Eric Weinstein: Geometric Unity and the Call for New Ideas, Leaders & Institutions
音乐与艺术政治与社会技术与编程生物与进化物理与宇宙学
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🔑 关键词
dongoingtheorygottryingstoryfourcalledsaidpersonmitsayingdidnsupposedhopesomebodyelonweirdphysicstalk
💬 精彩语录
"Because if the fundamentals of the systems are broken, then I just don't see a way for MIT to succeed."
因为如果系统的基础被打破，那么我就看不到麻省理工学院成功的方法。
— Eric Weinstein （2:02:35.640）
"Like we could go on for days and days and days, all the nonsense that you've parroted inside of the institution."
就像我们可以持续几天、几天、几天，所有你在机构内鹦鹉学舌的废话。
— Eric Weinstein （2:01:24.480）
"Now, if you take somebody with perfect standardized tests and you know, a winner of math competitions"
现在，如果你找一个标准化测试完美的人，你知道，他是数学竞赛的获胜者
— Eric Weinstein （2:35:56.440）
🎙️ 完整对话（2717 条）
Lex Fridman (00:00.000)
The following is a conversation with Eric Weinstein, the second time we've
以下是我们第二次与埃里克·韦恩斯坦 (Eric Weinstein) 的对话
Lex Fridman (00:04.200)
spoken on this podcast, he's a mathematician with a bold and piercing
在这个播客中，他是一位大胆而敏锐的数学家
Lex Fridman (00:08.680)
intelligence, unafraid to explore the biggest questions in the universe and
智慧，不畏惧探索宇宙中最大的问题，
Lex Fridman (00:13.320)
shine a light on the darkest corners of our society.
照亮我们社会最黑暗的角落。
Lex Fridman (00:16.920)
He is the host of the portal podcast, a part of which he recently released his
他是门户播客的主持人，最近他发布了其中的一部分
Eric Weinstein (00:23.200)
2013 Oxford lecture on his theory of geometric unity that is at the center of
2013 年牛津演讲，主题为几何统一理论
Lex Fridman (00:29.720)
his lifelong efforts to arrive at a theory of everything that unifies the
他毕生的努力是为了建立一个统一了一切的理论
Eric Weinstein (00:34.400)
fundamental laws of physics.
物理的基本定律。
Lex Fridman (00:36.520)
This conversation was recorded recently in the time of the coronavirus pandemic
这段对话是最近在冠状病毒大流行期间录制的
Eric Weinstein (00:41.120)
for everyone feeling the medical, psychological and financial burden of
对于每个感到医疗、心理和经济负担的人
Lex Fridman (00:44.320)
this crisis, I'm sending love your way.
这场危机，我以这种方式向你传递爱。
Eric Weinstein (00:47.080)
Stay strong.
坚强点。
Lex Fridman (00:47.960)
We're in this together.
我们在一起。
Eric Weinstein (00:49.200)
We'll beat this thing.
我们会打败这件事。
Lex Fridman (00:50.800)
This is the artificial intelligence podcast.
这是人工智能播客。
Eric Weinstein (00:53.320)
If you enjoy it, subscribe on YouTube, review it with five stars and apple
如果您喜欢它，请在 YouTube 上订阅，并用五颗星和苹果进行评论
Lex Fridman (00:56.800)
podcasts, support it on Patreon or simply connect with me on Twitter
播客、在 Patreon 上支持它或在 Twitter 上与我联系
Eric Weinstein (01:00.760)
at Lex Friedman spelled F R I D M A N.
Lex Friedman 拼写为 F R I D M A N。
Eric Weinstein (01:04.880)
This show is presented by cash app, the number one finance app in the app store.
本节目由应用商店排名第一的金融应用程序现金应用程序呈现。
Eric Weinstein (01:09.560)
When you get it, use code Lex podcast.
当您获得它时，请使用代码 Lex 播客。
Lex Fridman (01:12.840)
Cash app lets you send money to friends by Bitcoin and invest in the stock
Eric Weinstein (01:16.320)
market with as little as $1.
Lex Fridman (01:18.800)
Since cash app does fractional share trading, let me mention that the order
Eric Weinstein (01:22.720)
execution algorithm that works behind the scenes to create the abstraction of
Lex Fridman (01:27.080)
the fractional orders is an algorithmic Marvel.
Lex Fridman (01:30.480)
So big props to the cash app engineers for solving a hard problem that in the
Lex Fridman (01:34.440)
end provides an easy interface that takes a step up to the next layer of
Eric Weinstein (01:38.720)
abstraction of the stock market, making trading more accessible to new
Lex Fridman (01:43.000)
investors and diversification much easier.
Lex Fridman (01:47.120)
So again, if you get cash app from the app store, Google play and use code
Lex Fridman (01:51.320)
Lex podcast, you get $10 and cash app will also donate $10 to first an
Eric Weinstein (01:57.080)
organization that is helping to advance robotics and STEM education for
Lex Fridman (02:00.880)
young people around the world.
Lex Fridman (02:03.280)
And now here's my conversation with Eric Weinstein.
Lex Fridman (02:08.400)
Do you see a connection between world war II and the crisis
Lex Fridman (02:12.200)
we're living through right now?
Lex Fridman (02:13.800)
Sure.
Eric Weinstein (02:14.920)
The need for collective action, reminding ourselves of the fact that all of these
Lex Fridman (02:20.680)
abstractions, like everyone should just do exactly what he or she wants to do
Eric Weinstein (02:25.960)
for himself and leave everyone else alone.
Lex Fridman (02:28.120)
None of these abstractions work in a global crisis.
Lex Fridman (02:31.520)
And this is just a reminder that we didn't somehow put all that behind us.
Lex Fridman (02:36.600)
When I hear stories about my grandfather who was in the army.
Lex Fridman (02:40.640)
And so the Soviet union where most people die, when you're in the army,
Lex Fridman (02:44.080)
there's a brotherhood that happens.
Eric Weinstein (02:45.960)
There's a love that happens.
Lex Fridman (02:48.120)
Do you think that's something we're going to see here?
Eric Weinstein (02:49.720)
Uh, since we're not there, I mean, what the Soviet union went through, I mean,
Lex Fridman (02:54.640)
the enormity of the war on, uh, the Russian doorstep, this is different.
Lex Fridman (03:02.640)
What we're going through now is not, we can't talk about Stalingrad and
Lex Fridman (03:05.640)
COVID in the same breath yet.
Eric Weinstein (03:07.440)
We're not ready.
Lex Fridman (03:08.320)
And the, the sort of, uh, you know, just the sense of like the great patriotic
Eric Weinstein (03:14.320)
war and the way in which I was very moved by the Soviet custom of,
Lex Fridman (03:19.680)
of newlyweds going and visiting war memorials on their wedding day.
Eric Weinstein (03:23.280)
It's like the happiest day of your life.
Lex Fridman (03:24.440)
You have to say thank you to the people who made it possible.
Eric Weinstein (03:27.680)
We're not there.
Lex Fridman (03:28.880)
We're, we're just restarting history.
Eric Weinstein (03:31.840)
We, you know, I've called this on the Rogan program.
Lex Fridman (03:35.520)
I called it the great nap, the 75 years with, um, very little by historical
Eric Weinstein (03:41.840)
standards in, in terms of really profound disruption.
Lex Fridman (03:45.800)
And so when you call it the great nap, meaning lack of deep global tragedy,
Eric Weinstein (03:51.240)
well, lack of realized global tragedy.
Lex Fridman (03:54.240)
So I think that the development, for example, of the hydrogen bomb, you know,
Eric Weinstein (03:58.680)
was something that happened during the great nap.
Lex Fridman (04:02.360)
And that doesn't mean that people who lived during that time didn't feel
Eric Weinstein (04:08.160)
feared and no anxiety, but it was to say that most of the violent potential
Lex Fridman (04:13.240)
of the human species was not realized.
Eric Weinstein (04:15.680)
It was in the form of potential energy.
Lex Fridman (04:18.040)
And this is the thing that I've sort of taken issue with, with the description
Eric Weinstein (04:21.440)
of Steven Pinker's optimism is that if you look at the realized kinetic
Lex Fridman (04:25.960)
variables, things have been getting much better for a long time, which is the
Eric Weinstein (04:28.880)
great nap, but it's not as if, uh, our fragility has not grown our dependence
Lex Fridman (04:34.880)
on electronic systems, our vulnerability to disruption.
Lex Fridman (04:38.440)
And so all sorts of things have gotten much better. Other things have gotten
Lex Fridman (04:42.960)
much worse and the destructive potential is skyrocketed.
Eric Weinstein (04:47.000)
It's tragedy.
Lex Fridman (04:47.760)
The only way we wake up from the big nap.
Eric Weinstein (04:51.160)
Well, no, you could also have a, you know, jubilation about positive things, but
Lex Fridman (04:56.520)
it's harder to get people's attention.
Lex Fridman (04:58.720)
Can you give an example of a big global positive thing that could happen?
Lex Fridman (05:02.920)
I think that when, for example, just historically speaking, uh, HIV
Eric Weinstein (05:07.880)
went from being a death sentence to something that people could live with
Lex Fridman (05:11.360)
for a very long period of time.
Lex Fridman (05:13.600)
It would be great if that had happened on a Wednesday, right?
Lex Fridman (05:16.840)
Like all at once, like you knew that things had changed.
Lex Fridman (05:19.960)
And so the bleed in somewhat kills the, the sort of the Wednesday effect
Lex Fridman (05:24.640)
where it all happens on a particular day at a particular moment.
Eric Weinstein (05:29.320)
I think if you look at the stock market here, you know, there's a very clear
Lex Fridman (05:32.320)
moment where you can see that the market absorbs the idea of the coronavirus.
Eric Weinstein (05:37.120)
I think that with respect to, um, positives, the moon landing was the best
Lex Fridman (05:43.240)
example of a positive that happened at a particular time or, uh, recapitulating
Lex Fridman (05:49.240)
the Soviet American, uh, link up in terms of, um, Skylab and Soyuz, right?
Lex Fridman (05:57.160)
Like that was a huge moment when you actually had these two nations connecting.
Eric Weinstein (06:02.800)
Uh, in orbit.
Lex Fridman (06:03.800)
And so, yeah, there are great moments where something beautiful and wonderful
Lex Fridman (06:07.400)
and amazing happens, you know, but it's just, there are fewer of, that's why,
Eric Weinstein (06:11.720)
that's why as much as I can't imagine proposing to somebody at a sporting event,
Eric Weinstein (06:17.200)
when you have like 30,000 people waiting and you know, like she says, yes,
Lex Fridman (06:22.720)
it's pretty exciting.
Lex Fridman (06:23.760)
So I think that we shouldn't, we shouldn't discount that.
Lex Fridman (06:27.840)
So how bad do you think it's going to get in terms of, um,
Lex Fridman (06:33.240)
of the global suffering that we're going to experience with this, with this crisis?
Lex Fridman (06:38.480)
I can't figure this one out.
Eric Weinstein (06:40.200)
I'm just not smart enough.
Lex Fridman (06:41.200)
Something is going weirdly wrong.
Eric Weinstein (06:43.840)
They're almost like two separate storylines.
Lex Fridman (06:46.360)
We in one storyline, we aren't taking things nearly seriously enough.
Eric Weinstein (06:52.080)
We see people using food packaging lids as masks who are doctors or nurses.
Lex Fridman (06:59.680)
Um, we hear horrible stories about people dying needlessly due to triage.
Lex Fridman (07:05.560)
And that's a very terrifying story.
Lex Fridman (07:09.560)
On the other hand, there's this other story, which says there are
Eric Weinstein (07:12.960)
tons of ventilators someplace.
Lex Fridman (07:15.000)
We've got lots of masks, but they haven't been released.
Eric Weinstein (07:18.800)
We've got hospital ships where none of the beds are being used.
Lex Fridman (07:22.560)
And it's very confusing to me that somehow these two stories give me the feeling
Eric Weinstein (07:28.800)
that they both must be true simultaneously, and they can't both be true in any kind
Lex Fridman (07:33.520)
of standard way, whether I don't know whether it's just that I'm dumb, but I
Eric Weinstein (07:37.800)
can't get one or the other story to quiet down.
Lex Fridman (07:40.560)
So I think weirdly, this is much more serious than we had understood it.
Lex Fridman (07:44.800)
And it's not nearly as serious as some people are making it out to be at the
Lex Fridman (07:49.480)
same time and that we're not being given the tools to actually understand, Oh,
Eric Weinstein (07:54.440)
here's how to interpret the data, or here's the issue with the personal protective
Lex Fridman (07:58.760)
equipment is actually a jurisdictional battle or a question of who pays for it
Eric Weinstein (08:03.760)
rather than a question of whether it's present or absent.
Lex Fridman (08:06.040)
I don't understand the details of it, but something is wildly off in our
Eric Weinstein (08:10.360)
ability to understand where we are.
Lex Fridman (08:11.960)
So that's, that's policy that's institutions.
Lex Fridman (08:14.600)
What about, do you think about the quiet suffering of millions of
Lex Fridman (08:18.960)
people that have lost their job?
Lex Fridman (08:21.600)
Is this a temporary thing?
Lex Fridman (08:23.200)
I mean, what I'm my ears, not to the suffering of those people who have
Eric Weinstein (08:28.520)
lost their job or the 50% possibly a small businesses that are going to go
Lex Fridman (08:32.800)
bankrupt, do you think about that?
Eric Weinstein (08:36.280)
Sure.
Lex Fridman (08:36.400)
It's suffering.
Eric Weinstein (08:37.440)
Well, and how that might arise itself could be not quiet too.
Lex Fridman (08:41.840)
I mean, right.
Eric Weinstein (08:42.720)
That's the, could be a depression.
Lex Fridman (08:44.600)
This could go from recession to depression and depression could go
Eric Weinstein (08:47.960)
to armed conflict and then to war.
Lex Fridman (08:49.720)
So it's not a very, um, abstract causal chain that gets us to the point where
Eric Weinstein (08:57.240)
we can begin with quiet suffering and anxiety and all of these sorts of things
Lex Fridman (09:01.720)
and people losing their jobs and people dying from stress and all sorts of things.
Eric Weinstein (09:06.840)
But, um, look, anything powerful enough to put us all indoors in a, I mean,
Lex Fridman (09:15.080)
I think about this as an incredible experiment. Imagine that you proposed,
Eric Weinstein (09:20.520)
Hey, I want to do a bunch of research.
Lex Fridman (09:22.880)
Let's figure out what changes in our emissions, emissions profiles for our
Eric Weinstein (09:27.600)
carbon footprints when we're all indoors or what happens to traffic patterns or
Lex Fridman (09:32.200)
what happens to the vulnerability of retail sales, uh, as Amazon gets stronger,
Eric Weinstein (09:37.960)
you know, et cetera, et cetera.
Lex Fridman (09:39.120)
I believe that in many of those situations, um, we're running an incredible
Lex Fridman (09:44.960)
experiment and I, am I worried for us all?
Lex Fridman (09:47.760)
Yes, there are some bright spots.
Eric Weinstein (09:49.440)
One of which is that when you're ordered to stay indoors, people are
Lex Fridman (09:53.640)
going to feel entitled and the usual thing that people are going to hit when
Eric Weinstein (09:58.440)
they hear that they've lost your job, you know, there's this kind of tough,
Lex Fridman (10:04.720)
um, tough love attitude that you see, particularly in the United States, like,
Eric Weinstein (10:09.800)
Oh, you lost your job, poor baby.
Lex Fridman (10:12.360)
Well, go retrain, get another one.
Eric Weinstein (10:15.080)
I think there's going to be a lot less appetite for that.
Lex Fridman (10:18.280)
Um, because we've been asked to sacrifice, to risk, to act collectively.
Lex Fridman (10:23.960)
And that's the interesting thing.
Lex Fridman (10:25.480)
What does that reawaken in us?
Eric Weinstein (10:27.160)
Maybe the idea that we actually are nations and that, you know, you're
Lex Fridman (10:31.640)
fellow countrymen may, may start to mean something to more people.
Eric Weinstein (10:35.520)
It certainly means something to people in the military, but I wonder how many
Lex Fridman (10:39.800)
people who aren't in the military start to think about this as like, Oh yeah,
Eric Weinstein (10:43.320)
we are kind of running separate experiments and we are not China.
Lex Fridman (10:48.720)
So you think this is kind of a period that might be studied for years to come.
Eric Weinstein (10:52.560)
From my perspective, we are a part of experiment, but I don't feel like
Lex Fridman (10:57.840)
we have access to the full range of knowledge.
Lex Fridman (10:59.680)
But I don't feel like we have access to the full data, the full data of the
Lex Fridman (11:04.280)
experiment, we're just like little mice in a large, does this one make sense to you?
Eric Weinstein (11:11.480)
I'm, I'm romanticizing it and I keep connecting it to world war II.
Lex Fridman (11:15.080)
So I keep connecting to historical events and making sense of them through that way
Eric Weinstein (11:19.640)
or reading the plague by Camus, like almost kind of telling narratives and
Lex Fridman (11:26.720)
stories, but it might, I'm not hearing the suffering that people are going
Eric Weinstein (11:33.320)
through because I think that's quiet there.
Lex Fridman (11:36.480)
Everybody's numb currently.
Eric Weinstein (11:39.320)
They're not realizing what it means to have lost your job and
Lex Fridman (11:43.160)
to have lost your business.
Eric Weinstein (11:44.240)
There's kind of a, I don't, I, um, I'm afraid how that fear will materialize
Lex Fridman (11:52.720)
itself once the numbness wears out.
Lex Fridman (11:54.680)
And especially if this lasts for many months, then if it's connected to
Lex Fridman (12:01.160)
the incompetence of the CDC and the WHO and our government and perhaps the
Eric Weinstein (12:07.600)
election process, you know, my biggest fear is that the elections get delayed
Lex Fridman (12:13.640)
or something like that.
Lex Fridman (12:15.800)
So the, the, the basic mechanisms of our democracy get slowed or
Lex Fridman (12:23.000)
damaged in some way that then mixes with the fear that people have that
Eric Weinstein (12:26.960)
turns to panic, that turns to anger, that anger.
Lex Fridman (12:31.160)
Can I just play with that for a little bit?
Eric Weinstein (12:32.400)
Sure.
Lex Fridman (12:33.680)
What if in fact, all of that structure that you grew up thinking about, and
Lex Fridman (12:40.440)
again, you grew up in two places, right?
Lex Fridman (12:43.120)
So, uh, when you were inside the U S we tend to look at all of these things as
Lex Fridman (12:49.360)
museum pieces, like how often do we amend the constitution anymore?
Lex Fridman (12:54.600)
And in some sense, if you think about the Jewish tradition of Simha Torah,
Eric Weinstein (12:59.200)
you've got this beautiful scroll that has been lovingly hand drawn and
Lex Fridman (13:04.640)
calligraphy, um, that's very valuable.
Lex Fridman (13:08.600)
And it's very important that you not treat it as a relic to be revered.
Lex Fridman (13:15.560)
And so we, one day a year, we dance with the Torah and we hold this incredibly
Eric Weinstein (13:20.080)
vulnerable document up and we treat it as if, uh, you know, it was Ginger
Lex Fridman (13:25.800)
Rogers being, uh, led by Fred Astaire.
Eric Weinstein (13:28.920)
Well, that is how you become part of your country.
Lex Fridman (13:33.400)
In fact, maybe the, maybe the election will be delayed.
Eric Weinstein (13:36.640)
Maybe extraordinary powers will be used.
Lex Fridman (13:38.960)
Maybe any one of a number of things will indicate that you're
Eric Weinstein (13:42.280)
actually living through history.
Eric Weinstein (13:43.720)
This isn't a museum piece that you were handed by your great, great grandparents.
Lex Fridman (13:47.800)
But you're kind of suggesting that there might be a, like a
Eric Weinstein (13:51.920)
community thing that pops up like, like, um, as opposed to, uh, an angry revolution.
Eric Weinstein (13:59.560)
It might have a positive effect of, well, for example, are you telling me
Lex Fridman (14:04.520)
that if the right person stood up and called for us to sacrifice PPE, uh, for
Eric Weinstein (14:11.840)
our nurses and our, our MDs who are on the front lines, that like people wouldn't
Eric Weinstein (14:19.160)
reach down deep in their own supply that they've been like stocking and carefully
Eric Weinstein (14:23.480)
storing them just say, like, say here, take it.
Lex Fridman (14:26.200)
Like right now, an actual leader would use this time to bring out the heroic
Eric Weinstein (14:35.440)
character and I'm going to just go wildly patriotic cause I frigging love this
Lex Fridman (14:39.400)
country, we've got this dormant population in the us that loves leadership
Lex Fridman (14:45.960)
and country and pride in our freedom and not being told what to do.
Lex Fridman (14:51.240)
And we still have this thing that binds us together and all of them,
Eric Weinstein (14:55.800)
the merchants of division just be gone.
Lex Fridman (14:59.920)
I totally agree with you.
Eric Weinstein (15:01.160)
There's a, I think there is a deep hunger for that leadership.
Lex Fridman (15:04.800)
Why hasn't that, why, why hasn't one of us, we don't have the right search
Eric Weinstein (15:09.160)
surgeon general, we have a guy saying, you know, come on guys, don't buy masks.
Lex Fridman (15:14.360)
They don't really work for you.
Eric Weinstein (15:15.440)
Save them for our healthcare professionals.
Lex Fridman (15:18.640)
No, you can't do that.
Eric Weinstein (15:20.880)
You have to say, you know what, these masks actually do work and they more
Lex Fridman (15:24.040)
work to protect other people from you, but they would work for you.
Eric Weinstein (15:28.640)
They'll keep you somewhat safer if you wear them.
Lex Fridman (15:30.720)
Here's the deal.
Eric Weinstein (15:31.840)
You've got somebody who's taking huge amounts of viral load all the time
Lex Fridman (15:35.040)
because the patients are shedding.
Lex Fridman (15:36.320)
Do you want to protect that person who's volunteered to be on the front
Lex Fridman (15:38.920)
line, who's up sleepless nights?
Eric Weinstein (15:41.520)
You just changed the message.
Lex Fridman (15:43.080)
You stop lying to people.
Eric Weinstein (15:44.960)
You just, you level with them.
Lex Fridman (15:46.800)
It's like, it's bad.
Eric Weinstein (15:48.160)
Absolutely.
Lex Fridman (15:48.680)
But that's a, that's a little bit specific.
Lex Fridman (15:51.320)
So you, you have to be just honest about the facts of the situation.
Lex Fridman (15:54.560)
Yes.
Lex Fridman (15:55.360)
But I think you were referring to something bigger than just that inspiring,
Lex Fridman (16:00.480)
like, you know, rewriting the constitution, sort of rethinking how
Eric Weinstein (16:05.520)
we work as a nation.
Lex Fridman (16:06.920)
Yeah.
Eric Weinstein (16:07.420)
I think you should probably, you know, amend the constitution once
Eric Weinstein (16:09.960)
or twice in a lifetime so that you don't get this distance from the foundational
Eric Weinstein (16:15.760)
documents and, you know, part of the problem is that we've got two generations
Eric Weinstein (16:20.520)
on top that feel very connected to the U S they feel bought in and we've got three
Eric Weinstein (16:25.560)
generations below it's a little bit like watching your parents riding the tricycle
Lex Fridman (16:31.800)
that they were supposed to pass on to you.
Lex Fridman (16:34.200)
And it's like, you're now too old to ride a tricycle and they're still
Lex Fridman (16:37.600)
whooping it up, ringing the bell with the streamers coming off the handlebars.
Lex Fridman (16:41.040)
And you're just thinking, do you guys never get bored?
Lex Fridman (16:44.240)
Do you never pass a torch?
Lex Fridman (16:45.800)
Do you really want it?
Eric Weinstein (16:47.440)
We had five septuagenarians all born in the forties running for president of the
Eric Weinstein (16:51.640)
United States when Clovis sure dropped out.
Lex Fridman (16:53.840)
The youngest was Warren.
Eric Weinstein (16:55.040)
We had Warren Biden, Sanders, Bloomberg, and Trump from like 1949 to 1941.
Lex Fridman (17:01.840)
All who had been the oldest president at inauguration and nobody's, nobody says
Eric Weinstein (17:07.240)
grandma and grandpa, you're embarrassing us except Joe Rogan.
Lex Fridman (17:13.240)
Let me put it on you.
Eric Weinstein (17:14.480)
You have a big platform.
Lex Fridman (17:16.440)
You're somewhat of an intelligent, eloquent guy.
Lex Fridman (17:19.240)
What, what role do you somewhat, what role do you play?
Lex Fridman (17:23.440)
Why aren't you that leader?
Eric Weinstein (17:25.240)
Well, you're, I mean, I would argue that you're in, in ways becoming a leader.
Lex Fridman (17:30.840)
In ways becoming that leader.
Lex Fridman (17:32.360)
So I haven't taken enough risk.
Lex Fridman (17:34.720)
Is that your idea?
Lex Fridman (17:35.920)
What should I do or say at the moment?
Lex Fridman (17:38.160)
No, you're a little bit, no, you have taken quite a big risks
Lex Fridman (17:41.800)
and we'll, we'll talk about it.
Lex Fridman (17:43.400)
All right.
Lex Fridman (17:43.760)
But you're also on the outside shooting in, meaning, um, you're, uh, dismantling
Lex Fridman (17:55.400)
the institution from the outside as opposed to becoming the institution.
Lex Fridman (18:00.360)
Do you remember that thing you brought up when you were on the view, the view?
Lex Fridman (18:05.160)
I'm sorry.
Eric Weinstein (18:05.520)
When you were on Oprah, I didn't make, I didn't get the invite.
Lex Fridman (18:09.360)
Sorry.
Lex Fridman (18:09.880)
When you were on Bill Maher's program, what was that thing you were saying?
Lex Fridman (18:16.800)
They don't know we're here.
Eric Weinstein (18:18.640)
They may watch us.
Lex Fridman (18:20.160)
Yeah.
Eric Weinstein (18:21.200)
They may quietly slip us a direct message, but they pretend that this
Lex Fridman (18:27.480)
internet thing is, uh, some dangerous place where only lunatics play.
Eric Weinstein (18:32.840)
Well, who has the bigger platform, the portal or Bill Maher's program or the
Lex Fridman (18:37.880)
view, Bill Maher and the view in terms of viewership or in terms of what's
Lex Fridman (18:43.120)
the metric of size?
Lex Fridman (18:44.160)
Well, first of all, the key thing is, um, take, take a newspaper and even
Eric Weinstein (18:50.160)
imagine that it's completely fake.
Lex Fridman (18:52.440)
Okay.
Lex Fridman (18:53.160)
And then there's very little in the way of circulation.
Lex Fridman (18:55.600)
Yet imagine that it's an a hundred year old paper and that it's still part of
Eric Weinstein (18:59.920)
this game, this internal game of media.
Lex Fridman (19:03.520)
The key point is, is that those sources that have that kind of, um, mark of
Eric Weinstein (19:10.120)
respectability to the institutional structures matter in a way that even if
Lex Fridman (19:16.680)
I say something on a very large platform that makes a lot of sense, if it's
Eric Weinstein (19:20.600)
outside of what I've called the gated institutional narrative or gin, I'm
Lex Fridman (19:24.600)
sorry, institutional narrative or gin, it sort of doesn't matter to the
Eric Weinstein (19:29.160)
institutions. So the game is if it happens outside of the club, we can
Lex Fridman (19:34.680)
pretend that it never happened.
Lex Fridman (19:37.120)
How can you get the credibility and the authority from outside the, the
Lex Fridman (19:41.760)
gated institutional narrative?
Eric Weinstein (19:43.920)
Well, first of all, you and I both share, um, institutional credibility coming
Lex Fridman (19:52.560)
from organizations. So you, we were both at MIT, were you at Harvard at any
Eric Weinstein (19:57.600)
point? Nope. Okay.
Lex Fridman (19:59.520)
Well, I lived in Harvard square.
Lex Fridman (1:00:00.120)
And I think it was Schrodinger was standing in for him and he said that if your
Lex Fridman (1:00:04.240)
equations don't agree with experiment, that's kind of a minor detail.
Eric Weinstein (1:00:08.400)
If they have true beauty in them,
Lex Fridman (1:00:10.280)
you should explore them because very often the agreement with experiment is
Eric Weinstein (1:00:15.280)
that it is an issue of fine tuning of your model of the instantiation.
Lex Fridman (1:00:22.440)
And so it doesn't really tell you that your model is wrong.
