)
is because it's not a strong variable.
Lex Fridman (2:17:29.500)
Well, I don't believe so and in fact,
Bret Weinstein (2:17:31.060)
at the point that I went to publish my paper,
Lex Fridman (2:17:34.160)
Carol published her result.
Bret Weinstein (2:17:36.680)
She did so in a way that did not make a huge splash.
Lex Fridman (2:17:39.580)
Did she, I apologize if I don't know how,
Lex Fridman (2:17:44.140)
what was the emphasis of her publication of that paper?
Lex Fridman (2:17:49.860)
Was it purely just kind of showing data
Bret Weinstein (2:17:52.220)
or is there more, because in your paper,
Lex Fridman (2:17:54.140)
there's a kind of more of a philosophical statement as well.
Bret Weinstein (2:17:57.580)
Well, my paper was motivated by interest
Lex Fridman (2:18:00.920)
in the evolutionary dynamics around senescence.
Bret Weinstein (2:18:03.540)
I wasn't pursuing grants or anything like that.
Lex Fridman (2:18:07.660)
I was just working on a puzzle I thought was interesting.
Bret Weinstein (2:18:10.860)
Carol has, of course, gone on to win a Nobel Prize
Lex Fridman (2:18:14.320)
for her co discovery with Elizabeth Greider
Bret Weinstein (2:18:17.460)
of telomerase, the enzyme that lengthens telomeres.
Lex Fridman (2:18:21.760)
But anyway, she's a heavy hitter in the academic world.
Bret Weinstein (2:18:25.720)
I don't know exactly what her purpose was.
Lex Fridman (2:18:27.800)
I do know that she told me she wasn't planning to publish
Lex Fridman (2:18:30.220)
and I do know that I discovered that she was
Lex Fridman (2:18:32.220)
in the process of publishing very late
Lex Fridman (2:18:34.380)
and when I asked her to send me the paper
Lex Fridman (2:18:36.860)
to see whether or not she had put evidence in it
Bret Weinstein (2:18:40.960)
that the hypothesis had come from me,
Lex Fridman (2:18:43.540)
she grudgingly sent it to me
Lex Fridman (2:18:45.140)
and my name was nowhere mentioned
Lex Fridman (2:18:46.700)
and she broke contact at that point.
Lex Fridman (2:18:50.960)
What it is that motivated her, I don't know,
Lex Fridman (2:18:53.380)
but I don't think it can possibly be
Bret Weinstein (2:18:55.020)
that this result is unimportant.
Lex Fridman (2:18:57.300)
The fact is, the reason I called her in the first place,
Bret Weinstein (2:19:00.580)
an established contact that generated our collaboration,
Lex Fridman (2:19:04.820)
was that she was a leading light in the field
Bret Weinstein (2:19:07.040)
of telomeric studies and because of that,
Lex Fridman (2:19:11.020)
this question about whether the model organisms
Bret Weinstein (2:19:14.060)
are distorting the understanding
Lex Fridman (2:19:18.100)
of the functioning of telomeres, it's central.
Lex Fridman (2:19:20.980)
Do you feel like you've been,
Lex Fridman (2:19:23.580)
as a young graduate student, do you think Carol
Bret Weinstein (2:19:27.140)
or do you think the scientific community
Lex Fridman (2:19:28.660)
broadly screwed you over in some way?
Bret Weinstein (2:19:31.540)
I don't think of it in those terms.
Lex Fridman (2:19:33.260)
Probably partly because it's not productive
Lex Fridman (2:19:37.500)
but I have a complex relationship with this story.
Lex Fridman (2:19:42.360)
On the one hand, I'm livid with Carol Greider
Bret Weinstein (2:19:44.940)
for what she did.
Lex Fridman (2:19:46.400)
She absolutely pretended that I didn't exist in this story
Lex Fridman (2:19:50.060)
and I don't think I was a threat to her.
Lex Fridman (2:19:51.900)
My interest was as an evolutionary biologist,
Bret Weinstein (2:19:54.700)
I had made an evolutionary contribution,
Lex Fridman (2:19:57.460)
she had tested a hypothesis and frankly,
Bret Weinstein (2:19:59.540)
I think it would have been better for her
Lex Fridman (2:20:01.540)
if she had acknowledged what I had done.
Bret Weinstein (2:20:03.780)
I think it would have enhanced her work
Lex Fridman (2:20:07.020)
and I was, let's put it this way,
Bret Weinstein (2:20:10.460)
when I watched her Nobel lecture,
Lex Fridman (2:20:12.420)
and I should say there's been a lot of confusion
Bret Weinstein (2:20:13.980)
about this Nobel stuff.
Lex Fridman (2:20:15.020)
I've never said that I should have gotten a Nobel prize.
Bret Weinstein (2:20:17.840)
People have misportrayed that.
Lex Fridman (2:20:23.180)
In listening to her lecture,
Bret Weinstein (2:20:25.840)
I had one of the most bizarre emotional experiences
Lex Fridman (2:20:29.100)
of my life because she presented the work
Bret Weinstein (2:20:33.140)
that resulted from my hypothesis.
Lex Fridman (2:20:35.940)
She presented it as she had in her paper
Bret Weinstein (2:20:38.860)
with no acknowledgement of where it had come from
Lex Fridman (2:20:42.300)
and she had in fact portrayed the distortion
Bret Weinstein (2:20:47.220)
of the telomeres as if it were a lucky fact
Lex Fridman (2:20:50.620)
because it allowed testing hypotheses
Bret Weinstein (2:20:53.180)
that would otherwise not be testable.
Lex Fridman (2:20:55.600)
You have to understand as a young scientist
Bret Weinstein (2:21:00.680)
to watch work that you have done presented
Lex Fridman (2:21:04.480)
in what's surely the most important lecture
Bret Weinstein (2:21:07.680)
of her career, it's thrilling.
Lex Fridman (2:21:11.440)
It was thrilling to see her figures
Bret Weinstein (2:21:16.720)
projected on the screen there.
Lex Fridman (2:21:18.640)
To have been part of work that was important enough
Bret Weinstein (2:21:21.140)
for that felt great and of course,
Lex Fridman (2:21:23.160)
to be erased from the story felt absolutely terrible.
Lex Fridman (2:21:27.720)
So anyway, that's sort of where I am with it.
Lex Fridman (2:21:30.080)
My sense is what I'm really troubled by in this story
Bret Weinstein (2:21:35.960)
is the fact that as far as I know,
Lex Fridman (2:21:41.920)
the flaw with the mice has not been addressed.
Lex Fridman (2:21:45.800)
And actually, Eric did some looking into this.
Lex Fridman (2:21:48.020)
He tried to establish by calling the Jack's lab
Lex Fridman (2:21:50.680)
and trying to ascertain what had happened with the colonies,
Lex Fridman (2:21:54.360)
whether any change in protocol had occurred
Lex Fridman (2:21:57.000)
and he couldn't get anywhere.
Lex Fridman (2:21:58.720)
There was seemingly no awareness that it was even an issue.
Lex Fridman (2:22:02.280)
So I'm very troubled by the fact that as a father,
Lex Fridman (2:22:06.080)
for example, I'm in no position to protect my family
Bret Weinstein (2:22:10.480)
from the hazard that I believe lurks
Lex Fridman (2:22:12.400)
in our medicine cabinets, right?
Bret Weinstein (2:22:15.020)
Even though I'm aware of where the hazard comes from,
Lex Fridman (2:22:17.360)
it doesn't tell me anything useful
Bret Weinstein (2:22:18.920)
about which of these drugs will turn out to do damage
Lex Fridman (2:22:21.160)
if that is ultimately tested.
Lex Fridman (2:22:23.200)
And that's a very frustrating position to be in.
Lex Fridman (2:22:26.500)
On the other hand, there's a part of me
Bret Weinstein (2:22:28.160)
that's even still grateful to Carol for taking my call.
Lex Fridman (2:22:31.640)
She didn't have to take my call
Lex Fridman (2:22:33.000)
and talk to some young graduate student
Lex Fridman (2:22:34.640)
who had some evolutionary idea
Bret Weinstein (2:22:36.220)
that wasn't in her wheelhouse specifically, and yet she did.
Lex Fridman (2:22:41.320)
And for a while, she was a good collaborator, so.
Bret Weinstein (2:22:44.640)
Well, can I, I have to proceed carefully here because
Lex Fridman (2:22:49.040)
it's a complicated topic.
Lex Fridman (2:22:52.360)
So she took the call.
Lex Fridman (2:22:55.760)
And you kind of, you're kind of saying that
Bret Weinstein (2:23:01.480)
she basically erased credit, you know,
Lex Fridman (2:23:05.000)
pretending you didn't exist in some kind of,
Bret Weinstein (2:23:07.200)
in a certain sense.
Lex Fridman (2:23:11.040)
Let me phrase it this way.
Bret Weinstein (2:23:12.440)
I've, as a research scientist at MIT,
Lex Fridman (2:23:17.920)
I've had, and especially just part of
Bret Weinstein (2:23:22.860)
a large set of collaborations,
Lex Fridman (2:23:25.360)
I've had a lot of students come to me
Lex Fridman (2:23:28.400)
and talk to me about ideas,
Lex Fridman (2:23:31.260)
perhaps less interesting than what we're discussing here
Bret Weinstein (2:23:33.600)
in the space of AI, that I've been thinking about anyway.
Lex Fridman (2:23:38.360)
In general, with everything I'm doing with robotics, people
Bret Weinstein (2:23:45.900)
have told me a bunch of ideas
Lex Fridman (2:23:47.660)
that I'm already thinking about.
Bret Weinstein (2:23:49.400)
The point is taking that idea, see, this is different
Lex Fridman (2:23:53.080)
because the idea has more power in the space
Bret Weinstein (2:23:55.240)
that we're talking about here,
Lex Fridman (2:23:56.200)
and robotics is like your idea means shit
Bret Weinstein (2:23:58.520)
until you build it.
Lex Fridman (2:24:00.080)
Like, so the engineering world is a little different,
Lex Fridman (2:24:03.160)
but there's a kind of sense that I probably forgot
Lex Fridman (2:24:07.980)
a lot of brilliant ideas have been told to me.
Lex Fridman (2:24:11.520)
Do you think she pretended you don't exist?
Lex Fridman (2:24:14.800)
Do you think she was so busy that she kind of forgot,
Bret Weinstein (2:24:19.740)
you know, that she has like the stream
Lex Fridman (2:24:21.480)
of brilliant people around her,
Bret Weinstein (2:24:23.160)
there's a bunch of ideas that are swimming in the air,
Lex Fridman (2:24:26.240)
and you just kind of forget people
Bret Weinstein (2:24:28.280)
that are a little bit on the periphery
Lex Fridman (2:24:30.280)
on the idea generation, like, or is it some mix of both?
Bret Weinstein (2:24:34.720)
It's not a mix of both.
Lex Fridman (2:24:36.700)
I know that because we corresponded.
Bret Weinstein (2:24:39.840)
She put a graduate student on this work.
Lex Fridman (2:24:41.840)
He emailed me excitedly when the results came in.
Lex Fridman (2:24:46.720)
So there was no ambiguity about what had happened.
Lex Fridman (2:24:50.160)
What's more, when I went to publish my work,
Bret Weinstein (2:24:52.920)
I actually sent it to Carol in order to get her feedback
Lex Fridman (2:24:56.680)
because I wanted to be a good collaborator to her,
Lex Fridman (2:24:59.800)
and she absolutely panned it,
Lex Fridman (2:25:02.760)
made many critiques that were not valid,
Lex Fridman (2:25:06.080)
but it was clear at that point
Lex Fridman (2:25:07.600)
that she became an antagonist,
Lex Fridman (2:25:10.160)
and none of this adds up.
Lex Fridman (2:25:12.480)
She couldn't possibly have forgotten the conversation.
Bret Weinstein (2:25:16.960)
I believe I even sent her tissues at some point in part,
Lex Fridman (2:25:21.560)
not related to this project, but as a favor.
Bret Weinstein (2:25:23.840)
She was doing another project that involved telomeres,
Lex Fridman (2:25:25.840)
and she needed samples that I could get ahold of
Bret Weinstein (2:25:28.040)
because of the Museum of Zoology that I was in.
Lex Fridman (2:25:30.800)
So this was not a one off conversation.
Bret Weinstein (2:25:34.200)
I certainly know that those sorts of things can happen,
Lex Fridman (2:25:36.160)
but that's not what happened here.
Bret Weinstein (2:25:37.840)
This was a relationship that existed
Lex Fridman (2:25:41.300)
and then was suddenly cut short
Bret Weinstein (2:25:43.440)
at the point that she published her paper by surprise
Lex Fridman (2:25:46.360)
without saying where the hypothesis had come from
Lex Fridman (2:25:48.980)
and began to be a opposing force to my work.
Lex Fridman (2:25:54.900)
Is there, there's a bunch of trajectories
Bret Weinstein (2:25:57.000)
you could have taken through life.
Lex Fridman (2:25:58.700)
Do you think about the trajectory of being a researcher,
Bret Weinstein (2:26:06.640)
of then going to war in the space of ideas,
Lex Fridman (2:26:10.140)
of publishing further papers along this line?
Bret Weinstein (2:26:13.560)
I mean, that's often the dynamic of that fascinating space
Lex Fridman (2:26:18.880)
is you have a junior researcher with brilliant ideas
Lex Fridman (2:26:21.980)
and a senior researcher that starts out as a mentor
Lex Fridman (2:26:24.980)
that becomes a competitor.
Bret Weinstein (2:26:26.000)
I mean, that happens.
Lex Fridman (2:26:27.800)
But then the way to,
Bret Weinstein (2:26:31.360)
it's almost an opportunity to shine
Lex Fridman (2:26:33.560)
is to publish a bunch more papers in this place
Bret Weinstein (2:26:36.840)
to tear it apart, to dig into,
Lex Fridman (2:26:39.280)
like really make it a war of ideas.
Lex Fridman (2:26:42.600)
Did you consider that possible trajectory?
Lex Fridman (2:26:45.400)
I did.
Bret Weinstein (2:26:46.840)
A couple of things to say about it.
Lex Fridman (2:26:48.400)
One, this work was not central for me.
Bret Weinstein (2:26:51.800)
I took a year on the T. Lemire project
Lex Fridman (2:26:54.480)
because something fascinating occurred to me
Lex Fridman (2:26:57.600)
and I pursued it.
Lex Fridman (2:26:58.480)
And the more I pursued it,
Bret Weinstein (2:26:59.560)
the clearer it was there was something there.
Lex Fridman (2:27:01.440)
But it wasn't the focus of my graduate work.
Lex Fridman (2:27:03.800)
And I didn't want to become a T. Lemire researcher.
Lex Fridman (2:27:08.680)
What I want to do is to be an evolutionary biologist
Bret Weinstein (2:27:12.260)
who upgrades the toolkit of evolutionary concepts
Lex Fridman (2:27:15.900)
so that we can see more clearly
Lex Fridman (2:27:17.800)
how organisms function and why.
Lex Fridman (2:27:20.180)
And T. Lemire's was a proof of concept, right?
Bret Weinstein (2:27:24.880)
That paper was a proof of concept
Lex Fridman (2:27:26.360)
that the toolkit in question works.
Bret Weinstein (2:27:30.400)
As for the need to pursue it further,
Lex Fridman (2:27:35.640)
I think it's kind of absurd
Lex Fridman (2:27:37.080)
and you're not the first person to say
Lex Fridman (2:27:38.480)
maybe that was the way to go about it.
Lex Fridman (2:27:40.060)
But the basic point is, look, the work was good.
Lex Fridman (2:27:43.760)
It turned out to be highly predictive.
Bret Weinstein (2:27:47.000)
Frankly, the model of senescence that I presented
Lex Fridman (2:27:50.120)
is now widely accepted.
Lex Fridman (2:27:52.000)
And I don't feel any misgivings at all
Lex Fridman (2:27:55.520)
about having spent a year on it, said my piece,
Lex Fridman (2:27:58.480)
and moved on to other things
Lex Fridman (2:28:00.040)
which frankly I think are bigger.
Bret Weinstein (2:28:02.320)
I think there's a lot of good to be done
Lex Fridman (2:28:03.680)
and it would be a waste to get overly narrowly focused.
Bret Weinstein (2:28:08.120)
There's so many ways through the space of science
Lex Fridman (2:28:12.920)
and the most common ways is just publish a lot.
Bret Weinstein (2:28:16.800)
Just publish a lot of papers, do these incremental work
Lex Fridman (2:28:19.240)
and exploring the space kind of like ants looking for food.
Bret Weinstein (2:28:24.240)
You're tossing out a bunch of different ideas.
Lex Fridman (2:28:26.840)
Some of them could be brilliant breakthrough ideas, nature.
Bret Weinstein (2:28:29.800)
Some of them are more confidence kind of publications,
Lex Fridman (2:28:32.020)
all those kinds of things.
Lex Fridman (2:28:33.360)
Did you consider that kind of path in science?
Lex Fridman (2:28:38.360)
Of course I considered it,
Lex Fridman (2:28:39.760)
but I must say the experience of having my first encounter
Lex Fridman (2:28:44.600)
with the process of peer review be this story,
Bret Weinstein (2:28:48.720)
which was frankly a debacle from one end to the other
Lex Fridman (2:28:52.460)
with respect to the process of publishing.
