Eric Weinstein: Difficult Conversations, Freedom of Speech, and Physics

Lex Fridman (01:21.260)

or connect with me on Twitter at Lex Friedman.

Lex Fridman (01:24.260)

And now here's my conversation with Eric Weinstein.

Lex Fridman (01:29.620)

You often talk about getting off this planet

Lex Fridman (01:32.900)

and I think you don't often talk

Lex Fridman (01:35.980)

about extra terrestrial life, intelligent life out there.

Lex Fridman (01:41.140)

Do you wonder about this kind of thing,

Lex Fridman (01:42.740)

about intelligent civilizations out there?

Eric Weinstein (01:44.980)

I do, but I try to not wonder about it in a particular way.

Lex Fridman (01:50.360)

In a certain sense, I do find that speculating

Eric Weinstein (01:53.040)

about Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster and space aliens

Lex Fridman (01:55.820)

is kind of a recreation

Eric Weinstein (01:57.100)

for when things aren't going very well.

Lex Fridman (02:00.180)

At least it gives us some meaning and purpose in our lives.

Lex Fridman (02:03.540)

So I worry about, for example,

Lex Fridman (02:06.260)

the simulation hypothesis is taking over from religion.

Eric Weinstein (02:09.380)

You can't quite believe enough to go to church

Lex Fridman (02:11.620)

or synagogue or the mosque on the weekend,

Lex Fridman (02:14.300)

so then you just take up an interest in simulation theory

Lex Fridman (02:17.900)

because that's something like what you do

Eric Weinstein (02:19.140)

for your job coding.

Lex Fridman (02:21.000)

I do think that in some sense,

Eric Weinstein (02:23.220)

the issue of aliens is a really interesting one,

Lex Fridman (02:26.360)

but has been spoiled by too much

Eric Weinstein (02:28.460)

sort of recreational escapism.

Lex Fridman (02:32.460)

The key question that I find is let's assume

Eric Weinstein (02:36.780)

that it is possible to look out at the night sky

Lex Fridman (02:40.220)

and see all of these distant worlds and then go visit them.

Eric Weinstein (02:43.700)

If that is possible, it's almost certainly possible

Lex Fridman (02:46.300)

through some as yet unknown or not accepted theory

Eric Weinstein (02:52.820)

of physics beyond Einstein.

Lex Fridman (02:55.540)

And I mean, it doesn't have to be that way, but probably is.

Eric Weinstein (03:00.400)

If that theory exists, there would be a percentage

Lex Fridman (03:04.180)

of the worlds that have life

Eric Weinstein (03:05.540)

in sort of a Drake equation kind of a way

Lex Fridman (03:07.520)

that would have encountered the ability to escape

Eric Weinstein (03:11.500)

soon enough after unlocking the power of the atom

Lex Fridman (03:17.220)

at a minimum and whatever they have

Eric Weinstein (03:19.100)

that is probably analogous to the cell on that world.

Lex Fridman (03:24.420)

So assuming that life is a fairly generic thing

Eric Weinstein (03:29.020)

that arises, probably not carbon based,

Lex Fridman (03:32.500)

probably doesn't have DNA,

Lex Fridman (03:33.660)

but that something that fits the pattern

Lex Fridman (03:37.180)

of Darwinian theory, which is descent with variation,

Eric Weinstein (03:43.820)

differential success.

Lex Fridman (03:45.500)

And thereby constantly improving and so on

Eric Weinstein (03:47.420)

that through time, there'll be a trajectory

Lex Fridman (03:50.120)

where there'll be something increasingly complex

Lex Fridman (03:53.180)

and fascinating and beautiful like us humans, but much more.

Lex Fridman (03:56.500)

That can also off gas whatever entropy it creates

Eric Weinstein (03:59.700)

to give an illusion that you're defeating thermodynamics.

Lex Fridman (04:03.200)

So whatever these things are probably has an analog

Eric Weinstein (04:05.740)

of the biolipid layer so that cells can get rid

Lex Fridman (04:08.620)

of the chaos on one side of the barrier

Lex Fridman (04:11.220)

and keep order on the other.

Lex Fridman (04:12.860)

Whatever these things are that create life,

Eric Weinstein (04:15.580)

assuming that there is a theory to be found

Lex Fridman (04:17.500)

that allows that civilization to diversify,

Eric Weinstein (04:22.420)

we would have to imagine that such a civilization

Lex Fridman (04:26.340)

might have taken an interest in its concept

Eric Weinstein (04:29.580)

of the universe and have come here.

Lex Fridman (04:31.380)

They would come here, they would have a deep understanding

Eric Weinstein (04:36.540)

of the physics of the universe sufficient

Lex Fridman (04:38.220)

to have arrived here.

Eric Weinstein (04:40.900)

Well, there's two questions,

Lex Fridman (04:41.740)

whether they could arrive physically

Lex Fridman (04:43.220)

and whether their information could be sent here

Lex Fridman (04:47.800)

and whether they could gain information from us.

Eric Weinstein (04:50.460)

It's possible that they would have a way

Lex Fridman (04:53.780)

of looking into our world without actually reaching it.

Eric Weinstein (04:57.260)

I don't know.

Lex Fridman (04:58.540)

But yes, if my hope, which is that we can escape this world,

Eric Weinstein (05:04.900)

can be realized, if that's feasible,

Lex Fridman (05:07.720)

then you would have to imagine that the reverse is true

Lex Fridman (05:10.540)

and that somebody else should be here.

Lex Fridman (05:15.020)

First of all, I wanna say this.

Eric Weinstein (05:17.220)

My purpose when I come on to your show

Lex Fridman (05:19.900)

and I reframe the questions is not to challenge you.

Eric Weinstein (05:24.180)

I can sit inside all of those.

Lex Fridman (05:26.020)

It's to give you better audio and video

Eric Weinstein (05:27.680)

because I think we've been on an incredible role.

Lex Fridman (05:29.880)

I really love what you do.

Lex Fridman (05:31.540)

And so I am trying to honor you by being as disagreeable

Lex Fridman (05:35.100)

about frame breaking as possible.

Eric Weinstein (05:36.560)

I think some of your listeners don't understand

Lex Fridman (05:38.920)

that it's actually a sign of respect

Eric Weinstein (05:40.500)

as opposed to some sort of a complex dynamic,

Lex Fridman (05:43.260)

which is I think you can play outside of some of the frames

Lex Fridman (05:46.780)

and that these are sort of offerings

Lex Fridman (05:48.280)

to get the conversation started.

Lex Fridman (05:49.640)

So let me try to break that frame

Lex Fridman (05:51.140)

and give you something different.

Eric Weinstein (05:52.460)

Beautiful.

Lex Fridman (05:53.300)

I think what's going on here is that I can prove effectively

Eric Weinstein (06:00.420)

that we're not thinking about this in very deep terms.

Lex Fridman (06:03.220)

As soon as I say we've gotta get off this planet,

Eric Weinstein (06:05.820)

the number of people who assume

Lex Fridman (06:07.540)

that I'm talking about faster than light travel is very high

Lex Fridman (06:12.700)

and faster than light travel assumes some sort

Lex Fridman (06:15.740)

of Einsteinian paradigm that then is broken

Eric Weinstein (06:20.340)

by some small adjustment.

Lex Fridman (06:22.220)

And I think that that's fascinating.

Eric Weinstein (06:24.740)

It shows me that our failure to imagine

Lex Fridman (06:27.560)

what could be being said is profound.

Eric Weinstein (06:30.700)

We don't have an idea of all of the different ways

Lex Fridman (06:35.860)

in which we might be able to visit distant worlds.

Eric Weinstein (06:40.640)

All we think about is, okay,

Lex Fridman (06:42.980)

it must be Einsteinian space times

Lex Fridman (06:45.380)

and then some means of exceeding the speed limit.

Lex Fridman (06:48.220)

And it's just, it's fascinating to me

Eric Weinstein (06:50.420)

that we don't really have, we've lost the ability

Lex Fridman (06:55.940)

to just realize we don't know the framework

Lex Fridman (06:59.540)

and what does it even mean?

Lex Fridman (07:01.360)

So one of the things I think about a lot

Eric Weinstein (07:03.140)

is worlds with more than one temporal dimension.

Lex Fridman (07:06.940)

It's very hard to think about

Eric Weinstein (07:08.540)

more than one temporal dimension.

Lex Fridman (07:10.880)

So that's a really strong mental exercise

Eric Weinstein (07:14.820)

of breaking the framework in which we think

Lex Fridman (07:17.300)

because most of the frameworks

Lex Fridman (07:18.980)

would have a single temporal dimension, right?