Lex Fridman (1:00:25.560)
And of course Heisenberg told Dirac that his model was wrong because that the
Lex Fridman (1:00:30.400)
proton and the electron should be the same mass if they are each other's
Eric Weinstein (1:00:33.680)
anti particles.
Lex Fridman (1:00:35.560)
And that was an irrelevant kind of silliness rather than a real threat to the
Eric Weinstein (1:00:40.560)
Dirac theory. But okay. So amidst all this silliness,
Lex Fridman (1:00:46.560)
I'm hoping that we could talk about the journey that geometric unity has taken
Lex Fridman (1:00:51.240)
and will take as an idea and an idea that we'll see the light.
Lex Fridman (1:00:56.000)
Yeah. That. So first of all, let's,
Eric Weinstein (1:00:59.320)
I'm thinking of writing a book called geometric unity for idiots. Okay.
Lex Fridman (1:01:03.920)
And I need you as a consultant. So can we, first of all,
Eric Weinstein (1:01:07.200)
I hope I have the trademark on geometric unit. You do. Good.
Lex Fridman (1:01:10.400)
Can you give a basic introduction of the goals of geometric unity?
Eric Weinstein (1:01:17.120)
The basic tools of mathematics use the viewpoints in general for idiots.
Lex Fridman (1:01:23.640)
Sure. Like me. Okay. Great. Fun.
Lex Fridman (1:01:26.240)
So what's the goal of geometric unity?
Lex Fridman (1:01:28.800)
The goal of geometric unity is to start with something so completely bland that
Eric Weinstein (1:01:36.000)
you can simply say, well,
Lex Fridman (1:01:37.520)
that's a something that begins the game is as close to a mathematical.
Eric Weinstein (1:01:41.320)
Nothing is possible. In other words, I can't answer the question.
Lex Fridman (1:01:44.400)
Why is there something rather than nothing?
Lex Fridman (1:01:46.120)
But if there has to be a something that we begin from,
Lex Fridman (1:01:49.160)
let it begin from something that's like a blank canvas.
Lex Fridman (1:01:53.520)
Let's even more basic. So what is something, what are we trying to describe here?
Lex Fridman (1:01:59.000)
Right now we have a model of our world and it's got two sectors.
Eric Weinstein (1:02:04.000)
Two sectors. One of the sectors is called general relativity.
Lex Fridman (1:02:07.680)
The other is called the standard model.
Lex Fridman (1:02:09.840)
So we'll call it GR for general relativity and SM for standard model.
Lex Fridman (1:02:15.960)
What's the difference between the two? What are the two described?
Lex Fridman (1:02:19.320)
So general relativity gives pride of place to gravity and everything else is
Lex Fridman (1:02:26.760)
acting as a sort of a back, a backup singer.
Eric Weinstein (1:02:30.600)
Gravity is the star of the show. Gravity is the star of general relativity.
Lex Fridman (1:02:34.960)
And in the standard model,
Eric Weinstein (1:02:38.160)
the other three non gravitational forces.
Lex Fridman (1:02:41.360)
So if there are four forces that we know about three of the four non
Eric Weinstein (1:02:44.240)
gravitational, that's where they get to shine. Great.
Lex Fridman (1:02:48.480)
So tiny little particles and how they interact with each other.
Lex Fridman (1:02:52.280)
So photons, gluons and so called intermediate vector bosons.
Lex Fridman (1:02:57.120)
Those are the things that the standard model showcases and general relativity
Eric Weinstein (1:03:02.120)
showcases gravity. And then you have matter,
Lex Fridman (1:03:05.800)
which is accommodated in both theories,
Lex Fridman (1:03:08.040)
but much more beautifully inside of the standard model.
Lex Fridman (1:03:11.160)
So what, what is a theory of everything do?
Eric Weinstein (1:03:14.880)
So, so first of all, I think that that's,
Lex Fridman (1:03:17.520)
that's the first place where we haven't talked enough.
Eric Weinstein (1:03:19.840)
We assume that we know what it means,
Lex Fridman (1:03:22.600)
but we don't actually have any idea what it means.
Lex Fridman (1:03:25.080)
And what I claim it is, is that it's a theory where the questions beyond that
Lex Fridman (1:03:30.960)
theory are no longer of a mathematical nature.
Eric Weinstein (1:03:36.240)
In other words, if I say, let us take, um,
Lex Fridman (1:03:40.680)
X to be a four dimensional manifold
Eric Weinstein (1:03:45.720)
to a mathematician or a physicist. I've said very little.
Lex Fridman (1:03:49.000)
I've simply said there's some place for calculus and linear algebra to,
Eric Weinstein (1:03:54.000)
to, uh, to dance together and to play.
Lex Fridman (1:03:58.080)
And that's what manifolds are. They're the most natural place where,
Eric Weinstein (1:04:00.840)
where our two greatest math theories can really, uh,
Lex Fridman (1:04:06.800)
intertwine.
Eric Weinstein (1:04:07.880)
Which are the two? Oh, you mean calculus and linear algebra. Right. Okay.
Lex Fridman (1:04:12.680)
Now the question is beyond that. So it's sort of like saying,
Eric Weinstein (1:04:16.600)
I'm an artist and I want to order a canvas.
Lex Fridman (1:04:18.680)
Okay. Now the question is, does the canvas paint itself?
Eric Weinstein (1:04:26.720)
Does the can, does the canvas come up with an artist
Lex Fridman (1:04:31.960)
and paint an ink, which then paint the canvas? Like that's the,
Eric Weinstein (1:04:36.720)
that's the hard part about theories of everything,
Lex Fridman (1:04:39.240)
which I don't think people talk enough about.
Eric Weinstein (1:04:41.640)
Can we just, you bring up Escher and the hand that draws itself.
Lex Fridman (1:04:45.480)
Is it the fire that lights itself or drawing hands, the drawing hands. Yeah.
Eric Weinstein (1:04:50.480)
And, uh, every time I start to think about that, my mind like, uh,
Lex Fridman (1:04:54.880)
shuts down. Well, don't do that. There's a spark and this is the most beautiful
Eric Weinstein (1:05:00.200)
part. We should do this together. No, it's beautiful, but, uh,
Lex Fridman (1:05:04.320)
this robot's brain, uh, sparks fly.
Lex Fridman (1:05:08.680)
So can we try to say the same thing over and over in different ways about what,
Lex Fridman (1:05:12.880)
what, what you mean by that having to be a thing we have to contend with?
Eric Weinstein (1:05:17.440)
Sure. Like why,
Lex Fridman (1:05:19.200)
why do you think that creating a theory of everything,
Eric Weinstein (1:05:23.000)
as you call the source code are understanding our source code require a view
Lex Fridman (1:05:29.320)
like the hand that draws itself. Okay.
Eric Weinstein (1:05:31.040)
Well here's what goes on in the regular physics picture.
Lex Fridman (1:05:35.040)
We've got these two main theories, general relativity and the standard model.
Lex Fridman (1:05:38.400)
Right?
Lex Fridman (1:05:39.240)
Okay. Think of general relativity as more or less,
Eric Weinstein (1:05:44.800)
the theory of the canvas. Okay.
Lex Fridman (1:05:48.880)
Maybe you have the canvas in a particularly rigid shape.
Eric Weinstein (1:05:52.720)
Maybe you've measured it. So it's got length and it's got angle,
Lex Fridman (1:05:55.480)
but more or less it's just canvas and length and angle.
Lex Fridman (1:05:58.720)
And that's all that really general relativity is,
Lex Fridman (1:06:02.560)
but it allows the canvas to warp a bit.
Eric Weinstein (1:06:04.720)
Okay. Then we have the second thing,
Lex Fridman (1:06:08.560)
which is this import of foreign libraries where,
Eric Weinstein (1:06:13.680)
which aren't tied to space and time.
Lex Fridman (1:06:18.880)
So we've got this crazy set of symmetries called SU three cross SU two cross U
Eric Weinstein (1:06:23.200)
one.
Lex Fridman (1:06:24.240)
We've got this collection of 16 particles in a generation,
Eric Weinstein (1:06:27.600)
which are these sort of twisted spinners.
Lex Fridman (1:06:30.600)
And we've got three copies of them.
Eric Weinstein (1:06:32.600)
Then we've got this weird Higgs field that comes in and like Deus ex machina
Lex Fridman (1:06:37.160)
solves all the problems that have been created in the play that can't be
Eric Weinstein (1:06:40.960)
resolved otherwise.
Lex Fridman (1:06:42.040)
So that's the standard model of quantum field theory just plopped on top.
Eric Weinstein (1:06:45.920)
It's a problem of the double origin story.
Lex Fridman (1:06:48.880)
One origin story is about space and time.
Eric Weinstein (1:06:51.600)
The other origin story is about what we would call internal quantum numbers and
Lex Fridman (1:06:56.320)
internal symmetries.
Lex Fridman (1:06:58.040)
And then there was an attempt to get one to follow from the other called
Lex Fridman (1:07:02.440)
Kaluza Klein theory, which didn't work out.
Lex Fridman (1:07:06.160)
And this is sort of in that vein.
Lex Fridman (1:07:10.800)
So you said origin story. So in the hand that draws itself,
Lex Fridman (1:07:15.400)
what is it?
Lex Fridman (1:07:16.200)
So it's, it's as if you had the canvas and then you ordered
Eric Weinstein (1:07:21.000)
up also give me paint brushes, paints, pigments, pencils, and artists.
Lex Fridman (1:07:26.040)
But you're saying that's like, if you want to create a universe from scratch,
Eric Weinstein (1:07:29.800)
the canvas should be generating the paintbrushes and the paintbrushes and the
Lex Fridman (1:07:33.960)
artists, right? Like you should, who's the artist in this analogy?
Eric Weinstein (1:07:38.280)
Well, this is sorry.
Lex Fridman (1:07:40.160)
Then we're going to get into a religious thing and I don't want to do that.
Eric Weinstein (1:07:42.880)
Okay. Well, you know my shtick, which is that we are the AI.
Lex Fridman (1:07:47.600)
We have two great stories about the simulation and artificial general
Eric Weinstein (1:07:51.440)
intelligence. In one story,
Lex Fridman (1:07:54.400)
man fears that some program we've given birth to will become self aware,
Eric Weinstein (1:07:59.400)
smarter than us and we'll take over in another story.
Lex Fridman (1:08:04.680)
There are genius simulators and we live in their simulation and we haven't
Eric Weinstein (1:08:10.200)
realized that those two stories are the same story. In one case,
Lex Fridman (1:08:14.960)
we are the simulator. In another case,
Eric Weinstein (1:08:18.640)
we are the simulated and if you buy those and you put them together,
Lex Fridman (1:08:23.960)
we are the AGI and whether or not we have simulators,
Eric Weinstein (1:08:27.080)
we may be trying to wake up by learning our own source code.
Lex Fridman (1:08:30.320)
So this could be our Skynet moment,
Eric Weinstein (1:08:31.960)
which is one of the reasons I have some issues around it.
Lex Fridman (1:08:35.200)
I think we'll talk about that cause I,
Eric Weinstein (1:08:37.160)
well that's the issue of the emergent artist within the story just to get back
Lex Fridman (1:08:40.800)
to the point. Okay. So,
Lex Fridman (1:08:42.400)
so now the key point is the standard way we tell the story is that Einstein sets
Eric Weinstein (1:08:47.120)
the canvas and then we order all the stuff that we want and then that paints the
Eric Weinstein (1:08:52.720)
picture that is our universe.
Lex Fridman (1:08:54.040)
So you order the, the, the paint,
Eric Weinstein (1:08:57.920)
you order the artist,
Lex Fridman (1:09:00.600)
you order the brushes and that then when you collide the two gives you two
Eric Weinstein (1:09:06.640)
separate origin stories.
Lex Fridman (1:09:08.080)
The canvas came from one place and everything else came from somewhere else.
Lex Fridman (1:09:12.840)
So what are the mathematical tools required to,
Lex Fridman (1:09:18.240)
to construct consistent geometric theory?
Eric Weinstein (1:09:21.480)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:09:23.600)
You know, make this concrete.
Eric Weinstein (1:09:25.760)
Well, somehow you need to get three copies,
Lex Fridman (1:09:30.240)
for example,
Eric Weinstein (1:09:31.760)
of generations with 16 particles each,
Lex Fridman (1:09:36.720)
right? And so the question would be like, well, there's a lot,
Eric Weinstein (1:09:40.760)
there's a lot of special personality in those symmetries.
Lex Fridman (1:09:44.440)
Where would they come from? So for example,
Eric Weinstein (1:09:47.680)
you've got what would be called grand unified theories that sound like,
Lex Fridman (1:09:52.600)
um, SU five, uh, the George I.
Eric Weinstein (1:09:55.280)
Glashow theory. There's something that should be called spin 10,
Lex Fridman (1:09:58.400)
but physicists insist on calling it SO 10.
Eric Weinstein (1:10:01.680)
There's something called the petit salon theory that tends to be called SU four
Lex Fridman (1:10:06.080)
cross SU two cross SU two, which should be called spin six cross spin four.
Eric Weinstein (1:10:10.360)
I can get into all of these.
Lex Fridman (1:10:11.960)
What are they all accomplishing?
Eric Weinstein (1:10:13.800)
They're all taking the known forces that we see and packaging them up
Lex Fridman (1:10:18.800)
to say, we can't get rid of the second origin story,
Lex Fridman (1:10:22.640)
but we can at least make that origin story more unified.
Lex Fridman (1:10:26.520)
So they're trying grand unification is the attempt to.
Lex Fridman (1:10:29.240)
And that's a mistake in your, in your.
Lex Fridman (1:10:30.800)
It's not a mistake that the problem is, is it was born lifeless. When,
Eric Weinstein (1:10:35.240)
when George I.
Lex Fridman (1:10:35.920)
And Glashow first came out with the SU five theory, um,
Eric Weinstein (1:10:40.520)
it was very exciting because it could be tested in a South Dakota, um,
Lex Fridman (1:10:45.200)
mine filled up with like, I dunno, cleaning fluid or something like that.
Lex Fridman (1:10:49.600)
And they looked for proton decay and didn't see it.
Lex Fridman (1:10:51.800)
And then they gave up because in that day,
Eric Weinstein (1:10:54.240)
when your experiment didn't work, you gave up on the theory.
Lex Fridman (1:10:57.680)
It didn't come to us born of a fusion between Einstein and,
Eric Weinstein (1:11:02.280)
and, and bore, you know,
Lex Fridman (1:11:05.160)
and that was kind of the problem is that it had this weird parenting where it
Eric Weinstein (1:11:09.440)
was just on the bore side. There was no Einsteinian contribution.
Lex Fridman (1:11:15.920)
Lex, how can I help you most? I'm trying to figure,
Lex Fridman (1:11:19.880)
what questions do you want to ask so that you get the most satisfying answers?
Lex Fridman (1:11:24.600)
Uh, there's, there's a, there's a bunch,
Eric Weinstein (1:11:26.080)
there's a bunch of questions I want to ask. I mean, one,
Lex Fridman (1:11:28.560)
and I'm trying to sneak up on you somehow to reveal
Eric Weinstein (1:11:33.440)
in a accessible way, then the nature of our universe.
Lex Fridman (1:11:40.040)
So I can just give you a guess, right?
Eric Weinstein (1:11:42.520)
We have to be very careful that we're not claiming that this has been accepted.
Lex Fridman (1:11:47.880)
This is a speculation, but I will, I will make the speculation that what,
Eric Weinstein (1:11:51.920)
I think what you would want to ask me is how can the canvas generate all the
Lex Fridman (1:11:55.480)
stuff that usually has to be ordered separately? All right. Should we do that?
Eric Weinstein (1:11:59.240)
Let's go there. Okay.
Lex Fridman (1:12:00.360)
Okay. So the first thing is,
Eric Weinstein (1:12:03.600)
is that you have a concept in computers called technical debt.
Lex Fridman (1:12:08.560)
You're coding and you cut corners and you know,
Eric Weinstein (1:12:10.440)
you're going to have to do it right before the thing is safe for the world,
Lex Fridman (1:12:15.400)
but you're piling up some series of IO use to yourself and your project as
Eric Weinstein (1:12:21.960)
you're going along.
Lex Fridman (1:12:23.680)
So the first thing is we can't figure out if you have only four degrees of
Eric Weinstein (1:12:28.680)
freedom. And that's what your canvas is.
Lex Fridman (1:12:30.680)
How do you get at least Einstein's world? Einstein says, look,
Eric Weinstein (1:12:35.320)
it's not just four degrees of freedom,
Lex Fridman (1:12:36.880)
but there need to be rulers and protractors to measure length and angle in the
Eric Weinstein (1:12:40.720)
world. You can't just have a flabby four degrees of freedom.
Lex Fridman (1:12:46.360)
So the first thing you do is you create 10 extra variables,
Eric Weinstein (1:12:49.440)
which is like if we can't choose any particular set of rulers and protractors to
Lex Fridman (1:12:53.480)
measure length and angle, let's take the,
Eric Weinstein (1:12:55.960)
take the set of all possible rulers and protractors.
Lex Fridman (1:13:00.080)
And that would be called symmetric non degenerate two tensors on the tangent
Eric Weinstein (1:13:04.880)
space of the four manifold X four.
Lex Fridman (1:13:08.480)
Now because there are four degrees of freedom,
Eric Weinstein (1:13:11.000)
you start off with four dimensions.
Lex Fridman (1:13:12.600)
Then you need four rulers for each of those different directions.
Lex Fridman (1:13:17.880)
So that's four that gets us up to eight variables.
Lex Fridman (1:13:20.480)
And then between four original variables, there are six possible angles.
Lex Fridman (1:13:24.800)
So four plus four plus six is equal to 14.
Lex Fridman (1:13:29.280)
So now you've replaced X four with another space, which in the lecture,
Eric Weinstein (1:13:33.440)
I think I called you 14, but I'm now calling Y 14.
Eric Weinstein (1:13:36.160)
This is one of the big problems of working on something in private is every time
Eric Weinstein (1:13:39.720)
you pull it out, you sort of can't remember it. You name something, something new.
Lex Fridman (1:13:43.120)
Okay. So you've got a 14 dimensional world,
Eric Weinstein (1:13:45.560)
which is the original four dimensional world plus a lot of extra gadgetry for
Lex Fridman (1:13:51.400)
measurement.
Eric Weinstein (1:13:52.240)
Yeah. And because you're not in the four dimensional world,
Lex Fridman (1:13:55.200)
you don't have the technical debt.
Eric Weinstein (1:13:56.880)
No, now you've got a lot of technical debt because now you have to explain away
Lex Fridman (1:13:59.840)
a 14 dimensional world, which is a big,
Lex Fridman (1:14:02.680)
you're taking a huge advance on your payday check, right?
Lex Fridman (1:14:05.960)
But aren't more dimensions allow you more freedom to, I mean,
Eric Weinstein (1:14:10.360)
maybe, but you have to get rid of them somehow because we don't perceive them.
Lex Fridman (1:14:14.000)
So eventually you have to collapse it down to the thing that we perceive or you
Eric Weinstein (1:14:16.880)
have to sample a four dimensional filament within that 14 dimensional world known
Lex Fridman (1:14:23.040)
as a section of a bundle.
Eric Weinstein (1:14:26.280)
Okay. So how do we get from the four 14 dimensional world where I imagine a lot
Lex Fridman (1:14:31.240)
of, oh, wait, wait, wait. Yep. You're cheating.
Lex Fridman (1:14:33.760)
The first question was how do we get something from almost nothing?
Lex Fridman (1:14:38.920)
Like how do we get the,
Eric Weinstein (1:14:40.720)
if I've said that the who and the what in the newspaper story that is a theory
Lex Fridman (1:14:45.720)
theory of everything are bosons and Fermions. So let's make the who,
Eric Weinstein (1:14:50.680)
the Fermions and the what the bosons think of it as the players and the
Lex Fridman (1:14:54.240)
equipment for a game.
Lex Fridman (1:14:56.320)
Are we supposed to be thinking of actual physical things with mass or energy?
Lex Fridman (1:15:00.840)
Okay. So think about everything you see in this room.
Lex Fridman (1:15:05.240)
So from chemistry, you know, it's all protons, neutrons and electrons,
Lex Fridman (1:15:08.480)
but from a little bit of late 1960s physics,
Eric Weinstein (1:15:12.240)
we know that the protons and neutrons are all made of up quarks and down quarks.
Lex Fridman (1:15:16.720)
So everything in this room is basically up quarks, down quarks,
Lex Fridman (1:15:19.840)
and electrons stuck together with, with the, the, what the equipment.
Lex Fridman (1:15:25.200)
Okay.
Eric Weinstein (1:15:26.760)
Now the way we see it currently is we see that there are space time indices,
Lex Fridman (1:15:32.960)
which we would call spinners that correspond to the who that is the Fermions,
Eric Weinstein (1:15:38.200)
the matter, the stuff, the up quarks, the down quarks, the electrons.
Lex Fridman (1:15:41.120)
And there are also
Eric Weinstein (1:15:46.640)
16 degrees of freedom that come from this in this space of internal quantum
Lex Fridman (1:15:51.640)
numbers. So in my theory,
Eric Weinstein (1:15:55.920)
in 14 dimensions,
Lex Fridman (1:15:58.200)
there's no internal quantum number space that figures in.
Eric Weinstein (1:16:03.560)
It's all just spin oriel.
Lex Fridman (1:16:05.200)
So spinners in 14 dimensions without any festooning with extra linear algebraic
Eric Weinstein (1:16:14.920)
information.
Lex Fridman (1:16:17.040)
There's a concept of a, of, of, of spinners,
Eric Weinstein (1:16:20.920)
which is natural if you have a manifold with length and angle and Y 14 is almost
Lex Fridman (1:16:27.880)
a manifold with length and angle. It's,
Eric Weinstein (1:16:32.240)
it's so close. It's in other words,
Lex Fridman (1:16:35.080)
because you're looking at the space of all rulers and protractors,
Eric Weinstein (1:16:39.320)
maybe it's not that surprising that a space of rulers and protractors might come
Lex Fridman (1:16:43.520)
very close to having rulers and protractors on it itself.
Eric Weinstein (1:16:47.040)
Like can you measure the space of measurements and you almost can't in a space
Lex Fridman (1:16:52.720)
that has length and angle.
Eric Weinstein (1:16:54.600)
If it doesn't have a topological obstruction comes with these objects called
Lex Fridman (1:16:58.480)
spinners.
Eric Weinstein (1:16:59.320)
Now spinners are the stuff of of our world.
Lex Fridman (1:17:05.160)
We are made of spinners. They are the most important,
Eric Weinstein (1:17:08.360)
really deep object that I can tell you about. They were very surprising.
Lex Fridman (1:17:11.720)
What is a spinner? So famously,
Eric Weinstein (1:17:14.640)
there are these weird things that require 720 degrees of rotation in order to
Lex Fridman (1:17:23.400)
come back to normal. And that doesn't make sense.
Lex Fridman (1:17:26.040)
And the reason for this is that there's a knottedness in our three dimensional
Lex Fridman (1:17:31.880)
world that people don't observe. And you know,
Eric Weinstein (1:17:34.400)
you can famously see it by this Dirac string trick.
Lex Fridman (1:17:39.000)
So if you take a glass of water,
Eric Weinstein (1:17:40.440)
imagine that this was a tumbler and I didn't want to spill any of it.
Lex Fridman (1:17:43.680)
And the question is if I rotate the cup without losing my grip on the base,
Eric Weinstein (1:17:49.520)
360 degrees and I can't go backwards,
Lex Fridman (1:17:53.480)
is there any way I can take a sip? And the answer is this weird motion,
Eric Weinstein (1:17:58.480)
which is
Lex Fridman (1:18:01.440)
go over first and under second.
Lex Fridman (1:18:04.800)
And that that's 720 degrees of rotation to come back to normal so that I can
Lex Fridman (1:18:08.400)
take a sip. Well, that weird principle,
Eric Weinstein (1:18:10.880)
which sometimes is known as the Philippine wine glass dance because waitresses
Lex Fridman (1:18:14.840)
in the Philippines apparently learned how to do this.
Eric Weinstein (1:18:18.320)
Um,
Lex Fridman (1:18:19.160)
so that that move defines if you will,
Eric Weinstein (1:18:24.520)
this hidden space that nobody knew was there of spinners,
Lex Fridman (1:18:28.720)
which Dirac figured out when he took the square root of something called the
Eric Weinstein (1:18:32.760)
Klein Gordon equation, uh, which I think had earlier,
Lex Fridman (1:18:37.680)
um, work incorporated from Cartan and killing and company in mathematics.
Lex Fridman (1:18:43.280)
So spinners are one of the most profound aspects of human existence.
Lex Fridman (1:18:46.760)
I mean, forgive me for the perhaps dumb questions, but, uh,
Eric Weinstein (1:18:49.560)
would a spinner be the mathematical objects that's the basic unit of our
Lex Fridman (1:18:54.560)
universe?
Eric Weinstein (1:18:55.560)
When you, when you start with a manifold,
Lex Fridman (1:19:01.560)
um, which is just like something like a donut or a sphere circle or a Mobius
Eric Weinstein (1:19:06.200)
band,
Lex Fridman (1:19:07.680)
a spinner is usually the first wildly surprising thing that you found was
Eric Weinstein (1:19:12.760)
hidden in your original purchase.
Lex Fridman (1:19:14.720)
So you,
Eric Weinstein (1:19:15.560)
you order a manifold and you didn't even realize it's like buying a house and
Lex Fridman (1:19:20.560)
finding a panic room inside that you hadn't counted on.
Eric Weinstein (1:19:23.960)
It's very surprising when you understand that spinners are running around on
Lex Fridman (1:19:27.200)
your spaces.
Eric Weinstein (1:19:29.960)
Again, perhaps a dumb question,
Lex Fridman (1:19:31.640)
but we're talking about 14 dimensions and four dimensions.
Lex Fridman (1:19:34.920)
What is the manifold we're operating under?
Lex Fridman (1:19:38.600)
So in my case, it's proto space time. It's before,
Eric Weinstein (1:19:41.720)
it's before Einstein can slap rulers and protractors on space time.
Lex Fridman (1:19:47.000)
What do you mean by that? Sorry to interrupt is space.
Eric Weinstein (1:19:49.680)
Time is the four D manifold.
Lex Fridman (1:19:52.760)
Space time is a four dimensional manifold with extra structure.
Lex Fridman (1:19:57.760)
What's the extra structure?
Lex Fridman (1:19:58.920)
It's called a semi Ramanian or pseudo Ramanian metric.
Eric Weinstein (1:20:04.200)
In essence,
Lex Fridman (1:20:05.280)
there is something akin to a four by four symmetric manifold.
Eric Weinstein (1:20:10.280)
Four symmetric matrix from which is equivalent to length and angle.
Lex Fridman (1:20:15.680)
So when I talk about rulers and protractors,
Eric Weinstein (1:20:17.520)
or I talk about length and angle,
Lex Fridman (1:20:19.520)
or I talk about Ramanian or pseudo Ramanian or semi Ramanian met manifolds,
Eric Weinstein (1:20:24.040)
I'm usually talking about the same thing.
Lex Fridman (1:20:26.560)
Can you measure how long something is and what the angle is between two
Lex Fridman (1:20:30.720)
different rays or vectors?
Lex Fridman (1:20:32.960)
So that's what Einstein gave us as his arena, his place to play, his his canvas.
Lex Fridman (1:20:43.320)
So there's a bunch of questions I can ask here.
Lex Fridman (1:20:45.920)
But like I said, I'm working on this book, Geometric Unity for Idiots.
Lex Fridman (1:20:51.240)
And and I think what would be really nice as your editor
Lex Fridman (1:20:57.280)
to have like beautiful, maybe even visualizations that people could try to
Eric Weinstein (1:21:05.760)
play with, try to try to reveal small little beauties about the way you're
Lex Fridman (1:21:09.760)
thinking about the score.
Eric Weinstein (1:21:10.680)
Well, I usually use the Joe Rogan program for that.
Lex Fridman (1:21:13.120)
Sometimes I have him doing the Philippine wine glass dance.
Eric Weinstein (1:21:16.480)
I had the hop vibration.
Lex Fridman (1:21:18.400)
The part of the problem is that most people don't know this language about
Eric Weinstein (1:21:23.680)
spinners, bundles, metrics, gauge fields.
Lex Fridman (1:21:27.960)
And they're very curious about the theory of everything, but they have no
Eric Weinstein (1:21:31.720)
understanding of even what we know about our own world.
Lex Fridman (1:21:34.360)
Is it, is it a hopeless pursuit?
Lex Fridman (1:21:37.520)
So like even gauge theory, right?