Bret Weinstein (2:28:55.840)
It did not, it was not a very good sales pitch
Lex Fridman (2:28:58.800)
for trying to make a difference through publication.
Lex Fridman (2:29:01.480)
And I would point out part of what I ran into
Lex Fridman (2:29:03.320)
and I think frankly part of what explains Carol's behavior
Bret Weinstein (2:29:06.920)
is that in some parts of science,
Lex Fridman (2:29:10.640)
there is this dynamic where PIs parasitize their underlings
Lex Fridman (2:29:16.560)
and if you're very, very good, you rise to the level
Lex Fridman (2:29:20.320)
where one day instead of being parasitized,
Bret Weinstein (2:29:23.160)
you get to parasitize others.
Lex Fridman (2:29:25.320)
Now I find that scientifically despicable
Lex Fridman (2:29:28.360)
and it wasn't the culture of the lab I grew up in at all.
Lex Fridman (2:29:31.220)
My lab, in fact, the PI, Dick Alexander, who's now gone,
Lex Fridman (2:29:35.840)
but who was an incredible mind and a great human being,
Lex Fridman (2:29:40.400)
he didn't want his graduate students working
Bret Weinstein (2:29:42.520)
on the same topics he was on,
Lex Fridman (2:29:44.280)
not because it wouldn't have been useful and exciting,
Lex Fridman (2:29:47.480)
but because in effect, he did not want any confusion
Lex Fridman (2:29:51.240)
about who had done what because he was a great mentor
Lex Fridman (2:29:55.640)
and the idea was actually a great mentor
Lex Fridman (2:29:58.600)
is not stealing ideas and you don't want people
Bret Weinstein (2:30:02.360)
thinking that they are.
Lex Fridman (2:30:03.500)
So anyway, my point would be,
Bret Weinstein (2:30:08.120)
I wasn't up for being parasitized.
Lex Fridman (2:30:11.200)
I don't like the idea that if you are very good,
Bret Weinstein (2:30:14.440)
you get parasitized until it's your turn
Lex Fridman (2:30:16.300)
to parasitize others.
Bret Weinstein (2:30:17.700)
That doesn't make sense to me.
Lex Fridman (2:30:21.080)
Crossing over from evolution into cellular biology
Bret Weinstein (2:30:23.680)
may have exposed me to that.
Lex Fridman (2:30:25.440)
That may have been par for the course,
Lex Fridman (2:30:26.960)
but it doesn't make it acceptable.
Lex Fridman (2:30:29.800)
And I would also point out that my work falls
Bret Weinstein (2:30:33.120)
in the realm of synthesis.
Lex Fridman (2:30:36.500)
My work generally takes evidence accumulated by others
Lex Fridman (2:30:41.500)
and places it together in order to generate hypotheses
Lex Fridman (2:30:46.420)
that explain sets of phenomena
Bret Weinstein (2:30:48.660)
that are otherwise intractable.
Lex Fridman (2:30:51.300)
And I am not sure that that is best done
Bret Weinstein (2:30:55.260)
with narrow publications that are read by few.
Lex Fridman (2:30:59.700)
And in fact, I would point to the very conspicuous example
Bret Weinstein (2:31:03.020)
of Richard Dawkins, who I must say I've learned
Lex Fridman (2:31:05.160)
a tremendous amount from and I greatly admire.
Bret Weinstein (2:31:07.940)
Dawkins has almost no publication record
Lex Fridman (2:31:12.240)
in the sense of peer reviewed papers in journals.
Lex Fridman (2:31:15.720)
What he's done instead is done synthetic work
Lex Fridman (2:31:18.160)
and he's published it in books,
Bret Weinstein (2:31:19.580)
which are not peer reviewed in the same sense.
Lex Fridman (2:31:22.520)
And frankly, I think there's no doubting
Bret Weinstein (2:31:24.820)
his contribution to the field.
Lex Fridman (2:31:27.040)
So my sense is if Richard Dawkins can illustrate
Bret Weinstein (2:31:32.240)
that one can make contributions to the field
Lex Fridman (2:31:34.380)
without using journals as the primary mechanism
Bret Weinstein (2:31:38.340)
for distributing what you've come to understand,
Lex Fridman (2:31:40.560)
then it's obviously a valid mechanism
Lex Fridman (2:31:42.360)
and it's a far better one from the point of view
Lex Fridman (2:31:44.640)
of accomplishing what I want to accomplish.
Bret Weinstein (2:31:46.380)
Yeah, it's really interesting.
Lex Fridman (2:31:47.880)
There is of course several levels
Bret Weinstein (2:31:49.200)
you can do the kind of synthesis
Lex Fridman (2:31:50.800)
and that does require a lot of both broad
Lex Fridman (2:31:53.940)
and deep thinking is exceptionally valuable.
Lex Fridman (2:31:56.180)
You could also, I'm working on something
Bret Weinstein (2:31:58.880)
with Andrew Huberman now, you can also publish synthesis.
Lex Fridman (2:32:02.280)
That's like review papers that are exceptionally valuable
Bret Weinstein (2:32:05.680)
for the communities.
Lex Fridman (2:32:06.720)
It brings the community together, tells a history,
Bret Weinstein (2:32:09.400)
tells a story of where the community has been.
Lex Fridman (2:32:11.120)
It paints a picture of where the path lays for the future.
Bret Weinstein (2:32:14.440)
I think it's really valuable.
Lex Fridman (2:32:15.600)
And Richard Dawkins is a good example
Bret Weinstein (2:32:17.440)
of somebody that does that in book form
Lex Fridman (2:32:20.280)
that he kind of walks the line really interestingly.
Bret Weinstein (2:32:23.680)
You have like somebody who like Neil deGrasse Tyson,
Lex Fridman (2:32:26.440)
who's more like a science communicator.
Bret Weinstein (2:32:28.800)
Richard Dawkins sometimes is a science communicator,
Lex Fridman (2:32:31.000)
but he gets like close to the technical
Bret Weinstein (2:32:34.000)
to where it's a little bit, it's not shying away
Lex Fridman (2:32:36.960)
from being really a contribution to science.
Bret Weinstein (2:32:41.440)
No, he's made real contributions.
Lex Fridman (2:32:44.140)
In book form.
Bret Weinstein (2:32:45.040)
Yes, he really has.
Lex Fridman (2:32:46.600)
Which is fascinating.
Bret Weinstein (2:32:47.600)
I mean, Roger Penrose, I mean, similar kind of idea.
Lex Fridman (2:32:51.640)
That's interesting, that's interesting.
Bret Weinstein (2:32:53.060)
Synthesis does not, especially synthesis work,
Lex Fridman (2:32:56.480)
work that synthesizes ideas does not necessarily need
Bret Weinstein (2:33:00.440)
to be peer reviewed.
Lex Fridman (2:33:03.280)
It's peer reviewed by peers reading it.
Bret Weinstein (2:33:08.240)
Well, and reviewing it.
Lex Fridman (2:33:10.160)
That's it, it is reviewed by peers,
Bret Weinstein (2:33:11.720)
which is not synonymous with peer review.
Lex Fridman (2:33:13.500)
And that's the thing is people don't understand
Lex Fridman (2:33:15.600)
that the two things aren't the same, right?
Lex Fridman (2:33:17.740)
Peer review is an anonymous process
Bret Weinstein (2:33:20.240)
that happens before publication
Lex Fridman (2:33:23.360)
in a place where there is a power dynamic, right?
Bret Weinstein (2:33:26.620)
I mean, the joke of course is that peer review
Lex Fridman (2:33:28.280)
is actually peer preview, right?
Bret Weinstein (2:33:30.360)
Your biggest competitors get to see your work
Lex Fridman (2:33:32.880)
before it sees the light of day
Lex Fridman (2:33:34.160)
and decide whether or not it gets published.
Lex Fridman (2:33:37.260)
And again, when your formative experience
Bret Weinstein (2:33:41.240)
with the publication apparatus is the one I had
Lex Fridman (2:33:43.520)
with the telomere paper, there's no way
Bret Weinstein (2:33:46.880)
that that seems like the right way
Lex Fridman (2:33:48.300)
to advance important ideas.
Lex Fridman (2:33:50.720)
And what's the harm in publishing them
Lex Fridman (2:33:54.000)
so that your peers have to review them in public
Bret Weinstein (2:33:55.900)
where they actually, if they're gonna disagree with you,
Lex Fridman (2:33:58.600)
they actually have to take the risk of saying,
Lex Fridman (2:34:00.580)
I don't think this is right and here's why, right?
Lex Fridman (2:34:03.380)
With their name on it.
Bret Weinstein (2:34:04.520)
I'd much rather that.
Lex Fridman (2:34:05.540)
It's not that I don't want my work reviewed by peers,
Lex Fridman (2:34:07.600)
but I want it done in the open, you know,
Lex Fridman (2:34:10.220)
for the same reason you don't meet
Bret Weinstein (2:34:11.480)
with dangerous people in private, you meet at the cafe.
Lex Fridman (2:34:14.640)
I want the work reviewed out in public.
Lex Fridman (2:34:18.840)
Can I ask you a difficult question?
Lex Fridman (2:34:20.840)
Sure.
Bret Weinstein (2:34:23.640)
There is popularity in martyrdom.
Lex Fridman (2:34:26.640)
There's popularity in pointing out
Bret Weinstein (2:34:30.580)
that the emperor has no clothes.
Lex Fridman (2:34:33.740)
That can become a drug in itself.
Bret Weinstein (2:34:40.980)
I've confronted this in scientific work I've done at MIT
Lex Fridman (2:34:46.860)
where there are certain things that are not done well.
Bret Weinstein (2:34:49.900)
People are not being the best version of themselves.
Lex Fridman (2:34:52.500)
And particular aspects of a particular field
Bret Weinstein (2:34:59.880)
are in need of a revolution.
Lex Fridman (2:35:02.280)
And part of me wanted to point that out
Bret Weinstein (2:35:06.280)
versus doing the hard work of publishing papers
Lex Fridman (2:35:11.280)
and doing the revolution.
Bret Weinstein (2:35:13.240)
Basically just pointing out, look,
Lex Fridman (2:35:15.920)
you guys are doing it wrong and then just walking away.
Bret Weinstein (2:35:19.320)
Are you aware of the drug of martyrdom,
Lex Fridman (2:35:23.360)
of the ego involved in it,
Lex Fridman (2:35:29.760)
that it can cloud your thinking?
Lex Fridman (2:35:32.700)
Probably one of the best questions I've ever been asked.
Lex Fridman (2:35:35.840)
So let me try to sort it out.
Lex Fridman (2:35:39.360)
First of all, we are all mysteries to ourself at some level.
Lex Fridman (2:35:43.560)
So it's possible there's stuff going on in me
Lex Fridman (2:35:46.240)
that I'm not aware of that's driving.
Lex Fridman (2:35:48.320)
But in general, I would say one of my better strengths
Lex Fridman (2:35:52.080)
is that I'm not especially ego driven.
Bret Weinstein (2:35:55.280)
I have an ego, I clearly think highly of myself,
Lex Fridman (2:35:58.540)
but it is not driving me.
Bret Weinstein (2:36:00.300)
I do not crave that kind of validation.
Lex Fridman (2:36:03.220)
I do crave certain things.
Bret Weinstein (2:36:05.000)
I do love a good eureka moment.
Lex Fridman (2:36:07.880)
There is something great about it.
Lex Fridman (2:36:09.360)
And there's something even better about the phone calls
Lex Fridman (2:36:11.720)
you make next when you share it, right?
Lex Fridman (2:36:14.280)
It's pretty fun, right?
Lex Fridman (2:36:15.840)
I really like it.
Lex Fridman (2:36:17.380)
I also really like my subject, right?
Lex Fridman (2:36:20.880)
There's something about a walk in the forest
Bret Weinstein (2:36:23.800)
when you have a toolkit in which you can actually look
Lex Fridman (2:36:26.920)
at creatures and see something deep, right?
Bret Weinstein (2:36:30.740)
I like it, that drives me.
Lex Fridman (2:36:33.060)
And I could entertain myself for the rest of my life, right?
Bret Weinstein (2:36:35.880)
If I was somehow isolated from the rest of the world,
Lex Fridman (2:36:39.800)
but I was in a place that was biologically interesting,
Bret Weinstein (2:36:42.920)
hopefully I would be with people that I love
Lex Fridman (2:36:45.960)
and pets that I love, believe it or not.
Lex Fridman (2:36:48.360)
But if I were in that situation and I could just go out
Lex Fridman (2:36:51.600)
every day and look at cool stuff and figure out
Lex Fridman (2:36:54.000)
what it means, I could be all right with that.
Lex Fridman (2:36:56.680)
So I'm not heavily driven by the ego thing, as you put it.
Lex Fridman (2:37:02.680)
So I am completely the same except instead of the pets,
Lex Fridman (2:37:07.440)
I would put robots.
Lex Fridman (2:37:08.520)
But so it's not, it's the eureka, it's the exploration
Lex Fridman (2:37:12.000)
of the subject that brings you joy and fulfillment.
Bret Weinstein (2:37:16.040)
It's not the ego.
Lex Fridman (2:37:17.840)
Well, there's more to say.
Bret Weinstein (2:37:18.880)
No, I really don't think it's the ego thing.
Lex Fridman (2:37:21.480)
I will say I also have kind of a secondary passion
Bret Weinstein (2:37:24.200)
for robot stuff.
Lex Fridman (2:37:25.140)
I've never made anything useful, but I do believe,
Bret Weinstein (2:37:29.000)
I believe I found my calling.
Lex Fridman (2:37:30.640)
But if this wasn't my calling,
Bret Weinstein (2:37:32.320)
my calling would have been inventing stuff.
Lex Fridman (2:37:34.460)
I really enjoy that too.
Lex Fridman (2:37:36.120)
So I get what you're saying about the analogy quite well.
Lex Fridman (2:37:39.920)
But as far as the martyrdom thing,
Bret Weinstein (2:37:46.440)
I understand the drug you're talking about
Lex Fridman (2:37:47.920)
and I've seen it more than I've felt it.
Bret Weinstein (2:37:51.000)
I do, if I'm just to be completely candid
Lex Fridman (2:37:53.760)
and this question is so good, it deserves a candid answer.
Lex Fridman (2:37:57.640)
I do like the fight, right?
Lex Fridman (2:38:01.960)
I like fighting against people I don't respect
Lex Fridman (2:38:04.720)
and I like winning, but I have no interest in martyrdom.
Lex Fridman (2:38:10.000)
One of the reasons I have no interest in martyrdom
Lex Fridman (2:38:12.680)
is that I'm having too good a time, right?
Lex Fridman (2:38:15.300)
I very much enjoy my life and.
Bret Weinstein (2:38:17.560)
It's such a good answer.
Lex Fridman (2:38:18.760)
I have a wonderful wife.
Bret Weinstein (2:38:21.240)
I have amazing children.
Lex Fridman (2:38:23.420)
I live in a lovely place.
Bret Weinstein (2:38:26.040)
I don't wanna exit any quicker than I have to.
Lex Fridman (2:38:29.440)
That said, I also believe in things
Lex Fridman (2:38:32.240)
and a willingness to exit if that's the only way
Lex Fridman (2:38:35.600)
is not exactly inviting martyrdom,
Lex Fridman (2:38:37.840)
but it is an acceptance that fighting is dangerous
Lex Fridman (2:38:41.260)
and going up against powerful forces
Lex Fridman (2:38:43.720)
means who knows what will come of it, right?
Lex Fridman (2:38:46.040)
I don't have the sense that the thing is out there
Bret Weinstein (2:38:48.840)
that used to kill inconvenient people.
Lex Fridman (2:38:51.440)
I don't think that's how it's done anymore.
Bret Weinstein (2:38:52.880)
It's primarily done through destroying them reputationally,
Lex Fridman (2:38:56.880)
which is not something I relish the possibility of,
Lex Fridman (2:39:00.520)
but there is a difference between
Lex Fridman (2:39:03.440)
a willingness to face the hazard
Lex Fridman (2:39:07.800)
rather than a desire to face it because of the thrill, right?
Lex Fridman (2:39:13.560)
For me, the thrill is in fighting when I'm in the right.
Bret Weinstein (2:39:19.600)
I think I feel that that is a worthwhile way
Lex Fridman (2:39:22.320)
to take what I see as the kind of brutality
Bret Weinstein (2:39:27.320)
that is built into men and to channel it
Lex Fridman (2:39:30.560)
to something useful, right?
Bret Weinstein (2:39:33.520)
If it is not channeled into something useful,
Lex Fridman (2:39:35.240)
it will be channeled into something else,
Lex Fridman (2:39:36.520)
so it damn well better be channeled into something useful.
Lex Fridman (2:39:38.880)
It's not motivated by fame or popularity,
Bret Weinstein (2:39:41.040)
those kinds of things.
Lex Fridman (2:39:42.040)
It's, you know what, you're just making me realize
Bret Weinstein (2:39:45.840)
that enjoying the fight,
Lex Fridman (2:39:50.440)
fighting the powerful and idea that you believe is right
Bret Weinstein (2:39:53.240)
is a kind of optimism for the human spirit.