Lex Fridman (07:20.980)

Well, first of all, most of the frameworks

Eric Weinstein (07:22.900)

in which we think would have no temporal dimension

Lex Fridman (07:25.060)

would have pure, like in mathematics,

Eric Weinstein (07:27.020)

the differential geometry that Riemann came up with

Lex Fridman (07:30.340)

in the 1800s.

Eric Weinstein (07:32.980)

We don't usually talk about

Lex Fridman (07:35.220)

what we would call split signature metrics

Eric Weinstein (07:37.940)

or Lorentzian signature.

Lex Fridman (07:39.940)

In fact, if it weren't for relativity,

Eric Weinstein (07:41.740)

this would be the most obscure topic out there.

Lex Fridman (07:45.580)

Almost all the work we do is in Euclidean signature

Lex Fridman (07:48.220)

and then there's this one freakish case

Lex Fridman (07:50.220)

of relativity theory in physics

Eric Weinstein (07:52.060)

that uses this one time and the rest spatial dimensions.

Lex Fridman (07:56.940)

Fascinating.

Lex Fridman (07:57.860)

So it's usually momentary and just looking at space.

Lex Fridman (08:01.100)

Yes, we have these three kinds of equations

Eric Weinstein (08:05.420)

that are very important to us.

Lex Fridman (08:06.740)

We have elliptic, hyperbolic and parabolic, right?

Lex Fridman (08:11.340)

And so the idea is if I'm chewing gum

Lex Fridman (08:15.140)

after eating garlic bread, when I open my mouth

Lex Fridman (08:20.820)

and I've got chewing gum between my lips,

Lex Fridman (08:23.940)

maybe it's gonna form an elliptic object

Eric Weinstein (08:27.040)

called a minimal surface.

Lex Fridman (08:29.100)

Then when I pop that and blow through it,

Eric Weinstein (08:31.260)

you're gonna hear a noise that's gonna travel to you

Lex Fridman (08:33.520)

by a wave equation, which is gonna be hyperbolic.

Lex Fridman (08:36.280)

But then the garlic breath is gonna diffuse towards you

Lex Fridman (08:38.940)

and you're eventually gonna be very upset with me

Eric Weinstein (08:41.220)

according to a heat equation, which will be parabolic.

Lex Fridman (08:44.040)

So those are the three basic paradigms

Eric Weinstein (08:46.620)

for most of the work that we do.

Lex Fridman (08:48.220)

And a lot of the work that we do in mathematics is elliptic,

Eric Weinstein (08:52.300)

whereas the physicists are in the hyperbolic case.

Lex Fridman (08:54.700)

And I don't even know what to do

Eric Weinstein (08:55.780)

about more than one temporal dimension

Lex Fridman (08:57.540)

because I think almost no one studies that.

Eric Weinstein (08:59.920)

I can't believe you just captured much of modern physics

Lex Fridman (09:04.140)

in the example of chewing gum.

Eric Weinstein (09:05.820)

Well, I have an off color one, which I chose not to share,

Lex Fridman (09:08.060)

but hopefully the kids at home can imagine.

Eric Weinstein (09:11.140)

Okay, so, okay, that is the place where we come from.

Lex Fridman (09:16.760)

Now, if we want to arrive at a possibility

Eric Weinstein (09:19.040)

of breaking the frameworks with two

Lex Fridman (09:22.760)

versus zero temporal dimensions,

Lex Fridman (09:25.640)

how do we even begin to think about that?

Lex Fridman (09:27.120)

Well, let's think about it as you and I getting together

Lex Fridman (09:29.600)

in New York City, okay?

Lex Fridman (09:31.920)

So if you tell me, Eric, I wanna meet you in New York City,

Eric Weinstein (09:36.600)

go to the corner of, I don't know, 34th Street

Lex Fridman (09:41.400)

and Third Avenue, and you'll find a building

Lex Fridman (09:43.960)

on the Northwest corner and go up to the 17th floor, right?

Lex Fridman (09:48.620)

So when we have Third Avenue, that's one coordinate,

Eric Weinstein (09:51.520)

34th Street, that's the second coordinate,

Lex Fridman (09:53.680)

and go up to the 17th.

Lex Fridman (09:55.160)

And what time is it?

Lex Fridman (09:56.080)

Oh, 12 noon.

Eric Weinstein (09:58.000)

All right, well, now imagine that we traded the ability

Lex Fridman (10:01.880)

to get up to a particular height in a building

Lex Fridman (10:03.920)

and it's all flat land,

Lex Fridman (10:05.240)

but I'm gonna give you two temporal coordinates.

Lex Fridman (10:07.400)

So meet me at 5 p.m. and 12 noon

Lex Fridman (10:11.360)

at the corner of 34th and Third.

Eric Weinstein (10:13.400)

That gets to be too mind blowing.

Lex Fridman (10:15.120)

I've got two separate watches.

Lex Fridman (10:17.280)

And presumably that's just specifying a single point

Lex Fridman (10:20.600)

in those two different dimensions,

Lex Fridman (10:22.540)

but then being able to travel along those dimensions.

Lex Fridman (10:25.520)

Let me see your right hand.

Eric Weinstein (10:28.740)

You have no watch on that.

Lex Fridman (10:30.300)

No.

Eric Weinstein (10:31.140)

Okay, I'm very concerned, Lex,

Lex Fridman (10:32.900)

that you're going through life without a wristwatch.

Eric Weinstein (10:36.760)

That is my favorite and most valued wristwatch.

Lex Fridman (10:39.720)

I want you to wear it.

Eric Weinstein (10:40.940)

This guy is funnier than basically any human on Earth.

Lex Fridman (10:45.200)

Lex, that has been in my family for months.

Eric Weinstein (10:49.600)

It's a Fitbit.

Lex Fridman (10:51.160)

Now, what I want you to understand is Lex Fridman

Eric Weinstein (10:53.560)

is now in a position to live in two spatial

Lex Fridman (10:57.440)

and two temporal dimensions unlike the rest of us.

Eric Weinstein (11:00.400)

I clearly am only fit for four spatial dimensions.

Lex Fridman (11:04.760)

So I'm frozen, whereas you can double move.

Eric Weinstein (11:07.920)

I can double move, which is funny

Lex Fridman (11:09.620)

because this is set in Austin time.

Lex Fridman (11:12.760)

So it's 4 p.m. and this is set in Los Angeles time.

Lex Fridman (11:16.360)

Well, but that's just with an affine shift in mod 12.

Lex Fridman (11:18.920)

But my point is, wouldn't that be interesting

Lex Fridman (11:22.140)

if there were two separate time scales

Lex Fridman (11:23.520)

and you had to coordinate both of those,

Lex Fridman (11:25.680)

but you didn't have to worry about what floor

Eric Weinstein (11:27.200)

of the building because everything was on the ground floor.

Lex Fridman (11:30.320)

That is the confusion that we're having.

Lex Fridman (11:33.840)

And if you do one more show, right,

Lex Fridman (11:36.600)

then they're gonna put a watch on your ankle

Lex Fridman (11:38.040)

and you're only gonna have one spatial dimension

Lex Fridman (11:40.160)

that you can move around.

Lex Fridman (11:41.040)

But my claim is that all of these are actually sectors

Lex Fridman (11:45.360)

of my theory in case we're interested in that,

Eric Weinstein (11:48.200)

which is geometric unity.

Lex Fridman (11:50.160)

There is a two, two sector and a three, one and a one, three

Lex Fridman (11:53.700)

and a zero, four and a four, zero.

Lex Fridman (11:55.380)

And all of these sectors have some physical reality.

Eric Weinstein (11:58.600)

We happen to live in a one, three sector.

Lex Fridman (12:01.440)

But that's the kind of thinking that we don't do.

Eric Weinstein (12:04.920)

When I say we have to get off this planet,

Lex Fridman (12:06.660)

people imagine, oh, okay, it's just Einstein

Eric Weinstein (12:08.640)

plus some ability to break the law.

Lex Fridman (12:10.940)

By the way, even though you did this for humor's sake,

Eric Weinstein (12:14.160)

I perhaps am tempted to pull a Putin who.

Lex Fridman (12:19.760)

Am I gonna get whacked?

Eric Weinstein (12:20.840)

No, not quite.

Lex Fridman (12:23.000)

But he was given a Super Bowl ring to look at

Lex Fridman (12:27.600)

and he, instead of just looking at it,

Lex Fridman (12:29.920)

put it on his finger and walked away with it.

Lex Fridman (12:32.440)

Rubbercraft?