Lex Fridman (1:21:39.960)
Just this, I mean, it seems to be very inaccessible.
Lex Fridman (1:21:43.680)
Is there some aspect of it that could be made accessible?
Lex Fridman (1:21:46.080)
I mean, I could go to the board right there and give you a five minute lecture
Eric Weinstein (1:21:50.120)
on gauge theory that would be better than the official lecture on gauge theory.
Lex Fridman (1:21:54.560)
You would know what gauge theory was.
Lex Fridman (1:21:56.800)
So it is, it's, it's possible to make it accessible, but nobody does.
Lex Fridman (1:22:01.280)
Like, in other words, you're going to watch over the next year, lots of
Eric Weinstein (1:22:05.400)
different discussions about quantum entanglement or, you know, the multiverse.
Lex Fridman (1:22:09.920)
Where are we now?
Lex Fridman (1:22:11.760)
Or, you know, many worlds, are they all equally real?
Lex Fridman (1:22:15.120)
Yeah.
Eric Weinstein (1:22:17.160)
Right.
Lex Fridman (1:22:17.840)
I mean, yeah, that's okay.
Lex Fridman (1:22:19.120)
But you're not going to hear anything about the hop vibration except if
Lex Fridman (1:22:22.120)
it's from me and I hate that.
Lex Fridman (1:22:24.320)
Why, why can't you be the one?
Lex Fridman (1:22:26.400)
Well, because I'm going a different path.
Eric Weinstein (1:22:28.240)
I think that we've made a huge mistake, which is we have things we can show
Lex Fridman (1:22:31.840)
people about the actual models.
Eric Weinstein (1:22:34.160)
We can push out visualizations where they they're not listening by analogy.
Lex Fridman (1:22:38.240)
They're watching the same thing that we're seeing.
Lex Fridman (1:22:40.840)
And as I've said to you before, this is like choosing to perform sheet music
Lex Fridman (1:22:45.640)
that hasn't been performed in a long time.
Eric Weinstein (1:22:47.520)
Or, you know, the experts can't afford orchestras.
Lex Fridman (1:22:50.040)
So they just trade Beethoven symphonies as sheet music.
Lex Fridman (1:22:53.160)
And they, Oh, wow, that was beautiful.
Lex Fridman (1:22:55.440)
But it's like, nobody heard anything.
Eric Weinstein (1:22:57.920)
They just looked at the score.
Lex Fridman (1:22:59.040)
Well, that's how mathematicians and physicists trade papers and ideas is that
Eric Weinstein (1:23:03.280)
they, they write down the things that represent stuff.
Eric Weinstein (1:23:07.880)
I want to at least close out the thought line that you started, which is how does
Eric Weinstein (1:23:13.840)
the canvas order all of this other stuff into being so I at least want to say some
Lex Fridman (1:23:22.320)
incomprehensible things about that.
Lex Fridman (1:23:23.960)
And then we'll, we'll have that much done.
Lex Fridman (1:23:26.120)
All right.
Lex Fridman (1:23:27.760)
And that just point, does it have to be incomprehensible?
Lex Fridman (1:23:32.520)
Do you know what the Schrodinger equation is?
Eric Weinstein (1:23:34.440)
Yes.
Lex Fridman (1:23:35.280)
Do you know what the Dirac equation is?
Lex Fridman (1:23:38.160)
What does no mean?
Lex Fridman (1:23:39.760)
Well, my point is you're going to have some feeling that, you know, what the
Eric Weinstein (1:23:42.960)
Schrodinger equation is, as soon as we get to the Dirac equation, your eyes are
Lex Fridman (1:23:47.440)
going to get a little bit glazed, right?
Lex Fridman (1:23:51.360)
So now why is that?
Lex Fridman (1:23:53.520)
Well, the answer to me is, is that you, you want to ask me about the theory
Eric Weinstein (1:23:59.920)
of everything, but you haven't even digested the theory of everything as
Lex Fridman (1:24:05.600)
we've had it since 1928 when Dirac came out with his equation.
Lex Fridman (1:24:10.240)
So for whatever reason, and this isn't a hit on you, you haven't been motivated
Lex Fridman (1:24:17.120)
enough in all the time that you've been on earth to at least get as far as the
Eric Weinstein (1:24:21.560)
Dirac equation.
Lex Fridman (1:24:22.640)
And this was very interesting to me after I gave the talk in Oxford new scientist.
Eric Weinstein (1:24:28.040)
Who had done kind of a hatchet job on me to begin with sent a reporter to come to
Lex Fridman (1:24:32.080)
the third version of the talk that I gave.
Lex Fridman (1:24:34.560)
And that person had never heard of the Dirac equation.
Lex Fridman (1:24:37.200)
So you have a person who's completely professionally, not qualified to ask
Eric Weinstein (1:24:43.560)
these questions wanting to know, well, how does, how does your theory solve
Lex Fridman (1:24:49.600)
new problems and like, well, in the case of the Dirac equation, well, tell me
Eric Weinstein (1:24:53.120)
about that.
Lex Fridman (1:24:53.400)
I don't know what that is.
Lex Fridman (1:24:54.520)
So then the point is, okay, I got it.
Lex Fridman (1:24:57.560)
You're not even caught up minimally to where we are now.
Lex Fridman (1:25:01.560)
And that's not a knock on you.
Lex Fridman (1:25:03.120)
Almost nobody even knows where you are.
Lex Fridman (1:25:04.960)
And that's not a knock on you, almost nobody is.
Lex Fridman (1:25:08.040)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:25:08.480)
But then how does it become my job to digest what has been available
Lex Fridman (1:25:14.000)
for like over 90 years?
Eric Weinstein (1:25:17.840)
Well, to me, the open question is whether what's been available for over 90 years
Lex Fridman (1:25:22.280)
can be, um, there could be, uh, a blueprint of a journey that one takes to
Eric Weinstein (1:25:30.000)
understand it, not to do that with you.
Lex Fridman (1:25:32.600)
And I, I, one of the things I think I've been relatively successful at, for
Eric Weinstein (1:25:36.560)
example, you know, when you ask other people what gauge theory is, you get
Lex Fridman (1:25:41.720)
these very confusing responses and my response is much simpler.
Eric Weinstein (1:25:45.520)
It's, oh, it's a theory of, uh, differentiation where when you calculate
Lex Fridman (1:25:49.800)
the instantaneous rise over run, you measure the rise, not from a flat
Eric Weinstein (1:25:54.360)
horizontal, but from a custom endogenous reference level.
Lex Fridman (1:25:58.640)
What do you mean by that?
Eric Weinstein (1:25:59.840)
It's like, okay.
Lex Fridman (1:26:00.520)
And then I do this thing with Mount Everest, which is Mount Everest is how
Eric Weinstein (1:26:04.280)
high then they give the height I say above what then they say sea level.
Lex Fridman (1:26:07.640)
And I say, which sea is that in Nepal?
Eric Weinstein (1:26:10.320)
Like, oh, I guess there isn't a sea cause it's landlocked.
Lex Fridman (1:26:12.400)
It's like, okay, well, what do you mean by sea level?
Eric Weinstein (1:26:14.600)
Oh, there's this thing called the geoid I'd never heard of.
Lex Fridman (1:26:17.240)
Oh, that's the reference level.
Eric Weinstein (1:26:18.840)
That's a custom reference level that we imported.
Lex Fridman (1:26:22.120)
So you, all sorts of people have remembered the exact height of Mount
Eric Weinstein (1:26:27.280)
Everest without ever knowing what it's a height from.
Lex Fridman (1:26:31.840)
Well, in this case, engage theory, there's a hidden reference level where
Eric Weinstein (1:26:35.600)
you measure the rise in rise over run to give the slope of the line.
Lex Fridman (1:26:40.880)
What if you have different concepts of what, of where that rise should be
Eric Weinstein (1:26:46.560)
measured from that vary within the theory that are endogenous to the theory.
Lex Fridman (1:26:51.040)
That's what gauge theory is.
Eric Weinstein (1:26:53.720)
Okay.
Lex Fridman (1:26:54.040)
We have a video here, right?
Eric Weinstein (1:26:55.200)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:26:55.680)
Okay.
Eric Weinstein (1:26:56.000)
Okay.
Lex Fridman (1:26:57.160)
I'm going to use my phone.
Eric Weinstein (1:26:59.280)
If I want to measure my hand and its slope, this is my attempt to
Lex Fridman (1:27:05.000)
measure it using standard calculus.
Eric Weinstein (1:27:07.800)
In other words, the reference level is apparently flat and I measure the
Lex Fridman (1:27:11.280)
rise above that phone using my hand.
Eric Weinstein (1:27:14.960)
Okay.
Lex Fridman (1:27:15.640)
If I want to use gauge theory, it means I can do this or I can do that, or
Eric Weinstein (1:27:20.200)
I can do this, or I can do this, or I could do what I did from the beginning.
Lex Fridman (1:27:24.040)
Okay.
Eric Weinstein (1:27:24.480)
At some level, that's what gauge theory is.
Lex Fridman (1:27:27.080)
Now that is an act.
Eric Weinstein (1:27:27.880)
No, I've never heard anyone describe it that way.
Lex Fridman (1:27:31.640)
So while the community may say, well, who is this guy and why does he
Lex Fridman (1:27:34.240)
have the right to talk in public?
Lex Fridman (1:27:35.880)
I'm waiting for somebody to jump out of the woodwork and say, you know,
Eric Weinstein (1:27:39.960)
Eric's whole shtick about rulers and protractors, uh, leading to a derivative.
Lex Fridman (1:27:44.920)
Derivatives are measured as rise over run above reference level.
Eric Weinstein (1:27:47.640)
The reference levels don't fit together.
Lex Fridman (1:27:48.800)
Like I go through this whole shtick in order to make it accessible.
Eric Weinstein (1:27:51.680)
I've never heard anyone say it.
Lex Fridman (1:27:54.360)
I'm trying to make Prometheus would like to discuss fire with everybody else.
Eric Weinstein (1:28:00.040)
All right.
Lex Fridman (1:28:00.160)
I'm going to just say one thing to close out the earlier line, which is what I
Eric Weinstein (1:28:03.800)
think we should have continued with.
Lex Fridman (1:28:05.960)
When you take the naturally occurring spinners, the unadorned spinners, the
Eric Weinstein (1:28:10.960)
naked spinners, not on this 14 dimensional manifold, but on something very closely
Lex Fridman (1:28:18.120)
tied to it, which I've called the chimeric tangent bundle, that is the object
Eric Weinstein (1:28:24.000)
which stands in for the thing that should have had length and angle on it,
Lex Fridman (1:28:27.560)
but just missed.
Eric Weinstein (1:28:28.600)
Okay.
Eric Weinstein (1:28:30.440)
When you take that object and you form spinners on that and you don't adorn them.
Lex Fridman (1:28:34.440)
So you're still in the single origin story.
Lex Fridman (1:28:37.600)
You get very large spin oriel objects upstairs on this 14 dimensional world.
Lex Fridman (1:28:43.800)
Why 14, which is part of the observers.
Lex Fridman (1:28:46.520)
When you pull that information back from Y 14 down to X four, it miraculously
Eric Weinstein (1:28:56.360)
looks like the adorned spinners, the festoon spinners, the spinners that
Lex Fridman (1:29:03.800)
we play with in ordinary reality.
Eric Weinstein (1:29:06.720)
In other words, the 14 dimensional world looks like a four dimensional world
Lex Fridman (1:29:11.400)
plus a 10 dimensional compliment.
Lex Fridman (1:29:13.640)
So 10 plus four equals 14, that 10 dimensional compliment, which is called
Eric Weinstein (1:29:17.960)
a normal bundle, generates spin properties, internal quantum numbers that look like
Eric Weinstein (1:29:24.360)
the things that give our, our particles personality that make let's say up quarks
Lex Fridman (1:29:30.160)
and down quarks charged by negative one third or plus two thirds, you know, that
Eric Weinstein (1:29:36.080)
kind of stuff, or whether or not, you know, some quarks feel the weak side.
Lex Fridman (1:29:42.640)
Quarks feel the weak force and other quarks do not.
Lex Fridman (1:29:46.520)
So the X four generates Y 14 Y 14 generates something called the chimeric
Lex Fridman (1:29:52.600)
tangent bundle chimeric tangent bundle generates unadorned spinners.
Eric Weinstein (1:29:56.520)
The unadorned spinners get pulled back from 14 down to four where they
Lex Fridman (1:30:00.760)
look like adorned spinners.
Lex Fridman (1:30:03.200)
And we have the right number of them.
Lex Fridman (1:30:05.200)
You thought you needed three.
Eric Weinstein (1:30:06.600)
You only got two, but then something else that you'd never seen before
Eric Weinstein (1:30:10.720)
broke apart on this journey and it broke into another copy of the thing that you
Eric Weinstein (1:30:15.800)
already have two copies of one piece of that thing broke off.
Lex Fridman (1:30:19.680)
So now you have two generations plus an imposter third generation, which is, I
Eric Weinstein (1:30:25.200)
don't know why we never talk about this possibility in regular physics.
Lex Fridman (1:30:28.520)
And then you've got a bunch of stuff that we haven't seen, which has descriptions.
Lex Fridman (1:30:32.080)
So people always say, does it make any falsifiable predictions?
Lex Fridman (1:30:34.800)
Yes, it does.
Eric Weinstein (1:30:35.480)
It says that the matter that you should be seeing, um, next has particular
Lex Fridman (1:30:41.120)
properties that can be read off like, like a weak ISIS spin, weak hypercharge,
Eric Weinstein (1:30:47.640)
like the responsiveness to the strong force.
Lex Fridman (1:30:50.560)
The one I can't tell you is what energy scale it would happen at.
Lex Fridman (1:30:54.560)
So you would, if you can't say if those characteristics can be
Lex Fridman (1:30:58.760)
detected with the current, but it may be that somebody else can.
Eric Weinstein (1:31:02.000)
I'm not a physicist.
Lex Fridman (1:31:02.920)
I'm not a quantum field theorist.
Eric Weinstein (1:31:04.640)
I can't, I don't know how you would do that.
Lex Fridman (1:31:07.920)
The hope for me is that there's some simple explanations for all of it.
Lex Fridman (1:31:14.960)
Like, should we have a drink?
Lex Fridman (1:31:17.280)
You're having fun.
Eric Weinstein (1:31:18.600)
No, I'm trying to have fun with you.
Lex Fridman (1:31:20.200)
You know, there's a bunch of fun things to talk about here.
Eric Weinstein (1:31:26.840)
Anyway, that was how I got what I thought you wanted, which is,
Lex Fridman (1:31:30.680)
if you think about the fermions as the artists and the bosons as the brushes
Lex Fridman (1:31:37.760)
and the paint, what I told you is that's how we get the artists.
Lex Fridman (1:31:43.800)
What are the open questions for you in this?
Lex Fridman (1:31:46.280)
What were the challenges?
Lex Fridman (1:31:48.120)
So you're not done.
Eric Weinstein (1:31:49.800)
Well, there's, there's things that I would like to have in better order.
Lex Fridman (1:31:53.600)
So a lot of people will say, see, if you're going to do this, you have to
Eric Weinstein (1:31:59.120)
say, see, the reason I hesitate on this is I just have a totally different
Lex Fridman (1:32:03.920)
view than the community.
Lex Fridman (1:32:04.880)
So for example, I believe that general relativity began in 1913
Lex Fridman (1:32:10.640)
with Einstein and Grossman.
Eric Weinstein (1:32:13.920)
Now that was the first of like four major papers in this line of thinking.
Lex Fridman (1:32:19.960)
To most physicists, general relativity happened when Einstein produced, uh,
Eric Weinstein (1:32:25.800)
a divergence free, um, gradient, which turned out to be the gradient of the,
Lex Fridman (1:32:32.800)
of the so called Hilbert or Einstein Hilbert action.
Lex Fridman (1:32:36.800)
And from my perspective, that wasn't true.
Lex Fridman (1:32:39.400)
This is that it began when Einstein said, look, this is about, um, differential
Eric Weinstein (1:32:45.040)
geometry and it's the final answer is going to look like a curvature tensor
Lex Fridman (1:32:50.000)
on one side and matter and energy on the other side.
Lex Fridman (1:32:53.280)
And that was enough.
Lex Fridman (1:32:54.520)
And then he published a wrong version of it where it was the Ricci tensor,
Eric Weinstein (1:32:58.640)
not the Einstein tensor.
Lex Fridman (1:32:59.920)
Then he corrected the reach, the Ricci tensor to make it into the Einstein
Eric Weinstein (1:33:03.200)
tensor, then he corrected that to add a cosmological constant.
Lex Fridman (1:33:08.600)
I can't stand that the community thinks in those terms.
Eric Weinstein (1:33:11.840)
There's some things about which, like there's a question about
Lex Fridman (1:33:15.360)
which contraction do I use?
Eric Weinstein (1:33:17.080)
There's an Einstein contraction.
Lex Fridman (1:33:19.120)
There's a Ricci contraction.
Eric Weinstein (1:33:20.400)
They both go between the same spaces.
Lex Fridman (1:33:22.240)
I'm not sure what I should do.
Eric Weinstein (1:33:23.840)
I'm not sure which contraction I should choose.
Lex Fridman (1:33:26.760)
This is called a shiab operator for ship in a bottle and my stuff.
Eric Weinstein (1:33:32.040)
You have this big platform in many ways that inspires people's
Lex Fridman (1:33:39.360)
curiosity about physics and mathematics.
Eric Weinstein (1:33:42.160)
Right.
Lex Fridman (1:33:43.920)
Now, and I'm one of those people and, but then you start using a lot of words
Eric Weinstein (1:33:50.960)
that I don't understand and, or like I might know them, but I don't understand.
Lex Fridman (1:33:58.400)
And what's unclear to me, if I'm supposed to be listening to those words, or if
Eric Weinstein (1:34:03.160)
it's just, if this is one of those technical things that's intended for
Eric Weinstein (1:34:08.280)
a very small community, or if I'm supposed to actually take those words and start,
Eric Weinstein (1:34:14.280)
you know, a multi year study, not, not a serious study, but a, the community
Lex Fridman (1:34:20.240)
study, but the kind of study when you, you're interested in learning about
Eric Weinstein (1:34:24.320)
machine learning, for example, or any kind of discipline, that's where
Lex Fridman (1:34:28.040)
I'm a little bit confused.
Lex Fridman (1:34:29.400)
So you've, you've speak beautifully about ideas.
Lex Fridman (1:34:32.840)
You often reveal the beauty in math, in geometry, and I'm unclear in what
Eric Weinstein (1:34:39.960)
are the steps I should be taking.
Lex Fridman (1:34:42.040)
I, I'm curious, how can I explore?
Lex Fridman (1:34:45.640)
How can I play with something?
Lex Fridman (1:34:46.880)
How can I play with these ideas?
Eric Weinstein (1:34:48.440)
And, and, and enjoy the beauty of not necessarily understanding the
Lex Fridman (1:34:52.400)
depth of the theory that you're presenting, but start to share in the
Eric Weinstein (1:34:56.280)
beauty, as opposed to sharing and enjoying the beauty of just the way,
Lex Fridman (1:35:01.680)
the passion with which you speak, which is in itself fun to listen to, but
Eric Weinstein (1:35:08.520)
also starting to be able to understand some aspects of this theory that I can
Lex Fridman (1:35:14.160)
enjoy it to, and start to build an intuition, what the heck we're even
Eric Weinstein (1:35:19.520)
talking about, because you're basically saying we need to throw a lot of our
Lex Fridman (1:35:23.240)
ideas of, of views of the universe out.
Lex Fridman (1:35:29.200)
And I'm trying to find accessible ways in, not in this conversation.
Lex Fridman (1:35:36.960)
No, I appreciate that.
Lex Fridman (1:35:37.800)
So one of the things that I've done is I've, I've picked on one
Lex Fridman (1:35:40.600)
paragraph from Edward Witten, and I said, this is the paragraph.
Eric Weinstein (1:35:46.480)
If I could only take one paragraph with me, this is the one I'd take.
Lex Fridman (1:35:49.840)
And it's almost all in prose, not an equation.
Lex Fridman (1:35:53.360)
And he says, look, this is, this is our knowledge of the
Lex Fridman (1:35:55.480)
universe at its deepest level.
Lex Fridman (1:35:57.120)
And he was writing this during the 1980s.
Lex Fridman (1:35:59.720)
And he has three separate points that constitute our deepest knowledge.
Lex Fridman (1:36:04.520)
And those three points refer to equations, one to the Einstein field
Eric Weinstein (1:36:08.840)
equation, one to the Dirac equation, and one to the Yang Mills Maxwell equation.
Eric Weinstein (1:36:14.480)
Now, one thing I would do is take a look at that paragraph and say, okay,
Lex Fridman (1:36:20.760)
what do these three lines mean?
Eric Weinstein (1:36:22.920)
Like it's a finite amount of verbiage.
Lex Fridman (1:36:24.560)
You can write down every word that you don't know.
Lex Fridman (1:36:27.720)
And you can say, what do I think done now?
Lex Fridman (1:36:32.680)
Young man.
Eric Weinstein (1:36:33.560)
Yes.
Lex Fridman (1:36:33.920)
There's a beautiful wall in Stony Brook, New York built by someone
Eric Weinstein (1:36:39.400)
who I know you will interview named Jim Simons and Jim Simons.
Lex Fridman (1:36:45.160)
He's not the artist, but he's the guy who funded it.
Eric Weinstein (1:36:47.720)
World's greatest hedge fund manager.
Lex Fridman (1:36:49.720)
And on that wall contain the three equations that Witten
Eric Weinstein (1:36:53.360)
refers to in that paragraph.
Lex Fridman (1:36:56.880)
And so that is the transmission from the paragraph or graph to the wall.
Eric Weinstein (1:37:01.840)
Now that wall needs an owner's manual, which Roger Penrose has written
Lex Fridman (1:37:07.640)
called the road to reality.
Lex Fridman (1:37:09.400)
And let's call that the tome.
Lex Fridman (1:37:11.480)
So this is the subject of the so called graph wall tome project that is going
Eric Weinstein (1:37:17.400)
on in our discord server and our general group around the portal community, which
Eric Weinstein (1:37:22.600)
is how do you take something that purports in one paragraph to say what the deepest
Eric Weinstein (1:37:28.520)
understanding man has of the universe in which he lives, it's memorialized on a
Eric Weinstein (1:37:34.760)
wall, which nobody knows about, which is an incredibly gorgeous piece of, uh, of
Eric Weinstein (1:37:40.600)
art.
Lex Fridman (1:37:41.920)
And that was written up in a book, which is, has been written for no man.
Eric Weinstein (1:37:47.280)
Right.
Lex Fridman (1:37:47.960)
Maybe, maybe it's for a woman.
Eric Weinstein (1:37:48.960)
I don't know, but no, no one should be able to read this book because either
Eric Weinstein (1:37:52.920)
you're a professional and you know, a lot of this book, in which case it's kind of
Eric Weinstein (1:37:56.560)
a refresher to see how Roger thinks about these things, or you don't even know that
Lex Fridman (1:38:00.880)
this book is a self contained, uh, invitation to understanding our deepest
Eric Weinstein (1:38:05.560)
nature.
Lex Fridman (1:38:06.680)
So I would say find yourself in the graph wall tome transmission sequence and join
Eric Weinstein (1:38:12.360)
the graph wall tome project if that's of interest.
Lex Fridman (1:38:15.800)
Okay.
Eric Weinstein (1:38:16.040)
Beautiful.
Lex Fridman (1:38:17.000)
Uh, now just to linger on a little longer, what kind of journey do you
Lex Fridman (1:38:20.440)
see geometric community taking?
Lex Fridman (1:38:22.640)
I don't know.
Eric Weinstein (1:38:23.600)
I mean, that's the thing is that.
Lex Fridman (1:38:25.160)
First of all, the professional community has to get very angry and outraged and
Eric Weinstein (1:38:28.280)
they have to work through their feeling that this is nonsense.
Lex Fridman (1:38:31.520)
This is bullshit or like, no, wait a minute.
Eric Weinstein (1:38:33.920)
This is really cool.
Lex Fridman (1:38:35.440)
Actually, I need some clarification over here.
Lex Fridman (1:38:37.280)
So there's going to be some sort of weird coming back together process.
Lex Fridman (1:38:41.560)
Are you already hearing murmurings of that?
Eric Weinstein (1:38:45.720)
It was very funny.
Lex Fridman (1:38:46.680)
Officially I've seen very little.
Lex Fridman (1:38:50.160)
So it's perhaps happening quietly.
Lex Fridman (1:38:52.040)
Yeah.
Eric Weinstein (1:38:52.400)
You, you often talk about, we need to get off this planet.
Lex Fridman (1:38:55.200)
Yep.
Eric Weinstein (1:38:57.320)
Can I try to sneak up on that by asking what in your kind of view is the
Lex Fridman (1:39:01.920)
difference, the gap between the science of it, the theory and the actual
Lex Fridman (1:39:07.760)
engineering of building something that leverages the theory to do something?
Lex Fridman (1:39:11.320)
Like how big is that?
Eric Weinstein (1:39:12.800)
We don't know.
Lex Fridman (1:39:13.920)
Gap.
Eric Weinstein (1:39:14.880)
I mean, if you have 10 extra dimensions to play with that are the rules of
Lex Fridman (1:39:19.320)
protractors of the world themselves, can you gain access to those dimensions?
Lex Fridman (1:39:25.320)
Do you have a hunch?
Lex Fridman (1:39:26.320)
So I don't know.
Eric Weinstein (1:39:28.480)
I don't want to get ahead of myself because you have to appreciate, I can
Lex Fridman (1:39:31.840)
have hunches and I can, I can jaw off.
Lex Fridman (1:39:35.360)
But one of the ways that I'm succeeding in this world is to not bow down to my
Lex Fridman (1:39:42.280)
professional communities nor to ignore them.
Eric Weinstein (1:39:45.080)
Like I'm actually in the middle of a world where I'm not
Lex Fridman (1:39:47.720)
going to ignore them, like I'm actually interested in the criticism.
Eric Weinstein (1:39:50.840)
I just want to denature it so that it's not mostly interpersonal and irrelevant.
Lex Fridman (1:39:58.920)
I believe that they don't want me to speculate and I don't
Eric Weinstein (1:40:01.560)
need to speculate about this.
Lex Fridman (1:40:02.960)
I can simply say I'm open to the idea that it may have engineering prospects
Lex Fridman (1:40:08.000)
and it may be a death sentence.
Eric Weinstein (1:40:09.480)
We may find out that there's not enough new here that even if it were right, that
Eric Weinstein (1:40:15.360)
there would be nothing new to do.
Lex Fridman (1:40:16.360)
Can't tell you that's what you mean by death sentences.
Eric Weinstein (1:40:19.640)
There would not be exciting breakthroughs.
Lex Fridman (1:40:21.480)
Wouldn't it be terrible if you couldn't, like you can do new things in an
Lex Fridman (1:40:25.600)
Einsteinian world that you couldn't do in a Newtonian world, right?
Lex Fridman (1:40:29.520)
You know, like you have twin paradoxes or Lorentz contraction of length or
Eric Weinstein (1:40:33.200)
any one of a number of new cool things happen in relativity theory
Lex Fridman (1:40:36.800)
that didn't happen for Newton.
Lex Fridman (1:40:38.640)
What if there wasn't new stuff to do at the next and final level?
Lex Fridman (1:40:43.040)
Yeah, that would be quite sad.
Eric Weinstein (1:40:47.880)
Let me ask a silly question, but we'll say it with a straight face.
Lex Fridman (1:40:55.480)
Impossible.
Lex Fridman (1:40:57.400)
So let me mention Elon Musk.
Lex Fridman (1:41:01.680)
What are your thoughts about he's more, you're more on the physics theory side
Eric Weinstein (1:41:07.680)
of things, he's more on the physics engineering side of things in terms of
Lex Fridman (1:41:11.400)
SpaceX efforts, what do you think of his efforts to, uh, get off this planet?
Eric Weinstein (1:41:18.920)
Well, I think he's the other guy who's semi serious about getting off this planet.
Lex Fridman (1:41:26.360)
I think there are two of us who are semi serious about getting off the planet.
Lex Fridman (1:41:29.480)
What do you think about his methodology and yours when you look at them?
Eric Weinstein (1:41:33.600)
Don't, and I don't want to be against you because like I was so excited that like
Eric Weinstein (1:41:38.480)
your top video was Ray Kurzweil and then I did your podcast and we had some
Lex Fridman (1:41:42.920)
chemistry, so it zoomed up and I thought, okay, I'm going to beat Ray Kurzweil.