Lex Fridman (2:40:01.640)
It's like, we can win this.
Bret Weinstein (2:40:05.520)
It's almost like you're turning into action,
Lex Fridman (2:40:08.000)
into personal action, this hope for humanity
Bret Weinstein (2:40:13.480)
by saying like, we can win this.
Lex Fridman (2:40:15.720)
And that makes you feel good about the rest of humanity,
Bret Weinstein (2:40:20.720)
that if there's people like me, then we're going to be okay.
Lex Fridman (2:40:26.000)
Even if you're like, your ideas might be wrong or not,
Lex Fridman (2:40:29.480)
but if you believe they're right
Lex Fridman (2:40:31.520)
and you're fighting the powerful against all odds,
Bret Weinstein (2:40:36.080)
then we're going to be okay.
Lex Fridman (2:40:39.960)
If I were to project, I mean,
Bret Weinstein (2:40:42.480)
because I enjoy the fight as well,
Lex Fridman (2:40:44.320)
I think that's the way I, that's what brings me joy,
Bret Weinstein (2:40:48.080)
is it's almost like it's optimism in action.
Lex Fridman (2:40:54.200)
Well, it's a little different for me.
Lex Fridman (2:40:55.600)
And again, I think, you know, I recognize you.
Lex Fridman (2:40:58.440)
You're a familiar, your construction is familiar,
Lex Fridman (2:41:01.000)
even if it isn't mine, right?
Lex Fridman (2:41:03.800)
For me, I actually expect us not to be okay.
Lex Fridman (2:41:08.320)
And I'm not okay with that.
Lex Fridman (2:41:10.160)
But what's really important, if I feel like what I've said
Bret Weinstein (2:41:14.400)
is I don't know of any reason that it's not okay,
Lex Fridman (2:41:17.320)
or any reason that it's too late.
Bret Weinstein (2:41:19.720)
As far as I know, we could still save humanity
Lex Fridman (2:41:22.560)
and we could get to the fourth frontier
Bret Weinstein (2:41:24.040)
or something akin to it.
Lex Fridman (2:41:26.280)
But I expect us not to, I expect us to fuck it up, right?
Bret Weinstein (2:41:29.960)
I don't like that thought, but I've looked into the abyss
Lex Fridman (2:41:32.360)
and I've done my calculations
Lex Fridman (2:41:34.480)
and the number of ways we could not succeed are many
Lex Fridman (2:41:38.920)
and the number of ways that we could manage
Bret Weinstein (2:41:40.920)
to get out of this very dangerous phase of history is small.
Lex Fridman (2:41:44.040)
The thing I don't have to worry about is
Lex Fridman (2:41:47.440)
that I didn't do enough, right?
Lex Fridman (2:41:50.520)
That I was a coward, that I prioritized other things.
Bret Weinstein (2:41:57.160)
At the end of the day, I think I will be able to say
Lex Fridman (2:41:59.240)
to myself, and in fact, the thing that allows me to sleep,
Bret Weinstein (2:42:02.120)
is that when I saw clearly what needed to be done,
Lex Fridman (2:42:05.600)
I tried to do it to the extent that it was in my power.
Lex Fridman (2:42:08.400)
And if we fail, as I expect us to,
Lex Fridman (2:42:12.720)
I can't say, well, geez, that's on me, you know?
Lex Fridman (2:42:16.160)
And frankly, I regard what I just said to you
Lex Fridman (2:42:18.400)
as something like a personality defect, right?
Bret Weinstein (2:42:22.160)
I'm trying to free myself from the sense
Lex Fridman (2:42:24.240)
that this is my fault.
Bret Weinstein (2:42:25.760)
On the other hand, my guess is that personality defect
Lex Fridman (2:42:28.160)
is probably good for humanity, right?
Bret Weinstein (2:42:31.320)
It's a good one for me to have the externalities
Lex Fridman (2:42:34.880)
of it are positive, so I don't feel too bad about it.
Bret Weinstein (2:42:38.640)
Yeah, that's funny, so yeah, our perspective on the world
Lex Fridman (2:42:42.920)
are different, but they rhyme, like you said.
Bret Weinstein (2:42:45.160)
Because I've also looked into the abyss,
Lex Fridman (2:42:47.600)
and it kind of smiled nervously back.
Lex Fridman (2:42:51.640)
So I have a more optimistic sense that we're gonna win
Lex Fridman (2:42:55.720)
more than likely we're going to be okay.
Bret Weinstein (2:42:59.240)
Right there with you, brother.
Lex Fridman (2:43:00.160)
I'm hoping you're right.
Bret Weinstein (2:43:01.560)
I'm expecting me to be right.
Lex Fridman (2:43:03.720)
But back to Eric, you had a wonderful conversation.
Bret Weinstein (2:43:07.280)
In that conversation, he played the big brother role,
Lex Fridman (2:43:11.080)
and he was very happy about it.
Bret Weinstein (2:43:13.280)
He was self congratulatory about it.
Lex Fridman (2:43:17.080)
Can you talk to the ways in which Eric made you
Lex Fridman (2:43:21.280)
a better man throughout your life?
Lex Fridman (2:43:24.040)
Yeah, hell yeah.
Bret Weinstein (2:43:25.600)
I mean, for one thing, you know,
Lex Fridman (2:43:27.920)
Eric and I are interestingly similar in some ways
Lex Fridman (2:43:30.960)
and radically different in some other ways,
Lex Fridman (2:43:33.080)
and it's often a matter of fascination
Bret Weinstein (2:43:35.760)
to people who know us both because almost always
Lex Fridman (2:43:38.000)
people meet one of us first, and they sort of
Bret Weinstein (2:43:40.040)
get used to that thing, and then they meet the other,
Lex Fridman (2:43:41.800)
and it throws the model into chaos.
Lex Fridman (2:43:44.400)
But you know, I had a great advantage,
Lex Fridman (2:43:47.080)
which is I came second, right?
Lex Fridman (2:43:49.440)
So although it was kind of a pain in the ass
Lex Fridman (2:43:51.800)
to be born into a world that had Eric in it
Lex Fridman (2:43:53.760)
because he's a force of nature, right?
Lex Fridman (2:43:55.920)
It was also terrifically useful because A,
Bret Weinstein (2:43:59.520)
he was a very awesome older brother
Lex Fridman (2:44:02.640)
who made interesting mistakes, learned from them,
Lex Fridman (2:44:06.000)
and conveyed the wisdom of what he had discovered,
Lex Fridman (2:44:08.760)
and that was, you know, I don't know who else
Bret Weinstein (2:44:12.640)
ends up so lucky as to have that kind of person
Lex Fridman (2:44:16.120)
blazing the trail.
Bret Weinstein (2:44:18.000)
It also probably, you know, my hypothesis
Lex Fridman (2:44:22.520)
for what birth order effects are
Lex Fridman (2:44:24.840)
is that they're actually adaptive, right?
Lex Fridman (2:44:27.960)
That the reason that a second born is different
Bret Weinstein (2:44:30.680)
than a first born is that they're not born
Lex Fridman (2:44:32.840)
into a world with the same niches in it, right?
Lex Fridman (2:44:35.560)
And so the thing about Eric is he's been
Lex Fridman (2:44:38.240)
completely dominant in the realm of fundamental thinking,
Bret Weinstein (2:44:44.000)
right, like what he's fascinated by
Lex Fridman (2:44:45.800)
is the fundamental of fundamentals,
Lex Fridman (2:44:48.400)
and he's excellent at it, which meant
Lex Fridman (2:44:50.520)
that I was born into a world where somebody
Bret Weinstein (2:44:52.080)
was becoming excellent in that, and for me
Lex Fridman (2:44:54.320)
to be anywhere near the fundamental of fundamentals
Lex Fridman (2:44:57.160)
was going to be pointless, right?
Lex Fridman (2:44:58.760)
I was going to be playing second fiddle forever,
Lex Fridman (2:45:00.880)
and I think that that actually drove me
Lex Fridman (2:45:02.520)
to the other end of the continuum
Bret Weinstein (2:45:04.640)
between fundamental and emergent,
Lex Fridman (2:45:06.560)
and so I became fascinated with biology
Lex Fridman (2:45:09.120)
and have been since I was three years old, right?
Lex Fridman (2:45:13.480)
I think Eric drove that, and I have to thank him for it
Bret Weinstein (2:45:16.920)
because, you know, I mean.
Lex Fridman (2:45:19.280)
I never thought of, so Eric drives towards the fundamental,
Lex Fridman (2:45:24.040)
and you drive towards the emergent,
Lex Fridman (2:45:26.360)
the physics and the biology.
Bret Weinstein (2:45:28.160)
Right, opposite ends of the continuum,
Lex Fridman (2:45:30.040)
and as Eric would be quick to point out
Bret Weinstein (2:45:32.600)
if he was sitting here, I treat the emergent layer,
Lex Fridman (2:45:36.120)
I seek the fundamentals in it,
Bret Weinstein (2:45:37.720)
which is sort of an echo of Eric's style of thinking
Lex Fridman (2:45:40.320)
but applied to the very far complexity.
Bret Weinstein (2:45:43.440)
He's overpoweringly argues for the importance of physics,
Lex Fridman (2:45:50.360)
the fundamental of the fundamental.
Bret Weinstein (2:45:55.320)
He's not here to defend himself.
Lex Fridman (2:45:57.360)
Is there an argument to be made against that?
Bret Weinstein (2:46:00.200)
Or biology, the emergent,
Lex Fridman (2:46:03.040)
the study of the thing that emerged
Bret Weinstein (2:46:06.800)
when the fundamental acts at the cosmic scale
Lex Fridman (2:46:10.800)
and then builds the beautiful thing that is us
Bret Weinstein (2:46:13.200)
is much more important.
Lex Fridman (2:46:16.160)
Psychology, biology, the systems
Bret Weinstein (2:46:19.840)
that we're actually interacting with in this human world
Lex Fridman (2:46:23.440)
are much more important to understand
Bret Weinstein (2:46:25.440)
than the low level theories of quantum mechanics
Lex Fridman (2:46:31.720)
and general relativity.
Bret Weinstein (2:46:33.760)
Yeah, I can't say that one is more important.
Lex Fridman (2:46:35.720)
I think there's probably a different time scale.
Bret Weinstein (2:46:38.400)
I think understanding the emergent layer
Lex Fridman (2:46:40.760)
is more often useful, but the bang for the buck
Bret Weinstein (2:46:44.880)
at the far fundamental layer may be much greater.
Lex Fridman (2:46:48.400)
So for example, the fourth frontier,
Bret Weinstein (2:46:51.240)
I'm pretty sure it's gonna have to be fusion powered.
Lex Fridman (2:46:55.640)
I don't think anything else will do it,
Lex Fridman (2:46:57.200)
but once you had fusion power,
Lex Fridman (2:46:58.800)
assuming we didn't just dump fusion power on the market
Bret Weinstein (2:47:01.400)
the way we would be likely to
Lex Fridman (2:47:02.600)
if it was invented usefully tomorrow,
Lex Fridman (2:47:05.680)
but if we had fusion power
Lex Fridman (2:47:08.520)
and we had a little bit more wisdom than we have,
Bret Weinstein (2:47:10.920)
you could do an awful lot.
Lex Fridman (2:47:12.000)
And that's not gonna come from people like me
Bret Weinstein (2:47:15.360)
who look at the dynamics of it.
Lex Fridman (2:47:17.960)
Can I argue against that?
Bret Weinstein (2:47:19.400)
Please.
Lex Fridman (2:47:21.240)
I think the way to unlock fusion power
Bret Weinstein (2:47:25.680)
is through artificial intelligence.
Lex Fridman (2:47:28.840)
So I think most of the breakthrough ideas
Bret Weinstein (2:47:32.560)
in the futures of science will be developed by AI systems.
Lex Fridman (2:47:35.960)
And I think in order to build intelligent AI systems,
Bret Weinstein (2:47:38.960)
you have to be a scholar of the fundamental
Lex Fridman (2:47:41.440)
of the emergent, of biology, of the neuroscience,
Bret Weinstein (2:47:46.440)
of the way the brain works,
Lex Fridman (2:47:48.960)
of intelligence, of consciousness.
Lex Fridman (2:47:50.960)
And those things, at least directly,
Lex Fridman (2:47:53.800)
don't have anything to do with physics.
Bret Weinstein (2:47:56.120)
Well.
Lex Fridman (2:47:56.960)
You're making me a little bit sad
Bret Weinstein (2:47:58.240)
because my addiction to the aha moment thing
Lex Fridman (2:48:02.080)
is incompatible with outsourcing that job.
Bret Weinstein (2:48:06.760)
Like the outsource thing.
Lex Fridman (2:48:07.600)
I don't wanna outsource that thing to the AI.
Bret Weinstein (2:48:09.280)
You reap the moment.
Lex Fridman (2:48:11.520)
And actually, I've seen this happen before
Bret Weinstein (2:48:13.240)
because some of the people who trained Heather and me
Lex Fridman (2:48:16.400)
were phylogenetic systematists,
Bret Weinstein (2:48:19.360)
Arnold Kluge in particular.
Lex Fridman (2:48:21.720)
And the problem with systematics
Bret Weinstein (2:48:24.920)
is that to do it right when your technology is primitive,
Lex Fridman (2:48:28.760)
you have to be deeply embedded in the philosophical
Lex Fridman (2:48:32.000)
and the logical, right?
Lex Fridman (2:48:33.960)
Your method has to be based in the highest level of rigor.
Bret Weinstein (2:48:40.200)
Once you can sequence genes,
Lex Fridman (2:48:42.360)
genes can spit so much data at you
Bret Weinstein (2:48:44.120)
that you can overwhelm high quality work
Lex Fridman (2:48:46.800)
with just lots and lots and lots of automated work.
Lex Fridman (2:48:49.960)
And so in some sense,
Lex Fridman (2:48:51.760)
there's like a generation of phylogenetic systematists
Bret Weinstein (2:48:54.960)
who are the last of the greats
Lex Fridman (2:48:56.640)
because what's replacing them is sequencers.
Lex Fridman (2:48:59.760)
So anyway, maybe you're right about the AI.
Lex Fridman (2:49:03.120)
And I guess I'm...
Lex Fridman (2:49:03.960)
What makes you sad?
Lex Fridman (2:49:06.200)
I like figuring stuff out.
Bret Weinstein (2:49:07.960)
Is there something that you disagree with the error con,
Lex Fridman (2:49:11.240)
even trying to convince them you failed so far,
Lex Fridman (2:49:14.840)
but you will eventually succeed?
Lex Fridman (2:49:18.600)
You know, that is a very long list.
Bret Weinstein (2:49:20.600)
Eric and I have tensions over certain things
Lex Fridman (2:49:24.120)
that recur all the time.
Lex Fridman (2:49:26.960)
And I'm trying to think what would be the ideal...
Lex Fridman (2:49:29.760)
Is it in the space of science,
Lex Fridman (2:49:30.840)
in the space of philosophy, politics, family, love, robots?
Lex Fridman (2:49:35.840)
Well, all right, let me...
Bret Weinstein (2:49:39.760)
I'm just gonna use your podcast
Lex Fridman (2:49:42.480)
to make a bit of a cryptic war
Lex Fridman (2:49:44.760)
and just say there are many places
Lex Fridman (2:49:47.120)
in which I believe that I have butted heads with Eric
Bret Weinstein (2:49:50.720)
over the course of decades
Lex Fridman (2:49:52.360)
and I have seen him move in my direction
Bret Weinstein (2:49:55.040)
substantially over time.
Lex Fridman (2:49:56.320)
So you've been winning.
Bret Weinstein (2:49:57.560)
He might win a battle here or there,
Lex Fridman (2:49:59.480)
but you've been winning the war.
Bret Weinstein (2:50:00.600)
I would not say that.
Lex Fridman (2:50:01.840)
It's quite possible he could say the same thing about me.
Lex Fridman (2:50:04.800)
And in fact, I know that it's true.
Lex Fridman (2:50:06.240)
There are places where he's absolutely convinced me.
Lex Fridman (2:50:08.440)
But in any case, I do believe it's at least...
Lex Fridman (2:50:11.880)
It may not be a totally even fight,
Lex Fridman (2:50:13.240)
but it's more even than some will imagine.
Lex Fridman (2:50:16.480)
But yeah, we have...
Lex Fridman (2:50:18.920)
There are things I say that drive him nuts, right?
Lex Fridman (2:50:22.680)
Like when something, like you heard me talk about the...
Lex Fridman (2:50:28.400)
What was it?
Lex Fridman (2:50:29.560)
It was the autopilot that seems to be putting
Bret Weinstein (2:50:33.880)
a great many humans in needless medical jeopardy
Lex Fridman (2:50:37.240)
over the COVID 19 pandemic.
Lex Fridman (2:50:40.360)
And my feeling is we can say this almost for sure.
Lex Fridman (2:50:45.520)
Anytime you have the appearance
Bret Weinstein (2:50:47.080)
of some captured gigantic entity
Lex Fridman (2:50:50.720)
that is censoring you on YouTube
Lex Fridman (2:50:52.960)
and handing down dictates from the who and all of that,
Lex Fridman (2:50:56.840)
it is sure that there will be
Lex Fridman (2:50:59.240)
a certain amount of collusion, right?