Lex Fridman (12:33.280)

Rubbercraft, that's right.

Lex Fridman (12:34.120)

So in the same way, I will, if you don't mind,

Lex Fridman (12:38.160)

walk away with this Fitbit

Lex Fridman (12:39.500)

and taking the entirety of your life story with it

Lex Fridman (12:42.080)

because there's all these steps on it.

Eric Weinstein (12:43.880)

Boy, have you lost a lot of weight.

Lex Fridman (12:45.880)

And where have I been?

Eric Weinstein (12:49.160)

Exactly.

Lex Fridman (12:50.740)

Right, that's what we're talking about.

Eric Weinstein (12:52.200)

We're talking about, you wanna get into aliens,

Lex Fridman (12:53.800)

let's have an interesting alien conversation.

Eric Weinstein (12:55.520)

Let's stop having the typical free will conversation,

Lex Fridman (12:58.920)

the typical alien conversation,

Eric Weinstein (13:00.360)

the typical AGI morality conversation.

Lex Fridman (13:02.840)

It's like, we have to recognize that we're amusing ourselves

Eric Weinstein (13:05.720)

because we're not making progress.

Lex Fridman (13:07.600)

Time to have better versions of all these conversations.

Eric Weinstein (13:10.400)

Is there some version of the alien conversation

Lex Fridman (13:13.020)

that could incorporate the breaking of frameworks?

Eric Weinstein (13:15.880)

Well, I think so.

Lex Fridman (13:16.720)

I mean, the key question would be,

Eric Weinstein (13:18.680)

we've had the Pentagon release multiple videos

Lex Fridman (13:21.620)

of strange UFOs that undermined a lot of us.

Eric Weinstein (13:25.080)

I just think it's also really fascinating

Lex Fridman (13:26.960)

to talk about the fact that those of us

Eric Weinstein (13:29.240)

who were trained to call BS on all of this stuff

Lex Fridman (13:33.080)

just had the rug pulled out from under us

Eric Weinstein (13:35.120)

by the Pentagon choosing to do this.

Lex Fridman (13:36.700)

And you know what the effect of that is?

Eric Weinstein (13:38.400)

You've opened the door for every stupid theory known to man.

Lex Fridman (13:44.040)

My aunt saw a ghost.

Eric Weinstein (13:46.640)

Okay, now we're gonna have to listen to,

Lex Fridman (13:48.980)

well, hey, the Pentagon used to deny it.

Eric Weinstein (13:51.000)

Then it turned out there were UFOs, dude.

Lex Fridman (13:53.100)

Whoever is in charge of lying to the public,

Eric Weinstein (13:58.860)

they need a cost function that incorporates

Lex Fridman (14:01.020)

the damage and trust because I held this line

Eric Weinstein (14:04.220)

that this was all garbage and all BS.

Lex Fridman (14:07.260)

Now I don't know what to think.

Eric Weinstein (14:09.100)

There's a fascinating aspect to this alien discussion,

Lex Fridman (14:11.500)

the breaking of frameworks that involves

Eric Weinstein (14:13.380)

the release of videos from the Pentagon,

Lex Fridman (14:15.940)

which is almost like another dimension

Eric Weinstein (14:18.300)

that trust in itself or the nature of truth and information

Lex Fridman (14:21.960)

is a kind of dimension along which we're traveling

Eric Weinstein (14:24.780)

constantly that is messing with my head to think about

Lex Fridman (14:29.180)

because it almost feels like you need to incorporate that

Eric Weinstein (14:35.940)

into your study of the nature of reality

Lex Fridman (14:38.400)

is like the constant shifting of the notation,

Eric Weinstein (14:43.180)

the tools we use to communicate that reality.

Lex Fridman (14:45.940)

And so what am I supposed to think about these videos?

Lex Fridman (14:48.960)

Is it a complete distraction?

Lex Fridman (14:51.320)

Is it a kind of cosmic joke?

Lex Fridman (14:53.300)

I don't know, but you know what?

Lex Fridman (14:54.620)

I'm tired of these people,

Eric Weinstein (14:55.540)

just completely tired of these people.

Lex Fridman (14:57.500)

The people on the Pentagon side

Eric Weinstein (14:59.020)

or the people who are interpreting this stuff

Lex Fridman (15:00.500)

on the Pentagon side?

Eric Weinstein (15:01.340)

I'm tired of the authorities playing games

Lex Fridman (15:05.860)

with what we can know.

Eric Weinstein (15:08.340)

The fact that you and I don't,

Lex Fridman (15:09.500)

do you have a security clearance?

Eric Weinstein (15:11.740)

Some level of it for,

Lex Fridman (15:13.100)

because I was funded for DARPA for a while.

Eric Weinstein (15:15.180)

I don't have a security clearance.

Lex Fridman (15:17.260)

You know, I am going to release whatever theory I have.

Lex Fridman (15:21.380)

And my guess is that there is zero interest

Lex Fridman (15:23.940)

from our own government.

Lex Fridman (15:26.620)

And so the Chinese will find out about it at the same time,

Lex Fridman (15:29.580)

our government does,

Eric Weinstein (15:30.660)

because Lord knows what they do in these buildings.

Lex Fridman (15:33.260)

I watch crazy people walk in and out

Eric Weinstein (15:36.480)

of the intelligence community, walk in and out of DARPA.

Lex Fridman (15:39.980)

And I think, wow, you're talking to that person?

Eric Weinstein (15:43.100)

That's really fascinating to me.

Lex Fridman (15:45.220)

We don't seem to have a clue as to who might have the ball.

Eric Weinstein (15:48.980)

Complete lack of transparency.

Lex Fridman (15:50.520)

Do you think it's possible there's,

Eric Weinstein (15:52.020)

the government is in possession

Lex Fridman (15:54.460)

of something deeply fundamental

Eric Weinstein (15:57.060)

to our understanding of the world

Lex Fridman (15:58.500)

that they're not releasing?

Lex Fridman (16:00.620)

So this is one of the things is,

Lex Fridman (16:02.460)

this is one of the famous distractions

Eric Weinstein (16:05.540)

that people play with, the narrative.

Lex Fridman (16:06.980)

Assume that that were true.

Eric Weinstein (16:08.180)

Of alien life forms and spacecraft in possession,

Lex Fridman (16:12.740)

that the government is in possession of alien spacecraft.

Eric Weinstein (16:15.060)

Assume that were true.

Lex Fridman (16:17.580)

I don't think the government really exists at the moment.

Eric Weinstein (16:21.260)

I believe, and this is not an idea that was original to me.

Lex Fridman (16:24.660)

There was a guy named Michael Teitelbaum

Eric Weinstein (16:26.620)

who used to be at the Sloan Foundation.

Lex Fridman (16:28.420)

And at some point I pointed out that the US government

Eric Weinstein (16:31.300)

had completely contradictory objectives

Lex Fridman (16:33.700)

when it came to the military and science.

Lex Fridman (16:36.220)

And one branch said this, one branch said that.

Lex Fridman (16:38.660)

I said, I don't understand which is true.

Lex Fridman (16:40.820)

What does the government want?

Lex Fridman (16:41.660)

He said, do you think there's a government?

Lex Fridman (16:43.700)

And I said, what do you mean?

Lex Fridman (16:45.340)

He said, what makes you think that the people

Lex Fridman (16:47.740)

in those two offices have ever coordinated?

Lex Fridman (16:51.820)

What is it that allows each office

Lex Fridman (16:54.300)

to have a coherent plan with respect to every other office?

Lex Fridman (16:57.740)

And that's when I first started to understand

Eric Weinstein (16:59.580)

that there are periods where the government coheres,

Lex Fridman (17:02.500)

and then there are periods where the coherence just decays.

Lex Fridman (17:04.940)

And I think that that's been going on since 1945.

Lex Fridman (17:07.940)

That there have been a few places

Eric Weinstein (17:09.500)

where there's been increased coherence,

Lex Fridman (17:10.900)

but in general everything is just getting

Eric Weinstein (17:12.580)

less and less coherent.

Lex Fridman (17:13.940)

And that what war did was focus us on the need

Eric Weinstein (17:17.180)

to have a government of people, a mission,

Lex Fridman (17:20.100)

capacity, technology, commitment, ideology.

Lex Fridman (17:23.820)

And then as soon as that was gone,

Lex Fridman (17:27.780)

different people, those who'd been through World War II

Eric Weinstein (17:30.260)

had one set of beliefs, those born in the 1950s

Lex Fridman (17:34.500)

or late 40s by the time they got to Woodstock,

Eric Weinstein (17:38.020)

they didn't buy any of that.