Lex Fridman (1:41:46.200)
So just as I'm coming up on Ray Kurzweil, you're like, and now Alex Fridman
Lex Fridman (1:41:50.720)
special Elon Musk and he blew me out of the water.
Lex Fridman (1:41:53.400)
So I don't want to be petty about it.
Lex Fridman (1:41:55.240)
I want to say that I don't, but I am.
Eric Weinstein (1:41:58.640)
Okay.
Lex Fridman (1:41:59.000)
But here's the funny part.
Eric Weinstein (1:42:00.560)
Um, he's not taking enough risk.
Lex Fridman (1:42:03.840)
Like he's trying to get us to Mars.
Eric Weinstein (1:42:05.280)
Imagine that he got us to Mars, the moon, and we'll throw in Titan and nowhere
Lex Fridman (1:42:12.360)
good enough, the diversification level is too low.
Eric Weinstein (1:42:15.400)
Now there's a compatibility.
Lex Fridman (1:42:18.280)
First of all, I don't think Elon is serious about Mars.
Eric Weinstein (1:42:22.680)
I think Elon is using Mars as a, as a narrative, as a story, as a dream to
Lex Fridman (1:42:29.080)
make the moon jealous to make the, uh,
Eric Weinstein (1:42:33.640)
uh, I think he's using it as a story to organize us, to reacquaint ourselves
Lex Fridman (1:42:39.160)
with our need for space, our need to get off this planet.
Eric Weinstein (1:42:42.240)
It's a concrete thing.
Lex Fridman (1:42:43.720)
He shown that, um, many people think that he's shown that he's the most
Eric Weinstein (1:42:48.800)
brilliant and capable person on the planet.
Lex Fridman (1:42:50.840)
I don't think that's what he showed.
Eric Weinstein (1:42:52.120)
I think he showed that the rest of us have forgotten our capabilities.
Lex Fridman (1:42:55.520)
And so he's like the only guy who has still kept the faith and is like,
Lex Fridman (1:42:59.320)
what's wrong with you people?
Lex Fridman (1:43:00.560)
So you think the lesson we should draw from Elon Musk is there's, uh, there's
Eric Weinstein (1:43:04.360)
a capable person within, within a lot of us, Elon makes sense to me in what way
Lex Fridman (1:43:10.480)
he's doing, what any sensible person should do.
Eric Weinstein (1:43:12.520)
He's trying incredible things and he's partially succeeding, partially failing
Lex Fridman (1:43:17.440)
to try to solve the obvious problems before, you know, when he comes up with
Eric Weinstein (1:43:21.640)
things like, uh, you know, I got it.
Lex Fridman (1:43:24.040)
We'll come up with a battery company, but batteries aren't sexy.
Lex Fridman (1:43:26.680)
So we'll, we'll make a car around it.
Lex Fridman (1:43:28.400)
It's like, great, you know, or, um, any one of a number of things.
Eric Weinstein (1:43:34.760)
Elon is behaving like a sane person and I view everyone else is insane.
Lex Fridman (1:43:40.200)
And my feeling is, is that we really have to get off this planet.
Eric Weinstein (1:43:45.080)
We have to get out of this.
Lex Fridman (1:43:46.080)
We have to get out of the neighborhood.
Eric Weinstein (1:43:48.560)
To linger on a little bit.
Lex Fridman (1:43:49.640)
Do you think that's a physics problem or an engineering problem?
Eric Weinstein (1:43:54.040)
I think it's a cowardice problem.
Lex Fridman (1:43:55.400)
I think that we're afraid that we had 400 hitters of the mind, like Einstein
Lex Fridman (1:44:01.800)
and Dirac and that, that era is done.
Lex Fridman (1:44:03.880)
And now we're just sort of copy editors.
Lex Fridman (1:44:07.920)
So it's some of it money, like if we become brave enough to go outside the
Lex Fridman (1:44:13.640)
solar system, can we afford to financially?
Eric Weinstein (1:44:17.560)
Well, I think that that's not really the issue.
Lex Fridman (1:44:19.840)
The issue is look what Elon did well, he amassed a lot of money and then he,
Eric Weinstein (1:44:28.240)
you know, he plowed it back in and he spun, spun the wheel and he made more
Lex Fridman (1:44:31.880)
money and now he's got F you money.
Eric Weinstein (1:44:35.000)
Now the problem is, is that a lot of the people who have F you money are not
Lex Fridman (1:44:41.640)
people whose middle finger you ever want to see.
Eric Weinstein (1:44:43.800)
I want to see Elon's middle finger.
Lex Fridman (1:44:46.600)
I want to see what he's doing by that.
Eric Weinstein (1:44:47.960)
Or like when you say, fuck it, I'm going to do the biggest possible.
Lex Fridman (1:44:50.800)
Do whatever the fuck you want, right?
Eric Weinstein (1:44:53.280)
Fuck you.
Lex Fridman (1:44:54.080)
Fuck anything that gets in his way that he can afford to push out of his way.
Lex Fridman (1:44:57.480)
And you're saying he's not actually even doing that enough.
Lex Fridman (1:45:00.280)
No, I'm he's not going, please.
Eric Weinstein (1:45:02.440)
I'm going to go.
Lex Fridman (1:45:03.360)
Elon's doing fine with his money.
Eric Weinstein (1:45:05.240)
I just want him to enjoy himself, have the most, you know, Dionysian, but
Lex Fridman (1:45:11.000)
you're saying Mars is playing it safe.
Eric Weinstein (1:45:14.480)
He doesn't know how to do anything else.
Lex Fridman (1:45:15.800)
He knows rockets and he might know some physics at a fundamental level.
Eric Weinstein (1:45:25.120)
Yeah.
Eric Weinstein (1:45:25.640)
I guess, okay, just, let me just go right back to how much physics do you really,
Lex Fridman (1:45:30.520)
how much brilliant breakthrough ideas on the physics side do you
Lex Fridman (1:45:34.400)
need to get off this planet?
Eric Weinstein (1:45:37.480)
I don't know.
Lex Fridman (1:45:38.400)
And I don't know whether like in my most optimistic dream, I don't know
Eric Weinstein (1:45:41.520)
whether my stuff gets us out of this.
Lex Fridman (1:45:42.920)
Like in my most optimistic dream, I don't know whether my stuff gets us off the
Eric Weinstein (1:45:46.080)
planet, but it's hope it's hope that there's a more fundamental theory that
Lex Fridman (1:45:51.200)
we can access that we don't need.
Eric Weinstein (1:45:54.120)
Um, you know, whose elegance and beauty will suggest that this is probably
Lex Fridman (1:46:00.040)
the way the universe goes.
Eric Weinstein (1:46:01.400)
Like you have to say this weird thing, which is this, I believe, and this,
Lex Fridman (1:46:06.160)
I believe is a very dangerous statement, but this, I believe, I believe that my
Eric Weinstein (1:46:11.560)
theory, um, points the way now, Elon might or might not be able to access my
Lex Fridman (1:46:18.280)
theory.
Eric Weinstein (1:46:18.680)
I don't know.
Lex Fridman (1:46:19.200)
I don't know what he knows, but keep in mind, why are we all so focused on Elon?
Eric Weinstein (1:46:25.720)
It's really weird.
Lex Fridman (1:46:26.640)
It's kind of creepy too.
Lex Fridman (1:46:28.320)
Why he's just the person who's just asking the, the obvious questions
Lex Fridman (1:46:32.240)
and doing whatever he can, but he makes sense to me.
Eric Weinstein (1:46:35.040)
You see Craig Venter makes sense to me.
Lex Fridman (1:46:37.080)
Jim Watson makes sense to me, but we're focusing on Elon.
Eric Weinstein (1:46:41.000)
Because he's, he's somehow is rare.
Lex Fridman (1:46:44.160)
Well, that's the weird thing.
Eric Weinstein (1:46:45.560)
Like we've come up with a system that eliminates all Elon from our pipeline
Lex Fridman (1:46:51.280)
and Elon somehow, uh, snuck through when they weren't quality adjusting
Lex Fridman (1:46:56.600)
everything, you know?
Lex Fridman (1:46:57.840)
And this, this idea of, uh, of disc, right?
Eric Weinstein (1:47:02.200)
Distributed idea suppression complex.
Lex Fridman (1:47:04.480)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:47:04.880)
Is that what's bringing the Elans of the world down?
Lex Fridman (1:47:09.520)
You know, it's so funny.
Eric Weinstein (1:47:10.320)
It's like, he's asking Joe Rogan, like, is that a joint, you know, it's like,
Lex Fridman (1:47:14.520)
well, what, what will happen if I smoke it?
Lex Fridman (1:47:16.240)
What will happen to the stock price?
Lex Fridman (1:47:17.920)
What will happen if I scratch myself in public?
Lex Fridman (1:47:20.840)
What will happen if I say what I think about Thailand or COVID or who knows what?
Lex Fridman (1:47:26.800)
And everybody's like, don't say that, say this, go do this, go do that.
Eric Weinstein (1:47:30.400)
Well, it's crazy making, it's absolutely crazy making.
Lex Fridman (1:47:34.440)
And if you think about what we put through people through, um, we, we
Eric Weinstein (1:47:41.240)
need to get people who can use FU money, the FU money they need to insulate
Lex Fridman (1:47:46.840)
themselves from all of the people who know better, because the, the, my
Lex Fridman (1:47:51.720)
nightmare is, is that why did we only get one Elon?
Lex Fridman (1:47:55.640)
What if we were supposed to have thousands and thousands of Elans?
Lex Fridman (1:47:59.080)
And the weird thing is like, this is all that remains you're, you're looking
Lex Fridman (1:48:03.400)
at like OB one and Yoda, and it's like, this is the only, this is all that's
Eric Weinstein (1:48:09.240)
left after X, uh, order 66 has been executed.
Lex Fridman (1:48:14.320)
And that's the thing that's really upsetting to me is we used, we
Eric Weinstein (1:48:16.720)
used to have Elon's five deep.
Lex Fridman (1:48:18.600)
And then we could talk about Elon in the context of his cohort.
Lex Fridman (1:48:23.400)
But this is like, if you were to see a giraffe in the Arctic with no
Lex Fridman (1:48:27.320)
trees around, you'd think why the long neck, what a strange sight, you know?
Lex Fridman (1:48:32.200)
You know, how do we get more Elans?
Lex Fridman (1:48:35.880)
How do we change these?
Lex Fridman (1:48:37.000)
So I think the use, so we know MIT and Harvard, so maybe returning to our
Lex Fridman (1:48:44.520)
previous conversation, my sense is that the Elans of the world are supposed
Lex Fridman (1:48:48.800)
to come from MIT and Harvard, right?
Lex Fridman (1:48:51.240)
And how do you change?
Eric Weinstein (1:48:53.160)
Let's think of one that MIT sort of killed.
Lex Fridman (1:48:57.480)
Have any names in mind?
Eric Weinstein (1:48:58.600)
Aaron Schwartz leaps to my mind.
Lex Fridman (1:49:01.440)
Yeah.
Eric Weinstein (1:49:01.920)
Okay.
Lex Fridman (1:49:02.600)
Are we MIT supposed to shield the Aaron Schwartz's from, I don't know, journal
Eric Weinstein (1:49:11.720)
publishers, or are we supposed to help the journal publishers so that we can
Eric Weinstein (1:49:15.640)
throw 35 year sentences in his face or whatever it is that we did that depressed
Eric Weinstein (1:49:19.840)
him? Okay.
Lex Fridman (1:49:21.000)
So here's my point.
Eric Weinstein (1:49:22.080)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:49:22.400)
I want MIT to go back to being the home of Aaron Schwartz, and if you want to
Eric Weinstein (1:49:29.240)
send Aaron Schwartz to a state where he's looking at 35 years in prison or
Lex Fridman (1:49:36.440)
something like that, you are my sworn enemy.
Eric Weinstein (1:49:39.560)
You are not MIT.
Lex Fridman (1:49:41.800)
Yeah.
Eric Weinstein (1:49:42.040)
You are the traitors, uh, irresponsible, middle brow, pencil pushing green
Lex Fridman (1:49:53.920)
eyeshade fool that needs to not be in the seat at the, at the presidency of MIT
Eric Weinstein (1:49:59.160)
period, the end, get the fuck out of there and let one of our people sit in that
Lex Fridman (1:50:03.360)
chair.
Lex Fridman (1:50:04.080)
And the thing that you've articulated is that the people in those chairs are not
Eric Weinstein (1:50:10.160)
the way they are because they're evil or somehow morally compromised is that it's
Eric Weinstein (1:50:15.240)
just the, that's the distributed nature is that there's some kind of aspect of
Eric Weinstein (1:50:19.280)
the system that people who wed themselves to the system, they adapt every instinct.
Lex Fridman (1:50:25.600)
And the fact is, is that they're not going to be on Joe Rogan smoking a blunt.
Lex Fridman (1:50:32.120)
Let me ask a silly question.
Lex Fridman (1:50:33.280)
Do you think institutions generally just tend to become that?
Lex Fridman (1:50:38.000)
No.
Eric Weinstein (1:50:38.400)
We get some of the institutions, we get Caltech.
Lex Fridman (1:50:41.920)
Here's what we're supposed to have.
Eric Weinstein (1:50:42.960)
We're supposed to have Caltech.
Lex Fridman (1:50:44.320)
We're supposed to have a read.
Eric Weinstein (1:50:46.360)
We're supposed to have deep springs.
Lex Fridman (1:50:49.520)
We're supposed to have MIT.
Eric Weinstein (1:50:50.760)
We're supposed to have a part of Harvard.
Lex Fridman (1:50:54.040)
And when the sharp elbow crowd comes after the shelf, sharp, uh, mind crowd,
Eric Weinstein (1:50:58.200)
we're supposed to break those sharp elbows and say, don't come around here
Lex Fridman (1:51:01.840)
again.
Lex Fridman (1:51:02.400)
So what are the weapons that the sharp minds are supposed to use in our modern
Lex Fridman (1:51:06.320)
day?
Lex Fridman (1:51:06.680)
So to reclaim MIT, what, what is the, what's the future?
Lex Fridman (1:51:11.160)
Are you kidding me?
Eric Weinstein (1:51:12.480)
First of all, assume that this is being seen at MIT.
Lex Fridman (1:51:15.920)
Hey everybody is okay.
Eric Weinstein (1:51:18.640)
Hey everybody, try to remember who you are.
Lex Fridman (1:51:22.240)
You're the guys who put the police car on top of the great dump.
Eric Weinstein (1:51:25.680)
You guys came up with the great breast of knowledge.
Lex Fridman (1:51:28.120)
You created a Tetris game in the green building.
Lex Fridman (1:51:31.360)
Now, what is your problem?
Lex Fridman (1:51:33.920)
Is your problem they killed one of your own.
Eric Weinstein (1:51:37.440)
You should make their life a living hell.
Eric Weinstein (1:51:40.960)
You should be the ones who keep the mayor memory of Aaron Schwartz alive and all
Eric Weinstein (1:51:45.720)
of those hackers and all of those mutants, you know,
Lex Fridman (1:51:50.360)
it's like it's either our place or it isn't.
Lex Fridman (1:51:54.160)
And if we have to throw 12 more pianos off of the
Lex Fridman (1:51:58.760)
roof, right?
Eric Weinstein (1:52:01.040)
If Harold Edgerton was taking those photographs, you know,
Lex Fridman (1:52:06.240)
uh, with slow mo back in the forties,
Eric Weinstein (1:52:10.520)
if Noam Chomsky is on your faculty,
Lex Fridman (1:52:13.800)
what the hell is wrong with you kids?
Eric Weinstein (1:52:16.120)
You are the most creative and insightful people and you can't figure out how to
Lex Fridman (1:52:19.880)
defend Aaron Schwartz. That's on you guys.
Lex Fridman (1:52:22.560)
So some of that is giving more power to the young, like you said,
Lex Fridman (1:52:25.880)
no, it's taking power from taking power from the feeble and the middle
Lex Fridman (1:52:30.200)
Brown. Yeah. But how do you, what is the mechanism to me?
Lex Fridman (1:52:32.920)
I don't know. You, you have some nine volt batteries, copper wire.
Lex Fridman (1:52:38.200)
I, uh, I tend to, do you have a capacitor?
Lex Fridman (1:52:41.720)
I tend to believe you have to create an alternative and, uh,
Eric Weinstein (1:52:46.440)
make the alternative so much better that it makes MIT obsolete unless
Lex Fridman (1:52:51.400)
they change. And that's what forces change. So as opposed to somehow,
Eric Weinstein (1:52:56.280)
okay, so use projection mapping, what's projection mapping,
Lex Fridman (1:53:00.240)
where you take some complicated edifice and you map all of its planes.
Lex Fridman (1:53:04.240)
And then you actually project some unbelievable graphics,
Lex Fridman (1:53:07.160)
re skinning a building, let's say at night. That's right. Yeah. Okay.
Lex Fridman (1:53:10.120)
So you want to do some graffiti art with like basically want to hack the system.
Lex Fridman (1:53:13.600)
No, I'm saying, look, listen to me. Yeah. We're smarter than they are.
Lex Fridman (1:53:18.600)
And they, you know what they say? They say things like,
Lex Fridman (1:53:21.240)
okay, I think we need some geeks. Get me two PhDs.
Eric Weinstein (1:53:26.600)
Right. You treat PhDs like that. That's a bad move.
Lex Fridman (1:53:31.200)
Because PhDs are capable and we act like our job is to peel
Eric Weinstein (1:53:35.800)
grapes for our betters.
Lex Fridman (1:53:37.600)
Yeah. That's a strange thing. And I,
Eric Weinstein (1:53:39.120)
I you speak about it very eloquently is how we treat basically
Lex Fridman (1:53:43.800)
the greatest minds in the world, which is like at their prime,
Eric Weinstein (1:53:48.520)
which is PhD students like that. We pay them nothing.
Lex Fridman (1:53:54.160)
Uh, I'm done with it. Yeah. Right. We got to take what's ours.
Eric Weinstein (1:53:58.840)
So, so take back MIT, become ungovernable,
Lex Fridman (1:54:04.040)
become ungovernable. And by the way, when you become ungovernable,
Eric Weinstein (1:54:08.920)
don't do it by throwing food.
Lex Fridman (1:54:12.400)
Don't do it by pouring salt on the lawn, like a jerk,
Eric Weinstein (1:54:15.360)
do it through brilliance, because what you Caltech and MIT can do,
Lex Fridman (1:54:19.720)
and maybe Rensselaer Polytechnic or Worcester Polytech, I don't know.
Lex Fridman (1:54:23.760)
Lehigh. God damn it. What's wrong with you technical people?
Lex Fridman (1:54:27.440)
You act like you're a servant class.
Eric Weinstein (1:54:30.400)
It's unclear to me how you reclaim it except with brilliance,
Lex Fridman (1:54:33.800)
like you said. Uh,
Lex Fridman (1:54:35.480)
but to me that the way you reclaim it with brilliance is to go outside the
Lex Fridman (1:54:39.000)
system.
Eric Weinstein (1:54:39.440)
Aaron Schwartz came from the Elon Musk class.
Lex Fridman (1:54:42.200)
What are you guys going to do about it? Right.
Eric Weinstein (1:54:44.920)
The super capable people need to flex,
Lex Fridman (1:54:49.960)
need to be individual. They need to stop giving away all their power to,
Eric Weinstein (1:54:53.160)
you know, a zeitgeist or a community or this or that you're not,
Lex Fridman (1:54:56.840)
you're not indoor cats. You're outdoor cats. Go be outdoor cats.
Lex Fridman (1:54:59.800)
Do you think we're going to see this, this kind of one asking me, you know,
Lex Fridman (1:55:03.400)
before, like what about the world war II generation? Right.
Eric Weinstein (1:55:06.280)
Oh,
Lex Fridman (1:55:06.400)
and I'm trying to say is that there's a technical revolt coming here's you want
Eric Weinstein (1:55:10.520)
to talk about it, but I'm trying to lead it. I'm trying to see,
Lex Fridman (1:55:13.360)
no, you're not trying to lead it. I'm trying to get a blueprint here.
Eric Weinstein (1:55:15.680)
All right, Lex. Yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:55:17.120)
How angry are you about our country pretending that you and I can't actually do
Eric Weinstein (1:55:22.480)
technical subjects so that they need an army of, uh,
Lex Fridman (1:55:26.040)
kids coming in from four countries in Asia.
Eric Weinstein (1:55:29.160)
It's not about the four countries in Asia. It's not about those kids.
Lex Fridman (1:55:32.640)
It's about lying about us that we don't care enough about science and
Eric Weinstein (1:55:35.840)
technology that we're incapable of it as if we don't have Chinese and Russians
Lex Fridman (1:55:40.840)
and Russians and Koreans and Croatians. Like we've got everybody here.
Eric Weinstein (1:55:46.360)
The only reason you're looking outside is,
Eric Weinstein (1:55:48.600)
is that you want to hire cheap people from the family business because you don't
Lex Fridman (1:55:52.160)
want to pass the family business on. And you know what?
Lex Fridman (1:55:56.120)
You didn't really build the family business. It's not yours to decide.
Eric Weinstein (1:56:00.400)
You the boomers and you the silent generation, you did your bit,
Lex Fridman (1:56:03.840)
but you also fouled a lot of stuff up and you're custodians.
Eric Weinstein (1:56:07.600)
You are caretakers. You were supposed to hand something.
Lex Fridman (1:56:11.320)
What you did instead was to gorge yourself on cheap foreign labor,
Eric Weinstein (1:56:16.560)
which you then held up as being much more brilliant than your own children,
Lex Fridman (1:56:20.400)
which was never true.
Lex Fridman (1:56:22.720)
But I'm trying to understand how we create a better system without anger,
Lex Fridman (1:56:26.120)
without revolution, not, not,
Eric Weinstein (1:56:28.680)
not by kissing and hugs and, and,
Lex Fridman (1:56:32.320)
but by any,
Eric Weinstein (1:56:35.000)
I don't understand within MIT what the mechanism of building a better MIT is.
Lex Fridman (1:56:39.800)
We're not going to pay Elsevier. Aaron Schwartz was right.
Eric Weinstein (1:56:42.840)
JSTOR is an abomination.
Lex Fridman (1:56:45.400)
But why, who within MIT, who within institutions is going to do that?
Eric Weinstein (1:56:50.080)
When just like you said,
Lex Fridman (1:56:51.920)
the people who are running the show are more senior.
Eric Weinstein (1:56:54.800)
I don't know, get Frank Wilczek to speak out.
Lex Fridman (1:56:58.320)
So you're, it's basically individuals that step up. I mean,
Eric Weinstein (1:57:01.040)
one of the surprising things about Elon is that one person can inspire so
Lex Fridman (1:57:05.920)
much.
Eric Weinstein (1:57:06.560)
He's got academic freedom. It just comes from money.
Lex Fridman (1:57:10.760)
I don't agree with that. That you think money. Okay.
Lex Fridman (1:57:15.160)
So yes, certainly. Sorry.
Lex Fridman (1:57:19.160)
And testicles. Yes.
Eric Weinstein (1:57:20.800)
I think that testicles are more important than money or guts.
Lex Fridman (1:57:25.200)
I think I do agree with you.
Eric Weinstein (1:57:27.240)
You speak about this a lot that because the money in academic institutions
Lex Fridman (1:57:30.960)
has been so constrained that people are misbehaving and horrible.
Eric Weinstein (1:57:35.760)
Yes.
Lex Fridman (1:57:36.440)
But I don't think that if we reverse that and give a huge amount of money,
Eric Weinstein (1:57:40.960)
people will all of a sudden behave well. I think it also takes guts.
Lex Fridman (1:57:43.720)
No, you need to give people security. Security. Yes.
Eric Weinstein (1:57:46.600)
Like you need to know that you have a job on Monday when on
Lex Fridman (1:57:51.360)
Friday you say, I'm not so sure I really love diversity and inclusion.
Lex Fridman (1:57:56.040)
And somebody is like, wait, what? You didn't love diversity?
Lex Fridman (1:57:59.320)
We had a statement on diversity and you wouldn't sign.
Lex Fridman (1:58:02.040)
Are you against the inclusion part or are you against diverse?
Lex Fridman (1:58:05.040)
Do you just not like people like you?
Eric Weinstein (1:58:06.960)
Like actually that has nothing to do with anything.
Lex Fridman (1:58:09.920)
You're making this into something that it isn't.
Eric Weinstein (1:58:11.960)
I don't want to sign your goddamn stupid statement and get out of my lab,
Lex Fridman (1:58:16.200)
right? Get out of my lab. It all begins from the middle finger.
Eric Weinstein (1:58:19.840)
Get out of my lab. The administrators need to find other
Lex Fridman (1:58:24.720)
work.
Eric Weinstein (1:58:25.560)
Yeah. Listen, I agree with you and I hope to seek your advice
Lex Fridman (1:58:30.880)
and wisdom as we change this, because I'd love to see...
Eric Weinstein (1:58:35.760)
I will visit you in prison if that's what you're asking.
Lex Fridman (1:58:38.240)
I have no... I think prison is great.
Eric Weinstein (1:58:41.840)
You get a lot of reading done and good working out.
Lex Fridman (1:58:45.800)
Well, let me ask something I brought up before is the Nietzsche quote
Eric Weinstein (1:58:52.040)
of beware that when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster.
Lex Fridman (1:58:56.640)
For when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes into you.
Eric Weinstein (1:59:01.000)
Are you worried that your focus on the flaws in the system
Lex Fridman (1:59:05.240)
that we've just been talking about has damaged your mind
Eric Weinstein (1:59:09.280)
or the part of your mind that's able to see the beauty in the world
Lex Fridman (1:59:13.360)
in the system that because you have so sharply been able to see
Lex Fridman (1:59:20.440)
the flaws in the system, you can no longer step back and appreciate its beauty?
Lex Fridman (1:59:25.840)
Look, I'm the one who's trying to get the institutions to save themselves
Eric Weinstein (1:59:31.160)
by getting rid of their inhabitants, but leaving the institution
Lex Fridman (1:59:34.560)
like a neutron bomb that removes the unworkable leadership class,
Lex Fridman (1:59:40.800)
but leaves the structures.
Lex Fridman (1:59:42.400)
So the leadership class is really the problem.
Eric Weinstein (1:59:45.240)
The leadership class is the problem.
Lex Fridman (1:59:46.680)
But the individual, like the professors, the individual scholars...
Eric Weinstein (1:59:48.760)
No, the professors are going to have to go back into training
Lex Fridman (1:59:52.120)
to remember how to be professors.
Eric Weinstein (1:59:54.760)
Like people are cowards at the moment because if they're not cowards,
Lex Fridman (1:59:58.000)
they're unemployed.
Lex Fridman (20:02.160)
So did I, but you know, at some level, the issue isn't whether you have
Lex Fridman (20:07.600)
credentials in that sense.
Eric Weinstein (20:09.880)
The key question is, can you be trusted to file a flight plan and not deviate
Lex Fridman (20:14.400)
from that flight plan when you are in an interview situation, will you stick to
Lex Fridman (20:19.400)
the talking points?
Lex Fridman (20:20.280)
Not, and that's why you're not going to be allowed in the general
Eric Weinstein (20:25.640)
conversation, which amplifies these sentiments, but I'm still trying to, um,
Lex Fridman (20:30.520)
so your, your point, it would be, is that we're, let's say both.
Lex Fridman (20:33.600)
So you've done how many Joe Rogan for I've done for two, right?
Lex Fridman (20:37.720)
So both of us are somewhat frequent guests. The show is huge.
Eric Weinstein (20:40.880)
You know, the power as well as I do, and people are going to watch this
Lex Fridman (20:44.800)
conversation. A huge number watched our last one, by the way, I want to thank
Eric Weinstein (20:48.880)
you for that one. That was a terrific, terrific conversation.
Lex Fridman (20:51.560)
Really did change my life. Like you're brilliant interviewer. So thank you.
Eric Weinstein (20:56.560)
Thank you. That was that you changed my life too.
Lex Fridman (21:00.520)
That you gave me a chance. So I was so glad I did that one.
Lex Fridman (21:04.640)
What I would say is, is that we keep mistaking how big the audience is for
Lex Fridman (21:08.720)
whether or not you have the kiss and the kiss is a different thing.
Eric Weinstein (21:12.120)
Yes. Yeah. Well, it doesn't, it's not an acronym yet. Okay. Um,
Lex Fridman (21:16.120)
it's uh, but thank you for asking. It's a question of,
Lex Fridman (21:20.960)
are you part of the inter interoperable institution friendly discussion?