Lex Fridman (2:51:01.360)
There's gonna be some embarrassing emails in some places
Bret Weinstein (2:51:04.000)
that are gonna reveal some shocking connections.
Lex Fridman (2:51:05.880)
And then there's gonna be an awful lot of emergence
Lex Fridman (2:51:09.520)
that didn't involve collusion, right?
Lex Fridman (2:51:11.400)
In which people were doing their little part of a job
Lex Fridman (2:51:13.480)
and something was emerging.
Lex Fridman (2:51:14.480)
And you never know what the admixture is.
Lex Fridman (2:51:16.800)
How much are we looking at actual collusion
Lex Fridman (2:51:19.600)
and how much are we looking at an emergent process?
Lex Fridman (2:51:21.560)
But you should always walk in with the sense
Lex Fridman (2:51:23.600)
that it's gonna be a ratio.
Lex Fridman (2:51:24.840)
And the question is, what is the ratio in this case?
Lex Fridman (2:51:27.680)
I think this drives Eric nuts
Bret Weinstein (2:51:29.840)
because he is very focused on the people.
Lex Fridman (2:51:32.480)
I think he's focused on the people who have a choice
Lex Fridman (2:51:34.960)
and make the wrong one.
Lex Fridman (2:51:36.880)
And anyway, he may.
Bret Weinstein (2:51:38.600)
Discussion of the ratio is a distraction to that.
Lex Fridman (2:51:41.320)
I think he takes it almost as an offense
Bret Weinstein (2:51:45.000)
because it grants cover to people who are harming others.
Lex Fridman (2:51:51.440)
And I think it offends him morally.
Lex Fridman (2:51:56.120)
And if I had to say, I would say it alters his judgment
Lex Fridman (2:52:00.280)
on the matter.
Lex Fridman (2:52:02.000)
But anyway, certainly useful just to leave open
Lex Fridman (2:52:05.280)
the two possibilities and say it's a ratio,
Lex Fridman (2:52:07.280)
but we don't know which one.
Lex Fridman (2:52:10.440)
Brother to brother, do you love the guy?
Bret Weinstein (2:52:13.280)
Hmm, hell yeah, hell yeah.
Lex Fridman (2:52:15.480)
And I'd love him if he was just my brother,
Lex Fridman (2:52:18.200)
but he's also awesome.
Lex Fridman (2:52:19.240)
So I love him and I love him for who he is.
Lex Fridman (2:52:21.960)
So let me ask you about back to your book,
Lex Fridman (2:52:25.920)
Hunter Gatherer's Guide to the 21st Century.
Bret Weinstein (2:52:29.680)
I can't wait both for the book and the videos
Lex Fridman (2:52:32.480)
you do on the book.
Bret Weinstein (2:52:33.720)
That's really exciting that there's like a structured,
Lex Fridman (2:52:35.880)
organized way to present this.
Bret Weinstein (2:52:39.760)
A kind of from an evolutionary biology perspective,
Lex Fridman (2:52:44.640)
a guide for the future,
Bret Weinstein (2:52:46.680)
using our past as the fundamental, the emergent way
Lex Fridman (2:52:52.360)
to present a picture of the future.
Bret Weinstein (2:52:56.160)
Let me ask you about something that,
Lex Fridman (2:53:00.880)
I think about a little bit in this modern world,
Bret Weinstein (2:53:02.720)
which is monogamy.
Lex Fridman (2:53:07.600)
So I personally value monogamy.
Bret Weinstein (2:53:10.200)
One girl, ride or die.
Lex Fridman (2:53:12.440)
There you go.
Bret Weinstein (2:53:13.560)
Ride or, no, that's exactly it now.
Lex Fridman (2:53:15.480)
But that said, I don't know what's the right way
Bret Weinstein (2:53:21.720)
to approach this,
Lex Fridman (2:53:23.120)
but from an evolutionary biology perspective
Bret Weinstein (2:53:27.200)
or from just looking at modern society,
Lex Fridman (2:53:30.120)
that seems to be an idea that's not,
Lex Fridman (2:53:33.640)
what's the right way to put it, flourishing?
Lex Fridman (2:53:37.480)
It is waning.
Bret Weinstein (2:53:38.400)
It's waning.
Lex Fridman (2:53:41.120)
So I suppose based on your reaction,
Bret Weinstein (2:53:44.120)
you're also a supporter of monogamy
Lex Fridman (2:53:45.880)
or you value monogamy.
Lex Fridman (2:53:47.920)
Are you and I just delusional?
Lex Fridman (2:53:53.720)
What can you say about monogamy
Bret Weinstein (2:53:56.400)
from the context of your book,
Lex Fridman (2:53:58.280)
from the context of evolutionary biology,
Lex Fridman (2:54:00.640)
from the context of being human?
Lex Fridman (2:54:02.560)
Yeah, I can say that I fully believe
Bret Weinstein (2:54:05.040)
that we are actually enlightened
Lex Fridman (2:54:06.600)
and that although monogamy is waning,
Bret Weinstein (2:54:09.360)
that it is not waning because there is a superior system.
Lex Fridman (2:54:12.320)
It is waning for predictable other reasons.
Lex Fridman (2:54:15.400)
So let us just say it is,
Lex Fridman (2:54:18.480)
there is a lot of pre trans fallacy here
Bret Weinstein (2:54:21.920)
where people go through a phase
Lex Fridman (2:54:24.880)
where they recognize that actually
Bret Weinstein (2:54:26.760)
we know a lot about the evolution of monogamy
Lex Fridman (2:54:31.840)
and we can tell from the fact
Bret Weinstein (2:54:33.480)
that humans are somewhat sexually dimorphic
Lex Fridman (2:54:36.720)
that there has been a lot of polygyny in human history.
Lex Fridman (2:54:39.480)
And in fact, most of human history was largely polygynous.
Lex Fridman (2:54:45.120)
But it is also the case that most of the people
Bret Weinstein (2:54:48.760)
on earth today belong to civilizations
Lex Fridman (2:54:51.200)
that are at least nominally monogamous
Lex Fridman (2:54:53.040)
and have practiced monogamy.
Lex Fridman (2:54:54.640)
And that's not anti evolutionary.
Lex Fridman (2:54:58.040)
What that is is part of what I mentioned before
Lex Fridman (2:55:01.360)
where human beings can swap out their software program
Lex Fridman (2:55:05.280)
and different mating patterns are favored
Lex Fridman (2:55:09.880)
in different periods of history.
Lex Fridman (2:55:11.960)
So I would argue that the benefit of monogamy,
Lex Fridman (2:55:15.160)
the primary one that drives the evolution
Bret Weinstein (2:55:17.360)
of monogamous patterns in humans
Lex Fridman (2:55:19.560)
is that it brings all adults into child rearing.
Bret Weinstein (2:55:24.840)
Now the reason that that matters
Lex Fridman (2:55:26.640)
is because human babies are very labor intensive.
Bret Weinstein (2:55:29.880)
In order to raise them properly,
Lex Fridman (2:55:31.120)
having two parents is a huge asset
Lex Fridman (2:55:34.040)
and having more than two parents,
Lex Fridman (2:55:35.440)
having an extended family also very important.
Lex Fridman (2:55:39.720)
But what that means is that for a population
Lex Fridman (2:55:43.480)
that is expanding, a monogamous mating system makes sense.
Bret Weinstein (2:55:48.000)
It makes sense because it means that the number of offspring
Lex Fridman (2:55:50.720)
that can be raised is elevated.
Bret Weinstein (2:55:52.840)
It's elevated because all potential parents
Lex Fridman (2:55:56.280)
are involved in parenting.
Bret Weinstein (2:55:58.080)
Whereas if you sideline a bunch of males
Lex Fridman (2:56:00.160)
by having a polygynous system
Bret Weinstein (2:56:01.520)
in which one male has many females,
Lex Fridman (2:56:03.240)
which is typically the way that works,
Lex Fridman (2:56:05.360)
what you do is you sideline all those males,
Lex Fridman (2:56:07.040)
which means the total amount of parental effort is lower
Lex Fridman (2:56:09.960)
and the population can't grow.
Lex Fridman (2:56:12.160)
So what I'm arguing is that you should expect to see
Bret Weinstein (2:56:16.920)
populations that face the possibility of expansion
Lex Fridman (2:56:20.640)
endorse monogamy.
Lex Fridman (2:56:21.880)
And at the point that they have reached carrying capacity,
Lex Fridman (2:56:24.000)
you should expect to see polygyny break back out.
Lex Fridman (2:56:26.480)
And what we are seeing
Lex Fridman (2:56:28.120)
is a kind of false sophistication around polyamory,
Bret Weinstein (2:56:31.600)
which will end up breaking down into polygyny,
Lex Fridman (2:56:35.080)
which will not be in the interest of most people.
Bret Weinstein (2:56:37.560)
Really the only people whose interest
Lex Fridman (2:56:38.920)
it could be argued to be in
Bret Weinstein (2:56:41.200)
would be the very small number of males at the top
Lex Fridman (2:56:44.320)
who have many partners and everybody else suffers.
Bret Weinstein (2:56:48.960)
Is it possible to make the argument
Lex Fridman (2:56:51.240)
if we focus in on those males at the quote unquote top
Bret Weinstein (2:56:55.040)
with many female partners,
Lex Fridman (2:56:57.640)
is it possible to say that that's a suboptimal life,
Lex Fridman (2:57:02.280)
that a single partner is the optimal life?
Lex Fridman (2:57:05.240)
Well, it depends what you mean.
Bret Weinstein (2:57:06.320)
I have a feeling that you and I wouldn't have to go very far
Lex Fridman (2:57:09.280)
to figure out that what might be evolutionarily optimal
Bret Weinstein (2:57:15.080)
doesn't match my values as a person
Lex Fridman (2:57:17.280)
and I'm sure it doesn't match yours either.
Lex Fridman (2:57:20.200)
Can we try to dig into that gap between those two?
Lex Fridman (2:57:23.200)
Sure.
Bret Weinstein (2:57:24.040)
I mean, we can do it very simply.
Lex Fridman (2:57:29.120)
Selection might favor your engaging in war
Lex Fridman (2:57:33.200)
against a defenseless enemy or genocide, right?
Lex Fridman (2:57:38.960)
It's not hard to figure out
Lex Fridman (2:57:40.160)
how that might put your genes at advantage.
Lex Fridman (2:57:43.320)
I don't know about you, Lex.
Bret Weinstein (2:57:44.760)
I'm not getting involved in no genocide.
Lex Fridman (2:57:46.800)
It's not gonna happen.
Bret Weinstein (2:57:47.800)
I won't do it.
Lex Fridman (2:57:48.640)
I will do anything to avoid it.
Lex Fridman (2:57:49.920)
So some part of me has decided that my conscious self
Lex Fridman (2:57:54.400)
and the values that I hold trump my evolutionary self
Lex Fridman (2:57:59.400)
and once you figure out that in some extreme case,
Lex Fridman (2:58:03.080)
that's true and then you realize
Bret Weinstein (2:58:04.920)
that that means it must be possible in many other cases
Lex Fridman (2:58:07.520)
and you start going through all of the things
Bret Weinstein (2:58:09.120)
that selection would favor
Lex Fridman (2:58:10.200)
and you realize that a fair fraction of the time,
Bret Weinstein (2:58:12.360)
actually, you're not up for this.
Lex Fridman (2:58:14.000)
You don't wanna be some robot on a mission
Bret Weinstein (2:58:17.160)
that involves genocide when necessary.
Lex Fridman (2:58:19.960)
You wanna be your own person and accomplish things
Bret Weinstein (2:58:22.000)
that you think are valuable.
Lex Fridman (2:58:24.880)
And so among those are not advocating,
Bret Weinstein (2:58:30.880)
let's suppose you were in a position
Lex Fridman (2:58:32.120)
to be one of those males at the top of a polygynous system.
Lex Fridman (2:58:35.040)
We both know why that would be rewarding, right?
Lex Fridman (2:58:38.160)
But we also both recognize.
Lex Fridman (2:58:39.560)
Do we?
Lex Fridman (2:58:40.400)
Yeah, sure.
Lex Fridman (2:58:41.440)
Lots of sex?
Lex Fridman (2:58:42.280)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (2:58:43.120)
Okay, what else?
Lex Fridman (2:58:43.960)
Lots of sex and lots of variety, right?
Lex Fridman (2:58:45.960)
So look, every red blooded American slash Russian male
Lex Fridman (2:58:51.560)
can understand why that's appealing, right?
Bret Weinstein (2:58:53.840)
On the other hand, it is up against an alternative
Lex Fridman (2:58:57.800)
which is having a partner with whom one is bonded
Lex Fridman (2:59:03.320)
especially closely, right?
Lex Fridman (2:59:05.400)
Right.
Lex Fridman (2:59:06.240)
And so.
Lex Fridman (2:59:07.080)
A love.
Bret Weinstein (2:59:08.240)
Right.
Lex Fridman (2:59:09.080)
Well, I don't wanna straw man the polygyny position.
Bret Weinstein (2:59:14.080)
Obviously polygyny is complex
Lex Fridman (2:59:15.840)
and there's nothing that stops a man presumably
Bret Weinstein (2:59:19.480)
from loving multiple partners and from them loving him back.
Lex Fridman (2:59:23.520)
But in terms of, if love is your thing,
Bret Weinstein (2:59:25.640)
there's a question about, okay, what is the quality of love
Lex Fridman (2:59:28.680)
if it is divided over multiple partners, right?
Lex Fridman (2:59:31.760)
And what is the net consequence for love in a society
Lex Fridman (2:59:36.200)
when multiple people will be frozen out
Lex Fridman (2:59:38.720)
for every individual male in this case who has it?
Lex Fridman (2:59:41.880)
And what I would argue is, and you know,
Bret Weinstein (2:59:46.040)
this is weird to even talk about,
Lex Fridman (2:59:47.920)
but this is partially me just talking
Bret Weinstein (2:59:49.680)
from personal experience.
Lex Fridman (2:59:51.120)
I think there actually is a monogamy program in us
Lex Fridman (2:59:54.040)
and it's not automatic.
Lex Fridman (2:59:55.640)
But if you take it seriously, you can find it
Lex Fridman (30:00.380)
But we can obviously also say,
Lex Fridman (30:03.380)
we paid a huge price for all of the disasters
Bret Weinstein (30:07.020)
that I've mentioned.
Lex Fridman (30:09.360)
And we have to factor that into the equation.
Bret Weinstein (30:12.060)
Something can be very productive short term
Lex Fridman (30:13.840)
and very destructive long term.
Bret Weinstein (30:17.100)
Also, the question is how many disasters we avoided
Lex Fridman (30:20.900)
because of the ingenuity of humans
Bret Weinstein (30:23.980)
or just the integrity and character of humans.
Lex Fridman (30:28.020)
That's sort of an open question.
Bret Weinstein (30:30.260)
We may be more intelligent than lucky.
Lex Fridman (30:35.800)
That's the hope.
Bret Weinstein (30:36.900)
Because the optimistic message here that you're getting at
Lex Fridman (30:40.060)
is maybe the process that we should be,
Bret Weinstein (30:44.980)
that maybe we can overcome luck with ingenuity.
Lex Fridman (30:48.520)
Meaning, I guess you're suggesting the processes
Bret Weinstein (30:51.940)
we should be listing all the ways
Lex Fridman (30:53.700)
that human civilization can destroy itself,
Bret Weinstein (30:57.100)
assigning likelihood to it,
Lex Fridman (30:59.940)
and thinking through how can we avoid that.
Lex Fridman (31:03.180)
And being very honest with the data out there
Lex Fridman (31:06.700)
about the close calls and using those close calls
Bret Weinstein (31:10.500)
to then create sort of mechanism
Lex Fridman (31:13.900)
by which we minimize the probability of those close calls.
Lex Fridman (31:17.420)
And just being honest and transparent
Lex Fridman (31:21.220)
with the data that's out there.
Bret Weinstein (31:23.140)
Well, I think we need to do a couple things for it to work.
Lex Fridman (31:27.640)
So I've been an advocate for the idea
Bret Weinstein (31:30.060)
that sustainability is actually,
Lex Fridman (31:32.060)
it's difficult to operationalize,
Lex Fridman (31:33.660)
but it is an objective that we have to meet
Lex Fridman (31:35.900)
if we're to be around long term.
Lex Fridman (31:38.540)
And I realized that we also need to have reversibility
Lex Fridman (31:41.460)
of all of our processes.
Bret Weinstein (31:43.300)
Because processes very frequently when they start
Lex Fridman (31:46.320)
do not appear dangerous.
Lex Fridman (31:47.940)
And then when they scale, they become very dangerous.
Lex Fridman (31:51.260)
So for example, if you imagine
Bret Weinstein (31:54.280)
the first internal combustion engine vehicle
Lex Fridman (31:58.300)
driving down the street,
Lex Fridman (31:59.680)
and you imagine somebody running after them saying,
Lex Fridman (32:01.740)
hey, if you do enough of that,
Bret Weinstein (32:02.980)
you're gonna alter the atmosphere
Lex Fridman (32:04.280)
and it's gonna change the temperature of the planet.