Lex Fridman (17:39.660)

So coherence is the complete opposite

Eric Weinstein (17:42.780)

of bureaucracy being paralyzed by bureaucracy.

Lex Fridman (17:48.500)

So coherence is efficient, functional government.

Eric Weinstein (17:52.500)

Because when you say there's no government,

Lex Fridman (17:54.300)

meaning there's no emergent function

Eric Weinstein (17:58.540)

from a collection of individuals.

Lex Fridman (18:00.100)

It's just a bunch of individuals stuck in their offices

Eric Weinstein (18:03.540)

without any kind of efficient communication

Lex Fridman (18:05.420)

with each other on a single mission.

Lex Fridman (18:07.420)

And so a government that is truly at the epitome

Lex Fridman (18:12.620)

of what a government is supposed to be

Eric Weinstein (18:14.140)

is when a bunch of people working together.

Lex Fridman (18:16.180)

What are we about?

Lex Fridman (18:17.020)

Are we about freedom?

Lex Fridman (18:17.860)

Are we about growth?

Lex Fridman (18:19.380)

Are we about decency and fairness?

Lex Fridman (18:22.420)

Are we about the absence of a national culture

Lex Fridman (18:24.940)

so that we can all just do our own thing?

Lex Fridman (18:26.980)

I've called this thing the USA and the United States

Eric Weinstein (18:29.620)

have absolutely nothing.

Lex Fridman (18:31.580)

These are all different visions for our country.

Lex Fridman (18:35.580)

So it's possible that there's a alien spacecraft somewhere

Lex Fridman (18:39.540)

and there's like 20 people that know about it.

Lex Fridman (18:42.860)

And then they're kind of like,

Lex Fridman (18:44.460)

as you communicate further and further into the offices,

Eric Weinstein (18:47.180)

that information dissipates,

Lex Fridman (18:48.580)

it gets distorted in some kind of way.

Lex Fridman (18:50.340)

And then it's completely lost the power,

Lex Fridman (18:52.500)

the possibility of that information is lost.

Eric Weinstein (18:55.780)

We bought a house and I had this idea

Lex Fridman (18:57.780)

that I wanted to find out what all the switches did.

Lex Fridman (19:00.260)

And I quickly found out that your house

Lex Fridman (19:03.220)

doesn't keep updating its plans.

Eric Weinstein (19:05.700)

As people do modifications,

Lex Fridman (19:07.380)

they just do the modifications

Lex Fridman (19:08.820)

and they don't actually record

Lex Fridman (19:10.380)

why they were doing what they were doing

Eric Weinstein (19:11.820)

or what things lead to.

Lex Fridman (19:12.820)

So there are all sorts of bizarre,

Eric Weinstein (19:14.860)

like there's a switch in my house that says privacy.

Lex Fridman (19:17.420)

I don't know what privacy is.

Lex Fridman (19:20.220)

Does it turn on an electromagnetic field?

Lex Fridman (19:22.300)

Does some lead shielding go over the house?

Eric Weinstein (19:27.540)

That's what we have.

Lex Fridman (19:28.580)

We have a system in which the people

Eric Weinstein (19:30.180)

who've inherited these structures have no idea

Lex Fridman (19:32.500)

why their grandparents built them.

Eric Weinstein (19:34.140)

I'd be funny if there's a freedom of speech switch

Lex Fridman (19:37.020)

that you could also control.

Lex Fridman (19:38.700)

And there'd be a perfect metaphor.

Lex Fridman (19:39.900)

Well, that's different because what they figured out is,

Eric Weinstein (19:42.900)

is that if they can just make sure

Lex Fridman (19:44.500)

that we don't have any public options for communication,

Eric Weinstein (19:48.900)

then hey, everything that we say to each other

Lex Fridman (19:52.660)

goes through a private company,

Eric Weinstein (19:53.740)

private companies can do whatever they want.

Lex Fridman (19:55.380)

And this is like one of the greatest moves

Eric Weinstein (19:57.620)

that we didn't really notice.

Lex Fridman (1:00:00.840)

And you said you also got paid as a young man, right?

Eric Weinstein (1:00:04.560)

I believe the word was laid, but allegedly.

Lex Fridman (1:00:07.600)

My hearing isn't so good at age 55.

Eric Weinstein (1:00:09.800)

All right, leaving that aside.

Lex Fridman (1:00:11.400)

Leaving that aside, what was Jeffrey Epstein doing

Lex Fridman (1:00:16.120)

hanging around all of these scientists?

Lex Fridman (1:00:18.080)

I don't think that was the same program

Eric Weinstein (1:00:22.200)

that was about compromising political leaders

Lex Fridman (1:00:24.760)

and business people and entertainment figures.

Eric Weinstein (1:00:27.360)

I think these are two different programs

Lex Fridman (1:00:29.120)

that were being run through one individual.

Lex Fridman (1:00:31.760)

And Joe seemed to think that I didn't think he was smooth.

Lex Fridman (1:00:35.480)

I thought he was glib.

Eric Weinstein (1:00:38.000)

I think what Joe is really trying to get at is that

Lex Fridman (1:00:39.960)

I found his mysticism meretricious.

Eric Weinstein (1:00:43.240)

He had an ability to deflect every conversation

Lex Fridman (1:00:48.120)

that might go towards revealing

Eric Weinstein (1:00:50.160)

that he didn't know what he was talking about.

Lex Fridman (1:00:51.640)

Every time you started to get close to something

Eric Weinstein (1:00:54.640)

where the rubber hit the road,

Lex Fridman (1:00:55.820)

the rubber wouldn't hit the road.

Lex Fridman (1:00:58.320)

And yet, can you help me untangle the fact

Lex Fridman (1:01:02.400)

that you thought deeply about the physics

Eric Weinstein (1:01:07.260)

of the nature of our universe

Lex Fridman (1:01:10.520)

and Jeffrey Epstein was interested?

Lex Fridman (1:01:13.520)

How did he know?

Lex Fridman (1:01:14.840)

I wasn't really talking about this stuff until,

Eric Weinstein (1:01:18.640)

even my close friends didn't really know what I was up to.

Lex Fridman (1:01:22.240)

And yet you're saying he did not have

Eric Weinstein (1:01:25.360)

sufficient brilliance to understand

Lex Fridman (1:01:27.540)

when the rubber hit the road.

Lex Fridman (1:01:28.660)

So why did he have sufficient interest and curiosity?

Lex Fridman (1:01:33.080)

I'll tell you what I thought.

Eric Weinstein (1:01:34.660)

I had been waiting to find out,

Lex Fridman (1:01:36.160)

does my government even know I exist?

Lex Fridman (1:01:39.440)

Do you have an answer to that question?

Lex Fridman (1:01:40.960)

I have, a couple times the government

Eric Weinstein (1:01:44.320)

has reached out to me.

Lex Fridman (1:01:46.640)

In general, there is zero interest in me,

Eric Weinstein (1:01:49.600)

like less than zero interest.

Lex Fridman (1:01:52.420)

I find that fascinating.

Lex Fridman (1:01:54.440)

As far as you know, right?

Lex Fridman (1:01:56.320)

Well, that's what I'm trying to say.

Eric Weinstein (1:01:57.680)

The question about not being able to see

Lex Fridman (1:01:59.800)

through a half silvered mirror,

Eric Weinstein (1:02:01.960)

you don't know what's going on

Lex Fridman (1:02:03.580)

behind the half silvered mirror.

Eric Weinstein (1:02:04.940)

To you, it's all you see is your reflection.

Lex Fridman (1:02:09.120)

But your intuition still holds,

Eric Weinstein (1:02:10.920)

like this is where I've mentioned that I,

Lex Fridman (1:02:13.880)

this is where I'll say naive dumb things,

Lex Fridman (1:02:16.200)

but I still hold on to this intuition that Jeff,

Lex Fridman (1:02:20.880)

I'm not confident in this,

Lex Fridman (1:02:21.920)

but I lean towards that direction

Lex Fridman (1:02:25.160)

that Jeffrey Epstein is the source of evil,

Eric Weinstein (1:02:27.360)

not something that's underlying him.

Lex Fridman (1:02:29.760)

You have a bias.

Eric Weinstein (1:02:31.480)

It's different than mine.

Lex Fridman (1:02:32.760)

Our Bayesian priors are tutored

Eric Weinstein (1:02:35.200)

by different life experiences.