Lex Fridman (21:25.960)
And that's the discussion which we ultimately have to break into.
Lex Fridman (21:29.520)
But that's what I'm trying to get at is how do we, how do you,
Lex Fridman (21:32.600)
how does Eric Weinstein become the president of the United States?
Eric Weinstein (21:36.360)
I shouldn't become the president of the United States. Not interested.
Lex Fridman (21:39.160)
Thank you very much for asking. Okay.
Eric Weinstein (21:40.640)
Get into a leadership position where I guess I don't know what that means,
Lex Fridman (21:45.280)
but where you can inspire millions of people to, uh,
Eric Weinstein (21:50.200)
the inspire the sense of community, inspire the,
Lex Fridman (21:54.960)
the kind of actions required to overcome hardship,
Eric Weinstein (21:57.760)
the kind of hardship that we may be experiencing to inspire people,
Lex Fridman (22:01.880)
to work hard and face the difficult,
Eric Weinstein (22:05.280)
hard facts of the realities we're living through all those kinds of things that
Lex Fridman (22:09.080)
you're talking about. That leader, you know,
Eric Weinstein (22:13.080)
can that leader emerge from the current institutions or
Lex Fridman (22:18.480)
alternatively, can it also emerge from the outside?
Eric Weinstein (22:21.840)
I guess that's what I was asking.
Lex Fridman (22:22.920)
So my belief is,
Eric Weinstein (22:23.840)
is that this is the last hurrah for the elderly centrist kleptocrats.
Lex Fridman (22:31.760)
Can you define each of those terms? Okay. Elderly.
Eric Weinstein (22:36.200)
I mean people who were born at least a year before I was,
Lex Fridman (22:40.240)
that's a joke. You can laugh. Uh, no,
Eric Weinstein (22:43.800)
because I'm born at the cusp of the gen X boomer divide. Um,
Lex Fridman (22:49.160)
centrist they're pretending, you know,
Eric Weinstein (22:51.560)
there are two parties, Democrat and Republican party in the United States.
Lex Fridman (22:54.920)
I think it's easier to think of the mainstream of both of them as part of a,
Eric Weinstein (22:58.560)
an aggregate party that I sometimes call the looting party,
Lex Fridman (23:01.760)
which gets us to kleptocracy, which is ruled by thieves.
Lex Fridman (23:05.880)
And the great temptation has been to treat the U S like a trough.
Lex Fridman (23:09.600)
And you just have to get yours because it's not like we're doing anything
Eric Weinstein (23:12.280)
productive.
Lex Fridman (23:13.320)
So everybody's sort of looting the family mansion and somebody stole the silver
Lex Fridman (23:17.480)
and somebody is cutting the pictures out of the frames and you know,
Lex Fridman (23:20.840)
roughly speaking, we're watching our elders, uh,
Eric Weinstein (23:25.120)
we'll live it up in a way that doesn't make sense to the rest of us.
Lex Fridman (23:28.840)
Okay. So if it's the last hurrah,
Eric Weinstein (23:32.320)
this is the time for leaders to step up.
Lex Fridman (23:35.040)
We're not ready yet. We're not ready.
Eric Weinstein (23:36.920)
I just disagree with that. I call, I call out, you know,
Lex Fridman (23:40.600)
the head of the CDC should resign, should resign.
Eric Weinstein (23:45.680)
The surgeon general should resign. Trump should resign. Pelosi should resign.
Lex Fridman (23:49.920)
De Blasio should resign. I understand that. So that's why. So we'll wait.
Eric Weinstein (23:55.240)
No, but that's not how revolutions work. You don't wait for people to resign.
Lex Fridman (24:00.120)
You, uh, step up and inspire the alternative.
Lex Fridman (24:03.880)
Do you remember the Russian revolution of 1907? It's before my time,
Lex Fridman (24:09.800)
but there wasn't a Russian revolution of 1907.
Lex Fridman (24:12.360)
So you're thinking we're in 1907. I'm saying we're too early.
Lex Fridman (24:16.040)
But we got this, you know, Spanish flu came in 17, 18.
Lex Fridman (24:20.480)
So I would argue that there's a lot of parallels there or there were one.
Lex Fridman (24:25.360)
I think it's not time yet. Like John Prine, the, uh,
Eric Weinstein (24:29.040)
uh, the songwriter just died of COVID. That was a pretty big,
Lex Fridman (24:34.240)
really? Yeah. By the way, you, yes, of course. I, um,
Eric Weinstein (24:40.080)
every time we do this, uh,
Lex Fridman (24:41.560)
we discover our mutual appreciation of obscure brilliant witty
Eric Weinstein (24:46.800)
songwriter. He's really, he's really quite good, right? He's, he's really good.
Lex Fridman (24:50.520)
Yeah. He died.
Eric Weinstein (24:52.560)
My understanding is that he passed recently due to complications of Corona.
Lex Fridman (24:56.720)
Yeah. So we haven't had large enough,
Eric Weinstein (25:01.320)
enough large, large enough shocking deaths yet,
Lex Fridman (25:05.400)
picturesque deaths, deaths of a family that couldn't get treatment.
Eric Weinstein (25:10.160)
There are stories that will come and break our hearts and we have not had enough
Lex Fridman (25:14.840)
of those. The visuals haven't come in, but I think they're coming. Well,
Eric Weinstein (25:18.360)
we'll find out.
Lex Fridman (25:19.440)
But that you gotta, you have to be there. He has to be there when they come.
Eric Weinstein (25:22.560)
I mean,
Lex Fridman (25:23.000)
but we didn't get the visual for example of falling man from nine 11.
Eric Weinstein (25:27.840)
Right. So the outside world did, but Americans were not,
Lex Fridman (25:32.000)
it was thought that we would be too delicate.
Lex Fridman (25:33.960)
So just the way you remember Pulitzer prize winning photographs from the Vietnam
Lex Fridman (25:37.960)
era,
Eric Weinstein (25:38.640)
you don't easily remember the photographs from all sorts of things that have
Lex Fridman (25:43.720)
happened since because something changed in our media.
Eric Weinstein (25:46.200)
We are in sense that we cannot feel or experience our own lives and the tragedy
Lex Fridman (25:51.200)
that would animate us to action.
Eric Weinstein (25:53.760)
Yeah. But I think there, again,
Lex Fridman (25:56.000)
I think there's going to be that suffering that's going to build and build and
Eric Weinstein (25:59.880)
build in terms of businesses,
Lex Fridman (26:02.600)
mom and pop shops that close. And I, like,
Eric Weinstein (26:05.680)
I think for myself, I think often that,
Lex Fridman (26:09.960)
that I'm being weak and,
Lex Fridman (26:13.440)
and like I feel like I should be doing something.
Lex Fridman (26:17.280)
I should be becoming a leader on a small scale.
Eric Weinstein (26:19.760)
You can't, this is not world war II, and this is not Soviet Russia.
Lex Fridman (26:24.800)
Why not? Why not?
Eric Weinstein (26:27.080)
Because our internal programming,
Lex Fridman (26:29.880)
the malware that sits between our ears is much different than the propaganda is
Eric Weinstein (26:36.560)
malware of the Soviet era. I mean,
Lex Fridman (26:40.720)
people were both very indoctrinated and also knew that some level it was BS.
Eric Weinstein (26:45.720)
They had a double mind. I don't know.
Lex Fridman (26:48.440)
There must be a great word in Russian for being able to think both of those
Eric Weinstein (26:53.440)
things simultaneously.
Lex Fridman (26:54.280)
You don't think people are actually sick of the partisanship,
Eric Weinstein (27:00.280)
sick of incompetence.
Lex Fridman (27:01.680)
Yeah, but I called for revolt the other day on Joe Rogan.
Eric Weinstein (27:05.160)
People found it quixotic.
Lex Fridman (27:06.480)
Well, because I think you're not, I think revolt is different.
Eric Weinstein (27:11.160)
I think that's like, okay, I'm really angry. I'm, I'm furious.
Lex Fridman (27:16.680)
I cannot stand that this is my country at the moment. I'm embarrassed.
Lex Fridman (27:21.080)
So let's build a better one. Yeah. Right. That's the, I'm in.
Lex Fridman (27:25.880)
Okay. So, well, okay, so let's take over a few universities.
Eric Weinstein (27:30.320)
Let's start running a different experiment at some of our better universities.
Lex Fridman (27:34.120)
Like when I did this experiment and I said, what,
Eric Weinstein (27:36.720)
at this, if this were 40 years ago, the median age,
Lex Fridman (27:41.240)
I believe of a university president was 51 that would have the person in gen X
Lex Fridman (27:46.840)
and we'd have a bunch of millennial presidents, a bunch of, you know,
Lex Fridman (27:50.280)
more than half gen X it's almost 100% baby boom at this point.
Lex Fridman (27:56.680)
Um, and how did that happen?
Lex Fridman (27:58.520)
We can get into how they changed retirement,
Lex Fridman (28:00.880)
but this generation of people are not going to be able to do that.
Lex Fridman (28:04.880)
But this generation above us does not feel for even even the older generous
Eric Weinstein (28:12.920)
silent generous. I had Roger Penrose on my program.
Lex Fridman (28:16.800)
Excellent. And I thank you. I really appreciate that.
Lex Fridman (28:19.800)
And I asked him a question that was very important to me. I said, look,
Lex Fridman (28:22.840)
you're in your late eighties.
Lex Fridman (28:24.880)
Is there anyone you could point to as a successor that we should be watching?
Lex Fridman (28:28.640)
We can get excited. You know, I said,
Eric Weinstein (28:31.000)
here's an opportunity to pass the baton and he said, well, let me,
Lex Fridman (28:33.440)
let me hold off on that. It was like, Oh,
Eric Weinstein (28:36.360)
is it ever the right moment to point to somebody younger than you to keep your
Lex Fridman (28:40.480)
flame alive after you're gone? And also like, I don't know whether,
Eric Weinstein (28:44.080)
I'm just going to admit to this.
Lex Fridman (28:45.280)
People treat me like I'm crazy for caring about the world after I'm dead
Eric Weinstein (28:51.160)
or wanting to be remembered after you're gone. Like, well,
Lex Fridman (28:53.600)
what does it matter to you? You're gone.
Eric Weinstein (28:55.040)
It's this deeply sort of secular somatic perspective on everything where we
Lex Fridman (29:00.040)
don't, you know, that phrase in a, as time goes by,
Eric Weinstein (29:04.520)
it says it's still the same old story, a fight for love and glory,
Lex Fridman (29:10.040)
a case of do or die.
Eric Weinstein (29:13.040)
I don't think people imagined then that there wouldn't be a story about
Lex Fridman (29:18.760)
fighting for love and glory.
Lex Fridman (29:20.160)
And like we are so out of practice about fighting, you know,
Lex Fridman (29:25.080)
rivals for love and and and and fighting for glory and something bigger than
Eric Weinstein (29:31.080)
yourself.
Lex Fridman (29:34.320)
But the hunger is there.
Eric Weinstein (29:35.920)
Well, that was the point then, right? The whole idea is that Rick was,
Lex Fridman (29:39.520)
you know, it was like Han Solo of his time. He's just like,
Eric Weinstein (29:42.760)
I stick my neck out for nobody. You know, it's like, Oh, come on, Rick,
Lex Fridman (29:46.240)
you're just pretending you actually have a big soul. Right.
Lex Fridman (29:49.320)
And so at some level, that's the question. Do we have a big soul or is it just
Lex Fridman (29:53.120)
all bullshit?
Lex Fridman (29:53.960)
So yeah, I think, I think there's huge Manhattan project style projects,
Lex Fridman (29:59.320)
whether you talk about physical infrastructure or going to Mars, you know,
Eric Weinstein (2:00:00.240)
Yeah, that's one of the disappointing things I've encountered is to me, tenure...
Lex Fridman (2:00:06.520)
But nobody has tenure now.
Eric Weinstein (2:00:10.520)
Whether they do or not, they certainly don't have the kind of character
Lex Fridman (2:00:19.200)
and fortitude that I was hoping to see.
Lex Fridman (2:00:22.880)
But they'd be gone.
Lex Fridman (2:00:25.400)
See, you're dreaming about the people who used to live at MIT.
Eric Weinstein (2:00:33.120)
You're dreaming about the previous inhabitants of your university.
Lex Fridman (2:00:37.200)
And if you looked at somebody like, you know, Isidore Singer is very old.
Eric Weinstein (2:00:42.080)
I don't know what state he's in, but that guy was absolutely the real deal.
Lex Fridman (2:00:46.560)
And if you look at Noam Chomsky, tell me that Noam Chomsky has been muzzled.
Lex Fridman (2:00:51.600)
Right?
Lex Fridman (2:00:52.120)
Yeah.
Eric Weinstein (2:00:53.080)
Now, what I'm trying to get at is you're talking about younger energetic people,
Lex Fridman (2:00:58.120)
but those people...
Eric Weinstein (2:00:59.040)
Like when I say something like, I'm against...
Eric Weinstein (2:01:02.440)
I'm for inclusion and I'm for diversity, but I'm against diversity and inclusion TM,
Eric Weinstein (2:01:09.880)
like the movement.
Lex Fridman (2:01:12.400)
Well, I couldn't say that if I was a professor.
Eric Weinstein (2:01:16.360)
Oh my God, he's against our sacred document.
Lex Fridman (2:01:18.840)
Okay.
Lex Fridman (2:01:19.240)
Well, in that kind of a world, do you want to know how many things I don't agree with you on?
Eric Weinstein (2:01:24.480)
Like we could go on for days and days and days, all the nonsense that you've parroted inside of the institution.
Eric Weinstein (2:01:30.840)
Any sane person like has no need for it.
Lex Fridman (2:01:33.280)
They have no want or desire.
Lex Fridman (2:01:37.560)
Do you think you have to have some patience for nonsense when many people work together in a system?
Lex Fridman (2:01:44.240)
How long has string theory gone on for?
Lex Fridman (2:01:45.920)
And how long have I been patient?
Lex Fridman (2:01:48.200)
Okay.
Lex Fridman (2:01:48.400)
So you're talking about...
Lex Fridman (2:01:49.040)
There's a limit to patience.
Eric Weinstein (2:01:50.280)
You're talking about like 36 years of modern nonsense and string theory.
Lex Fridman (2:01:54.960)
So you can do like eight to 10 years, but not more.
Eric Weinstein (2:01:57.800)
I can do 40 minutes.
Lex Fridman (2:02:01.440)
This is 36 years.
Eric Weinstein (2:02:02.200)
Well, you've done that over two hours already.
Lex Fridman (2:02:03.880)
No, but I appreciate it.
Lex Fridman (2:02:05.320)
But it's been 36 years of nonsense since the anomaly cancellation in string theory.
Lex Fridman (2:02:11.000)
It's like, what are you talking about about patience?
Eric Weinstein (2:02:13.800)
I mean, Lex, you're not even acting like yourself.
Lex Fridman (2:02:18.680)
You're trying to stay in the system.
Eric Weinstein (2:02:20.560)
I'm not trying...
Eric Weinstein (2:02:22.120)
I'm trying to see if perhaps... So my hope is that the system just has a few assholes in it,
Eric Weinstein (2:02:29.640)
which you highlight, and the fundamentals of the system are broken.
Eric Weinstein (2:02:35.640)
Because if the fundamentals of the systems are broken, then I just don't see a way for MIT to succeed.
Eric Weinstein (2:02:42.840)
Like, I don't see how young people take over MIT.
Lex Fridman (2:02:47.320)
I don't see how...
Eric Weinstein (2:02:49.960)
By inspiring us.
Eric Weinstein (2:02:52.440)
You know, the great part about being at MIT, like when you saw the genius in these pranks,
Eric Weinstein (2:02:59.160)
the heart, the irreverence, it's like, don't...
Lex Fridman (2:03:03.320)
We were talking about Tom Lehrer the last time.
Eric Weinstein (2:03:05.640)
Tom Lehrer was as naughty as the day is long.
Lex Fridman (2:03:08.560)
Agreed?
Eric Weinstein (2:03:09.280)
Agreed.
Lex Fridman (2:03:10.160)
Was he also a genius?
Lex Fridman (2:03:11.680)
Was he well spoken?
Lex Fridman (2:03:12.680)
Was he highly cultured?
Eric Weinstein (2:03:14.840)
He was so talented, so intellectual that he could just make fart jokes morning,
Lex Fridman (2:03:19.040)
noon and night.
Eric Weinstein (2:03:20.280)
Okay.
Eric Weinstein (2:03:21.280)
Well, in part, the right to make fart jokes, the right to, for example, put a functioning
Eric Weinstein (2:03:26.280)
phone booth that was ringing on top of the great dome at MIT has to do with we are such
Lex Fridman (2:03:31.520)
bad asses that we can actually do this stuff.
Eric Weinstein (2:03:34.760)
Well, don't tell me about it anymore.
Lex Fridman (2:03:36.640)
Go break the law.
Eric Weinstein (2:03:38.640)
Go break the law in a way that inspires us and makes us not want to prosecute you.
Eric Weinstein (2:03:43.600)
Break the law in a way that lets us know that you're calling us out on our bullshit, that
Eric Weinstein (2:03:48.040)
you're filled with love, and that our technical talent has not gone to sleep, it's not incapable.
Lex Fridman (2:03:56.480)
And if the idea is that you're going to dig a moat around the university and fill it with
Eric Weinstein (2:04:00.800)
tiger sharks, that's awesome because I don't know how you're going to do it.
Lex Fridman (2:04:06.120)
But if you actually manage to do that, I'm not going to prosecute you under a reckless
Eric Weinstein (2:04:10.800)
endangerment.
Lex Fridman (2:04:13.320)
That's beautifully put.
Eric Weinstein (2:04:15.000)
I hope those, first of all, they'll listen, I hope young people at MIT will take over
Lex Fridman (2:04:19.760)
in this kind of way.
Eric Weinstein (2:04:22.160)
In the introduction to your podcast episode on Jeffrey Epstein, you give to me a really
Eric Weinstein (2:04:29.780)
moving story, but unfortunately for me, too brief, about your experience with a therapist
Lex Fridman (2:04:37.020)
and a lasting terror that permeated your mind.
Lex Fridman (2:04:40.440)
Can you go there, can you tell?
Eric Weinstein (2:04:45.160)
I don't think so.
Lex Fridman (2:04:46.160)
I mean, I appreciate what you're saying.
Eric Weinstein (2:04:47.720)
I said it obliquely, I said enough.
Eric Weinstein (2:04:51.920)
There are bad people who cross our paths and the current vogue is to say, oh, I'm a survivor,
Eric Weinstein (2:05:00.280)
I'm a victim, I can do anything I want.
Eric Weinstein (2:05:05.660)
This is a broken person and I don't know why I was sent to a broken person as a kid.
Lex Fridman (2:05:11.200)
And to be honest with you, I also felt like in that story, I say that I was able to say
Eric Weinstein (2:05:15.520)
no and this was like the entire weight of authority and he was misusing his position
Lex Fridman (2:05:23.440)
and I was also able to say no.
Lex Fridman (2:05:28.160)
What I couldn't say no to was having him re inflicted in my life.
Eric Weinstein (2:05:32.680)
Right, so you were sent back a second time.
Eric Weinstein (2:05:36.160)
I tried to complain about what had happened and I tried to do it in a way that did not
Eric Weinstein (2:05:42.040)
immediately cause horrific consequences to both this person and myself because we don't
Lex Fridman (2:05:48.440)
have the tools to deal with sexual misbehavior.
Eric Weinstein (2:05:55.400)
We have nuclear weapons, we don't have any way of saying this is probably not a good
Eric Weinstein (2:06:01.840)
place or a role for you at this moment as an authority figure and something needs to
Eric Weinstein (2:06:07.760)
be worked on.
Lex Fridman (2:06:08.800)
So in general, when we see somebody who is misbehaving in that way, our immediate instinct
Eric Weinstein (2:06:15.960)
is to treat the person as Satan and we understand why.
Lex Fridman (2:06:23.040)
We don't want our children to be at risk.
Eric Weinstein (2:06:28.080)
Now I personally believe that I fell down on the job and did not call out the Jeffrey
Eric Weinstein (2:06:33.480)
Epstein thing early enough because I was terrified of what Jeffrey Epstein represents and this
Eric Weinstein (2:06:38.240)
recapitulated the old terror trying to tell the world this therapist is out of control.
Lex Fridman (2:06:45.200)
And when I said that, the world responded by saying, well, you have two appointments
Eric Weinstein (2:06:50.040)
booked and you have to go for the second one.
Lex Fridman (2:06:52.520)
So I got re inflicted into this office on this person who was now convinced that I was
Eric Weinstein (2:06:57.640)
about to tear down his career and his reputation and might have been on the verge of suicide
Lex Fridman (2:07:01.160)
for all I know.
Eric Weinstein (2:07:02.160)
I don't know.
Lex Fridman (2:07:03.160)
But he was very, very angry and he was furious with me that I had breached a sacred confidence
Eric Weinstein (2:07:08.400)
of his office.
Lex Fridman (2:07:11.200)
What kind of ripple effects does that have?
Lex Fridman (2:07:13.600)
Has that had to the rest of your life?
Lex Fridman (2:07:16.400)
The absurdity and the cruelty of that?
Eric Weinstein (2:07:19.480)
I mean, there's no sense to it.
Eric Weinstein (2:07:22.560)
Well, see, this is the thing people don't really grasp, I think there's an academic
Eric Weinstein (2:07:30.240)
who I got to know many years ago, um, named Jennifer fried, who has a theory of betrayal,
Lex Fridman (2:07:39.200)
which she calls institutional betrayal.
Lex Fridman (2:07:41.400)
And her gambit is, is that when you were betrayed by an institution that is sort of like a fiduciary
Eric Weinstein (2:07:47.320)
or a parental obligation to take care of you, that you find yourself in a far different
Eric Weinstein (2:07:54.760)
situation with respect to trauma than if you were betrayed by somebody who's a peer.
Lex Fridman (2:08:02.480)
And so I think that my, in my situation, um, I kind of repeat a particular dynamic with
Eric Weinstein (2:08:12.880)
authority.
Eric Weinstein (2:08:13.880)
I come in not following all the rules, trying to do some things, not trying to do others,
Eric Weinstein (2:08:20.400)
blah, blah, blah.
Lex Fridman (2:08:21.680)
And then I get into a weird relationship with authority.
Lex Fridman (2:08:25.560)
And so I have more experience with what I would call institutional betrayal.
Eric Weinstein (2:08:29.840)
Now, the funny part about it is that when you don't have masks or PPE in a influenza
Eric Weinstein (2:08:38.200)
like pandemic and you missing ICU beds and ventilators, that is ubiquitous institutional
Lex Fridman (2:08:45.520)
betrayal.
Lex Fridman (2:08:46.920)
So I believe that in a weird way, I was very early, the idea of, and this is like the really
Eric Weinstein (2:08:53.200)
hard concept pervasive or otherwise universal institutional betrayal where all of the institutions
Eric Weinstein (2:09:01.080)
you can count on any hospital to not charge you properly for what their services are.
Eric Weinstein (2:09:06.940)
You can count on no pharmaceutical company to produce the drug that will be maximally
Eric Weinstein (2:09:11.480)
beneficial to the people who take it.
Eric Weinstein (2:09:14.560)
You know that your financial professionals are not simply working in your best interest.
Lex Fridman (2:09:19.880)
And that issue had to do with the way in which growth left our system.
Lex Fridman (2:09:25.280)
So I think that the weird thing is, is that this first institutional betrayal by a therapist
Eric Weinstein (2:09:30.560)
left me very open to the idea of, okay, well maybe the schools are bad.
Lex Fridman (2:09:34.620)
Maybe the hospitals are bad.
Eric Weinstein (2:09:35.880)
Maybe the drug companies are bad.
Lex Fridman (2:09:37.240)
Maybe our food is off.
Eric Weinstein (2:09:39.080)
Maybe our journalists are not serving journalistic ends.
Lex Fridman (2:09:42.180)
And that was what allowed me to sort of go all the distance and say, huh, I wonder if
Eric Weinstein (2:09:47.600)
our problem is that something is causing all of our sensemaking institutions to be off.
Lex Fridman (2:09:54.260)
That was the big insight and that tying that to a single ideology.
Lex Fridman (2:09:59.360)
What if it's just about growth?
Eric Weinstein (2:10:00.680)
They were all built on growth and now we've promoted people who are capable of keeping
Eric Weinstein (2:10:05.600)
quiet that their institutions aren't working.
Lex Fridman (2:10:08.720)
So we've, the privileged silent aristocracy, the people who can be counted upon, not to
Eric Weinstein (2:10:15.300)
mention a fire when a raging fire is tearing through a building.
Lex Fridman (2:10:20.680)
But nevertheless, it's how big of a psychological burden is that?
Eric Weinstein (2:10:25.280)
It's huge.
Lex Fridman (2:10:26.560)
It's terrible.
Eric Weinstein (2:10:27.560)
It's crushing.
Lex Fridman (2:10:28.560)
It's very, it's very comforting to be the parental, I mean, I don't know.
Eric Weinstein (2:10:34.280)
I treasure, I mean, we were just talking about MIT.
Eric Weinstein (2:10:38.480)
We can, until I can intellectualize and agree with everything you're saying, but there's
Eric Weinstein (2:10:42.600)
a comfort, a warm blanket of being within the institution and up until Aaron Schwartz,
Eric Weinstein (2:10:49.680)
let's say, in other words, now, if I look at the provost and the president as mommy
Lex Fridman (2:10:54.880)
and daddy, you did what to my big brother?
Lex Fridman (2:11:00.580)
You did what to our family?
Lex Fridman (2:11:03.540)
You sold us out in which way?
Lex Fridman (2:11:06.860)
What secrets left for China?
Lex Fridman (2:11:09.000)
You hired which workforce?
Lex Fridman (2:11:10.800)
You did what to my wages?
Lex Fridman (2:11:13.180)
You took this portion of my grant for what purpose?
Lex Fridman (2:11:15.700)
You just stole my retirement through a fringe rate.
Lex Fridman (2:11:18.560)
What did you do?
Lex Fridman (2:11:19.820)
But can you still, I mean, the thing is about this view you have is it often turns out to
Eric Weinstein (2:11:26.760)
be sadly correct.
Lex Fridman (2:11:27.760)
Well, this is the thing.
Lex Fridman (2:11:29.880)
But let me just, in this silly, hopeful thing, do you still have hope in institutions?
Lex Fridman (2:11:37.000)
Can you within your, psychologically, I'm referring not intellectually, because you
Lex Fridman (2:11:42.560)
have to carry this burden, can you still have a hope within you?
Eric Weinstein (2:11:47.480)
When you sit at home alone and as opposed to seeing the darkness within these institutions,
Eric Weinstein (2:11:53.320)
seeing a hope.
Lex Fridman (2:11:54.320)
Well, but this is the thing.
Eric Weinstein (2:11:55.760)
I want to confront, not for the purpose of a dust up.
Eric Weinstein (2:12:02.240)
I believe, for example, if you've heard episode 19, that the best outcome is for Carol Greider
Eric Weinstein (2:12:09.000)
to come forward, as we discussed in episode 19, and say, you know what, I screwed up.
Lex Fridman (2:12:17.760)
He did call.
Eric Weinstein (2:12:18.760)
He did suggest the experiment.
Lex Fridman (2:12:20.920)
I didn't understand that it was his theory that was producing it.
Eric Weinstein (2:12:24.380)
I was slow to grasp it.
Lex Fridman (2:12:27.480)
But my bad.
Lex Fridman (2:12:30.120)
And I don't want to pay for this bad choice on my part, let's say.
Eric Weinstein (2:12:38.480)
For the rest of my career, I want to own up, and I want to help make sure that we do what's
Eric Weinstein (2:12:44.000)
right with what's left.
Lex Fridman (2:12:45.280)
And that's one little case within the institution that you would like to see made.
Eric Weinstein (2:12:48.680)
I would like to see MIT very clearly come out and say, Margot O'Toole was right when
Eric Weinstein (2:12:54.560)
she said David Baltimore's lab here produced some stuff that was not reproducible with
Eric Weinstein (2:13:02.920)
Teresa Imanishi Kari's research.
Lex Fridman (2:13:05.600)
I want to see the courageous people.
Eric Weinstein (2:13:08.760)
I would like to see the Aaron Schwartz wing of the computer science department.
Lex Fridman (2:13:14.600)
Yeah, wouldn't, no, let's think about it.
Eric Weinstein (2:13:17.640)
Wouldn't that be great if we said, you know, an injustice was done and we're going to write
Lex Fridman (2:13:22.200)
that wrong just as if this was Alan Turing?