Lex Fridman (32:05.960)
It's preposterous, right?
Lex Fridman (32:07.420)
Why would you stop the person
Lex Fridman (32:08.580)
who's invented this marvelous new contraption?
Lex Fridman (32:10.900)
But of course, eventually you do get to the place
Bret Weinstein (32:13.140)
where you're doing enough of this
Lex Fridman (32:14.620)
that you do start changing the temperature of the planet.
Lex Fridman (32:17.060)
So if we built the capacity,
Lex Fridman (32:20.460)
if we basically said, look, you can't involve yourself
Bret Weinstein (32:23.780)
in any process that you couldn't reverse if you had to,
Lex Fridman (32:27.540)
then progress would be slowed,
Lex Fridman (32:30.180)
but our safety would go up dramatically.
Lex Fridman (32:33.300)
And I think in some sense, if we are to be around long term,
Bret Weinstein (32:38.120)
we have to begin thinking that way.
Lex Fridman (32:40.300)
We're just involved in too many very dangerous processes.
Lex Fridman (32:43.880)
So let's talk about one of the things
Lex Fridman (32:46.860)
that if not threatened human civilization
Bret Weinstein (32:50.300)
certainly hurt it at a deep level, which is COVID 19.
Lex Fridman (32:56.700)
What percent probability would you currently place
Bret Weinstein (33:00.380)
on the hypothesis that COVID 19 leaked
Lex Fridman (33:02.500)
from the Wuhan Institute of Virology?
Lex Fridman (33:06.300)
So I maintain a flow chart of all the possible explanations,
Lex Fridman (33:10.780)
and it doesn't break down exactly that way.
Bret Weinstein (33:15.300)
The likelihood that it emerged from a lab is very, very high.
Lex Fridman (33:20.140)
If it emerged from a lab,
Bret Weinstein (33:21.380)
the likelihood that the lab was the Wuhan Institute
Lex Fridman (33:23.580)
is very, very high.
Bret Weinstein (33:27.920)
There are multiple different kinds of evidence
Lex Fridman (33:30.500)
that point to the lab,
Lex Fridman (33:31.660)
and there is literally no evidence that points to nature.
Lex Fridman (33:35.060)
Either the evidence points nowhere or it points to the lab,
Lex Fridman (33:38.180)
and the lab could mean any lab,
Lex Fridman (33:39.900)
but geographically, obviously,
Bret Weinstein (33:41.900)
the labs in Wuhan are the most likely,
Lex Fridman (33:44.920)
and the lab that was most directly involved
Bret Weinstein (33:46.720)
with research on viruses that look like COVID,
Lex Fridman (33:50.340)
that look like SARS COVID 2,
Bret Weinstein (33:52.200)
is obviously the place that one would start.
Lex Fridman (33:55.820)
But I would say the likelihood that this virus
Bret Weinstein (33:59.640)
came from a lab is well above 95%.
Lex Fridman (34:04.100)
We can talk about the question of could a virus
Bret Weinstein (34:06.740)
have been brought into the lab and escaped from there
Lex Fridman (34:08.740)
without being modified.
Bret Weinstein (34:09.900)
That's also possible,
Lex Fridman (34:11.220)
but it doesn't explain any of the anomalies
Bret Weinstein (34:13.700)
in the genome of SARS COVID 2.
Lex Fridman (34:17.960)
Could it have been delivered from another lab?
Bret Weinstein (34:20.680)
Could Wuhan be a distraction
Lex Fridman (34:23.140)
in order that we would connect the dots in the wrong way?
Bret Weinstein (34:26.600)
That's conceivable.
Lex Fridman (34:27.620)
I currently have that below 1% on my flowchart,
Lex Fridman (34:30.620)
but I think...
Lex Fridman (34:31.440)
A very dark thought that somebody would do that
Bret Weinstein (34:34.180)
almost as a political attack on China.
Lex Fridman (34:37.740)
Well, it depends.
Bret Weinstein (34:39.100)
I don't even think that's one possibility.
Lex Fridman (34:42.380)
Sometimes when Eric and I talk about these issues,
Bret Weinstein (34:44.460)
we will generate a scenario just to prove
Lex Fridman (34:48.260)
that something could live in that space, right?
Bret Weinstein (34:51.060)
It's a placeholder for whatever may actually have happened.
Lex Fridman (34:53.820)
And so it doesn't have to have been an attack on China.
Bret Weinstein (34:57.300)
That's certainly one possibility.
Lex Fridman (34:59.280)
But I would point out,
Bret Weinstein (35:01.740)
if you can predict the future in some unusual way
Lex Fridman (35:06.740)
better than others, you can print money, right?
Bret Weinstein (35:10.260)
That's what markets that allow you to bet for
Lex Fridman (35:12.380)
or against virtually any sector allow you to do.
Lex Fridman (35:16.980)
So you can imagine a simply amoral person
Lex Fridman (35:23.260)
or entity generating a pandemic,
Bret Weinstein (35:26.380)
attempting to cover their tracks
Lex Fridman (35:28.260)
because it would allow them to bet against things
Bret Weinstein (35:30.520)
like cruise ships, air travel, whatever it is,
Lex Fridman (35:35.100)
and bet in favor of, I don't know,
Bret Weinstein (35:39.540)
sanitizing gel and whatever else you would do.
Lex Fridman (35:43.300)
So am I saying that I think somebody did that?
Bret Weinstein (35:46.400)
No, I really don't think it happened.
Lex Fridman (35:47.740)
We've seen zero evidence
Bret Weinstein (35:49.020)
that this was intentionally released.
Lex Fridman (35:51.340)
However, were it to have been intentionally released
Bret Weinstein (35:54.780)
by somebody who did not know,
Lex Fridman (35:56.180)
did not want it known where it had come from,
Bret Weinstein (35:59.260)
releasing it into Wuhan would be one way
Lex Fridman (36:00.980)
to cover their tracks.
Lex Fridman (36:01.860)
So we have to leave the possibility formally open,
Lex Fridman (36:05.140)
but acknowledge there's no evidence.
Lex Fridman (36:07.420)
And the probability therefore is low.
Lex Fridman (36:09.340)
I tend to believe maybe this is the optimistic nature
Bret Weinstein (36:13.740)
that I have that people who are competent enough
Lex Fridman (36:18.480)
to do the kind of thing we just described
Bret Weinstein (36:21.740)
are not going to do that
Lex Fridman (36:23.100)
because it requires a certain kind of,
Bret Weinstein (36:26.220)
I don't wanna use the word evil,
Lex Fridman (36:27.420)
but whatever word you wanna use to describe
Bret Weinstein (36:29.260)
the kind of disregard for human life required to do that,
Lex Fridman (36:36.860)
that's just not going to be coupled with competence.
Bret Weinstein (36:40.540)
I feel like there's a trade off chart
Lex Fridman (36:42.460)
where competence on one axis and evil is on the other.
Lex Fridman (36:45.940)
And the more evil you become,
Lex Fridman (36:48.540)
the crappier you are at doing great engineering,
Bret Weinstein (36:52.720)
scientific work required to deliver weapons
Lex Fridman (36:55.740)
of different kinds, whether it's bioweapons
Bret Weinstein (36:57.820)
or nuclear weapons, all those kinds of things.
Lex Fridman (36:59.860)
That seems to be the lessons I take from history,
Lex Fridman (37:02.700)
but that doesn't necessarily mean
Lex Fridman (37:04.380)
that's what's going to be happening in the future.
Lex Fridman (37:08.140)
But to stick on the lab leak idea,
Lex Fridman (37:11.300)
because the flow chart is probably huge here
Bret Weinstein (37:13.580)
because there's a lot of fascinating possibilities.
Lex Fridman (37:16.220)
One question I wanna ask is,
Lex Fridman (37:18.100)
what would evidence for natural origins look like?
Lex Fridman (37:20.780)
So one piece of evidence for natural origins
Bret Weinstein (37:25.220)
is that it's happened in the past
Lex Fridman (37:30.100)
that viruses have jumped.
Bret Weinstein (37:33.580)
Oh, they do jump.
Lex Fridman (37:35.060)
So like that's possible to have happened.
Lex Fridman (37:39.900)
So that's a sort of like a historical evidence,
Lex Fridman (37:42.280)
like, okay, well, it's possible that it have...
Bret Weinstein (37:46.220)
It's not evidence of the kind you think it is.
Lex Fridman (37:48.100)
It's a justification for a presumption, right?
Lex Fridman (37:52.260)
So the presumption upon discovering
Lex Fridman (37:54.180)
a new virus circulating is certainly
Lex Fridman (37:55.740)
that it came from nature, right?
Lex Fridman (37:57.860)
The problem is the presumption evaporates
Bret Weinstein (38:00.680)
in the face of evidence, or at least it logically should.
Lex Fridman (38:04.140)
And it didn't in this case.
Bret Weinstein (38:05.760)
It was maintained by people who privately
Lex Fridman (38:08.260)
in their emails acknowledged that they had grave doubts
Bret Weinstein (38:11.760)
about the natural origin of this virus.
Lex Fridman (38:14.820)
Is there some other piece of evidence
Bret Weinstein (38:17.020)
that we could look for and see that would say,
Lex Fridman (38:21.780)
this increases the probability that it's natural origins?
Bret Weinstein (38:24.740)
Yeah, in fact, there is evidence.
Lex Fridman (38:27.620)
I always worry that somebody is going to make up
Bret Weinstein (38:31.460)
some evidence in order to reverse the flow.
Lex Fridman (38:34.540)
Oh, boy.
Bret Weinstein (38:35.380)
Well, let's say I am...
Lex Fridman (38:36.580)
There's a lot of incentive for that actually.
Bret Weinstein (38:38.180)
There's a huge amount of incentive.
Lex Fridman (38:39.540)
On the other hand, why didn't the powers that be,
Bret Weinstein (38:43.460)
the powers that lied to us about weapons
Lex Fridman (38:45.140)
of mass destruction in Iraq,
Lex Fridman (38:46.340)
why didn't they ever fake weapons
Lex Fridman (38:48.140)
of mass destruction in Iraq?
Bret Weinstein (38:49.740)
Whatever force it is, I hope that force is here too.
Lex Fridman (38:52.660)
And so whatever evidence we find is real.
Bret Weinstein (38:54.940)
It's the competence thing I'm talking about,
Lex Fridman (38:56.820)
but okay, go ahead, sorry.
Bret Weinstein (38:58.900)
Well, we can get back to that.
Lex Fridman (39:00.180)
But I would say, yeah, the giant piece of evidence
Bret Weinstein (39:03.860)
that will shift the probabilities in the other direction
Lex Fridman (39:07.120)
is the discovery of either a human population
Bret Weinstein (39:10.500)
in which the virus circulated prior to showing up in Wuhan
Lex Fridman (39:14.280)
that would explain where the virus learned all of the tricks
Bret Weinstein (39:16.920)
that it knew instantly upon spreading from Wuhan.
Lex Fridman (39:20.340)
So that would do it, or an animal population
Bret Weinstein (39:24.060)
in which an ancestor epidemic can be found
Lex Fridman (39:27.860)
in which the virus learned this before jumping to humans.
Lex Fridman (39:30.600)
But I point out in that second case,
Lex Fridman (39:33.460)
you would certainly expect to see a great deal of evolution
Bret Weinstein (39:36.600)
in the early epidemic, which we don't see.
Lex Fridman (39:39.700)
So there almost has to be a human population
Bret Weinstein (39:42.860)
somewhere else that had the virus circulate
Lex Fridman (39:44.980)
or an ancestor of the virus that we first saw
Bret Weinstein (39:47.580)
in Wuhan circulating.
Lex Fridman (39:48.620)
And it has to have gotten very sophisticated
Bret Weinstein (39:50.940)
in that prior epidemic before hitting Wuhan
Lex Fridman (39:54.020)
in order to explain the total lack of evolution
Lex Fridman (39:56.380)
and extremely effective virus that emerged
Lex Fridman (3:00:00.680)
and frankly, marriage, and it doesn't have to be marriage,
Lex Fridman (3:00:04.560)
but whatever it is that results in a lifelong bond
Lex Fridman (3:00:07.440)
with a partner has gotten a very bad rap.
Bret Weinstein (3:00:10.440)
You know, it's the butt of too many jokes.
Lex Fridman (3:00:12.680)
But the truth is, it's hugely rewarding, it's not easy.
Lex Fridman (3:00:18.040)
But if you know that you're looking for something, right?
Lex Fridman (3:00:20.800)
If you know that the objective actually exists
Lex Fridman (3:00:22.520)
and it's not some utopian fantasy that can't be found,
Lex Fridman (3:00:25.360)
if you know that there's some real world, you know,
Bret Weinstein (3:00:28.600)
warts and all version of it, then you might actually think,
Lex Fridman (3:00:32.120)
hey, that is something I want and you might pursue it
Lex Fridman (3:00:34.240)
and my guess is you'd be very happy when you find it.
Lex Fridman (3:00:36.360)
Yeah, I think there is, getting to the fundamental
Lex Fridman (3:00:39.440)
and the emergent, I feel like there is some kind of physics
Lex Fridman (3:00:43.240)
of love.
Lex Fridman (3:00:44.080)
So one, there's a conservation thing going on.
Lex Fridman (3:00:47.200)
So if you have like many partners, yeah, in theory,
Bret Weinstein (3:00:51.560)
you should be able to love all of them deeply.
Lex Fridman (3:00:54.160)
But it seems like in reality that love gets split.
Bret Weinstein (3:00:57.800)
Yep.
Lex Fridman (3:00:58.880)
Now, there's another law that's interesting
Bret Weinstein (3:01:01.080)
in terms of monogamy.
Lex Fridman (3:01:02.720)
I don't know if it's at the physics level,
Lex Fridman (3:01:04.600)
but if you are in a monogamous relationship by choice
Lex Fridman (3:01:10.280)
and almost as in slight rebellion to social norms,
Bret Weinstein (3:01:16.520)
that's much more powerful.
Lex Fridman (3:01:17.760)
Like if you choose that one partnership,
Bret Weinstein (3:01:20.920)
that's also more powerful.
Lex Fridman (3:01:22.680)
If like everybody's in a monogamous,
Bret Weinstein (3:01:24.880)
this pressure to be married and this pressure of society,
Lex Fridman (3:01:27.880)
that's different because that's almost like a constraint
Bret Weinstein (3:01:30.760)
on your freedom that is enforced by something
Lex Fridman (3:01:33.960)
other than your own ideals.
Bret Weinstein (3:01:35.440)
It's by somebody else.
Lex Fridman (3:01:37.760)
When you yourself choose to, I guess,
Bret Weinstein (3:01:40.600)
create these constraints, that enriches that love.
Lex Fridman (3:01:45.000)
So there's some kind of love function,
Bret Weinstein (3:01:47.560)
like E equals MC squared, but for love,
Lex Fridman (3:01:50.160)
that I feel like if you have less partners
Lex Fridman (3:01:53.240)
and it's done by choice, that can maximize that.
Lex Fridman (3:01:56.520)
And that love can transcend the biology,
Bret Weinstein (3:02:00.880)
transcend the evolutionary biology forces
Lex Fridman (3:02:03.520)
that have to do much more with survival
Lex Fridman (3:02:06.280)
and all those kinds of things.
Lex Fridman (3:02:07.760)
It can transcend to take us to a richer experience,
Bret Weinstein (3:02:11.880)
which we have the luxury of having,
Lex Fridman (3:02:13.320)
exploring of happiness, of joy, of fulfillment,
Bret Weinstein (3:02:17.960)
all those kinds of things.
Lex Fridman (3:02:19.400)
Totally agree with this.
Lex Fridman (3:02:21.040)
And there's no question that by choice,
Lex Fridman (3:02:24.800)
when there are other choices,
Bret Weinstein (3:02:26.760)
imbues it with meaning that it might not otherwise have.
Lex Fridman (3:02:30.760)
I would also say, I'm really struck by,
Lex Fridman (3:02:35.640)
and I have a hard time not feeling terrible sadness
Lex Fridman (3:02:40.120)
over what younger people are coming
Bret Weinstein (3:02:44.360)
to think about this topic.
Lex Fridman (3:02:46.880)
I think they're missing something so important
Lex Fridman (3:02:49.520)
and so hard to phrase that,
Lex Fridman (3:02:51.680)
and they don't even know that they're missing it.
Bret Weinstein (3:02:54.280)
They might know that they're unhappy,
Lex Fridman (3:02:55.960)
but they don't understand what it is
Bret Weinstein (3:02:58.000)
they're even looking for,
Lex Fridman (3:02:58.840)
because nobody's really been honest with them
Bret Weinstein (3:03:00.800)
about what their choices are.
Lex Fridman (3:03:02.160)
And I have to say, if I was a young person,
Bret Weinstein (3:03:05.200)
or if I was advising a young person,
Lex Fridman (3:03:06.960)
which I used to do, again, a million years ago
Bret Weinstein (3:03:09.160)
when I was a college professor four years ago,
Lex Fridman (3:03:12.000)
but I used to talk to students.