Lex Fridman (1:02:37.760)

If I was mostly concerned, like Sam Harris is concerned,

Eric Weinstein (1:02:42.200)

that people fill their heads with nonsense,

Lex Fridman (1:02:45.560)

I would have a very strong sense

Eric Weinstein (1:02:47.700)

that people need order in the world,

Lex Fridman (1:02:49.400)

that they take mysterious situations,

Eric Weinstein (1:02:51.720)

they build entire castles in the air,

Lex Fridman (1:02:53.640)

and then they go move in if they really get crazy.

Eric Weinstein (1:02:56.440)

The old saying is that neurotics build castles in the air

Lex Fridman (1:03:01.000)

and psychotics move in.

Eric Weinstein (1:03:02.640)

Coming from a progressive family,

Lex Fridman (1:03:05.000)

we had a different experience.

Eric Weinstein (1:03:06.480)

It's really weird when the government

Lex Fridman (1:03:07.720)

is actually out to get you,

Eric Weinstein (1:03:09.000)

when they actually send a spy,

Lex Fridman (1:03:11.060)

when they actually engage in disinformation campaigns,

Eric Weinstein (1:03:14.000)

when they smear you.

Lex Fridman (1:03:15.640)

And if you've ever had that brought to bear on your family,

Eric Weinstein (1:03:19.040)

you have a Howard Zinn sort of understanding of the country,

Lex Fridman (1:03:22.600)

which is different than having a,

Eric Weinstein (1:03:25.200)

wow, do people believe crazy stuff

Lex Fridman (1:03:27.200)

because they watch too much TV.

Lex Fridman (1:03:29.820)

And both of these things have some merit to them,

Lex Fridman (1:03:32.280)

but it's a question of regulated expression.

Eric Weinstein (1:03:34.200)

When do you want to express more Sam Harris

Lex Fridman (1:03:36.460)

and when do you want to express more Howard Zinn?

Lex Fridman (1:03:39.680)

And you can express both, correct?

Lex Fridman (1:03:41.400)

The one human being can express both?

Eric Weinstein (1:03:42.840)

Sure, but there's a trade off between them.

Lex Fridman (1:03:44.940)

In other words, most people like the Michael Shermers

Eric Weinstein (1:03:47.640)

of the world are gonna tilt very strongly

Lex Fridman (1:03:49.680)

to extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Lex Fridman (1:03:52.440)

So you're gonna have that kind of energy.

Lex Fridman (1:03:54.320)

And then somebody else is gonna say,

Lex Fridman (1:03:55.600)

how many times do I have to get hit on,

Lex Fridman (1:03:58.240)

how many times do I have to hammer my own thumb

Lex Fridman (1:03:59.760)

before I realize that there's a problem?

Lex Fridman (1:04:02.040)

So my feeling about this is yes,

Eric Weinstein (1:04:04.680)

people see patterns in clouds.

Lex Fridman (1:04:06.520)

They see faces and scripture and all sorts of things,

Lex Fridman (1:04:09.240)

and it's just random cloud patterns.

Lex Fridman (1:04:10.680)

And it's also the case that there's tremendous pressure

Eric Weinstein (1:04:13.880)

not to see conspiracies when conspiracies

Lex Fridman (1:04:16.180)

are relatively more common than the people

Eric Weinstein (1:04:18.400)

who shout conspiracy theory will claim.

Lex Fridman (1:04:21.280)

So both of these things are true.

Lex Fridman (1:04:22.680)

And you have to ask, when do you express your inner Zinn

Lex Fridman (1:04:25.160)

and when your inner Harris?

Lex Fridman (1:04:26.920)

And those are different.

Lex Fridman (1:04:27.880)

I want to find them out.

Eric Weinstein (1:04:28.720)

The difference in you and I biases aside

Lex Fridman (1:04:31.500)

is you've actually met Jeffrey Epstein.

Lex Fridman (1:04:33.480)

And I'm listening to reverberations years later

Lex Fridman (1:04:40.800)

of stories and narratives throughout the story.

Eric Weinstein (1:04:42.920)

Luckily, I only met him once.

Lex Fridman (1:04:44.480)

And I think I had one or perhaps two phone conversations

Eric Weinstein (1:04:49.280)

with him other than the one meeting.

Lex Fridman (1:04:51.080)

You can learn a lot in just a few words, right,

Eric Weinstein (1:04:54.360)

from a human being.

Lex Fridman (1:04:55.200)

Well, that's true, but I think that the bigger issue

Eric Weinstein (1:04:57.640)

was I saw something that I don't hear much remarked upon,

Lex Fridman (1:05:01.240)

which is Jeffrey Epstein is all that there is.

Eric Weinstein (1:05:05.880)

In other words, there's the National Science Foundation,

Lex Fridman (1:05:08.760)

National Institute of Health, Howard Hughes.

Eric Weinstein (1:05:11.440)

There's all this stuff that kind of has the same feel to it,

Lex Fridman (1:05:16.260)

a little bit of variation and difference,

Eric Weinstein (1:05:18.200)

Department of Energy.

Lex Fridman (1:05:20.480)

If you fall outside of that, there's just Jeffrey Epstein.

Eric Weinstein (1:05:23.900)

That's what you're told.

Lex Fridman (1:05:25.200)

Yes.

Eric Weinstein (1:05:26.040)

That's not quite true.

Lex Fridman (1:05:26.860)

There's Kavli, maybe Jim Simons is now in the game.

Eric Weinstein (1:05:30.000)

Peter Thiel has done some stuff.

Lex Fridman (1:05:32.040)

You had Yuri Milner and Mark Zuckerberg try.

Lex Fridman (1:05:35.160)

So there is other money running around, Templeton.

Lex Fridman (1:05:39.620)

But very strongly, there was a belief

Eric Weinstein (1:05:41.960)

that if you're doing something really innovative

Lex Fridman (1:05:44.040)

and the system can't fund it because we become pussies,

Eric Weinstein (1:05:48.200)

Jeffrey Epstein's your guy.

Lex Fridman (1:05:49.560)

So there's like this funnel

Eric Weinstein (1:05:51.200)

that you're supposed to go through.

Lex Fridman (1:05:53.080)

That's right.

Lex Fridman (1:05:54.000)

And the idea is that you get called

Lex Fridman (1:05:55.360)

the great man's house and the sort of lubricious version

Eric Weinstein (1:06:02.960)

of Ralph Lauren takes you in and asks you bizarre questions.

Lex Fridman (1:06:07.880)

And maybe he has an island, maybe he has a plane.

Lex Fridman (1:06:10.960)

And when you're starved, somebody showing you a feast

Lex Fridman (1:06:17.520)

or when you're dehydrated in a death's door

Lex Fridman (1:06:20.720)

and somebody says, oh, I have a well, that's what it is.

Lex Fridman (1:06:27.760)

And so the thought is, wow, can somebody get some effing

Eric Weinstein (1:06:32.280)

money into the science system so that we don't have

Lex Fridman (1:06:34.840)

super creeps trying to learn all of our secrets

Lex Fridman (1:06:38.200)

ahead of time?

Lex Fridman (1:06:39.320)

WTF, what is your problem with transparency

Lex Fridman (1:06:42.280)

and taxpayer dollars?

Lex Fridman (1:06:43.320)

Just all of you, you wouldn't have a country.

Eric Weinstein (1:06:46.480)

You'd be speaking German.

Lex Fridman (1:06:47.880)

So essentially you believe that human beings

Eric Weinstein (1:06:51.240)

would not be able to, when the money is lacking

Lex Fridman (1:06:54.080)

in the system, like in research.

Eric Weinstein (1:06:55.840)

We produce public goods.

Lex Fridman (1:06:57.200)

You and I are meant to produce public goods.

Eric Weinstein (1:07:00.320)

Now I sell Athletic Greens and I sell Theragun

Lex Fridman (1:07:03.280)

and I sell Unagi scooters and Chili Pad.

Eric Weinstein (1:07:07.720)

Can I be honest, I love these products,

Lex Fridman (1:07:09.640)

but I didn't get into this game for the purpose of selling.

Lex Fridman (1:07:14.640)

I'm trying to figure out how do you have an FU lifestyle?

Lex Fridman (1:07:19.920)

But you know something Lex, I don't know why you built

Eric Weinstein (1:07:22.800)

this channel, it's kind of a mystery.

Lex Fridman (1:07:24.640)

I don't know why.

Eric Weinstein (1:07:26.040)

I'll tell you why I built my channel.

Lex Fridman (1:07:28.200)

It's gonna be a lot harder to roll me this time in an alley.