Eric Weinstein (2:13:26.660)
Which I don't think they've righted that wrong.
Lex Fridman (2:13:28.940)
Well then let's have the Turing Schwartz wing.
Eric Weinstein (2:13:33.160)
They're starting a new college of computing.
Lex Fridman (2:13:34.920)
It wouldn't be wonderful to call it the Turing Schwartz wing.
Eric Weinstein (2:13:37.280)
I would like to have the Madame Wu wing of the physics department.
Lex Fridman (2:13:41.080)
And I'd love to have the Emmy Nerder statue in front of the math department.
Lex Fridman (2:13:45.480)
I mean, like you want to get excited about actual diversity and inclusion?
Lex Fridman (2:13:48.920)
Yeah.
Eric Weinstein (2:13:49.920)
Well, let's go with our absolute best people who never got theirs because there is structural
Lex Fridman (2:13:53.880)
bigotry, you know?
Lex Fridman (2:13:56.100)
But if we don't actually start celebrating the beautiful stuff that we're capable of
Lex Fridman (2:14:00.800)
when we're handed heroes and we fumble them into the trash, what the hell?
Eric Weinstein (2:14:05.320)
I mean, Lex, this is such nonsense.
Lex Fridman (2:14:10.280)
We just pulling our head out.
Eric Weinstein (2:14:16.080)
You know, on everyone's cecum should be tattooed, if you can read this, you're too close.
Lex Fridman (2:14:25.840)
Beautifully put and I'm a dreamer just like you.
Lex Fridman (2:14:30.680)
So I don't see as much of the darkness genetically or due to my life experience, but I do share
Lex Fridman (2:14:38.820)
the hope.
Eric Weinstein (2:14:39.820)
From my teeth, the institution that we care a lot about.
Lex Fridman (2:14:42.640)
You both do.
Eric Weinstein (2:14:43.640)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (2:14:44.640)
And a Harvard institution I don't give a damn about, but you do.
Lex Fridman (2:14:48.040)
So I love Harvard.
Lex Fridman (2:14:49.040)
I'm just kidding.
Eric Weinstein (2:14:50.040)
I love Harvard, but Harvard and I have a very difficult relationship.
Lex Fridman (2:14:53.520)
And part of what, you know, when you love a family that isn't working, I don't want
Eric Weinstein (2:14:58.400)
to trash.
Eric Weinstein (2:14:59.400)
I didn't bring up the name of the president of MIT during the Aaron Schwartz period.
Eric Weinstein (2:15:05.080)
It's not vengeance.
Lex Fridman (2:15:06.600)
I want the rot cleared out.
Eric Weinstein (2:15:09.000)
I don't need to go after human beings.
Lex Fridman (2:15:11.840)
Yeah.
Eric Weinstein (2:15:12.840)
Just like you said with the, with the disc formulation, the individual human beings aren't
Lex Fridman (2:15:19.080)
don't necessarily carry them.
Eric Weinstein (2:15:22.960)
It's those chairs that are so powerful that in which they sit.
Lex Fridman (2:15:26.640)
It's the chairs, not the humans, not the humans without naming names.
Lex Fridman (2:15:34.240)
Can you tell the story of your struggle during your time at Harvard, maybe in a way that
Eric Weinstein (2:15:41.140)
tells the bigger story of the struggle of young bright minds that are trying to come
Lex Fridman (2:15:47.440)
up with big, bold ideas within the institutions that we're talking about?
Lex Fridman (2:15:54.360)
You can start.
Eric Weinstein (2:15:55.360)
I mean, in part, uh, it starts with, uh, coffee with, uh, a couple, uh, of Croatians in the
Lex Fridman (2:16:06.520)
math department at MIT.
Eric Weinstein (2:16:09.680)
And, um, we used to talk about, um, music and dance and math and physics and love and
Eric Weinstein (2:16:17.560)
all this kind of stuff as Eastern Europeans, uh, love to, and I ate it up and my friend
Eric Weinstein (2:16:24.960)
Gordon, uh, who was, uh, an instructor in the MIT math department when I was a graduate
Eric Weinstein (2:16:30.280)
student at Harvard said to me, I'm probably gonna do a bad version of her accent, but
Eric Weinstein (2:16:36.440)
here we go.
Lex Fridman (2:16:37.440)
It, um, will I see you tomorrow at the secret seminar?
Lex Fridman (2:16:42.560)
And I said, w what secret seminar, Eric, don't joke.
Lex Fridman (2:16:48.920)
I said, I'm not used to this style of humor.
Eric Weinstein (2:16:52.880)
Then she's Eric, the secret seminar that your advisor is running.
Lex Fridman (2:16:57.840)
I said, what are you talking about?
Eric Weinstein (2:17:00.960)
Ha ha ha, uh, you know, your advisor is running a secret seminar on this aspect.
Lex Fridman (2:17:06.120)
I think it was like the churn Simon's invariant.
Eric Weinstein (2:17:09.240)
I'm not sure what the topic was again, but she gave me the room number and the time and
Lex Fridman (2:17:14.960)
she was like not cracking a smile.
Eric Weinstein (2:17:16.760)
I've never known her to make this kind of a joke.
Lex Fridman (2:17:18.840)
And I thought this was crazy and I was trying to have an advisor.
Eric Weinstein (2:17:22.080)
I didn't want an advisor, but people said you have to have one.
Lex Fridman (2:17:24.480)
So I took one and I went to this room at like 15 minutes early and there was not a soul
Eric Weinstein (2:17:32.160)
inside it.
Eric Weinstein (2:17:33.160)
It was outside of the math department and it was still in the same building, the science
Eric Weinstein (2:17:38.960)
center at Harvard.
Lex Fridman (2:17:41.260)
And I sat there and I let five minutes go by, I let seven minutes go by, 10 minutes
Eric Weinstein (2:17:45.440)
go by.
Lex Fridman (2:17:46.440)
There's nobody.
Eric Weinstein (2:17:47.440)
I thought, okay, so this was all an elaborate joke.
Lex Fridman (2:17:50.680)
And then like three minutes to the hour, this graduate student walks in and like sees me
Lex Fridman (2:17:56.720)
and does a double take.
Lex Fridman (2:17:58.660)
And then I start to see the professors in geometry and topology start to file in and
Eric Weinstein (2:18:05.760)
everybody's like very disconcerted that I'm in this room.
Lex Fridman (2:18:11.120)
And finally the person who was supposed to be my advisor walks in to the seminar and
Eric Weinstein (2:18:18.440)
sees me and goes white as a ghost.
Lex Fridman (2:18:22.880)
And I realized that the secret seminar is true, that the department is conducting a
Eric Weinstein (2:18:30.480)
secret seminar on the exact topic that I'm interested in, not telling me about it.
Lex Fridman (2:18:36.120)
And that these are the reindeer games that the Rudolph's of the department are not invited
Eric Weinstein (2:18:41.440)
to.
Lex Fridman (2:18:42.880)
And so then I realized, okay, I did not understand it.
Eric Weinstein (2:18:45.840)
There's a parallel department.
Lex Fridman (2:18:49.600)
And that became the beginning of an incredible odyssey in which I came to understand that
Eric Weinstein (2:19:00.680)
the game that I had been sold about publication, about blind refereeing, about openness and
Lex Fridman (2:19:12.360)
scientific transmission of information was all a lie.
Eric Weinstein (2:19:18.240)
I came to understand that at the very top, there's a second system that's about closed
Eric Weinstein (2:19:24.640)
meetings and private communications and agreements about citation and publication that the rest
Eric Weinstein (2:19:33.760)
of us don't understand.
Lex Fridman (2:19:36.040)
And that in large measure, that is the thing that I won't submit to.
Lex Fridman (2:19:41.040)
And so when you ask me questions like, well, why wouldn't you feel good about, you know,
Eric Weinstein (2:19:45.240)
talking to your critics or why wouldn't you feel the answer is, oh, you don't know.
Eric Weinstein (2:19:49.200)
Like if you stay in a nice hotel, you don't realize that there is an entire second structure
Eric Weinstein (2:19:54.560)
inside of that hotel where like there's usually a worker's cafe in a resort complex that isn't
Eric Weinstein (2:20:01.580)
available to the people who are staying in the hotel.
Lex Fridman (2:20:03.920)
And then there are private hallways inside the same hotel that are parallel structures.
Lex Fridman (2:20:11.960)
So that's what I found, which was in essence, just the way you can stay hotels your whole
Eric Weinstein (2:20:16.560)
life and not realize that inside of every hotel is a second structure that you're not
Eric Weinstein (2:20:20.920)
supposed to see as the guest.
Eric Weinstein (2:20:23.200)
There is a second structure inside of academics that behaves totally differently with respect
Eric Weinstein (2:20:28.600)
to how people get dinged, how people get their grants taken away, how this person comes to
Lex Fridman (2:20:33.820)
have that thing named after them.
Lex Fridman (2:20:37.640)
And by pretending that we're not running a parallel structure, um, I have no patience
Lex Fridman (2:20:44.880)
for that anymore.
Lex Fridman (2:20:45.880)
So I got a chance to see how the game, how hard ball is really played at Harvard.
Lex Fridman (2:20:52.400)
And I'm now eager to play hard ball back with the same people who played hard ball with
Eric Weinstein (2:20:59.080)
me.
Lex Fridman (2:21:00.080)
Let me ask two questions on this.
Lex Fridman (2:21:02.640)
So one, do you think it's possible, so I call those people assholes, that's the technical
Lex Fridman (2:21:10.600)
term.
Lex Fridman (2:21:11.600)
Do you think it's possible that that's just not the entire system, but a part of the system?
Eric Weinstein (2:21:18.040)
Sort of that there's, you can navigate, you can swim in the waters and find the groups
Eric Weinstein (2:21:23.840)
of people who do aspire to the openness.
Eric Weinstein (2:21:26.640)
The guy who rescued my phd was one of the people who filed in to the secret seminar.
Eric Weinstein (2:21:33.680)
Right.
Lex Fridman (2:21:35.600)
But are there people outside of this, right?
Lex Fridman (2:21:38.200)
Is he an asshole?
Eric Weinstein (2:21:39.200)
Well, yes, I was, it was a bad, no, but I'm trying to make this point, which is this isn't
Eric Weinstein (2:21:44.600)
my failure to correctly map these people.
Lex Fridman (2:21:48.120)
It's yours.
Eric Weinstein (2:21:49.120)
You, you have a simplification that isn't going to work.
Lex Fridman (2:21:53.200)
I think, okay.
Eric Weinstein (2:21:54.200)
If I asked what was the wrong term, I would say lacking of character and what would you
Lex Fridman (2:21:59.800)
have had these people do?
Lex Fridman (2:22:02.600)
Why did they do this?
Lex Fridman (2:22:03.700)
Why have a secret seminar?
Eric Weinstein (2:22:06.120)
I don't understand the exact dynamics of a secret seminar, but I think the right thing
Eric Weinstein (2:22:09.880)
to do is to, I mean, to see individuals like you, there might be a reason to have a secret
Eric Weinstein (2:22:15.800)
seminar, but they should detect that an individual like you, a brilliant mind who's thinking
Lex Fridman (2:22:23.160)
about certain ideas could be damaged by this.
Eric Weinstein (2:22:25.400)
I don't think that they see it that way.
Lex Fridman (2:22:27.860)
The idea is we're going to sneak food to the children we want to survive.
Eric Weinstein (2:22:32.480)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (2:22:33.480)
So that that's highly problematic and there should be people within that room.
Eric Weinstein (2:22:36.800)
I'm trying to say this is the thing, the ball that can't is thrown, but won't be caught.
Eric Weinstein (2:22:41.800)
The problem is they know that most of their children won't survive and they can't say
Eric Weinstein (2:22:50.560)
that.
Lex Fridman (2:22:51.560)
I see.
Eric Weinstein (2:22:52.560)
Sorry to interrupt.
Eric Weinstein (2:22:54.560)
You mean that the fact that the whole system is underfunded, that they naturally have to
Eric Weinstein (2:23:00.440)
pick favorites.
Eric Weinstein (2:23:02.240)
They live in a world which reached steady state at some level, let's say, you know,
Eric Weinstein (2:23:08.440)
in the early seventies and in that world before that time you have a professor like Norman
Eric Weinstein (2:23:16.640)
Steenrod and you'd have 20 children that is graduate students and all of them would go
Lex Fridman (2:23:20.980)
on to be professors and all of them would want to have 20 children, right?
Lex Fridman (2:23:25.000)
So you start like taking higher and higher powers of 20 and you see that the system could
Eric Weinstein (2:23:30.680)
not, it's not just about money, the system couldn't survive.
Lex Fridman (2:23:34.580)
So the way it's supposed to work now is that we should shut down the vast majority of PhD
Eric Weinstein (2:23:41.040)
programs and we should let the small number of truly top places populate, um, mostly teaching
Lex Fridman (2:23:49.040)
and research departments that aren't PhD producing.
Eric Weinstein (2:23:53.040)
We don't want to do that because we use PhD students as a labor force.
Lex Fridman (2:23:56.720)
So the whole thing has to do with growth, resources, dishonesty, and in that world you
Eric Weinstein (2:24:04.480)
see all of these adaptations to a ruthless world where the key question is where are
Lex Fridman (2:24:10.040)
we going to bury this huge number of bodies of people who don't work out?
Lex Fridman (2:24:14.640)
So my problem was I wasn't interested in dying.
Lex Fridman (2:24:18.620)
So you clearly highlight that there's aspects of the system that are broken, but as an individual,
Lex Fridman (2:24:26.440)
is your role to, uh, exit the system or just acknowledge that it's a game and win it?
Lex Fridman (2:24:32.640)
My role is to survive and thrive in the public eye.
Eric Weinstein (2:24:37.560)
In other words, when you have an escapee of the system, like yourself, such as, and that
Eric Weinstein (2:24:45.520)
person says, you know, I wasn't exactly finished, let me show you a bunch of stuff.
Eric Weinstein (2:24:50.440)
Let me show you that, uh, the theory of telomeres never got reported properly.
Eric Weinstein (2:24:55.560)
Let me show you that all of, uh, marginal economics, uh, is supposed to be redone with
Eric Weinstein (2:25:00.920)
a different version of the differential calculus.
Eric Weinstein (2:25:03.040)
Let me show you that you didn't understand the self dual Yang Mills equations correctly
Eric Weinstein (2:25:07.400)
in topology and physics because they're in fact, uh, much more broadly found and it's
Lex Fridman (2:25:15.360)
only the mutations that happen in special dimensions.
Eric Weinstein (2:25:17.840)
There are lots of things to say, but this particular group of people, like if you just
Lex Fridman (2:25:24.400)
take, where are all the gen X and millennial university presidents?
Eric Weinstein (2:25:30.240)
Right.
Lex Fridman (2:25:31.240)
Okay.
Eric Weinstein (2:25:32.240)
They're all, they're all in a holding pattern.
Lex Fridman (2:25:36.320)
Now where, why in this story, you know, was it of telomeres?
Lex Fridman (2:25:42.040)
Was it an older professor and a younger graduate student?
Lex Fridman (2:25:45.520)
It's this issue of what would be called interference competition.
Lex Fridman (2:25:50.060)
So for example, orcas try to drown minke whales by covering their blow holes so that they
Lex Fridman (2:25:55.520)
suffocate because the needed resource is air.
Eric Weinstein (2:25:58.960)
Okay.
Lex Fridman (2:25:59.960)
Well, what do the universities do?
Eric Weinstein (2:26:01.660)
They try to make sure that you can't be viable, that you need them, that you need their grants.
Eric Weinstein (2:26:08.160)
You need to be, uh, zinged with overhead charges or fringe rates or all of the games that the
Eric Weinstein (2:26:15.440)
locals love to play.
Lex Fridman (2:26:17.200)
Well, my point is, okay, what's the cost of this?
Lex Fridman (2:26:20.640)
How many people died as a result of these interference competition games?
Eric Weinstein (2:26:25.880)
You know, when you take somebody like Douglas Prasher who did green fluorescent protein
Lex Fridman (2:26:30.120)
and he drives a shuttle bus, right?
Eric Weinstein (2:26:32.160)
Cause he, his grant runs out and he has to give away all of his research and all of that
Eric Weinstein (2:26:36.280)
research gets a Nobel prize and he gets to drive a shuttle bus for $35,000 a year.
Lex Fridman (2:26:40.920)
What do you mean by died?
Lex Fridman (2:26:41.920)
You mean their career, their dreams, their passions?
Eric Weinstein (2:26:43.920)
Yeah, the whole, as an academic, Doug Prasher was dead for a long period of time.
Eric Weinstein (2:26:49.760)
Okay.
Lex Fridman (2:26:51.400)
So as a, as a person who's escaped the system, can't you at this, cause you also have in
Eric Weinstein (2:26:58.560)
your mind a powerful theory that may turn out to be a useful, maybe not.
Lex Fridman (2:27:05.040)
So can't you also play the game enough?
Eric Weinstein (2:27:09.840)
Like with the children, so like publish and, but also if you told me that this would work,
Eric Weinstein (2:27:16.640)
really what I want to do, you see, is I would love to revolutionize a field with an H index
Eric Weinstein (2:27:23.960)
of zero, like we have these proxies that count how many papers you've written, how cited
Lex Fridman (2:27:31.700)
are the papers you've written.
Eric Weinstein (2:27:34.160)
All of this is nonsense.
Lex Fridman (2:27:35.160)
That's interesting.
Eric Weinstein (2:27:36.160)
Sorry.
Lex Fridman (2:27:37.160)
What do you mean by field with an H index as your, so a totally new field.
Eric Weinstein (2:27:40.240)
H index is count somehow.
Lex Fridman (2:27:42.200)
How many papers have you gotten that get so many citations?
Eric Weinstein (2:27:46.320)
Let's say H index undefined, like for example, um, I don't have an advisor for my PhD, but
Eric Weinstein (2:27:56.160)
I have to have an advisor as far as something called the math genealogy project that tracks
Eric Weinstein (2:28:01.400)
who advised who, who advised whom down the line.
Lex Fridman (2:28:07.160)
So I am my own advisor, which sets up a loop, right?
Lex Fridman (2:28:10.600)
How many students do I have?
Lex Fridman (2:28:11.600)
An infinite number.
Eric Weinstein (2:28:12.600)
Um, your descendants, they don't want to have that story.
Lex Fridman (2:28:16.940)
So I have to be, I have to have formal advisor, Raul bought, and my Wikipedia entry, for example,
Eric Weinstein (2:28:21.920)
says that I was advised by Raul bought, which is not true.
Lex Fridman (2:28:25.760)
So you get fit into a system that says, well, we have to know what your H index is.
Lex Fridman (2:28:31.000)
We have to know, um, you know, where are you a professor?
Lex Fridman (2:28:34.520)
If you want to apply for a grant, it makes all of these assumptions.
Lex Fridman (2:28:38.040)
What I'm trying to do is in part to show all of this is nonsense.
Lex Fridman (2:28:41.960)
This is proxy BS that came up in the institutional setting.
Lex Fridman (2:28:45.760)
And right now it's important for those of us who are still vital, like Elon, it would
Lex Fridman (2:28:50.400)
be great to have Elon as a professor of physics and engineering.
Eric Weinstein (2:28:53.640)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (2:28:54.640)
Right.
Eric Weinstein (2:28:55.640)
It seems ridiculous to say, but just as a shot, just as a shot in the arm.
Lex Fridman (2:29:00.440)
Yeah.
Eric Weinstein (2:29:01.440)
You know, like it'd be great to have Elon at Caltech even one day a week, one day a
Lex Fridman (2:29:07.120)
month.
Eric Weinstein (2:29:08.120)
Okay.
Lex Fridman (2:29:09.120)
Well, why can't we be in there?
Eric Weinstein (2:29:10.920)
It's the same reason.
Lex Fridman (2:29:11.920)
Well, why can't you be on the view?
Lex Fridman (2:29:13.440)
Why can't you be on bill Martin?
Eric Weinstein (2:29:14.880)
We need to know what you're going to do before we take you on the show on the show.
Eric Weinstein (2:29:18.200)
Well, I don't want to tell you what I'm going to do.
Lex Fridman (2:29:20.760)
Do you think you need to be able to dance the dance a little bit?
Eric Weinstein (2:29:24.440)
I can dance the dance fun to be on the view.
Lex Fridman (2:29:26.760)
Oh, come on.
Lex Fridman (2:29:27.760)
So you can, yeah, you do.
Lex Fridman (2:29:28.760)
You're not, I can do that.
Eric Weinstein (2:29:30.560)
Fine.
Eric Weinstein (2:29:31.560)
Here's where the place that it goes south is there like a set of questions that get
Eric Weinstein (2:29:37.320)
you into this more adversarial stuff.
Lex Fridman (2:29:39.880)
And you've in fact asked some of those more adversarial questions, the setting, and they're
Eric Weinstein (2:29:44.680)
not things that are necessarily aggressive, but they're things that are making assumptions.
Lex Fridman (2:29:49.200)
Right.
Eric Weinstein (2:29:50.200)
Right.
Lex Fridman (2:29:51.200)
So when you make a, I have a question is like, you know, Lex, are you avoiding your critics?
Lex Fridman (2:29:57.120)
You know, it's just like, okay, well why did you?
Lex Fridman (2:29:58.720)
You frame that that way.
Eric Weinstein (2:29:59.720)
Or the next question would be like, um, do you think that you should have a special exemption
Lex Fridman (2:30:04.480)
and that you should have the right to break rules and everyone else should have to follow
Lex Fridman (2:30:07.400)
them?
Lex Fridman (2:30:08.400)
Like that question I find innervating.
Eric Weinstein (2:30:09.960)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (2:30:10.960)
It doesn't really come out of anything meaningful.
Eric Weinstein (2:30:12.400)
It's just like we feel we're supposed to ask that of the other person to show that we're
Lex Fridman (2:30:16.160)
not captured by their madness.
Eric Weinstein (2:30:18.480)
That's not the real question you want to ask me.
Eric Weinstein (2:30:20.120)
If you want to get really excited about this, you want to ask, do you think this thing is
Lex Fridman (2:30:24.480)
right?
Lex Fridman (2:30:25.480)
Yeah.
Eric Weinstein (2:30:26.480)
Weirdly I do.
Lex Fridman (2:30:27.480)
Do you think that it's going to be immediately seen to be right?
Eric Weinstein (2:30:30.160)
I don't.
Eric Weinstein (2:30:31.160)
I think it's going to, it's going to have an interesting fight and it's going to have
Lex Fridman (2:30:34.280)
an interesting evolution and well, what do you hope to do with it in nonphysical terms?
Eric Weinstein (2:30:39.560)
Gosh, I hope it revolutionizes our relationship of well with people outside of the institutional
Eric Weinstein (2:30:47.240)
framework and it re inflicts us into the institutional framework where we can do the most good to
Lex Fridman (2:30:52.280)
bring the institutions back to health.
Eric Weinstein (2:30:55.500)
You know, it's like these are positive, uplifting questions and if you had Frank will check,
Eric Weinstein (2:31:00.480)
you wouldn't say, Frank, let's be honest, you have done very little with your life after
Eric Weinstein (2:31:05.240)
the original, a huge show that you used to break onto the physics scene.
Lex Fridman (2:31:10.160)
Like we weirdly ask people different questions based upon how they sit down.
Eric Weinstein (2:31:14.720)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (2:31:15.720)
That's very strange, right?
Lex Fridman (2:31:16.720)
But you have to understand that.
Lex Fridman (2:31:20.000)
So here's the thing.
Eric Weinstein (2:31:21.000)
I get these days, a large number of emails from people with the equivalent of a theory
Eric Weinstein (2:31:27.440)
of everything for AGI and I use my own radar, BS radar to detect unfairly, perhaps whether
Eric Weinstein (2:31:39.920)
they're full of shit or not, because I love where you're going with this, by the way.
Eric Weinstein (2:31:48.680)
My concern I often think about is there's elements of brilliance in what people write
Eric Weinstein (2:31:54.400)
to me and I'm trying to right now, as you made it clear, the kind of judgments and assumptions
Eric Weinstein (2:32:01.900)
we make, how am I supposed to deal with you who are not an outsider of the system and
Eric Weinstein (2:32:08.440)
think about what you're doing because my radar is saying you're not full of shit.
Lex Fridman (2:32:15.680)
But I'm also not completely outside of the system.
Eric Weinstein (2:32:18.260)
That's right.
Lex Fridman (2:32:19.260)
You've danced beautifully.
Eric Weinstein (2:32:20.620)
You've actually got all the credibility that you're supposed to get, all the nice little
Lex Fridman (2:32:26.080)
stamps of approval, not all, but a large enough amount.
Eric Weinstein (2:32:33.080)
I mean, it's hard to put into words exactly why you sound, whether your theory turns out
Lex Fridman (2:32:41.560)
to be good or not, you sound like a special human being.
Eric Weinstein (2:32:46.720)
I appreciate that and thank you in a good way.
Lex Fridman (2:32:50.400)
So but what am I supposed to do with that flood of emails from AGI?
Lex Fridman (2:32:54.840)
Why do I sound different?
Lex Fridman (2:32:56.640)
I don't know.
Lex Fridman (2:32:58.240)
And I would like to systemize that.
Lex Fridman (2:32:59.600)
I don't know.
Eric Weinstein (2:33:01.480)
Look, you know, when you're talking to people, you very quickly can surmise, like, am I claiming
Lex Fridman (2:33:09.420)
to be a physicist?
Eric Weinstein (2:33:10.420)
No, I say it every turn.
Lex Fridman (2:33:11.600)
I'm not a physicist, right?
Eric Weinstein (2:33:14.840)
When I say to you, when you say something about bundles, you say, well, can you explain
Lex Fridman (2:33:17.720)
it differently?
Eric Weinstein (2:33:18.720)
You know, I'm pushing around on this area, that lever over there.
Lex Fridman (2:33:25.080)
I'm trying to find something that we can play with and engage.
Lex Fridman (2:33:30.320)
And you know, another thing is that I'll say something at scale.
Lex Fridman (2:33:34.540)
So if I was saying completely wrong things about bundles on the Joe Rogan program, you
Eric Weinstein (2:33:38.840)
don't think that we wouldn't hear a crushing chorus.
Lex Fridman (2:33:41.480)
Yes.
Eric Weinstein (2:33:42.480)
Absolutely.
Lex Fridman (2:33:43.480)
And you know, same thing with geometric unity.
Lex Fridman (2:33:45.400)
So I put up this video from this Oxford lecture.
Eric Weinstein (2:33:50.160)
I understand that it's not a standard lecture, but you haven't heard, you know, the most
Eric Weinstein (2:33:56.840)
brilliant people in the field say, well, this is obviously nonsense.
Lex Fridman (2:34:00.960)
They don't know what to make of it.
Lex Fridman (2:34:01.960)
And they're going to hide behind, well, he hasn't said enough details.
Lex Fridman (2:34:06.720)
Where's the paper?
Lex Fridman (2:34:07.720)
Where's the paper?
Lex Fridman (2:34:08.720)
I've seen the criticism.
Eric Weinstein (2:34:10.560)
I've gotten the same kind of criticism.
Eric Weinstein (2:34:11.880)
I've published a few things and like, especially stuff related to Tesla that we did studies
Eric Weinstein (2:34:19.120)
on Tesla vehicles and the kind of criticism I've gotten, which showed that they're completely.
Lex Fridman (2:34:24.480)
Oh, right.
Eric Weinstein (2:34:25.480)
Like the guy who had Elon Musk on his program twice is going to give us an accurate assessment.
Lex Fridman (2:34:29.720)
Next.
Eric Weinstein (2:34:30.720)
Exactly.
Lex Fridman (2:34:31.720)
Exactly.
Eric Weinstein (2:34:32.720)
Exactly.
Lex Fridman (2:34:33.720)
It's just very low level.
Eric Weinstein (2:34:34.720)
Like without actually ever addressing the content.
Eric Weinstein (2:34:40.480)
You know, Lex, I think that in part you're trying to solve a puzzle that isn't really
Eric Weinstein (2:34:44.840)
your puzzle.
Lex Fridman (2:34:45.840)
I think, you know, that I'm sincere.
Eric Weinstein (2:34:47.640)
You don't know whether the theory is going to work or not.
Lex Fridman (2:34:50.820)
And you know that it's not coming out of somebody who's coming out of left field, like the story
Eric Weinstein (2:34:55.440)
makes sense.
Eric Weinstein (2:34:56.440)
There's enough that's new and creative and different in other aspects where you can check
Eric Weinstein (2:35:01.880)
me that your real concern is, are you really telling me that when you start breaking the
Eric Weinstein (2:35:08.120)
rules, you see the system for what it is and it's become really vicious and aggressive.