Bret Weinstein (3:03:13.800)
I knew my students really well,
Lex Fridman (3:03:15.000)
and they would ask questions about this,
Lex Fridman (3:03:16.680)
and they were always curious
Lex Fridman (3:03:17.600)
because Heather and I seemed to have a good relationship,
Lex Fridman (3:03:19.920)
and many of them knew both of us.
Lex Fridman (3:03:22.000)
So they would talk to us about this.
Bret Weinstein (3:03:24.480)
If I was advising somebody, I would say,
Lex Fridman (3:03:28.040)
do not bypass the possibility
Bret Weinstein (3:03:30.920)
that what you are supposed to do is find somebody worthy,
Lex Fridman (3:03:36.240)
somebody who can handle it,
Bret Weinstein (3:03:37.840)
somebody who you are compatible with,
Lex Fridman (3:03:39.520)
and that you don't have to be perfectly compatible.
Bret Weinstein (3:03:41.840)
It's not about dating until you find the one.
Lex Fridman (3:03:44.880)
It's about finding somebody whose underlying values
Lex Fridman (3:03:48.600)
and viewpoint are complimentary to yours,
Lex Fridman (3:03:51.200)
sufficient that you fall in love.
Bret Weinstein (3:03:53.880)
If you find that person, opt out together.
Lex Fridman (3:03:58.480)
Get out of this damn system
Bret Weinstein (3:04:00.400)
that's telling you what's sophisticated
Lex Fridman (3:04:02.120)
to think about love and romance and sex.
Lex Fridman (3:04:04.600)
Ignore it together, all right?
Lex Fridman (3:04:06.520)
That's the key, and I believe you'll end up laughing
Bret Weinstein (3:04:11.080)
in the end if you do it.
Lex Fridman (3:04:12.160)
You'll discover, wow, that's a hellscape
Lex Fridman (3:04:16.000)
that I opted out of, and this thing I opted into?
Lex Fridman (3:04:19.840)
Complicated, difficult, worth it.
Bret Weinstein (3:04:22.640)
Nothing that's worth it is ever not difficult,
Lex Fridman (3:04:25.760)
so we should even just skip
Bret Weinstein (3:04:27.480)
the whole statement about difficult.
Lex Fridman (3:04:30.120)
Yeah, all right.
Bret Weinstein (3:04:30.960)
I just, I wanna be honest.
Lex Fridman (3:04:32.240)
It's not like, oh, it's nonstop joy.
Lex Fridman (3:04:35.080)
No, it's fricking complex, but worth it?
Lex Fridman (3:04:38.920)
No question in my mind.
Bret Weinstein (3:04:41.040)
Is there advice outside of love
Lex Fridman (3:04:42.920)
that you can give to young people?
Bret Weinstein (3:04:45.320)
You were a million years ago a professor.
Lex Fridman (3:04:49.480)
Is there advice you can give to young people,
Lex Fridman (3:04:51.480)
high schoolers, college students about career, about life?
Lex Fridman (3:04:56.720)
Yeah, but it's not, they're not gonna like it
Bret Weinstein (3:04:58.800)
because it's not easy to operationalize,
Lex Fridman (3:05:00.840)
and this was a problem when I was a college professor, too.
Bret Weinstein (3:05:03.080)
People would ask me what they should do.
Lex Fridman (3:05:04.720)
Should they go to graduate school?
Bret Weinstein (3:05:06.280)
I had almost nothing useful to say
Lex Fridman (3:05:08.280)
because the job market and the market of prejob training
Lex Fridman (3:05:14.200)
and all of that, these things are all so distorted
Lex Fridman (3:05:19.120)
and corrupt that I didn't wanna point anybody to anything
Bret Weinstein (3:05:23.440)
because it's all broken, and I would tell them that,
Lex Fridman (3:05:26.560)
but I would say that results in a kind of meta level advice
Bret Weinstein (3:05:31.320)
that I do think is useful.
Lex Fridman (3:05:33.400)
You don't know what's coming.
Bret Weinstein (3:05:35.840)
You don't know where the opportunities will be.
Lex Fridman (3:05:38.680)
You should invest in tools rather than knowledge.
Bret Weinstein (3:05:42.560)
To the extent that you can do things,
Lex Fridman (3:05:44.440)
you can repurpose that no matter what the future brings
Bret Weinstein (3:05:47.880)
to the extent that if you, as a robot guy,
Lex Fridman (3:05:51.880)
you've got the skills of a robot guy.
Bret Weinstein (3:05:53.840)
Now, if civilization failed
Lex Fridman (3:05:56.760)
and the stuff of robot building disappeared with it,
Bret Weinstein (3:06:00.480)
you'd still have the mind of a robot guy,
Lex Fridman (3:06:02.560)
and the mind of a robot guy can retool
Bret Weinstein (3:06:04.480)
around all kinds of things, whether you're forced to work
Lex Fridman (3:06:08.160)
with fibers that are made into ropes.
Bret Weinstein (3:06:12.640)
Your mechanical mind would be useful in all kinds of places,
Lex Fridman (3:06:15.880)
so invest in tools like that that can be easily repurposed,
Lex Fridman (3:06:19.240)
and invest in combinations of tools, right?
Lex Fridman (3:06:23.800)
If civilization keeps limping along,
Bret Weinstein (3:06:28.960)
you're gonna be up against all sorts of people
Lex Fridman (3:06:30.840)
who have studied the things that you studied, right?
Bret Weinstein (3:06:33.360)
If you think, hey, computer programming
Lex Fridman (3:06:34.840)
is really, really cool, and you pick up computer programming,
Bret Weinstein (3:06:37.720)
guess what, you just entered a large group of people
Lex Fridman (3:06:40.660)
who have that skill, and many of them will be better
Bret Weinstein (3:06:42.540)
than you, almost certainly.
Lex Fridman (3:06:44.800)
On the other hand, if you combine that with something else
Bret Weinstein (3:06:48.600)
that's very rarely combined with it,
Lex Fridman (3:06:50.800)
if you have, I don't know if it's carpentry
Lex Fridman (3:06:54.080)
and computer programming, if you take combinations
Lex Fridman (3:06:57.120)
of things that are, even if they're both common,
Lex Fridman (3:07:00.560)
but they're not commonly found together,
Lex Fridman (3:07:03.040)
then those combinations create a rarefied space
Bret Weinstein (3:07:06.080)
where you inhabit it, and even if the things
Lex Fridman (3:07:08.360)
don't even really touch, but nonetheless,
Bret Weinstein (3:07:11.080)
they create a mind in which the two things are live
Lex Fridman (3:07:13.760)
and you can move back and forth between them
Lex Fridman (3:07:15.920)
and step out of your own perspective
Lex Fridman (3:07:18.360)
by moving from one to the other,
Bret Weinstein (3:07:20.400)
that will increase what you can see
Lex Fridman (3:07:22.640)
and the quality of your tools.
Lex Fridman (3:07:24.480)
And so anyway, that isn't useful advice.
Lex Fridman (3:07:26.440)
It doesn't tell you whether you should go
Bret Weinstein (3:07:27.520)
to graduate school or not, but it does tell you
Lex Fridman (3:07:30.840)
the one thing we can say for certain about the future
Bret Weinstein (3:07:33.600)
is that it's uncertain, and so prepare for it.
Lex Fridman (3:07:36.080)
And like you said, there's cool things to be discovered
Bret Weinstein (3:07:38.800)
in the intersection of fields and ideas.
Lex Fridman (3:07:42.400)
And I would look at grad school that way,
Bret Weinstein (3:07:44.960)
actually, if you do go, or I see,
Lex Fridman (3:07:50.080)
I mean, this is such a, like every course
Bret Weinstein (3:07:52.720)
in grad school, undergrad too,
Lex Fridman (3:07:55.160)
was like this little journey that you're on
Bret Weinstein (3:07:57.800)
that explores a particular field.
Lex Fridman (3:08:00.040)
And it's not immediately obvious how useful it is,
Lex Fridman (3:08:03.760)
but it allows you to discover intersections
Lex Fridman (3:08:08.360)
between that thing and some other thing.
Lex Fridman (3:08:11.120)
So you're bringing to the table these pieces of knowledge,
Lex Fridman (3:08:16.400)
some of which when intersected might create a niche
Bret Weinstein (3:08:19.880)
that's completely novel, unique, and will bring you joy.
Lex Fridman (3:08:23.560)
I mean, I took a huge number of courses
Bret Weinstein (3:08:25.760)
in theoretical computer science.
Lex Fridman (3:08:28.040)
Most of them seem useless, but they totally changed
Bret Weinstein (3:08:31.000)
the way I see the world in ways that I'm not prepared
Lex Fridman (3:08:34.760)
or is a little bit difficult to kind of make explicit,
Lex Fridman (3:08:38.640)
but taken together, they've allowed me to see,
Lex Fridman (3:08:44.880)
for example, the world of robotics totally different
Lex Fridman (3:08:48.200)
and different from many of my colleagues
Lex Fridman (3:08:50.400)
and friends and so on.
Lex Fridman (3:08:51.920)
And I think that's a good way to see if you go
Lex Fridman (3:08:54.600)
to grad school was as a opportunity
Bret Weinstein (3:08:59.160)
to explore intersections of fields,
Lex Fridman (3:09:01.920)
even if the individual fields seem useless.
Lex Fridman (3:09:04.720)
Yeah, and useless doesn't mean useless, right?
Lex Fridman (3:09:07.120)
Useless means not directly applicable,
Lex Fridman (3:09:09.280)
but a good, useless course can be the best one
Lex Fridman (3:09:12.160)
you ever took.
Bret Weinstein (3:09:14.200)
Yeah, I took James Joyce, a course on James Joyce,
Lex Fridman (3:09:18.080)
and that was truly useless.
Bret Weinstein (3:09:21.240)
Well, I took immunobiology in the medical school
Lex Fridman (3:09:25.880)
when I was at Penn as, I guess I would have been
Bret Weinstein (3:09:29.640)
a freshman or a sophomore.
Lex Fridman (3:09:30.880)
I wasn't supposed to be in this class.
Lex Fridman (3:09:33.040)
It blew my goddamn mind, and it still does, right?
Lex Fridman (3:09:37.080)
I mean, we had this, I don't even know who it was,
Lex Fridman (3:09:39.600)
but we had this great professor who was highly placed
Lex Fridman (3:09:42.720)
in the world of immunobiology.
Bret Weinstein (3:09:44.320)
The course is called Immunobiology, not immunology.
Lex Fridman (3:09:47.640)
Immunobiology, it had the right focus,
Lex Fridman (3:09:50.160)
and as I recall it, the professor stood sideways
Lex Fridman (3:09:54.560)
to the chalkboard, staring off into space,
Bret Weinstein (3:09:57.240)
literally stroking his beard with this bemused look
Lex Fridman (3:10:01.240)
on his face through the entire lecture.
Lex Fridman (3:10:04.280)
And you had all these medical students
Lex Fridman (3:10:05.800)
who were so furiously writing notes
Bret Weinstein (3:10:07.200)
that I don't even think they were noticing
Lex Fridman (3:10:08.600)
the person delivering this thing,
Lex Fridman (3:10:09.920)
but I got what this guy was smiling about.
Lex Fridman (3:10:13.640)
It was like so, what he was describing,
Lex Fridman (3:10:16.040)
adaptive immunity is so marvelous, right?
Lex Fridman (3:10:18.720)
That it was like almost a privilege to even be saying it
Lex Fridman (3:10:21.420)
to a room full of people who were listening, you know?
Lex Fridman (3:10:23.960)
But anyway, yeah, I took that course,
Lex Fridman (3:10:25.360)
and lo and behold, COVID.
Lex Fridman (3:10:27.360)
That's gonna be useful.
Bret Weinstein (3:10:28.920)
Well, yeah, suddenly it's front and center,
Lex Fridman (3:10:32.160)
and wow, am I glad I took it.
Lex Fridman (3:10:33.640)
But anyway, yeah, useless courses are great.
Lex Fridman (3:10:37.080)
And actually, Eric gave me one of the greater pieces
Bret Weinstein (3:10:40.240)
of advice, at least for college, that anyone's ever given,
Lex Fridman (3:10:43.420)
which was don't worry about the prereqs.
Lex Fridman (3:10:46.160)
Take it anyway, right?
Lex Fridman (3:10:48.560)
But now, I don't even know if kids can do this now
Bret Weinstein (3:10:50.440)
because the prereqs are now enforced by a computer.
Lex Fridman (3:10:53.280)
But back in the day, if you didn't mention
Bret Weinstein (3:10:56.800)
that you didn't have the prereqs,
Lex Fridman (3:10:58.020)
nobody stopped you from taking the course.
Lex Fridman (3:10:59.720)
And what he told me, which I didn't know,
Lex Fridman (3:11:01.440)
was that often the advanced courses are easier in some way.
Bret Weinstein (3:11:06.360)
The material's complex, but it's not like intro bio
Lex Fridman (3:11:11.880)
where you're learning a thousand things at once, right?
Bret Weinstein (3:11:14.480)
It's like focused on something.
Lex Fridman (3:11:16.040)
So if you dedicate yourself, you can pull it off.
Bret Weinstein (3:11:18.800)
Yeah, stay with an idea for many weeks at a time,
Lex Fridman (3:11:21.520)
and it's ultimately rewarding,
Lex Fridman (3:11:22.880)
and not as difficult as it looks.
Lex Fridman (3:11:25.760)
Can I ask you a ridiculous question?
Bret Weinstein (3:11:27.280)
Please.
Lex Fridman (3:11:28.100)
What do you think is the meaning of life?
Bret Weinstein (3:11:34.180)
Well, I feel terrible having to give you the answer.
Lex Fridman (3:11:38.860)
I realize you asked the question,
Lex Fridman (3:11:40.260)
but if I tell you, you're gonna again feel bad.
Lex Fridman (3:11:43.260)
I don't wanna do that.
Lex Fridman (3:11:44.100)
But look, there's two.
Lex Fridman (3:11:46.060)
There can be a disappointment.
Lex Fridman (3:11:47.300)
No, it's gonna be a horror, right?
Lex Fridman (3:11:50.340)
Because we actually know the answer to the question.
Bret Weinstein (3:11:52.660)
Oh no.
Lex Fridman (3:11:53.820)
It's completely meaningless.
Bret Weinstein (3:11:56.180)
There is nothing that we can do
Lex Fridman (3:11:58.460)
that escapes the heat death of the universe
Bret Weinstein (3:12:00.780)
or whatever it is that happens at the end.
Lex Fridman (3:12:02.740)
And we're not gonna make it there anyway.
Lex Fridman (3:12:04.780)
But even if you were optimistic about our ability
Lex Fridman (3:12:07.700)
to escape every existential hazard indefinitely,
Lex Fridman (3:12:13.300)
ultimately it's all for naught and we know it, right?
Lex Fridman (3:12:17.060)
That said, once you stare into that abyss,
Lex Fridman (3:12:20.660)
and then it stares back and laughs or whatever happens,
Lex Fridman (3:12:24.420)
then the question is, okay, given that,
Lex Fridman (3:12:27.140)
can I relax a little bit, right?
Lex Fridman (3:12:29.740)
And figure out, well, what would make sense
Lex Fridman (3:12:31.880)
if that were true, right?
Lex Fridman (3:12:34.380)
And I think there's something very clear to me.
Bret Weinstein (3:12:37.220)
I think if you do all of the,
Lex Fridman (3:12:38.980)
if I just take the values that I'm sure we share
Lex Fridman (3:12:41.780)
and extrapolate from them,
Lex Fridman (3:12:43.900)
I think the following thing is actually a moral imperative.
Bret Weinstein (3:12:48.460)
Being a human and having opportunity
Lex Fridman (3:12:51.600)
is absolutely fucking awesome, right?
Bret Weinstein (3:12:54.340)
A lot of people don't make use of the opportunity
Lex Fridman (3:12:56.020)
and a lot of people don't have opportunity, right?
Bret Weinstein (3:12:58.040)
They get to be human, but they're too constrained
Lex Fridman (3:13:00.140)
by keeping a roof over their heads to really be free.
Lex Fridman (3:13:03.880)
But being a free human is fantastic.
Lex Fridman (3:13:07.460)
And being a free human on this beautiful planet,
Bret Weinstein (3:13:10.100)
crippled as it may be, is unparalleled.
Lex Fridman (3:13:13.860)
I mean, what could be better?
Lex Fridman (3:13:15.300)
How lucky are we that we get that, right?
Lex Fridman (3:13:17.820)
So if that's true, that it is awesome to be human
Lex Fridman (3:13:21.380)
and to be free, then surely it is our obligation
Lex Fridman (3:13:25.300)
to deliver that opportunity to as many people as we can.
Lex Fridman (3:13:29.060)
And how do you do that?
Lex Fridman (3:13:30.760)
Well, I think I know what job one is.
Bret Weinstein (3:13:33.340)
Job one is we have to get sustainable.
Lex Fridman (3:13:36.820)
The way to get the maximum number of humans
Bret Weinstein (3:13:39.060)
to have that opportunity to be both here and free
Lex Fridman (3:13:42.720)
is to make sure that there isn't a limit
Bret Weinstein (3:13:44.900)
on how long we can keep doing this.