Eric Weinstein (1:07:32.360)

I got rolled multiple times and my point is I didn't want

Lex Fridman (1:07:37.880)

to become a celebrity, I didn't want to become well known,

Lex Fridman (1:07:41.040)

but it's a lot harder to roll somebody who's getting,

Lex Fridman (1:07:47.080)

I think I'm, I don't know if this is mistaken,

Lex Fridman (1:07:49.800)

but I think I'm the math PhD with the largest number

Lex Fridman (1:07:52.160)

of followers on Twitter.

Lex Fridman (1:07:54.400)

And there was nothing you could do before.

Lex Fridman (1:07:58.760)

I mean again, to put a little responsibility on you,

Lex Fridman (1:08:01.000)

so you've created something really special

Lex Fridman (1:08:03.880)

for the distribution of your own ideas.

Eric Weinstein (1:08:06.200)

I mean, but because it's not necessarily currently scalable,

Lex Fridman (1:08:11.040)

you also, perhaps you and I have the responsibility

Eric Weinstein (1:08:15.720)

of giving other people also a chance to spread their ideas.

Lex Fridman (1:08:19.480)

I mean Joe Rogan did this very effectively

Eric Weinstein (1:08:21.320)

for a bunch of people that.

Lex Fridman (1:08:23.720)

That's why they're angry at him because he's a gatekeeper

Lex Fridman (1:08:26.440)

and he let all sorts of people through that gate

Lex Fridman (1:08:29.600)

from Roger Penrose to Alex Jones.

Eric Weinstein (1:08:32.840)

To Jordan Peterson to, I mean, even first of all, to you.

Lex Fridman (1:08:38.760)

To Abby Martin.

Eric Weinstein (1:08:39.920)

To Abby Martin.

Lex Fridman (1:08:40.840)

To Barry Weiss.

Eric Weinstein (1:08:42.040)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:08:43.640)

That's the problem.

Eric Weinstein (1:08:45.920)

Well, but you have not successfully built up a thing

Lex Fridman (1:08:48.960)

that allows that to carry that forward.

Eric Weinstein (1:08:50.280)

Oh no, no, no, no.

Lex Fridman (1:08:52.000)

We are all vulnerable to reputational attack

Eric Weinstein (1:08:56.880)

because what happens, you see, the problem, Lex,

Lex Fridman (1:08:59.840)

is that you are now an institution at some level.

Eric Weinstein (1:09:02.920)

You walk around with all this equipment in a duffel bag.

Lex Fridman (1:09:08.320)

The last suit you'll ever need.

Lex Fridman (1:09:10.520)

And you have the reach of something like CNN

Lex Fridman (1:09:16.640)

to people who matter.

Eric Weinstein (1:09:19.300)

Okay.

Lex Fridman (1:09:20.320)

So now the question is, how do we control something

Eric Weinstein (1:09:23.540)

that doesn't have a board, doesn't have shareholders,

Lex Fridman (1:09:25.360)

doesn't have to make SEC filings, FCC.

Lex Fridman (1:09:28.460)

So the best answer they have is,

Lex Fridman (1:09:32.600)

well, we just have to destroy reputations.

Eric Weinstein (1:09:36.360)

All it takes is for us to take something

Lex Fridman (1:09:38.400)

that gets said or done or alleged.

Lex Fridman (1:09:41.480)

And I think it's incredibly important.

Lex Fridman (1:09:43.080)

One of the things people don't understand is that

Eric Weinstein (1:09:46.000)

I'm going to fight general reputational attacks.

Lex Fridman (1:09:49.760)

Not because some people don't deserve

Eric Weinstein (1:09:51.560)

to have their reputations dragged through the mud,

Lex Fridman (1:09:55.160)

but because it's too powerful of a tool

Eric Weinstein (1:09:58.260)

to hand it to CNN, MSNBC, Princeton, Harvard,

Lex Fridman (1:10:02.880)

the State Department.

Eric Weinstein (1:10:04.440)

Yes.

Lex Fridman (1:10:05.280)

But some of it is also.

Eric Weinstein (1:10:07.460)

J.P. Morgan.

Lex Fridman (1:10:09.060)

Muhammad Ali style, being good enough at

Eric Weinstein (1:10:15.540)

doing everything you need to do

Lex Fridman (1:10:17.040)

without giving enough meat for the reputational attacks.

Eric Weinstein (1:10:21.660)

Not being afraid, but not giving enough meat.

Lex Fridman (1:10:25.080)

I don't see why the people who have good ideas

Eric Weinstein (1:10:28.040)

have to lead lives that are that clean.

Lex Fridman (1:10:30.200)

If you can do it.

Eric Weinstein (1:10:31.040)

You can be messy, yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:10:32.200)

You should be able to be messy.

Eric Weinstein (1:10:34.000)

Otherwise, we're suppressing too many people.

Lex Fridman (1:10:37.060)

Too many, too brilliant minds.

Eric Weinstein (1:10:39.040)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:10:39.880)

Can you believe Elon Musk smoked a blunt?

Eric Weinstein (1:10:42.720)

I still, people tell me this.

Lex Fridman (1:10:45.240)

Okay, I have discussions about Elon and people,

Eric Weinstein (1:10:49.600)

the Avi Loeb, the Harvard scientist,

Lex Fridman (1:10:54.120)

who's talking about a Muammuah

Eric Weinstein (1:10:56.220)

that it might be alien technology.

Lex Fridman (1:10:58.520)

He told me his, this outside the box thinker.

Eric Weinstein (1:11:04.040)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:11:05.200)

When speaking to me about Elon said,

Eric Weinstein (1:11:10.480)

called him the guy who smoked, he smokes weed.

Lex Fridman (1:11:13.880)

The blunt.

Eric Weinstein (1:11:14.720)

I love it.

Lex Fridman (1:11:15.540)

In a dismissive way.

Eric Weinstein (1:11:16.480)

Like this guy's crazy because he smoked some weed.

Lex Fridman (1:11:20.160)

I was looking at him.

Lex Fridman (1:11:21.560)

I was like, why?

Lex Fridman (1:11:23.040)

Wow.

Eric Weinstein (1:11:24.160)

Wow.

Lex Fridman (1:11:25.140)

I think you should be able to have

Eric Weinstein (1:11:27.920)

consensual drug filled orgies.

Lex Fridman (1:11:30.320)

Fuck perfect lives.

Eric Weinstein (1:11:32.480)

Yeah, you should be allowed to be messy.

Lex Fridman (1:11:34.360)

Yeah, right.

Eric Weinstein (1:11:35.200)

I take back my statement.

Lex Fridman (1:11:36.040)

I'm just saying.

Eric Weinstein (1:11:37.120)

Respectability is the unique prison

Lex Fridman (1:11:40.340)

where all of the gates are open

Lex Fridman (1:11:43.060)

and the inmates beg to stay inside.

Lex Fridman (1:11:46.940)

It's time to end their prison of respectability

Eric Weinstein (1:11:49.800)

because it's too effective of a means of sidelining

Lex Fridman (1:11:53.020)

and silencing people.

Eric Weinstein (1:11:54.720)

Including it is better that we have bad people

Lex Fridman (1:11:58.880)

in our system than this idea of no platforming people

Eric Weinstein (1:12:04.040)

who are beyond the pale because it's such a simple technique.

Lex Fridman (1:12:08.200)

So how do we, what's the heroic action here on the?

Eric Weinstein (1:12:11.780)

Well, for example, having Ashley Matthews on my program.

Lex Fridman (1:12:15.280)

By the way, she was absolutely delightful as a guest.

Eric Weinstein (1:12:20.640)

She was, she is polite in the extreme,

Lex Fridman (1:12:23.840)

far more polite than I am.

Lex Fridman (1:12:26.060)

And I had her right after Roger Penrose as a guest

Lex Fridman (1:12:29.380)

because I wanted to highlight this program can go anywhere.

Eric Weinstein (1:12:32.200)

We can talk to anyone.

Lex Fridman (1:12:33.640)

What about social media?

Eric Weinstein (1:12:34.600)

You've started highlighting people being banned

Lex Fridman (1:12:37.080)

on social media.

Lex Fridman (1:12:38.720)

How do we fight this?

Lex Fridman (1:12:40.440)

Like if you get banned from social media,

Lex Fridman (1:12:42.240)

so you're saying nobody will stand up to me.

Lex Fridman (1:12:44.520)

Well, just figure out what your incentive structure

Eric Weinstein (1:12:46.440)

is before.

Lex Fridman (1:12:47.280)

Assume that I get banned on social media

Eric Weinstein (1:12:49.660)

because somebody wants to make sure

Lex Fridman (1:12:51.120)

that my message doesn't interfere

Eric Weinstein (1:12:53.720)

with the dominant narrative.

Lex Fridman (1:12:55.080)

Okay.