Lex Fridman (2:35:13.080)
And the answer is yes, and I had to break the rules in part because of learning issues
Eric Weinstein (2:35:18.240)
because I came into this field, you know, with a totally different set of attributes.
Eric Weinstein (2:35:23.620)
My profile just doesn't look like anybody else's remotely, but as a result, what that
Eric Weinstein (2:35:28.300)
did is it showed me what is the system true to its own ideals or does it just follow these
Eric Weinstein (2:35:34.080)
weird procedures and then when it, when you take it off the rails, it behaves terribly.
Lex Fridman (2:35:39.360)
And that's really what my story I think does is it just says, well, he completely takes
Eric Weinstein (2:35:45.500)
the system into new territory where it's not expecting to have to deal with somebody with
Lex Fridman (2:35:49.960)
these confusing sets of attributes.
Lex Fridman (2:35:52.400)
And I think what he's telling us is he believes it behaves terribly.
Eric Weinstein (2:35:56.440)
Now, if you take somebody with perfect standardized tests and you know, a winner of math competitions
Lex Fridman (2:36:04.320)
and you put them in a PhD program, they're probably going to be okay.
Eric Weinstein (2:36:09.880)
I'm not saying that the system, um, you know, breaks down for any everybody under all circumstances.
Eric Weinstein (2:36:17.680)
I'm saying when you present the system with a novel situation at the moment, it will almost
Lex Fridman (2:36:23.360)
certainly break down with probability approaching 100%.
Lex Fridman (2:36:29.240)
But to me, the painful and the tragic thing is it, uh, sorry to bring out my motherly
Lex Fridman (2:36:35.840)
instinct, but it feels like it's too much.
Eric Weinstein (2:36:39.220)
It could be too much of a burden to exist outside the system, maybe, but psychologically,
Eric Weinstein (2:36:44.280)
first of all, I've got a podcast that I kind of like and I've got amazing friends.
Eric Weinstein (2:36:51.760)
I have a life which has more interesting people passing through it than I know what to do
Lex Fridman (2:36:55.840)
with.
Eric Weinstein (2:36:56.840)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (2:36:57.840)
And they haven't managed to kill me off yet.
Eric Weinstein (2:36:58.840)
So, so far, so good.
Eric Weinstein (2:37:02.000)
Speaking of which you host an amazing podcast that we've mentioned several times, but should
Eric Weinstein (2:37:06.400)
mention over and over the portal, uh, where you somehow manage every single conversation
Lex Fridman (2:37:13.440)
is a surprise.
Eric Weinstein (2:37:15.560)
You go, I mean, not just the guests, but just the places you take them, uh, the, the kind
Lex Fridman (2:37:22.080)
of ways they become challenging and how you recover from that.
Eric Weinstein (2:37:25.280)
I mean, it's, uh, there's just, it's full of genuine human moments.
Lex Fridman (2:37:30.920)
So I really appreciate what you're, it's a fun, fun podcast to listen to.
Eric Weinstein (2:37:35.280)
Uh, let me ask some silly questions about it.
Lex Fridman (2:37:38.240)
What have you learned about conversation about human to human conversation?
Eric Weinstein (2:37:43.480)
Well, I have a problem that I haven't solved on the portal, which is that in general, when
Eric Weinstein (2:37:50.040)
I ask people questions, they usually find their deeply grooved answers and I'm not so
Eric Weinstein (2:37:56.760)
interested in all of the deeply grooved answers.
Lex Fridman (2:37:59.120)
And so there's a complaint, which I'm very sympathetic to actually that I talk over people
Eric Weinstein (2:38:03.920)
that I won't sit still for the answer.
Lex Fridman (2:38:05.400)
And I think that that's weirdly sort of correct.
Eric Weinstein (2:38:09.280)
It's not that I'm not interested in hearing other voices.
Eric Weinstein (2:38:12.680)
That I'm not interested in hearing the same voice on my program that I could have gotten
Eric Weinstein (2:38:16.880)
on somebody else's.
Lex Fridman (2:38:17.880)
And I haven't solved that well.
Lex Fridman (2:38:19.600)
So I've learned that I need a new conversational technique where I can keep somebody from finding
Lex Fridman (2:38:25.200)
their comfortable place and yet not be the voice talking over that person.
Eric Weinstein (2:38:29.960)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (2:38:30.960)
It's funny.
Eric Weinstein (2:38:31.960)
I can sense like your conversation with Brett, I can sense you detect that the line he's
Eric Weinstein (2:38:36.440)
going down, you know how it's going to end and you think it's a useless line, so you'll
Eric Weinstein (2:38:43.800)
just stop it right there and you take them into the direction that you think it should
Lex Fridman (2:38:47.360)
go.
Lex Fridman (2:38:48.360)
But that requires interruption.
Lex Fridman (2:38:49.360)
Well, and it does so far.
Eric Weinstein (2:38:51.320)
I haven't found a better way.
Lex Fridman (2:38:52.440)
I'm looking for a better way.
Eric Weinstein (2:38:54.240)
It's not like I don't hear the problem.
Lex Fridman (2:38:57.020)
I do hear the problem.
Eric Weinstein (2:38:59.280)
I haven't solved the problem.
Lex Fridman (2:39:01.880)
And you know, on the, on the bread episode, um, I was insufferable.
Eric Weinstein (2:39:06.680)
It was very difficult to listen to.
Lex Fridman (2:39:08.640)
It was so overbearing.
Lex Fridman (2:39:10.520)
But on the other hand, I was right.
Lex Fridman (2:39:12.640)
You know, it's like funny.
Eric Weinstein (2:39:14.000)
You keep saying that, but I didn't find it maybe because I heard brothers, like I heard
Lex Fridman (2:39:19.360)
a big brother.
Eric Weinstein (2:39:20.360)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (2:39:21.360)
It was pretty bad.
Lex Fridman (2:39:22.360)
Really?
Lex Fridman (2:39:23.360)
I think so.
Eric Weinstein (2:39:24.360)
I didn't think it was bad.
Lex Fridman (2:39:25.360)
Well, a lot of people found it interesting.
Lex Fridman (2:39:26.440)
And I think it also has to do with the fact that this has become a frequent experience.
Eric Weinstein (2:39:31.040)
I have several shows where somebody who I very much admire and think of as courageous,
Eric Weinstein (2:39:35.960)
um, you know, I'm talking with them, maybe we're friends and they sit down on the show
Lex Fridman (2:39:41.400)
and they immediately become this fake person.
Eric Weinstein (2:39:44.560)
Like two seconds in there, they're sort of saying, well, I don't want to be too critical
Lex Fridman (2:39:49.200)
or too harsh.
Eric Weinstein (2:39:50.200)
I don't want to name any names.
Lex Fridman (2:39:51.200)
I wanted this story.
Eric Weinstein (2:39:52.200)
He was like, okay, I'm going to put my listeners through three hours of you being sweetness
Lex Fridman (2:39:57.440)
and light.
Eric Weinstein (2:39:58.440)
Like at least give me some reality and then we can decide to shelve the show and never
Eric Weinstein (2:40:04.960)
let it hear, uh, you know, the, the, the call of freedom in the, in the bigger world.
Lex Fridman (2:40:10.040)
But I've seen you break out of that a few times.
Eric Weinstein (2:40:12.800)
I've seen you to be successful that, uh, I forgot to guess, but she was dressed with,
Eric Weinstein (2:40:18.000)
um, um, you were at the end of the episode, you had an argument about Brett.
Lex Fridman (2:40:24.520)
I forgot.
Eric Weinstein (2:40:25.520)
Agnes Callard.
Lex Fridman (2:40:26.520)
Yeah.
Eric Weinstein (2:40:27.520)
She was one of the philosophers for at the university of Chicago.
Lex Fridman (2:40:30.080)
Yeah.
Eric Weinstein (2:40:31.080)
You've continuously broken out of her.
Lex Fridman (2:40:33.280)
Uh, you guys went, you know, uh, I didn't even seem pretty genuine.
Eric Weinstein (2:40:38.040)
I like her.
Lex Fridman (2:40:39.400)
I'm completely ethically opposed to what she's ethically for.
Eric Weinstein (2:40:42.720)
Well, she was great.
Lex Fridman (2:40:44.480)
And she wasn't like that.
Eric Weinstein (2:40:46.000)
You're both going hard.
Lex Fridman (2:40:47.600)
She's a grownup.
Eric Weinstein (2:40:48.600)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (2:40:49.600)
And she knows that I care about her.
Lex Fridman (2:40:50.600)
So that was awesome.
Lex Fridman (2:40:51.600)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (2:40:52.600)
But you're saying that some people are difficult to break out.
Eric Weinstein (2:40:55.520)
Well, it's just that, you know, she was bringing the courage of her convictions.
Eric Weinstein (2:40:59.840)
She was sort of defending the system and I thought, wow, that's a pretty indefensible
Lex Fridman (2:41:05.320)
system that you're doing.
Eric Weinstein (2:41:06.320)
That's great though.
Lex Fridman (2:41:07.320)
She's doing that.
Lex Fridman (2:41:08.320)
Isn't it?
Lex Fridman (2:41:09.320)
I mean, it made for an awesome, it's very informative for the world.
Eric Weinstein (2:41:13.840)
Yes.
Lex Fridman (2:41:14.840)
You just hated.
Eric Weinstein (2:41:15.840)
I just can't stand the idea that somebody says, well, we don't care who gets paid or
Lex Fridman (2:41:19.720)
who gets the credit as long as we get the goodies.
Eric Weinstein (2:41:21.920)
Cause that seems like insane.
Lex Fridman (2:41:24.360)
Have you ever been afraid leading into a conversation?
Eric Weinstein (2:41:30.760)
Gary Kasparov.
Eric Weinstein (2:41:31.760)
By the way, I mean, I know I'm just a fan taking requests, but I started, I started
Eric Weinstein (2:41:39.920)
the beginning in Russian and in fact I used one word incorrectly.
Lex Fridman (2:41:43.280)
Is that terrible?
Eric Weinstein (2:41:44.280)
You know, it was, it was pretty good.
Lex Fridman (2:41:46.240)
It's pretty good Russian.
Lex Fridman (2:41:47.240)
What was terrible is I think he complimented you.
Lex Fridman (2:41:49.680)
Right?
Eric Weinstein (2:41:50.680)
No.
Lex Fridman (2:41:51.680)
Did he compliment you or was that me?
Lex Fridman (2:41:52.680)
Did he compliment you on your Russian?
Lex Fridman (2:41:54.600)
Well, he said almost perfect Russian.
Eric Weinstein (2:41:57.040)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (2:41:58.040)
Like he was full of shit.
Eric Weinstein (2:42:00.040)
That was not great Russian, but that was not great Russian.
Lex Fridman (2:42:03.000)
That was great.
Eric Weinstein (2:42:04.000)
That was hard.
Lex Fridman (2:42:05.000)
That was, you tried hard, which is what matters.
Eric Weinstein (2:42:07.280)
That is so insulting.
Lex Fridman (2:42:08.280)
I hope so.
Lex Fridman (2:42:10.160)
But I do hope you continue.
Lex Fridman (2:42:12.160)
It felt like, I don't know how long it went.
Eric Weinstein (2:42:13.960)
It might've been like a two hour conversation, but it felt, I hope it continues.
Lex Fridman (2:42:18.600)
Like I feel like you have many conversations with Gary.
Eric Weinstein (2:42:21.520)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (2:42:22.520)
I would love to hear.
Eric Weinstein (2:42:23.520)
There's certain conversations I would just love to hear a long, much longer.
Eric Weinstein (2:42:27.720)
He's coming from a very, it's this issue about needing to overpower people in a very dangerous
Eric Weinstein (2:42:33.320)
world.
Lex Fridman (2:42:34.320)
And so Gary has that need.
Eric Weinstein (2:42:36.320)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (2:42:37.320)
He wasn't, he was interrupting you.
Eric Weinstein (2:42:38.880)
Sure.
Lex Fridman (2:42:39.880)
It was an interesting dynamic.
Eric Weinstein (2:42:40.880)
It was a, it was an interesting dynamic.
Lex Fridman (2:42:43.200)
Two Weinsteins going at you.
Eric Weinstein (2:42:44.760)
I mean, two powerhouse egos, brilliant.
Lex Fridman (2:42:47.760)
No, don't say egos, minds, spirits.
Eric Weinstein (2:42:51.560)
You don't have an ego.
Lex Fridman (2:42:52.560)
You're the most humble person I know.
Lex Fridman (2:42:54.200)
Is that true?
Lex Fridman (2:42:55.360)
No, that's a complete lie.
Lex Fridman (2:42:58.520)
Do you think about your own mortality, death?
Lex Fridman (2:43:01.320)
Sure.
Lex Fridman (2:43:02.320)
Are you afraid?
Lex Fridman (2:43:03.320)
Well, I released a theory during something that can kill older people.
Eric Weinstein (2:43:07.840)
Sure.
Lex Fridman (2:43:08.840)
Oh, is there a little bit of a parallel there?
Eric Weinstein (2:43:12.640)
Of course.
Lex Fridman (2:43:13.640)
Of course.
Eric Weinstein (2:43:14.640)
I don't want it to die with me.
Lex Fridman (2:43:16.860)
What do you hope your legacy is?
Eric Weinstein (2:43:20.000)
Oh, I hope my legacy is accurate.
Eric Weinstein (2:43:28.960)
I'd like to write on my accomplishments rather than how my community decided to ding me while
Eric Weinstein (2:43:33.520)
I was alive.
Lex Fridman (2:43:34.520)
That would be great.
Lex Fridman (2:43:35.520)
What about if it was significantly exaggerated?
Lex Fridman (2:43:38.280)
I don't want it.
Eric Weinstein (2:43:39.820)
You want it to be accurate.
Eric Weinstein (2:43:42.560)
I've got some pretty terrific stuff and whether it works out or doesn't that I would like
Eric Weinstein (2:43:48.240)
it to reflect what I actually was.
Lex Fridman (2:43:52.920)
I'll settle for accurate.
Lex Fridman (2:43:56.600)
What would you say, what is the greatest element of a Eric Weinstein accomplishment in life
Lex Fridman (2:44:04.240)
in terms of being accurate?
Lex Fridman (2:44:09.360)
What are you most proud of?
Eric Weinstein (2:44:14.160)
The idea that we were stalled out in the hardest field at the most difficult juncture and that
Eric Weinstein (2:44:27.160)
I didn't listen to that voice ever that said, stop, you're hurting yourself.
Lex Fridman (2:44:36.120)
You're hurting your family.
Eric Weinstein (2:44:37.120)
You're hurting everybody.
Lex Fridman (2:44:38.120)
You're embarrassing yourself.
Eric Weinstein (2:44:39.120)
You're screwing up.
Lex Fridman (2:44:40.120)
You can't do this.
Eric Weinstein (2:44:41.120)
You're a failure.
Lex Fridman (2:44:42.120)
You're a fraud.
Eric Weinstein (2:44:43.540)
Turn back, save yourself.
Lex Fridman (2:44:46.640)
That voice, I didn't ultimately listen to it and it was going for 35, 37 years.
Eric Weinstein (2:44:58.800)
Very hard.
Lex Fridman (2:45:02.400)
And I hope you never listen to that voice.
Eric Weinstein (2:45:05.440)
That's why you're an inspiration.
Lex Fridman (2:45:07.680)
Thank you.
Eric Weinstein (2:45:08.680)
I appreciate that.
Lex Fridman (2:45:09.680)
I'm just infinitely honored that you would spend time with me.
Eric Weinstein (2:45:15.680)
You've been a mentor to me, almost a friend.
Lex Fridman (2:45:21.200)
I can't imagine a better person to talk to in this world.
Lex Fridman (2:45:23.600)
So thank you so much for talking to me.
Lex Fridman (2:45:24.920)
I can't wait till we do it again.
Eric Weinstein (2:45:26.520)
Lex, thanks for sticking with me and thanks for being the most singular guy in the podcasting
Lex Fridman (2:45:32.280)
space.
Eric Weinstein (2:45:33.280)
In terms of all of my interviews, I would say that the last one I did with you, many
Lex Fridman (2:45:38.080)
people feel was my best and it was a nonconventional one.
Lex Fridman (2:45:43.840)
So whatever it is that you're bringing to the game, I think everyone's noticing and
Lex Fridman (2:45:46.720)
keep at it.
Eric Weinstein (2:45:48.320)
Thank you.
Lex Fridman (2:45:49.320)
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Eric Weinstein.
Lex Fridman (2:45:52.640)
And thank you to our presenting sponsor, Cash App.
Eric Weinstein (2:45:55.600)
Please consider supporting the podcast by downloading Cash App and using code LexPodcast.
Eric Weinstein (2:46:00.360)
If you enjoy this podcast, subscribe on YouTube, review it with five stars on Apple Podcast,
Lex Fridman (2:46:06.720)
subscribe on Patreon, or simply connect with me on Twitter at Lex Friedman.
Lex Fridman (2:46:11.720)
And now let me leave you with some words of wisdom from Eric Weinstein's first appearance
Lex Fridman (2:46:16.400)
on this podcast.
Eric Weinstein (2:46:19.120)
Everything is great about war, except all the destruction.
Lex Fridman (2:46:24.560)
Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.
Eric Weinstein (30:03.360)
the SpaceX NASA efforts or huge,
Lex Fridman (30:08.880)
huge scientific efforts.
Eric Weinstein (30:10.040)
Well,
Lex Fridman (30:10.200)
we need to get back into the institutions and we need to remove the weak
Eric Weinstein (30:13.360)
leadership that we have weak leaders and the weak leaders need to be removed and
Eric Weinstein (30:17.040)
they need to seat people more dangerous than the people who are currently sitting
Eric Weinstein (30:21.000)
in a lot of those chairs.
Lex Fridman (30:21.960)
Yeah. Or build new institutions. Good luck. Well,
Lex Fridman (30:27.080)
so one of the nice things of, uh,
Lex Fridman (30:30.440)
from the internet is for example,
Eric Weinstein (30:32.240)
somebody like you can have a bigger voice than almost anybody at the particular
Lex Fridman (30:38.440)
institutions we're talking about.
Eric Weinstein (30:39.920)
That's true. But the thing is I might say something.
Lex Fridman (30:43.560)
You can count on the fact that the, you know,
Eric Weinstein (30:46.000)
provost at Princeton isn't going to say anything.
Lex Fridman (30:48.200)
Yeah. What do you mean to, to afraid?
Eric Weinstein (30:51.440)
Well, if that person were to give an interview,
Lex Fridman (30:55.120)
how are things going in research at Princeton? Well,
Eric Weinstein (30:58.840)
I'm hesitant to say it,
Lex Fridman (30:59.920)
but they're perhaps as good as they've ever been and I think they're going to
Eric Weinstein (31:03.120)
get better. Oh, is that right? All fields? Yep. I don't see a weak one.
Lex Fridman (31:08.440)
It's just like, okay, great. Who are you and what are you even saying?
Eric Weinstein (31:14.600)
We're just used to total nonsense. 24 seven.
Lex Fridman (31:17.000)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (31:18.360)
What do you think might be a beautiful thing that comes out of this?
Lex Fridman (31:23.360)
Like what is there a hope that like a little inkling,
Lex Fridman (31:27.440)
a little fire of hope you have about our time right now?
Lex Fridman (31:31.320)
Yeah.
Eric Weinstein (31:31.720)
I think one thing is coming to understand that the freaks, weirdos,
Lex Fridman (31:36.080)
mutants, and other, uh,
Eric Weinstein (31:39.560)
near do wells, uh, sometimes referred to as grifters. I like that one.
Eric Weinstein (31:43.240)
Grifters, uh, and gadflies were very often the earliest people on the coronavirus.
Lex Fridman (31:51.560)
That's a really interesting question. Why was that?
Lex Fridman (31:54.120)
And it seems to be that they had already paid such a social price that they
Eric Weinstein (32:00.800)
weren't going to be beaten up by being, um,
Lex Fridman (32:05.760)
told that, Oh my God, you're xenophobic. You just hate China, you know,
Eric Weinstein (32:09.960)
or wow, you sound like a conspiracy theorist. Um,
Lex Fridman (32:14.360)
so if you'd already paid those prices, you were free to think about this.
Lex Fridman (32:17.240)
And everyone in an institutional framework was terrified that they didn't want
Lex Fridman (32:21.720)
to be seen as the alarmist, the, um,
Eric Weinstein (32:26.200)
chicken little. And so that's why you have this confidence where, you know,
Lex Fridman (32:30.880)
the Blasio says, you know, get on with your lives,
Eric Weinstein (32:34.320)
get back in there and celebrate Chinese new year in Chinatown.
Lex Fridman (32:37.920)
Uh, despite coronavirus, it's like, okay, really?
Lex Fridman (32:41.040)
So you just always thought everything would automatically be okay if you,
Lex Fridman (32:44.960)
if you adapted, sorry, if you adopted that posture.
Lex Fridman (32:49.000)
So you think, uh,
Lex Fridman (32:50.160)
this time reveals the weakness of our institutions and reveals the strength of
Eric Weinstein (32:55.180)
our gadflies and the weirdos and the.
Lex Fridman (32:58.080)
No, not necessarily the strength, but the, the, the value of freedom,
Eric Weinstein (33:02.280)
like a different way of saying it would be, wow,
Lex Fridman (33:04.920)
even your gadflies and your grifters were able to beat your institutional folks
Eric Weinstein (33:09.120)
because your institutional folks were playing with a giant mental handicap.
Lex Fridman (33:13.800)
So just imagine like we were in the story of Harrison Bergeron by Vonnegut and
Eric Weinstein (33:18.800)
our smartest people were all subjected to, uh,
Lex Fridman (33:23.480)
distracting noises every seven seconds. Well,
Eric Weinstein (33:27.520)
they would be functionally much dumber because they couldn't continue a thought
Lex Fridman (33:31.800)
through all the disturbance.
Lex Fridman (33:33.080)
So in some sense, that's a little bit like what belonging to an institution is,
Lex Fridman (33:37.200)
is that if you have to make a public statement,
Eric Weinstein (33:39.080)
of course the surgeon general is going to be the worst because they're,
Lex Fridman (33:42.800)
they're just playing with too much of a handicap.
Eric Weinstein (33:44.400)
There are too many institutional players are like, don't screw us up.
Lex Fridman (33:48.160)
And so the person has to say something wrong.
Eric Weinstein (33:50.040)
We're going to back propagate a falsehood. And this is very interesting.
Lex Fridman (33:54.440)
Some of my socially oriented friends say, Eric,
Eric Weinstein (33:57.680)
I don't understand what you're on about. Of course masks work,
Lex Fridman (34:00.000)
but you know what they're trying to do.
Eric Weinstein (34:01.320)
They're trying to get us not to buy up the masks for the doctors. And I think,
Lex Fridman (34:05.520)
okay,
Lex Fridman (34:05.840)
so you imagine that we can just create scientific fiction at will so that you can
Lex Fridman (34:10.840)
run whatever social program you want. This is what I, you know,
Eric Weinstein (34:13.960)
my point is get out of my lab, get out of the lab.
Lex Fridman (34:16.360)
You don't belong in the lab. You're not meant for the lab.
Eric Weinstein (34:19.040)
You're constitutionally incapable of being around the lab.
Lex Fridman (34:21.960)
You need to leave the lab.
Eric Weinstein (34:23.760)
You think the CDC and WHO knew that masks work and we're trying to,
Lex Fridman (34:28.760)
and we're trying to sort of imagine that people are kind of stupid and they would
Eric Weinstein (34:34.800)
buy masks in excess if they were told that masks work.
Lex Fridman (34:39.960)
Is that like, uh,
Eric Weinstein (34:42.400)
cause this does seem to be a particularly clear example of mistakes made.
Lex Fridman (34:48.880)
You're asking me this question. No, you're not. What do you think, Lex?
Eric Weinstein (34:53.440)
Well, I actually probably disagree with you a little bit. Great. Let's do it.
Lex Fridman (34:58.120)
I think it's not so easy to be honest with the populace when the danger of
Eric Weinstein (35:04.800)
panic is always around the corner.
Lex Fridman (35:08.000)
So I think the kind of honesty you exhibit appeals to a certain class of brave
Eric Weinstein (35:18.640)
intellectual minds that, uh, it appeals to me,
Lex Fridman (35:22.960)
but I don't know from the perspective of WHO,
Eric Weinstein (35:26.800)
I don't know if it's so obvious that they should,
Lex Fridman (35:32.240)
um, be honest 100% of the time with people.
Eric Weinstein (35:37.440)
I'm not saying you should be perfectly transparent and 100% honest.
Lex Fridman (35:41.040)
I'm saying that the quality of your lies has to be very high and it has to be
Eric Weinstein (35:44.920)
public spirited. There's a big difference between, so I'm not,
Lex Fridman (35:49.040)
I'm not a child about this. I'm not saying that when you're at war,
Eric Weinstein (35:52.400)
for example,
Lex Fridman (35:53.000)
you turn over all of your plans to the enemy because it's important that you're
Eric Weinstein (35:57.200)
transparent with 360 degree visibility. Far from it.
Lex Fridman (36:01.120)
What I'm saying is something has been forgotten and I forgot who it was who
Eric Weinstein (36:06.120)
told it to me,
Lex Fridman (36:06.880)
but it was a fellow graduate student in the Harvard math department and he said,
Eric Weinstein (36:12.960)
you know,
Lex Fridman (36:13.240)
I learned one thing being out in the workforce because he was one of the few
Eric Weinstein (36:16.400)
people who had had a work life in the department as a grad student.
Lex Fridman (36:20.840)
And he said, you can be friends with your boss,
Lex Fridman (36:24.400)
but if you're going to be friends with your boss,
Lex Fridman (36:26.080)
you have to be doing a good job at work.
Lex Fridman (36:29.760)
And there's an analog here,
Lex Fridman (36:32.320)
which is if you're going to be reasonably honest with the population,
Eric Weinstein (36:36.760)
you have to be doing a good job at work as the surgeon general or as the head of
Lex Fridman (36:40.160)
the CDC. So if you're doing a terrible job,
Eric Weinstein (36:44.760)
you're supposed to resign.
Lex Fridman (36:45.920)
And then the next person is supposed to say, look,
Eric Weinstein (36:50.320)
I'm not going to lie to you. I inherited the situation.
Lex Fridman (36:53.320)
It was in a bit of disarray.
Lex Fridman (36:55.800)
But I had several requirements before I agreed to step in and take the job
Lex Fridman (36:59.160)
because I needed to know I could turn it around.
Eric Weinstein (37:00.800)
I needed to know that I had clear lines of authority.
Lex Fridman (37:03.040)
I needed to know that I had the resources available in order to rectify the
Eric Weinstein (37:06.240)
problem.
Lex Fridman (37:06.840)
And I needed to know that I had the ability and the freedom to level with the
Eric Weinstein (37:09.520)
American people directly as I saw fit. All of my wishes were granted.
Lex Fridman (37:12.840)
And that's why I'm happy here on Monday morning. I've got my sleeves rolled up.
Eric Weinstein (37:17.280)
Boy, do we got a lot to do.
Lex Fridman (37:18.560)
So please come back in two weeks and then ask me how I'm doing then.
Lex Fridman (37:21.320)
And I hope to have something to show you. That's how you do it.
Lex Fridman (37:24.680)
So why is that excellence and basic competence
Lex Fridman (37:29.400)
missing?
Lex Fridman (37:31.000)
The big net. You see,
Eric Weinstein (37:32.680)
you come from multiple traditions where it was very important to remember
Lex Fridman (37:36.880)
things.
Eric Weinstein (37:38.040)
The Soviet tradition made sure that you remembered the sacrifices that came in
Lex Fridman (37:42.440)
that war and the Jewish tradition we're doing this on Passover,
Eric Weinstein (37:47.280)
right? Okay. Well, every year we tell one simple story.
Lex Fridman (37:52.440)
Well, why can't it be different every year?
Eric Weinstein (37:54.080)
Maybe we could have a rotating series of seven stories because it's the one
Lex Fridman (37:58.320)
story that you need. It's like, you know, you work with the men in black group,
Eric Weinstein (38:02.640)
right? And it's the last suit that you'll ever need.
Lex Fridman (38:04.680)
This is the last story that you ever need.
Eric Weinstein (38:06.520)
Don't think I fell for your neuralyzer last time.
Lex Fridman (38:10.440)
In any event, we tell one story because it's the,
Eric Weinstein (38:14.960)
get out of Dodge story.