Lex Fridman (3:13:46.780)
That effectively requires us to reach sustainability.
Lex Fridman (3:13:50.400)
And then at sustainability, you could have a horror show
Lex Fridman (3:13:54.340)
of sustainability, right?
Bret Weinstein (3:13:55.500)
You could have a totalitarian sustainability.
Lex Fridman (3:13:58.860)
That's not the objective.
Bret Weinstein (3:14:00.220)
The objective is to liberate people.
Lex Fridman (3:14:02.140)
And so the question, the whole fourth frontier question,
Bret Weinstein (3:14:04.980)
frankly, is how do you get to a sustainable
Lex Fridman (3:14:08.380)
and indefinitely sustainable state
Bret Weinstein (3:14:10.780)
in which people feel liberated,
Lex Fridman (3:14:13.060)
in which they are liberated,
Bret Weinstein (3:14:14.500)
to pursue the things that actually matter,
Lex Fridman (3:14:16.300)
to pursue beauty, truth, compassion, connection,
Bret Weinstein (3:14:22.940)
all of those things that we could list as unalloyed goods,
Lex Fridman (3:14:27.220)
those are the things that people should be most liberated
Bret Weinstein (3:14:29.420)
to do in a system that really functions.
Lex Fridman (3:14:31.660)
And anyway, my point is,
Bret Weinstein (3:14:35.020)
I don't know how precise that calculation is,
Lex Fridman (3:14:37.020)
but I'm pretty sure it's not wrong.
Bret Weinstein (3:14:38.580)
It's accurate enough.
Lex Fridman (3:14:39.940)
And if it is accurate enough, then the point is, okay,
Bret Weinstein (3:14:43.460)
well, there's no ultimate meaning,
Lex Fridman (3:14:45.300)
but the proximate meaning is that one.
Lex Fridman (3:14:47.100)
How many people can we get to have this wonderful experience
Lex Fridman (3:14:50.160)
that we've gotten to have, right?
Lex Fridman (3:14:52.220)
And there's no way that's so wrong
Lex Fridman (3:14:54.760)
that if I invest my life in it,
Bret Weinstein (3:14:56.640)
that I'm making some big error.
Lex Fridman (3:14:58.260)
I'm sure of that.
Bret Weinstein (3:14:59.180)
Life is awesome, and we wanna spread the awesome
Lex Fridman (3:15:02.300)
as much as possible.
Bret Weinstein (3:15:03.520)
Yeah, you sum it up that way, spread the awesome.
Lex Fridman (3:15:05.740)
Spread the awesome.
Lex Fridman (3:15:06.680)
So that's the fourth frontier.
Lex Fridman (3:15:07.940)
And if that fails, if the fourth frontier fails,
Bret Weinstein (3:15:10.560)
the fifth frontier will be defined by robots,
Lex Fridman (3:15:12.980)
and hopefully they'll learn the lessons
Bret Weinstein (3:15:15.420)
of the mistakes that the humans made
Lex Fridman (3:15:18.380)
and build a better world with more awesome.
Bret Weinstein (3:15:20.380)
I hope they're very happy here
Lex Fridman (3:15:21.220)
and that they do a better job with the place than we did.
Bret Weinstein (3:15:23.540)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (3:15:25.220)
Brett.
Bret Weinstein (3:15:26.060)
I can't believe it took us this long to talk,
Lex Fridman (3:15:29.020)
as I mentioned to you before,
Bret Weinstein (3:15:31.620)
that we haven't actually spoken, I think, at all.
Lex Fridman (3:15:35.780)
And I've always felt that we're already friends.
Bret Weinstein (3:15:39.320)
I don't know how that works
Lex Fridman (3:15:40.700)
because I've listened to your podcasts a lot.
Bret Weinstein (3:15:42.940)
I've also sort of loved your brother.
Lex Fridman (3:15:46.060)
And so it was like,
Bret Weinstein (3:15:48.140)
we've known each other for the longest time,
Lex Fridman (3:15:49.940)
and I hope we can be friends and talk often again.
Lex Fridman (3:15:53.940)
And I hope that you get a chance to meet
Lex Fridman (3:15:56.260)
some of my robot friends as well and fall in love.
Lex Fridman (3:15:59.020)
And I'm so glad that you love robots as well.
Lex Fridman (3:16:02.620)
So we get to share in that love.
Lex Fridman (3:16:04.060)
So I can't wait for us to interact together.
Lex Fridman (3:16:07.620)
So we went from talking about some of the worst failures
Bret Weinstein (3:16:11.680)
of humanity to some of the most beautiful
Lex Fridman (3:16:14.620)
aspects of humanity.
Lex Fridman (3:16:16.380)
What else can you ask for from a conversation?
Lex Fridman (3:16:18.840)
Thank you so much for talking today.
Bret Weinstein (3:16:20.580)
You know, Lex, I feel the same way towards you,
Lex Fridman (3:16:23.140)
and I really appreciate it.
Bret Weinstein (3:16:24.280)
This has been a lot of fun,
Lex Fridman (3:16:25.260)
and I'm looking forward to our next one.
Bret Weinstein (3:16:27.860)
Thanks for listening to this conversation
Lex Fridman (3:16:29.260)
with Brett Weinstein,
Lex Fridman (3:16:30.340)
and thank you to Jordan Harbridge's show,
Lex Fridman (3:16:32.820)
Express CPN, Magic Spoon, and Four Sigmatic.
Bret Weinstein (3:16:36.500)
Check them out in the description to support this podcast.
Lex Fridman (3:16:39.820)
And now, let me leave you with some words
Bret Weinstein (3:16:41.820)
from Charles Darwin.
Lex Fridman (3:16:43.680)
Ignorance more frequently begets confidence
Bret Weinstein (3:16:46.540)
than does knowledge.
Lex Fridman (3:16:47.880)
It is those who know little, not those who know much,
Bret Weinstein (3:16:51.540)
who so positively assert that this or that problem
Lex Fridman (3:16:55.140)
will never be solved by science.
Bret Weinstein (3:16:57.720)
Thank you for listening, and hope to see you next time.
Lex Fridman (40:00.120)
at the end of 2019.
Lex Fridman (40:01.660)
So you don't believe in the magic of evolution
Lex Fridman (40:03.680)
to spring up with all the tricks already there?
Bret Weinstein (40:05.660)
Like everybody who doesn't have the tricks,
Lex Fridman (40:07.460)
they die quickly.
Lex Fridman (40:09.420)
And then you just have this beautiful virus
Lex Fridman (40:11.500)
that comes in with a spike protein
Lex Fridman (40:13.420)
and through mutation and selection,
Lex Fridman (40:17.180)
just like the ones that succeed and succeed big
Bret Weinstein (40:23.660)
are the ones that are going to just spring into life
Lex Fridman (40:25.780)
with the tricks.
Bret Weinstein (40:26.780)
Well, no, that's called a hopeful monster.
Lex Fridman (40:30.580)
And hopeful monsters don't work.
Bret Weinstein (40:33.180)
The job of becoming a new pandemic virus is too difficult.
Lex Fridman (40:37.700)
It involves two very difficult steps
Lex Fridman (40:39.340)
and they both have to work.
Lex Fridman (40:40.340)
One is the ability to infect a person and spread
Bret Weinstein (40:43.420)
in their tissues sufficient to make an infection.
Lex Fridman (40:46.780)
And the other is to jump between individuals
Bret Weinstein (40:49.140)
at a sufficient rate that it doesn't go extinct
Lex Fridman (40:51.540)
for one reason or another.
Bret Weinstein (40:53.340)
Those are both very difficult jobs.
Lex Fridman (40:55.180)
They require, as you describe, selection.
Lex Fridman (40:58.060)
And the point is selection would leave a mark.
Lex Fridman (41:00.700)
We would see evidence that it would stay.
Bret Weinstein (41:02.220)
In animals or humans, we would see.
Lex Fridman (41:04.100)
Both, right?
Lex Fridman (41:05.820)
And we see this evolutionary trace of the virus
Lex Fridman (41:09.380)
gathering the tricks up.
Bret Weinstein (41:10.700)
Yeah, you would see the virus,
Lex Fridman (41:12.300)
you would see the clumsy virus get better and better.
Lex Fridman (41:14.180)
And yes, I am a full believer in the power of that process.
Lex Fridman (41:17.180)
In fact, I believe it.
Lex Fridman (41:19.300)
What I know from studying the process
Lex Fridman (41:22.420)
is that it is much more powerful than most people imagine.
Bret Weinstein (41:25.300)
That what we teach in the Evolution 101 textbook
Lex Fridman (41:28.900)
is too clumsy a process to do what we see it doing
Lex Fridman (41:32.100)
and that actually people should increase their expectation
Lex Fridman (41:35.220)
of the rapidity with which that process can produce
Bret Weinstein (41:39.780)
just jaw dropping adaptations.
Lex Fridman (41:42.620)
That said, we just don't see evidence that it happened here
Bret Weinstein (41:45.020)
which doesn't mean it doesn't exist,
Lex Fridman (41:46.620)
but it means in spite of immense pressure
Bret Weinstein (41:49.340)
to find it somewhere, there's been no hint
Lex Fridman (41:51.980)
which probably means it took place inside of a laboratory.
Lex Fridman (41:55.540)
So inside the laboratory,
Lex Fridman (41:58.220)
gain of function research on viruses.
Lex Fridman (42:00.900)
And I believe most of that kind of research
Lex Fridman (42:04.900)
is doing this exact thing that you're referring to
Bret Weinstein (42:07.100)
which is accelerated evolution
Lex Fridman (42:09.420)
and just watching evolution do its thing
Lex Fridman (42:11.180)
and a bunch of viruses
Lex Fridman (42:12.580)
and seeing what kind of tricks get developed.
Bret Weinstein (42:16.140)
The other method is engineering viruses.
Lex Fridman (42:21.340)
So manually adding on the tricks.
Lex Fridman (42:26.380)
Which do you think we should be thinking about here?
Lex Fridman (42:30.940)
So mind you, I learned what I know
Bret Weinstein (42:33.620)
in the aftermath of this pandemic emerging.
Lex Fridman (42:35.980)
I started studying the question and I would say
Bret Weinstein (42:39.100)
based on the content of the genome and other evidence
Lex Fridman (42:43.700)
in publications from the various labs
Bret Weinstein (42:45.660)
that were involved in generating this technology,
Lex Fridman (42:50.380)
a couple of things seem likely.
Bret Weinstein (42:52.460)
This SARS CoV2 does not appear to be entirely the result
Lex Fridman (42:57.740)
of either a splicing process or serial passaging.
Bret Weinstein (43:02.740)
It appears to have both things in its past
Lex Fridman (43:07.300)
or it's at least highly likely that it does.
Lex Fridman (43:09.300)
So for example, the fern cleavage site
Lex Fridman (43:11.820)
looks very much like it was added in to the virus
Lex Fridman (43:15.620)
and it was known that that would increase its infectivity
Lex Fridman (43:18.620)
in humans and increase its tropism.
Bret Weinstein (43:22.140)
The virus appears to be excellent
Lex Fridman (43:27.140)
at spreading in humans and minks and ferrets.
Bret Weinstein (43:32.220)
Now minks and ferrets are very closely related to each other
Lex Fridman (43:34.420)
and ferrets are very likely to have been used
Bret Weinstein (43:36.660)
in a serial passage experiment.
Lex Fridman (43:38.580)
The reason being that they have an ACE2 receptor
Bret Weinstein (43:41.340)
that looks very much like the human ACE2 receptor.
Lex Fridman (43:43.780)
And so were you going to passage the virus
Bret Weinstein (43:46.940)
or its ancestor through an animal
Lex Fridman (43:49.260)
in order to increase its infectivity in humans,
Bret Weinstein (43:51.620)
which would have been necessary,
Lex Fridman (43:53.940)
ferrets would have been very likely.
Bret Weinstein (43:55.620)
It is also quite likely
Lex Fridman (43:57.300)
that humanized mice were utilized
Lex Fridman (44:01.420)
and it is possible that human airway tissue was utilized.
Lex Fridman (44:05.700)
I think it is vital that we find out
Lex Fridman (44:07.940)
what the protocols were.
Lex Fridman (44:09.100)
If this came from the Wuhan Institute,
Bret Weinstein (44:11.380)
we need to know it
Lex Fridman (44:12.220)
and we need to know what the protocols were exactly
Bret Weinstein (44:14.940)
because they will actually give us some tools
Lex Fridman (44:17.260)
that would be useful in fighting SARS CoV2
Lex Fridman (44:20.900)
and hopefully driving it to extinction,
Lex Fridman (44:22.500)
which ought to be our priority.
Bret Weinstein (44:24.420)
It is a priority that does not,
Lex Fridman (44:26.180)
it is not apparent from our behavior,
Lex Fridman (44:28.220)
but it really is, it should be our objective.
Lex Fridman (44:31.300)
If we understood where our interests lie,
Bret Weinstein (44:33.420)
we would be much more focused on it.
Lex Fridman (44:36.580)
But those protocols would tell us a great deal.
Bret Weinstein (44:39.340)
If it wasn't the Wuhan Institute, we need to know that.
Lex Fridman (44:42.140)
If it was nature, we need to know that.
Lex Fridman (44:44.420)
And if it was some other laboratory,
Lex Fridman (44:45.860)
we need to figure out what and where
Lex Fridman (44:48.500)
so that we can determine what we can determine
Lex Fridman (44:51.340)
about what was done.
Bret Weinstein (44:53.060)
You're opening up my mind about why we should investigate,
Lex Fridman (44:57.340)
why we should know the truth of the origins of this virus.
Lex Fridman (45:01.340)
So for me personally,
Lex Fridman (45:03.060)
let me just tell the story of my own kind of journey.
Bret Weinstein (45:07.420)
When I first started looking into the lab leak hypothesis,
Lex Fridman (45:12.820)
what became terrifying to me
Lex Fridman (45:15.060)
and important to understand and obvious
Lex Fridman (45:19.100)
is the sort of like Sam Harris way of thinking,
Bret Weinstein (45:22.300)
which is it's obvious that a lab leak of a deadly virus
Lex Fridman (45:27.020)
will eventually happen.
Bret Weinstein (45:29.460)
My mind was, it doesn't even matter
Lex Fridman (45:32.580)
if it happened in this case.
Bret Weinstein (45:34.540)
It's obvious that it's going to happen in the future.
Lex Fridman (45:37.460)
So why the hell are we not freaking out about this?
Lex Fridman (45:40.620)
And COVID 19 is not even that deadly
Lex Fridman (45:42.540)
relative to the possible future viruses.
Bret Weinstein (45:45.100)
It's this, the way I disagree with Sam on this,
Lex Fridman (45:47.660)
but he thinks about this way about AGI as well,
Bret Weinstein (45:50.620)
not about artificial intelligence.
Lex Fridman (45:52.380)
It's a different discussion, I think,
Lex Fridman (45:54.100)
but with viruses, it seems like something that could happen
Lex Fridman (45:56.540)
on the scale of years, maybe a few decades.
Bret Weinstein (46:00.060)
AGI is a little bit farther out for me,
Lex Fridman (46:02.380)
but it seemed, the terrifying thing,
Bret Weinstein (46:04.220)
it seemed obvious that this will happen very soon
Lex Fridman (46:08.460)
for a much deadlier virus as we get better and better
Bret Weinstein (46:11.700)
at both engineering viruses
Lex Fridman (46:13.780)
and doing this kind of evolutionary driven research,
Bret Weinstein (46:16.660)
gain of function research.
Lex Fridman (46:18.620)
Okay, but then you started speaking out about this as well,
Lex Fridman (46:23.100)
but also started to say, no, no, no,
Lex Fridman (46:25.260)
we should hurry up and figure out the origins now
Bret Weinstein (46:27.780)
because it will help us figure out
Lex Fridman (46:29.780)
how to actually respond to this particular virus,
Lex Fridman (46:35.500)
how to treat this particular virus.
Lex Fridman (46:37.660)
What is in terms of vaccines, in terms of antiviral drugs,
Bret Weinstein (46:40.460)
in terms of just all the number of responses
Lex Fridman (46:45.820)
that we should have.
Bret Weinstein (46:46.660)
Okay, I still am much more freaking out about the future.
Lex Fridman (46:53.900)
Maybe you can break that apart a little bit.
Lex Fridman (46:57.620)
Which are you most focused on now?
Lex Fridman (47:03.940)
Which are you most freaking out about now
Bret Weinstein (47:06.900)
in terms of the importance of figuring out
Lex Fridman (47:08.620)
the origins of this virus?
Bret Weinstein (47:10.620)
I am most freaking out about both of them
Lex Fridman (47:13.660)
because they're both really important
Lex Fridman (47:15.380)
and we can put bounds on this.
Lex Fridman (47:18.100)
Let me say first that this is a perfect test case
Bret Weinstein (47:20.900)
for the theory of close calls
Lex Fridman (47:22.460)
because as much as COVID is a disaster,
Bret Weinstein (47:25.260)
it is also a close call from which we can learn much.
Lex Fridman (47:28.500)
You are absolutely right.