Lex Fridman (1:12:58.920)

What will happen, by the way,

Lex Fridman (1:12:59.960)

I'm very glad to be able to explain this on your show

Eric Weinstein (1:13:02.320)

because that video will presumably be archived

Lex Fridman (1:13:05.720)

and they can't easily make you take it down.

Eric Weinstein (1:13:08.920)

Okay.

Lex Fridman (1:13:09.800)

So what's gonna happen is,

Eric Weinstein (1:13:11.300)

is that there'll be a whole bunch

Lex Fridman (1:13:12.640)

of very low quality bot like accounts

Eric Weinstein (1:13:16.960)

that dog you every time you talk about me.

Lex Fridman (1:13:19.240)

Right, dude, it's getting old, getting boring.

Eric Weinstein (1:13:22.160)

We already heard you.

Lex Fridman (1:13:23.480)

Dude, that was like, let it go.

Eric Weinstein (1:13:25.860)

Not a good look.

Lex Fridman (1:13:27.120)

Not a good look is one of my favorites.

Lex Fridman (1:13:29.200)

But what about the high profile ones?

Lex Fridman (1:13:30.960)

Well, then you'll get a few high profile ones

Lex Fridman (1:13:32.800)

and some of the high profile ones command armies.

Lex Fridman (1:13:37.100)

Right.

Eric Weinstein (1:13:37.940)

Like at some point I had 10,000 people

Lex Fridman (1:13:40.280)

using exactly the same templated tweet, tweeting at me.

Eric Weinstein (1:13:43.560)

It was just actually, it got to the point

Lex Fridman (1:13:45.340)

where it was funny because everybody said,

Lex Fridman (1:13:48.000)

did you hear that in a hipster coffee shop?

Lex Fridman (1:13:49.960)

And I was like,

Lex Fridman (1:13:50.800)

why are you all suddenly talking about hipster coffee?

Lex Fridman (1:13:52.840)

Just hilarious.

Eric Weinstein (1:13:56.480)

Those things will cause you to think better of it.

Lex Fridman (1:13:58.940)

You'll start to see your follower count go down

Eric Weinstein (1:14:01.180)

because it's easy to give you a bunch of bot like follows

Lex Fridman (1:14:04.480)

and then just pull them.

Lex Fridman (1:14:06.060)

So I think that's pretty well known how,

Lex Fridman (1:14:09.680)

and then maybe your account will be suspended

Lex Fridman (1:14:11.600)

and it can't be revoked and et cetera, et cetera.

Lex Fridman (1:14:14.440)

And then three days later, you'll be told it was an error.

Lex Fridman (1:14:17.380)

So let me push back.

Lex Fridman (1:14:18.320)

I just don't see not defending you.

Eric Weinstein (1:14:20.480)

Like, okay, so what are the things you would do

Lex Fridman (1:14:23.760)

that given that I can actually talk to you offline,

Lex Fridman (1:14:27.840)

that would make me not defend you?

Lex Fridman (1:14:33.260)

Well, first of all, I can't, I mean, I can imagine some,

Lex Fridman (1:14:37.640)

but all of us have things.

Lex Fridman (1:14:39.640)

If somebody says, do you hear what your boy,

Lex Fridman (1:14:41.800)

Lex said about you?

Lex Fridman (1:14:43.560)

What did Lex say about me?

Eric Weinstein (1:14:45.660)

Oh, he said you were flawed, dude.

Lex Fridman (1:14:48.320)

Oh, shit.

Eric Weinstein (1:14:51.440)

They so distressed

Lex Fridman (1:14:53.760)

because none of us wanna stand behind flawed people.

Eric Weinstein (1:14:57.060)

That's why you have everybody rushing to say,

Lex Fridman (1:14:58.760)

I neither condemn nor condone.

Lex Fridman (1:15:00.080)

I know I don't condemn nor, what is that?

Lex Fridman (1:15:02.780)

We're all trying to say.

Eric Weinstein (1:15:03.620)

By the way, for the record,

Lex Fridman (1:15:04.980)

I said that Eric is smarter than me

Eric Weinstein (1:15:07.340)

in a brilliant human being, but flawed like all humans are.

Lex Fridman (1:15:10.880)

My point is I've now come up with a new policy,

Eric Weinstein (1:15:14.160)

which is I don't care what my friends have done.

Lex Fridman (1:15:17.580)

I am not disavowing my friends,

Eric Weinstein (1:15:20.040)

not because they didn't do the wrong thing.

Lex Fridman (1:15:22.080)

Maybe they did do the wrong thing.

Eric Weinstein (1:15:23.380)

I don't know.

Lex Fridman (1:15:25.080)

What's the value of friendship if that's not that?

Eric Weinstein (1:15:28.320)

Like, for example, we've had the situation

Lex Fridman (1:15:29.920)

with Brian Callan.

Eric Weinstein (1:15:30.880)

Brian Callan was featured recently in the Los Angeles Times.

Lex Fridman (1:15:34.000)

I know nothing about the allegations.

Lex Fridman (1:15:36.920)

I can't, I didn't even know Brian at the time, right?

Lex Fridman (1:15:39.760)

I've known him for roughly the time I've been in Los Angeles,

Eric Weinstein (1:15:42.340)

maybe a year and a half during that period of time.

Lex Fridman (1:15:44.960)

I've never seen anything wrong.

Lex Fridman (1:15:47.960)

Now I'm in a situation, well, what do you think he did?

Lex Fridman (1:15:50.040)

Do you think he didn't?

Lex Fridman (1:15:50.880)

It's like, you know what?

Lex Fridman (1:15:52.440)

I don't know, but I do know this.

Eric Weinstein (1:15:54.660)

Everyone's entitled to have friends

Lex Fridman (1:15:56.880)

because we can't afford isolated people.

Lex Fridman (1:16:00.080)

And if your friends do the wrong thing,

Lex Fridman (1:16:02.200)

they're still your friends.

Lex Fridman (1:16:04.280)

And if they do terrible, terrible things,

Lex Fridman (1:16:06.200)

you bring that up with them privately.

Lex Fridman (1:16:08.960)

And it's not my responsibility to disavow in public.

Lex Fridman (1:16:12.400)

We've had the situation that I don't like

Eric Weinstein (1:16:15.840)

where particular people that I've been close to,

Lex Fridman (1:16:19.240)

I'm put under tremendous pressure to disavow them.

Lex Fridman (1:16:21.880)

What do you think now about your buddy?

Lex Fridman (1:16:24.160)

I like Dave Rubin, all that kind of stuff.

Eric Weinstein (1:16:26.040)

Here's the thing, my friends are my friends.

Lex Fridman (1:16:28.960)

I don't disavow my friends.

Eric Weinstein (1:16:30.760)

We all need to make a statement

Lex Fridman (1:16:34.300)

that we will not be brought under pressure

Eric Weinstein (1:16:36.760)

to disavow our friends, our family members,

Lex Fridman (1:16:40.840)

because mass murderers are dangerous

Eric Weinstein (1:16:46.520)

the more isolated they become.

Lex Fridman (1:16:48.140)

It is not a good idea to constantly push to isolate people.

Eric Weinstein (1:16:52.920)

Yes.

Lex Fridman (1:16:53.760)

And it's dangerous, and so.

Lex Fridman (1:16:54.600)

And it sends a signal to everybody else

Lex Fridman (1:16:56.400)

to fit in, to be more cynical about the human.

Lex Fridman (1:17:00.720)

So my feeling, if I find out you've been selling heroin

Lex Fridman (1:17:04.140)

to elementary school students,

Eric Weinstein (1:17:06.480)

you're still my friend, and I will not be disavowing you.

Lex Fridman (1:17:09.480)

And if I have a problem with you selling heroin

Eric Weinstein (1:17:11.840)

to elementary school students during school hours,

Lex Fridman (1:17:15.760)

I will bring it up with you privately,

Eric Weinstein (1:17:18.800)

because we don't need to hear my voice

Lex Fridman (1:17:21.540)

added to that condemnation.

Eric Weinstein (1:17:23.020)

Are there things that you could do

Lex Fridman (1:17:25.020)

that would cause me to say, actually, F this guy?

Eric Weinstein (1:17:27.880)

Yeah, above and beyond that.

Lex Fridman (1:17:29.640)

But simply doing the wrong thing,

Eric Weinstein (1:17:32.200)

I think we've gone down a terrible path.

Lex Fridman (1:17:34.760)

I think isolated people are about the most dangerous thing

Eric Weinstein (1:17:37.280)

we could have in a heavily armed society.