Lex Fridman (38:16.080)
There's a time when you need to not wait for the bread to rise.
Lex Fridman (38:19.760)
And that's the thing, which is even if you live through a great nap,
Lex Fridman (38:24.880)
you deserve to know what it feels like to have to leave everything that has
Eric Weinstein (38:29.600)
become comfortable and, and unworkable.
Lex Fridman (38:33.760)
It's sad that you need, you need that tragedy.
Eric Weinstein (38:37.800)
I imagine to have the tradition of remembering
Lex Fridman (38:42.840)
it's, it's sad to to think that because things have been
Eric Weinstein (38:47.640)
nice and comfortable means that we can't have great competent leaders,
Lex Fridman (38:54.120)
which is kind of the implied statement.
Eric Weinstein (38:55.600)
Like, can we have great leaders who take big risks,
Lex Fridman (39:00.400)
who are, who inspire hard work,
Lex Fridman (39:03.560)
who deal with difficult truth, even though things have been comfortable?
Lex Fridman (39:08.480)
Well, we know what those people sound like. I mean, you know, if,
Eric Weinstein (39:12.320)
for example, Jaco Willink suddenly threw his hat into the ring,
Lex Fridman (39:17.720)
everyone would say, okay, right.
Eric Weinstein (39:21.800)
Party's over. It's time to get up at four 30 and really work hard.
Lex Fridman (39:26.040)
And we've got to get back into fighting shape. And yeah,
Lex Fridman (39:30.640)
but Jaco is a very special, I think,
Lex Fridman (39:34.640)
that whole group of people by profession,
Eric Weinstein (39:39.800)
put themselves in the way of, and into hardship on a daily basis.
Lex Fridman (39:44.200)
And he's not, I don't, well, I don't know,
Lex Fridman (39:47.120)
but he's probably not going to be, well, could Jaco be president?
Lex Fridman (39:52.680)
Okay. But it doesn't have to be Jaco, right? Like in other words,
Eric Weinstein (39:55.120)
if it was Kai Lenny or if it was Alex
Lex Fridman (39:59.840)
Honnold from rock climbing, right. But they're just serious people.
Eric Weinstein (40:04.480)
They're serious people who can't afford your BS.
Lex Fridman (40:10.440)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (40:10.600)
But why do we have serious people that do rock climbing and uh,
Lex Fridman (40:16.440)
don't have serious people who lead the nation? That seems to.
Eric Weinstein (40:20.760)
Because that was a,
Lex Fridman (40:22.360)
those skills needed in rock climbing are not good during the big nap.
Lex Fridman (40:27.360)
And at the tail end of the big nap, they would get you fired.
Lex Fridman (40:29.720)
But I don't,
Eric Weinstein (40:30.560)
don't you think there's a fundamental part of human nature that desires to,
Lex Fridman (40:35.040)
to excel, to be exceptionally good at your job?
Eric Weinstein (40:38.400)
Yeah. But what is your job? I mean, in other words, my, my,
Lex Fridman (40:42.040)
my point to you is if you,
Eric Weinstein (40:44.040)
if you're a general in a peacetime army and your major activity is playing war
Lex Fridman (40:48.040)
games,
Lex Fridman (40:50.200)
what if the skills needed to win war games are very different than the skills
Lex Fridman (40:54.200)
needed to win wars? Because you know how the war games are scored and you've,
Eric Weinstein (40:57.800)
you've done money ball, for example, with war games,
Lex Fridman (41:01.320)
you figured out how to win games on paper.
Lex Fridman (41:03.720)
So then the advancement skill becomes divergent from the, uh,
Lex Fridman (41:08.760)
ultimate skill that it was proxying for.
Eric Weinstein (41:12.320)
Yeah. But you create this, we're good as human beings to, I mean,
Lex Fridman (41:16.760)
I, at least me, I can't do a big nap.
Lex Fridman (41:20.000)
So at any one moment when I finish something,
Lex Fridman (41:22.600)
a new dream pops up. So going to Mars,
Lex Fridman (41:25.800)
what do you like to do? You like to do Brazilian jujitsu?
Lex Fridman (41:28.960)
Well, first of all, I like to do every, you like to play guitar,
Eric Weinstein (41:31.680)
guitar, you do this podcast, you do theory. You're always,
Lex Fridman (41:35.320)
you're constantly taking risks and exposing yourself. Right? Why?
Eric Weinstein (41:40.400)
Because you've got one of those crazy, I'm sorry to say it.
Lex Fridman (41:43.360)
You've got an Eastern European Jewish personality, which I'm still tied to,
Lex Fridman (41:47.240)
and I'm a couple of generations more distant than you are.
Lex Fridman (41:51.040)
And I've held on to that thing because it's valuable to me.
Eric Weinstein (41:54.760)
You don't think there's a huge percent of the populace,
Lex Fridman (41:58.000)
even in the United States. That's that's that might be a little bit dormant,
Lex Fridman (42:01.760)
but do you know Anna Hatchian from the red scare podcast?
Eric Weinstein (42:06.080)
Did you interview her? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I listened. Yeah, yeah, she was great.
Eric Weinstein (42:09.480)
She was great, right? Yeah. She's fun. She's, she's terrific.
Lex Fridman (42:12.560)
But she also has the same thing going on.
Lex Fridman (42:14.280)
And I made a joke in the liner notes for that episode,
Lex Fridman (42:17.360)
which is somewhere on the road from Stalingrad to forever 21,
Eric Weinstein (42:22.360)
something was lost. Like how can Stalingrad and forever 21 be in the same
Lex Fridman (42:26.120)
sentence? And, you know, in part it's that weird thing.
Eric Weinstein (42:30.480)
It's like trying to remember even words like I'm in Russian and Hebrew things,
Lex Fridman (42:35.000)
like it's like what pom yet then the score, you know,
Eric Weinstein (42:38.200)
these words have much more potency about memory and I don't know.
Eric Weinstein (42:43.200)
I do, I think, I think there's still a dormant populace that craves leaders on a
Eric Weinstein (42:53.080)
small scale and large scale.
Lex Fridman (42:55.160)
And I hope to be that leader on a small scale.
Lex Fridman (42:58.840)
And I think you sir have a role to be a leader.
Lex Fridman (43:04.480)
You kids go ahead without me. I'm just gonna,
Eric Weinstein (43:07.160)
I'm going to do a little bit of weird podcast.
Lex Fridman (43:08.760)
I see now you're, you're putting on your, uh, Joe Rogan hat.
Eric Weinstein (43:14.040)
Uh, he says, I'm just a comedian. Oh no, I'm not saying I'm just a,
Lex Fridman (43:17.000)
it's not that if I say I want to lead too much because of the big nap,
Eric Weinstein (43:21.800)
there's like a group, a chorus of automated idiots and their first thought is
Lex Fridman (43:26.160)
like, ah, I knew it. So it's a power grab all along. Why should you lead?
Eric Weinstein (43:30.560)
You know, it's just like,
Lex Fridman (43:31.760)
and so the idea is you're just trying to skirt around,
Eric Weinstein (43:34.400)
not stepping on all of the idiot landmines. It's like, okay,
Lex Fridman (43:38.280)
so now I'm going to hear that in my inbox for the next three days.
Eric Weinstein (43:41.120)
Okay. So lead by example, just live. No, I mean, the issue platform, look,
Lex Fridman (43:45.240)
we should take over the institutions. There are institutions.
Eric Weinstein (43:47.960)
We've got bad leadership.
Lex Fridman (43:49.120)
We should mutiny and we should inject a, I don't know,
Eric Weinstein (43:53.120)
15% 20% uh, disagreeable, dissident,
Lex Fridman (43:57.360)
very aggressive loner, individual mutant freaks,
Eric Weinstein (44:00.760)
all the people that you go to see Avengers movies about or the X men or whatever
Lex Fridman (44:04.280)
it is and stop pretending that everything good comes out of some great giant
Eric Weinstein (44:09.320)
inclusive, communal, uh, 12 hour meeting.
Lex Fridman (44:14.720)
It's like, stop it. That's not how shit happens.
Eric Weinstein (44:19.560)
You recently published the video of a lecture you gave at Oxford presenting
Lex Fridman (44:24.880)
some aspects of a theory, uh,
Eric Weinstein (44:27.600)
theory of everything called geometric unity.
Lex Fridman (44:29.840)
So this was a work of 30, 30 plus years.
Eric Weinstein (44:34.440)
This is life's work.
Lex Fridman (44:37.000)
Let me ask her the, the silly old question.
Lex Fridman (44:40.000)
How do you feel as a human? Excited, scared,
Lex Fridman (44:44.160)
the experience of posting it.
Eric Weinstein (44:47.200)
You know, it's funny. One of the, one of the things that you,
Lex Fridman (44:49.360)
you learn to feel as an academic is, um,
Eric Weinstein (44:53.800)
the great sins you can commit in academics, uh,
Lex Fridman (44:57.720)
is to show yourself to be a non serious person to show yourself to have
Eric Weinstein (45:01.720)
delusions,
Lex Fridman (45:03.800)
to avoid the standard practices,
Eric Weinstein (45:07.920)
which everyone has signed up for.
Lex Fridman (45:12.400)
And you know,
Eric Weinstein (45:14.560)
it's weird because like, you know that those people are going to be angry.
Lex Fridman (45:19.000)
He did what, you know, why would he do that? And,
Lex Fridman (45:23.600)
and what we're referring to, for example,
Lex Fridman (45:25.640)
there's traditions of sort of publishing incrementally,
Eric Weinstein (45:29.000)
certainly not trying to have a theory of everything,
Lex Fridman (45:32.520)
perhaps working within the academic departments, all those things.
Lex Fridman (45:37.200)
So that's true. And so you're going outside of all of that.
Lex Fridman (45:41.480)
Well, I mean, I was going inside of all of that and we did not come to terms
Eric Weinstein (45:47.000)
when I was inside and what they did was so outside to me was so weird,
Lex Fridman (45:52.000)
so freakish, like the most senior, respectable people at the most senior,
Eric Weinstein (45:57.040)
respectable places were functionally insane as far as I could tell.
Lex Fridman (46:01.600)
And again, it's like being functionally stupid.
Eric Weinstein (46:03.760)
If you're the head of the CDC or something where, you know,
Lex Fridman (46:07.680)
you're giving recommendations out that aren't based on what you actually
Eric Weinstein (46:10.600)
believe. They're based on what you think you have to be doing. Well,
Lex Fridman (46:13.680)
in some sense,
Eric Weinstein (46:14.520)
I think that that's a lot of how I saw the math and physics world as
Lex Fridman (46:18.680)
the physics world was really crazy and the math world was considerably less
Eric Weinstein (46:22.680)
crazy, just very strict and kind of dogmatic.
Lex Fridman (46:25.880)
Well, we'll psychoanalyze those folks,
Lex Fridman (46:27.960)
but I really want to maybe linger on it a little bit longer of how you feel
Lex Fridman (46:33.520)
because yeah, so this is such a, such a special moment in your life.
Eric Weinstein (46:36.560)
I really appreciate it. It's a great question.
Lex Fridman (46:38.280)
So that if we can pair off some of that other, those other issues. Um,
Eric Weinstein (46:43.280)
it's new being able to say what the observers is,
Lex Fridman (46:49.400)
which was my attempt to replace space time with something that is both closely
Eric Weinstein (46:53.400)
related to space, time and not space time. Um,
Lex Fridman (46:57.240)
so I used to carry the number 14 as a closely guarded secret in my life and uh,
Eric Weinstein (47:03.280)
we're 14 is really four dimensions of space and time plus 10.
Lex Fridman (47:08.280)
Extra dimensions of rulers and protractors or for the cool kids out there,
Eric Weinstein (47:13.560)
uh, symmetric two tensors.
Lex Fridman (47:16.120)
She had a geometric,
Eric Weinstein (47:18.160)
a complicated, beautiful geometric view of the world that you cared with you
Lex Fridman (47:22.120)
for a long time. Yeah. Did you,
Eric Weinstein (47:24.240)
did you have friends that you, um, colleagues, essentially? No.
Lex Fridman (47:28.920)
Talked. No. In fact, part of these, part of some of these stories are me,
Eric Weinstein (47:33.120)
coming out of the world,
Lex Fridman (47:34.160)
to my friends, um, and I use the phrase coming out because I think that gays
Eric Weinstein (47:39.160)
have monopolized the concept of the closet.
Lex Fridman (47:41.920)
Many of us are in closets having nothing to do with our sexual orientation.
Eric Weinstein (47:46.160)
Um, yeah, I didn't really feel comfortable talking to almost anyone.
Lex Fridman (47:50.640)
So this was a closely guarded, uh, secret.
Lex Fridman (47:54.320)
And I think that I let on in some ways that I was up to something and probably
Lex Fridman (47:58.280)
I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was,
Eric Weinstein (48:02.720)
I was up to something and probably, but it was a very weird life. So I had to,
Lex Fridman (48:07.040)
I had to have a series of things that I pretended to care about so that I could
Eric Weinstein (48:11.280)
use that as the stalking horse for what I really cared about. And to your point,
Lex Fridman (48:15.560)
um, I never understood this whole thing about theories of everything.
Eric Weinstein (48:19.160)
Like if you were going to go into something like theoretical physics,
Lex Fridman (48:22.840)
isn't that what you would normally pursue?
Eric Weinstein (48:25.480)
Like wouldn't it be crazy to do something that difficult and that poorly paid if
Lex Fridman (48:29.720)
you were going to try to do something other than figure out what this is all
Lex Fridman (48:33.000)
about?
Lex Fridman (48:34.400)
Now I have to reveal my cards,
Eric Weinstein (48:36.160)
my sort of weaknesses and lack and understanding of the music of physics and
Lex Fridman (48:41.360)
math departments.
Lex Fridman (48:42.800)
But there's an analogy here to artificial intelligence and often folks come in
Lex Fridman (48:49.680)
and say, okay,
Lex Fridman (48:50.920)
so there's a giant department working on quote unquote artificial intelligence,
Lex Fridman (48:55.320)
right? But why is nobody actually working on intelligence?
Lex Fridman (49:00.560)
Like you're all just building little toys, right?
Lex Fridman (49:04.560)
You're not actually trying to understand. And that breaks a lot of people. Uh,
Eric Weinstein (49:08.760)
they, it confuses them because like, okay, so I'm at MIT,
Lex Fridman (49:13.440)
I'm at Stanford, I'm at Harvard, I'm here.
Eric Weinstein (49:16.400)
I dreamed of being working on artificial intelligence.
Lex Fridman (49:20.000)
Why is everybody not actually working on intelligence?
Lex Fridman (49:23.200)
And I have the same kind of sense that that's what working on the theory of
Lex Fridman (49:27.280)
everything is that strangely you somehow become an outcast for even,
Lex Fridman (49:33.040)
but we know why this is right. Why? Well, it's because let's take the artificial,
Lex Fridman (49:38.480)
let's, let's play with AGI for example.
Eric Weinstein (49:41.200)
I think that the idea starts off with nobody really knows how to work on that.
Lex Fridman (49:45.760)
And so if we don't know how to work on it,
Eric Weinstein (49:48.160)
we choose instead to work on a program that is tangentially related to it.
Lex Fridman (49:52.920)
So we do a component of a program that is related to that big question because
Eric Weinstein (49:58.040)
it's felt like at least I can make progress there.
Lex Fridman (50:02.240)
And that wasn't where I was, where I was in,
Eric Weinstein (50:06.600)
it's funny there was this book of a called Frieden Uhlenbeck and it had this
Lex Fridman (50:10.040)
weird mysterious line in the beginning of it.
Lex Fridman (50:13.320)
And I tried to get clarification of this weird mysterious line and everyone said
Lex Fridman (50:17.920)
wrong things. And then I said, okay, well,
Lex Fridman (50:20.440)
so I can tell that nobody's thinking properly because I just asked the entire
Lex Fridman (50:24.520)
department and nobody has a correct interpretation of this.
Lex Fridman (50:29.320)
And so, you know, it's a little bit like you see a crime scene photo
Lex Fridman (50:33.880)
and you have a different idea.
Eric Weinstein (50:36.040)
Like there's a smoking gun and you figure that's actually a cigarette lighter.
Eric Weinstein (50:39.400)
I don't really believe that. And then there's like a pack of cards and you think,
Eric Weinstein (50:43.320)
Oh,
Lex Fridman (50:43.680)
that looks like the blunt instrument that the person was beaten with. You know,
Lex Fridman (50:47.360)
so you have a very different idea about how things go.
Lex Fridman (50:50.560)
And very quickly you realize that there's no one thinking about that.
Eric Weinstein (50:55.440)
There's a few human sides to this and technical sides,
Lex Fridman (50:58.480)
both of which I'd love to try to get down to. So the human side,
Eric Weinstein (51:03.120)
I can tell from my perspective, I think it was before April 1st, April Fools,
Lex Fridman (51:08.320)
maybe the day before, I forget,
Lex Fridman (51:10.000)
but I was laying in bed in the middle of the night and somehow it popped up,
Lex Fridman (51:15.000)
you know on my feed somewhere that your beautiful face is speaking live and I
Eric Weinstein (51:23.560)
clicked. And you know,
Lex Fridman (51:26.840)
it's kind of weird how the universe just brings things together in this kind of
Eric Weinstein (51:29.960)
way.
Lex Fridman (51:30.880)
And all of a sudden I realized that there's something big happening at this
Eric Weinstein (51:34.720)
particular moment. It's strange. On a day,
Lex Fridman (51:38.400)
like any day and all of a sudden you were thinking of,
Eric Weinstein (51:42.840)
you had this somber tone, like you were serious,
Lex Fridman (51:46.640)
like you were going through some difficult decision and it seems strange.
Eric Weinstein (51:54.000)
I almost thought you were maybe joking,
Lex Fridman (51:56.080)
but there was a serious decision being made and it was a wonderful experience
Eric Weinstein (51:59.520)
to go through with you.
Lex Fridman (52:00.640)
I really appreciate it. I mean it was April 1st.
Eric Weinstein (52:03.000)
Yeah, it was, it's kind of fascinating. I mean it's just the whole experience.
Lex Fridman (52:05.880)
And so I want to ask,
Eric Weinstein (52:10.720)
I mean thank you for letting me be part of that kind of journey of decision
Lex Fridman (52:14.760)
making that took 30 years, but why now?
Lex Fridman (52:19.560)
Why did you think,
Lex Fridman (52:21.240)
why did you struggle so long not to release it and decide to release it now?
Eric Weinstein (52:28.360)
While the whole world is on lockdown on April Fools,
Lex Fridman (52:32.360)
is it just because you like the comedy of absurd ways that the universe comes
Lex Fridman (52:38.120)
together?
Lex Fridman (52:38.960)
I don't think so.
Eric Weinstein (52:40.880)
I think that the COVID epidemic is the end of the big nap.
Lex Fridman (52:46.920)
And I think that I actually tried this seven years earlier in Oxford.
Lex Fridman (52:53.120)
So I, uh, and it was too early.
Lex Fridman (52:56.800)
Which part was too, is it the platform?
Eric Weinstein (52:59.200)
Cause your platform is quite different now actually the internet. I remember you,
Lex Fridman (53:02.480)
uh, I read several of your brilliant answers that people should read for the
Eric Weinstein (53:06.840)
edge questions. One of them was related to the internet.
Lex Fridman (53:10.320)
And it was the first one. Was it the first one? Yeah.
Eric Weinstein (53:12.880)
An essay called go virtual young man. Yeah. Yeah. That seemed,
Lex Fridman (53:16.760)
that's like forever ago now. Well that was 10 years ago.
Lex Fridman (53:19.520)
And that's exactly what I did is I decamped to the internet,
Lex Fridman (53:22.520)
which is where the portal lives, the portal, the portal, the portal.
Eric Weinstein (53:27.120)
Well, so the whole, the theme, that's the ominous theme music,
Lex Fridman (53:30.600)
which you just listened to forever.
Eric Weinstein (53:32.720)
I actually started recording a tiny guitar licks, uh,
Lex Fridman (53:36.920)
for the audio portion, not for the video portion. Um,
Eric Weinstein (53:40.400)
you've kind of inspired me with bringing your guitar into the story,
Lex Fridman (53:43.560)
but keep going.
Lex Fridman (53:45.200)
So you thought, so the Oxford was like step one and you kind of,
Lex Fridman (53:48.640)
you put your foot into the, in the water to sample it,
Lex Fridman (53:52.640)
but it was too cold at the time. So you didn't want to step in.
Lex Fridman (53:55.600)
I was just really disappointed.
Lex Fridman (53:57.440)
What was disappointing about that experience?
Lex Fridman (53:59.320)
It's very, it's a hard thing to talk about.
Eric Weinstein (54:01.080)
It has to do with the fact that, and I can see this,
Lex Fridman (54:05.600)
this, you know, this mirrors a disappointment within myself.
Eric Weinstein (54:09.240)
There are two separate issues.
Lex Fridman (54:10.640)
One is the issue of making sure that the idea is actually heard and explored.
Lex Fridman (54:16.960)
And the other is the,
Lex Fridman (54:18.360)
I is the question about will I become disconnected from my work because it will
Eric Weinstein (54:24.400)
be ridiculed. It will, it will be immediately improved.
Lex Fridman (54:27.520)
It will be found to be derivative of something that occurred in some paper in
Eric Weinstein (54:31.320)
1957. When the community does not want you to gain a voice,
Lex Fridman (54:37.040)
it's a little bit like a policeman deciding to weirdly enforce all of these
Eric Weinstein (54:42.720)
little known regulations against you. And you know,
Lex Fridman (54:47.160)
sometimes nobody else. And I think that's kind of, you know,
Eric Weinstein (54:50.880)
this weird thing where I just don't believe that we can reach the final theory
Lex Fridman (54:59.520)
necessarily within the political economy of academics.
Lex Fridman (55:03.800)
So if you think about how academics are tortured by each other and how they're
Lex Fridman (55:08.400)
paid and where they have freedom and where they don't,
Eric Weinstein (55:11.760)
I actually weirdly think that that system of selective pressures is going to
Lex Fridman (55:15.360)
eliminate anybody who's going to make real progress.
Lex Fridman (55:18.400)
So that's interesting.
Lex Fridman (55:19.200)
So if you look at the story of Andrew Wiles, for example,
Eric Weinstein (55:22.440)
with from our last term, I mean, he,
Lex Fridman (55:26.480)
as far as I understand,
Eric Weinstein (55:28.240)
he pretty much isolated himself from the world of academics in terms of the big,
Lex Fridman (55:33.200)
the bulk of the work he did.
Lex Fridman (55:35.200)
And it from my perspective is dramatic and fun to read about,
Lex Fridman (55:39.920)
but it seemed exceptionally stressful. The first step he took,
Eric Weinstein (55:43.080)
the first steps he took when actually making the work public that seemed to me
Lex Fridman (55:47.240)
it would be hell, but it's like so artificially dramatic, you know,
Eric Weinstein (55:51.720)
he leads up to it at a series of lectures.
Lex Fridman (55:55.560)
He doesn't want to say it. And then he finally says it at the end,
Eric Weinstein (55:59.800)
because obviously this comes out of a body of work where, I mean,
Lex Fridman (56:02.920)
the funny part about from us last theorem is that wasn't originally thought to
Eric Weinstein (56:06.680)
be a deep and meaningful problem.
Lex Fridman (56:09.160)
It was just an easy to state one that had gone unsolved.
Lex Fridman (56:12.400)
But if you think about it,
Lex Fridman (56:13.960)
it became attached to the body of regular theory.
Lex Fridman (56:17.600)
So he built up this body of regular theory gets all the way up to the end
Lex Fridman (56:21.320)
announces. And then like, there's this whole drama about, okay,
Eric Weinstein (56:25.840)
somebody's checking the proof. I don't understand what's going on in line 37,
Lex Fridman (56:30.040)
you know, and like, Oh, is this serious?
Eric Weinstein (56:31.720)
It seems a little bit more serious than we knew.
Lex Fridman (56:33.640)
I mean, do you see parallels?
Lex Fridman (56:35.000)
Do you share the concern that your experience might be something similar?
Lex Fridman (56:38.280)
Well, in his case, I think that if I recall correctly,
Eric Weinstein (56:41.040)
his original proof was unsalvageable.
Lex Fridman (56:42.680)
He actually came up with a second proof with a
Eric Weinstein (56:47.600)
colleague, Richard Taylor.
Lex Fridman (56:50.880)
And it was that second proof which carried the day.
Lex Fridman (56:53.800)
So it was a little bit that he got put under incredible pressure and then had
Lex Fridman (56:58.520)
to succeed in a new way, having failed the first time,
Eric Weinstein (57:00.920)
which is like even a weirder and stranger story.
Lex Fridman (57:03.520)
That's an incredible story in some sense. But I mean, are you,
Eric Weinstein (57:06.880)
I'm trying to get a sense of the kind of stress.
Lex Fridman (57:09.600)
I think that this is okay, but I'm rejecting what I don't think people
Eric Weinstein (57:14.040)
understand with me is the scale of the critique.
Lex Fridman (57:18.440)
It's like, I don't, you, people say, well,
Eric Weinstein (57:21.560)
you must implicitly agree with this and implicitly agree. It's like, no,
Lex Fridman (57:24.280)
try me ask before you,
Eric Weinstein (57:27.160)
you decide that I am mostly in agreement with the community about how these
Lex Fridman (57:30.880)
things should be handled or what these things mean.
Lex Fridman (57:33.640)
Can you, can you elaborate? And also just why, um,
Lex Fridman (57:37.280)
does criticism matter so much here?
Lex Fridman (57:41.880)
So you seem to dislike the burden of criticism that it will choke away all
Lex Fridman (57:49.560)
different kinds of criticism.
Eric Weinstein (57:51.320)
There's constructive criticism and there's destructive criticism.
Lex Fridman (57:54.840)
And what I don't like is I don't like a community that can't,
Eric Weinstein (58:01.640)
first of all, like if you take the physics community,
Lex Fridman (58:03.760)
like just the way we screwed up on masks and PPE, uh,
Eric Weinstein (58:08.720)
just the way we screwed up in the financial crisis and mortgage backed
Lex Fridman (58:11.320)
securities, we screwed up on string theory.
Eric Weinstein (58:13.880)
Can we just forget the string theory happened or sure,
Lex Fridman (58:17.680)
but somebody should say that, right? Somebody should say, you know,
Eric Weinstein (58:20.600)
it didn't work out. Yeah. But okay.
Lex Fridman (58:24.880)
But you're asking this,
Lex Fridman (58:25.880)
like why do you guys get to keep the prestige after failing for 35 years?
Lex Fridman (58:30.240)
Yeah. That's an interesting question. You guys, because to me,
Lex Fridman (58:34.720)
look these things, if there is a theory of everything to be had, right?
Lex Fridman (58:39.640)
It's going to be a relatively small group of people where this will be sorted
Eric Weinstein (58:43.240)
out. Absolutely. It's, it's, it's not tens of thousands.
Lex Fridman (58:46.840)
It's probably hundreds at the top.
Lex Fridman (58:50.360)
But within that, within that community,
Lex Fridman (58:53.400)
there is the assholes.
Eric Weinstein (58:57.200)
There's the, I mean, they, you have,
Lex Fridman (59:00.280)
you always in this world have people who are kind, open minded.
Eric Weinstein (59:05.600)
It's a question about, okay,
Lex Fridman (59:08.160)
let's imagine for example,
Eric Weinstein (59:10.000)
that you have a story where you believe that ulcers are definitely
Lex Fridman (59:14.560)
caused by stress and you've never questioned it.
Eric Weinstein (59:18.640)
Or maybe you felt like the Japanese came out of the blue and attacked us at
Lex Fridman (59:21.920)
Pearl Harbor, right?
Lex Fridman (59:23.760)
And now somebody introduces a new idea to you, which is like,
Lex Fridman (59:27.160)
what if it isn't stress at all?
Eric Weinstein (59:29.000)
Or what if we actually tried to make resource star of Japan attack us somewhere
Lex Fridman (59:33.720)
in the Pacific so we could have cast this belly to enter the Asian theater
Eric Weinstein (59:38.520)
person's original idea is like, what, what are you even saying? You know,
Lex Fridman (59:42.120)
it's like too crazy. Well,
Eric Weinstein (59:45.040)
when Dirac in 1963
Lex Fridman (59:47.320)
talked about the importance of beauty as a guiding principle in physics and he
Eric Weinstein (59:52.320)
wasn't talking about the scientific method, that was crazy talk,
Lex Fridman (59:57.200)
but he was actually making a great point and he was using Schrodinger.
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