Bret Weinstein (47:29.700)
If we keep playing this game in the lab,
Lex Fridman (47:32.140)
if we are not, if we are,
Bret Weinstein (47:34.820)
especially if we do it under pressure
Lex Fridman (47:36.540)
and when we are told that a virus
Bret Weinstein (47:37.860)
is going to leap from nature any day
Lex Fridman (47:40.100)
and that the more we know,
Bret Weinstein (47:41.300)
the better we'll be able to fight it,
Lex Fridman (47:42.540)
we're gonna create the disaster,
Bret Weinstein (47:44.620)
all the sooner.
Lex Fridman (47:46.540)
So yes, that should be an absolute focus.
Bret Weinstein (47:49.460)
The fact that there were people saying
Lex Fridman (47:50.940)
that this was dangerous back in 2015
Bret Weinstein (47:54.420)
ought to tell us something.
Lex Fridman (47:55.460)
The fact that the system bypassed a ban
Lex Fridman (47:57.780)
and offshored the work to China
Lex Fridman (48:00.140)
ought to tell us this is not a Chinese failure.
Bret Weinstein (48:02.180)
This is a failure of something larger and harder to see.
Lex Fridman (48:07.020)
But I also think that there's a clock ticking
Bret Weinstein (48:11.620)
with respect to SARS CoV2 and COVID,
Lex Fridman (48:14.780)
the disease that it creates.
Lex Fridman (48:16.940)
And that has to do with whether or not
Lex Fridman (48:18.340)
we are stuck with it permanently.
Lex Fridman (48:20.980)
So if you think about the cost to humanity
Lex Fridman (48:22.980)
of being stuck with influenza,
Bret Weinstein (48:24.940)
it's an immense cost year after year.
Lex Fridman (48:27.220)
And we just stop thinking about it because it's there.
Bret Weinstein (48:30.300)
Some years you get the flu, most years you don't.
Lex Fridman (48:32.460)
Maybe you get the vaccine to prevent it.
Bret Weinstein (48:34.220)
Maybe the vaccine isn't particularly well targeted.
Lex Fridman (48:37.180)
But imagine just simply doubling that cost.
Bret Weinstein (48:40.260)
Imagine we get stuck with SARS CoV2
Lex Fridman (48:44.020)
and its descendants going forward
Lex Fridman (48:45.980)
and that it just settles in
Lex Fridman (48:48.300)
and becomes a fact of modern human life.
Lex Fridman (48:51.340)
That would be a disaster, right?
Lex Fridman (48:52.860)
The number of people we will ultimately lose
Bret Weinstein (48:54.660)
is incalculable.
Lex Fridman (48:55.980)
The amount of suffering that will be caused is incalculable.
Bret Weinstein (48:58.340)
The loss of wellbeing and wealth, incalculable.
Lex Fridman (49:01.980)
So that ought to be a very high priority,
Bret Weinstein (49:04.660)
driving this extinct before it becomes permanent.
Lex Fridman (49:08.100)
And the ability to drive extinct goes down
Bret Weinstein (49:12.020)
the longer we delay effective responses.
Lex Fridman (49:15.660)
To the extent that we let it have this very large canvas,
Bret Weinstein (49:18.900)
large numbers of people who have the disease
Lex Fridman (49:21.580)
in which mutation and selection can result in adaptation
Bret Weinstein (49:25.060)
that we will not be able to counter
Lex Fridman (49:26.980)
the greater its ability to figure out features
Bret Weinstein (49:29.540)
of our immune system and use them to its advantage.
Lex Fridman (49:33.660)
So I'm feeling the pressure of driving it extinct.
Bret Weinstein (49:37.340)
I believe we could have driven it extinct six months ago
Lex Fridman (49:40.460)
and we didn't do it because of very mundane concerns
Bret Weinstein (49:43.420)
among a small number of people.
Lex Fridman (49:44.860)
And I'm not alleging that they were brazen about
Bret Weinstein (49:52.140)
or that they were callous about deaths that would be caused.
Lex Fridman (49:55.220)
I have the sense that they were working
Bret Weinstein (49:56.660)
from a kind of autopilot in which you,
Lex Fridman (50:00.380)
let's say you're in some kind of a corporation,
Bret Weinstein (50:02.700)
a pharmaceutical corporation,
Lex Fridman (50:04.420)
you have a portfolio of therapies
Bret Weinstein (50:08.500)
that in the context of a pandemic might be very lucrative.
Lex Fridman (50:11.540)
Those therapies have competitors.
Bret Weinstein (50:13.860)
You of course wanna position your product
Lex Fridman (50:15.780)
so that it succeeds and the competitors don't.
Lex Fridman (50:18.940)
And lo and behold, at some point through means
Lex Fridman (50:22.220)
that I think those of us on the outside
Bret Weinstein (50:23.820)
can't really intuit, you end up saying things
Lex Fridman (50:28.580)
about competing therapies that work better
Lex Fridman (50:30.940)
and much more safely than the ones you're selling
Lex Fridman (50:33.940)
that aren't true and do cause people to die
Bret Weinstein (50:36.460)
in large numbers.
Lex Fridman (50:38.660)
But it's some kind of autopilot, at least part of it is.
Lex Fridman (50:43.180)
So there's a complicated coupling of the autopilot
Lex Fridman (50:47.460)
of institutions, companies, governments.
Lex Fridman (50:53.540)
And then there's also the geopolitical game theory thing
Lex Fridman (50:57.580)
going on where you wanna keep secrets.
Bret Weinstein (51:00.500)
It's the Chernobyl thing where if you messed up,
Lex Fridman (51:04.860)
there's a big incentive, I think,
Bret Weinstein (51:07.780)
to hide the fact that you messed up.
Lex Fridman (51:10.780)
So how do we fix this?
Lex Fridman (51:12.740)
And what's more important to fix?
Lex Fridman (51:14.460)
The autopilot, which is the response
Bret Weinstein (51:18.420)
that we often criticize about our institutions,
Lex Fridman (51:21.980)
especially the leaders in those institutions,
Bret Weinstein (51:23.900)
Anthony Fauci and so on,
Lex Fridman (51:25.860)
some of the members of the scientific community.
Lex Fridman (51:29.100)
And the second part is the game with China
Lex Fridman (51:35.180)
of hiding the information
Bret Weinstein (51:37.260)
in terms of on the fight between nations.
Lex Fridman (51:40.300)
Well, in our live streams on Dark Horse,
Bret Weinstein (51:42.860)
Heather and I have been talking from the beginning
Lex Fridman (51:44.860)
about the fact that although, yes,
Lex Fridman (51:47.300)
what happens began in China,
Lex Fridman (51:50.020)
it very much looks like a failure
Bret Weinstein (51:51.540)
of the international scientific community.
Lex Fridman (51:54.700)
That's frightening, but it's also hopeful
Bret Weinstein (51:57.700)
in the sense that actually if we did the right thing now,
Lex Fridman (52:01.020)
we're not navigating a puzzle about Chinese responsibility.
Bret Weinstein (52:05.380)
We're navigating a question of collective responsibility
Lex Fridman (52:10.380)
for something that has been terribly costly to all of us.
Lex Fridman (52:14.140)
So that's not a very happy process.
Lex Fridman (52:17.980)
But as you point out, what's at stake
Bret Weinstein (52:20.140)
is in large measure at the very least
Lex Fridman (52:22.220)
the strong possibility this will happen again
Lex Fridman (52:24.980)
and that at some point it will be far worse.
Lex Fridman (52:27.140)
So just as a person that does not learn the lessons
Bret Weinstein (52:32.300)
of their own errors doesn't get smarter
Lex Fridman (52:34.940)
and they remain in danger,
Bret Weinstein (52:37.220)
we collectively, humanity has to say,
Lex Fridman (52:40.020)
well, there sure is a lot of evidence
Bret Weinstein (52:43.060)
that suggests that this is a self inflicted wound.
Lex Fridman (52:46.020)
When you have done something
Bret Weinstein (52:47.860)
that has caused a massive self inflicted wound,
Lex Fridman (52:51.260)
self inflicted wound, it makes sense to dwell on it
Bret Weinstein (52:55.340)
exactly to the point that you have learned the lesson
Lex Fridman (52:57.660)
that makes it very, very unlikely
Bret Weinstein (52:59.620)
that something similar will happen again.
Lex Fridman (53:01.820)
I think this is a good place to kind of ask you
Bret Weinstein (53:04.380)
to do almost like a thought experiment
Lex Fridman (53:07.500)
or to steel man the argument against the lab leak hypothesis.
Lex Fridman (53:15.500)
So if you were to argue, you said 95% chance
Lex Fridman (53:20.500)
that the virus leak from a lab.
Bret Weinstein (53:26.500)
There's a bunch of ways I think you can argue
Lex Fridman (53:29.940)
that even talking about it is bad for the world.
Lex Fridman (53:37.020)
So if I just put something on the table,
Lex Fridman (53:40.140)
it's to say that for one,
Bret Weinstein (53:44.060)
it would be racism versus Chinese people
Lex Fridman (53:46.780)
that talking about that it leaked from a lab,
Bret Weinstein (53:51.220)
there's a kind of immediate kind of blame
Lex Fridman (53:53.620)
and it can spiral down into this idea
Bret Weinstein (53:56.300)
that's somehow the people are responsible for the virus
Lex Fridman (54:00.020)
and this kind of thing.
Bret Weinstein (54:02.100)
Is it possible for you to come up
Lex Fridman (54:03.340)
with other steel man arguments against talking
Lex Fridman (54:08.860)
or against the possibility of the lab leak hypothesis?
Lex Fridman (54:12.160)
Well, so I think steel manning is a tool
Bret Weinstein (54:16.760)
that is extremely valuable,
Lex Fridman (54:19.240)
but it's also possible to abuse it.
Bret Weinstein (54:22.800)
I think that you can only steel man a good faith argument.
Lex Fridman (54:26.440)
And the problem is we now know
Bret Weinstein (54:28.600)
that we have not been engaged in opponents
Lex Fridman (54:31.280)
who were wielding good faith arguments
Bret Weinstein (54:32.720)
because privately their emails reflect their own doubts.
Lex Fridman (54:36.240)
And what they were doing publicly was actually a punishment,
Bret Weinstein (54:39.880)
a public punishment for those of us who spoke up
Lex Fridman (54:43.200)
with I think the purpose of either backing us down
Bret Weinstein (54:46.960)
or more likely warning others
Lex Fridman (54:49.120)
not to engage in the same kind of behavior.
Lex Fridman (54:51.280)
And obviously for people like you and me
Lex Fridman (54:53.420)
who regard science as our likely best hope
Bret Weinstein (54:58.600)
for navigating difficult waters,
Lex Fridman (55:01.440)
shutting down people who are using those tools honorably
Bret Weinstein (55:05.200)
is itself dishonorable.
Lex Fridman (55:07.540)
So I don't feel that there's anything to steel man.
Lex Fridman (55:13.840)
And I also think that immediately at the point
Lex Fridman (55:17.900)
that the world suddenly with no new evidence on the table
Bret Weinstein (55:21.400)
switched gears with respect to the lab leak,
Lex Fridman (55:24.160)
at the point that Nicholas Wade had published his article
Lex Fridman (55:26.500)
and suddenly the world was going to admit
Lex Fridman (55:28.480)
that this was at least a possibility, if not a likelihood,
Bret Weinstein (55:32.860)
we got to see something of the rationalization process
Lex Fridman (55:36.560)
that had taken place inside the institutional world.
Lex Fridman (55:39.320)
And it very definitely involved the claim
Lex Fridman (55:41.760)
that what was being avoided was the targeting
Bret Weinstein (55:45.080)
of Chinese scientists.
Lex Fridman (55:49.080)
And my point would be,
Bret Weinstein (55:50.040)
I don't wanna see the targeting of anyone.
Lex Fridman (55:53.420)
I don't want to see racism of any kind.
Bret Weinstein (55:55.880)
On the other hand, once you create license to lie
Lex Fridman (56:00.700)
in order to protect individuals when the world has a stake
Bret Weinstein (56:05.700)
in knowing what happened, then it is inevitable
Lex Fridman (56:08.620)
that that process, that license to lie will be used
Bret Weinstein (56:12.300)
by the thing that captures institutions
Lex Fridman (56:14.100)
for its own purposes.
Lex Fridman (56:15.220)
So my sense is it may be very unfortunate
Lex Fridman (56:19.540)
if the story of what happened here
Bret Weinstein (56:22.100)
can be used against Chinese people.
Lex Fridman (56:26.660)
That would be very unfortunate.
Lex Fridman (56:27.980)
And as I think I mentioned,
Lex Fridman (56:30.980)
Heather and I have taken great pains to point out
Bret Weinstein (56:33.740)
that this doesn't look like a Chinese failure.
Lex Fridman (56:35.820)
It looks like a failure
Bret Weinstein (56:36.640)
of the international scientific community.
Lex Fridman (56:38.420)
So I think it is important to broadcast that message
Bret Weinstein (56:41.140)
along with the analysis of the evidence.
Lex Fridman (56:43.920)
But no matter what happened, we have a right to know.
Lex Fridman (56:46.780)
And I frankly do not take the institutional layer
Lex Fridman (56:50.860)
at its word that its motivations are honorable
Lex Fridman (56:53.500)
and that it was protecting good hearted scientists
Lex Fridman (56:56.720)
at the expense of the world.
Bret Weinstein (56:58.100)
That explanation does not add up.
Lex Fridman (57:00.300)
Well, this is a very interesting question about
Bret Weinstein (57:04.260)
whether it's ever okay to lie at the institutional layer
Lex Fridman (57:08.300)
to protect the populace.
Bret Weinstein (57:12.940)
I think both you and I are probably on the same,
Lex Fridman (57:18.380)
have the same sense that it's a slippery slope.
Bret Weinstein (57:21.900)
Even if it's an effective mechanism in the short term,
Lex Fridman (57:25.220)
in the long term, it's going to be destructive.
Bret Weinstein (57:27.700)
This happened with masks.
Lex Fridman (57:30.940)
This happened with other things.
Bret Weinstein (57:32.540)
If you look at just history pandemics,
Lex Fridman (57:35.420)
there's an idea that panic is destructive
Bret Weinstein (57:40.420)
amongst the populace.
Lex Fridman (57:41.300)
So you want to construct a narrative,
Bret Weinstein (57:44.440)
whether it's a lie or not to minimize panic.
Lex Fridman (57:49.540)
But you're suggesting that almost in all cases,
Lex Fridman (57:52.760)
and I think that was the lesson from the pandemic
Lex Fridman (57:57.560)
in the early 20th century,
Bret Weinstein (57:59.260)
that lying creates distrust
Lex Fridman (58:03.660)
and distrust in the institutions is ultimately destructive.
Lex Fridman (58:08.220)
That's your sense that lying is not okay?
Lex Fridman (58:10.820)
Well, okay.
Bret Weinstein (58:12.380)
There are obviously places where complete transparency
Lex Fridman (58:15.800)
is not a good idea, right?
Bret Weinstein (58:17.300)
To the extent that you broadcast a technology
Lex Fridman (58:19.980)
that allows one individual to hold the world hostage,
Bret Weinstein (58:24.220)
obviously you've got something to be navigated.
Lex Fridman (58:27.660)
But in general, I don't believe that the scientific system
Bret Weinstein (58:32.900)
should be lying to us.
Lex Fridman (58:36.100)
In the case of this particular lie,
Bret Weinstein (58:39.820)
the idea that the wellbeing of Chinese scientists
Lex Fridman (58:45.380)
outweighs the wellbeing of the world is preposterous.
Bret Weinstein (58:50.220)
Right, as you point out,
Lex Fridman (58:51.900)
one thing that rests on this question
Bret Weinstein (58:53.460)
is whether we continue to do this kind of research
Lex Fridman (58:55.980)
going forward.
Lex Fridman (58:56.820)
And the scientists in question, all of them,
Lex Fridman (58:58.940)
American, Chinese, all of them were pushing the idea
Bret Weinstein (59:03.300)
that the risk of a zoonotic spillover event
Lex Fridman (59:06.140)
causing a major and highly destructive pandemic
Bret Weinstein (59:08.860)
was so great that we had to risk this.
Lex Fridman (59:12.260)
Now, if they themselves have caused it,
Lex Fridman (59:14.420)
and if they are wrong, as I believe they are,
Lex Fridman (59:16.780)
about the likelihood of a major world pandemic
Bret Weinstein (59:19.260)
spilling out of nature
Lex Fridman (59:20.780)
in the way that they wrote into their grant applications,
Bret Weinstein (59:24.660)
then the danger is the call is coming from inside the house
Lex Fridman (59:28.020)
and we have to look at that.
Lex Fridman (59:31.240)
And yes, whatever we have to do
Lex Fridman (59:33.860)
to protect scientists from retribution, we should do,
Lex Fridman (59:38.300)
but we cannot protecting them by lying to the world.
Lex Fridman (59:42.900)
And even worse,
Bret Weinstein (59:45.180)
by demonizing people like me, like Josh Rogin,
Lex Fridman (59:54.060)
like Yuri Dagan, the entire drastic group on Twitter,
Bret Weinstein (59:58.980)
by demonizing us for simply following the evidence
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