Lex Fridman (1:17:40.320)

So I deeply agree with you on Brian Callan

Lex Fridman (1:17:43.400)

and on all these people that, quote, unquote, got canceled.

Lex Fridman (1:17:47.480)

And I'm not saying that they,

Eric Weinstein (1:17:49.120)

I don't know the truth value, because we can't.

Lex Fridman (1:17:52.080)

And even if I did know the truth value,

Eric Weinstein (1:17:53.800)

I'm not setting up an incentive structure

Lex Fridman (1:17:56.840)

for the personal destruction

Eric Weinstein (1:17:59.720)

as a means of letting institutions combat

Lex Fridman (1:18:02.900)

the fact that individuals are the last thing that can say,

Eric Weinstein (1:18:05.440)

none of you guys make any sense.

Lex Fridman (1:18:08.160)

I don't treat these things like,

Eric Weinstein (1:18:09.680)

I had a conversation where Kevin Spacey

Lex Fridman (1:18:12.240)

was at the dinner table when I came down from a hotel room.

Lex Fridman (1:18:15.540)

And I had a very long conversation with Kevin Spacey.

Lex Fridman (1:18:18.560)

I will not detail, because I don't do that,

Eric Weinstein (1:18:21.680)

as to what we discussed.

Lex Fridman (1:18:23.520)

But we talked very specifically about him being canceled.

Lex Fridman (1:18:27.020)

And I don't think that the world has heard that story

Lex Fridman (1:18:30.280)

in part because there's a very strong sense

Eric Weinstein (1:18:33.760)

that he has to be outgrouped.

Lex Fridman (1:18:35.720)

And as a result, I mean, do we want,

Eric Weinstein (1:18:41.240)

do we want to disavow the space program

Lex Fridman (1:18:42.920)

because it touched Werner von Braun?

Eric Weinstein (1:18:44.560)

Do we want to disavow quantum mechanics

Lex Fridman (1:18:46.180)

because Pascal Jordan and Werner Heisenberg passed through it?

Lex Fridman (1:18:49.400)

Is Ehrenfest's theorem false because he murdered his child?

Lex Fridman (1:18:53.040)

I mean, at what point do we recognize

Lex Fridman (1:18:55.720)

that we are the problem?

Lex Fridman (1:18:57.800)

Humans are humans.

Lex Fridman (1:18:58.940)

And there is no perfect,

Lex Fridman (1:19:01.760)

there is no perfect group of people,

Eric Weinstein (1:19:03.080)

even all of the most oppressed people,

Lex Fridman (1:19:04.920)

the supposed victims of the world,

Eric Weinstein (1:19:06.620)

who we now have fetishized into thinking

Lex Fridman (1:19:08.440)

that they're all oracles

Eric Weinstein (1:19:09.520)

because their lived experience informs us

Lex Fridman (1:19:12.080)

and their pain is more salient than everyone else's pain.

Eric Weinstein (1:19:16.040)

Those people aren't necessarily great people.

Lex Fridman (1:19:19.800)

It's like none of us, we can't do this in this fashion.

Lex Fridman (1:19:24.920)

So when we sit down to have a conversation

Lex Fridman (1:19:27.640)

across the table from somebody,

Eric Weinstein (1:19:29.680)

you should be willing to,

Lex Fridman (1:19:32.080)

like you should not have NPR in your mind.

Eric Weinstein (1:19:33.880)

You should be willing to take the full risk

Lex Fridman (1:19:36.680)

and to see the good in the person

Eric Weinstein (1:19:40.080)

with limited information

Lex Fridman (1:19:41.920)

and to do your best to understand that person.

Eric Weinstein (1:19:44.520)

Everybody is entitled to a hypocrisy budget.

Lex Fridman (1:19:48.480)

I don't believe this is of institutions, okay?

Eric Weinstein (1:19:51.480)

Everybody is entitled

Lex Fridman (1:19:52.920)

to a certain amount of screwing up in life.

Eric Weinstein (1:19:55.160)

You're entitled to a mendacity budget.

Lex Fridman (1:19:57.800)

You're entitled to an aggression budget.

Eric Weinstein (1:20:00.920)

The idea of getting rid of everybody,

Lex Fridman (1:20:03.360)

you know, people haven't even blown through their budgets

Lex Fridman (1:20:06.800)

and we're already.

Lex Fridman (1:20:07.640)

Yeah, I think about, for example, one person,

Eric Weinstein (1:20:11.200)

I'd be curious to get your thoughts about Alex Jones.

Lex Fridman (1:20:14.720)

Let's not talk about Alex Jones for a second.

Eric Weinstein (1:20:16.200)

Let's talk about the National Enquirer.

Lex Fridman (1:20:18.800)

Is everything the National Enquirer says false?

Eric Weinstein (1:20:22.800)

No.

Lex Fridman (1:20:23.640)

No.

Lex Fridman (1:20:25.200)

Okay, do you remember the John Edwards story?

Lex Fridman (1:20:28.880)

Did you cheat on his wife?

Eric Weinstein (1:20:30.080)

Sorry.

Lex Fridman (1:20:30.920)

He had a child from an extramarital affair.

Eric Weinstein (1:20:33.120)

Yes.

Lex Fridman (1:20:34.440)

I believe that the National Enquirer broke the story.

Lex Fridman (1:20:39.880)

And then what does the New York Times do?

Lex Fridman (1:20:41.120)

The New York Times, I think, is allowed to report

Eric Weinstein (1:20:43.880)

that the National Enquirer is making a claim.

Lex Fridman (1:20:46.280)

That way they don't have to substantiate the story.

Lex Fridman (1:20:49.040)

So why is the New York Times talking to Mike Cernovich

Lex Fridman (1:20:53.520)

or using the National Enquirer as a source?

Lex Fridman (1:20:56.160)

Are they using Alex Jones as a source?

Lex Fridman (1:20:59.840)

Here's the big problem that we're having.

Lex Fridman (1:21:02.520)

Why are certain people entitled to talk to everybody

Lex Fridman (1:21:05.840)

and other people are entitled to talk to no one?

Eric Weinstein (1:21:08.240)

I don't really understand this.

Lex Fridman (1:21:09.280)

This is an indulgence system.

Eric Weinstein (1:21:10.880)

This is how the Catholic church used to do things.

Lex Fridman (1:21:13.280)

It's hard to fight the system because the reason

Eric Weinstein (1:21:15.520)

you don't talk to Alex Jones is because the platforms

Lex Fridman (1:21:17.960)

on which we do the communication will deplatform.

Eric Weinstein (1:21:21.920)

I'm not platform.

Lex Fridman (1:21:23.160)

I used to do NPR and I used to do the NewsHour

Lex Fridman (1:21:27.800)

and I used to provide stories

Lex Fridman (1:21:29.960)

to Washington Post, New York Times.

Eric Weinstein (1:21:32.600)

That has gone away.

Lex Fridman (1:21:33.840)

They've circled the wagons closer and closer

Lex Fridman (1:21:36.760)

and more of us are unacceptable.

Lex Fridman (1:21:38.840)

And right now I have no question that they're going

Eric Weinstein (1:21:41.440)

through anybody who has a platform trying to say,

Lex Fridman (1:21:45.160)

okay, what do we have against that person

Lex Fridman (1:21:46.760)

in case we need to shut that down?

Lex Fridman (1:21:48.720)

We have to make a different decision, Lex,

Lex Fridman (1:21:51.040)

and the different decision is that it doesn't matter

Lex Fridman (1:21:54.280)

how many times Joe said the N word.

Eric Weinstein (1:21:58.680)

It doesn't matter that somebody else,

Lex Fridman (1:22:04.000)

with mathematical theorems, if the worst person

Eric Weinstein (1:22:06.520)

in the world proves a mathematical theorem

Lex Fridman (1:22:08.160)

like the Unabomber, we can't undo the theorem.

Lex Fridman (1:22:12.680)

And I point out Charles Manson's song,

Lex Fridman (1:22:15.640)

Look at Your Game Girl is an amazing song.

Eric Weinstein (1:22:18.520)

It's a really good song.

Lex Fridman (1:22:19.560)

I don't think it's one of the greatest songs ever,

Lex Fridman (1:22:22.120)

but it happens that he wasn't a no talent.

Lex Fridman (1:22:25.240)

And I don't know how Hitler was as an artist.

Eric Weinstein (1:22:29.280)

Fiction, not bad.

Lex Fridman (1:22:30.760)

Okay, we've got to get past this.

Eric Weinstein (1:22:33.720)

We've got to get past this idea

Lex Fridman (1:22:35.480)

that we're going to purge ourselves of our badness

Lex Fridman (1:22:37.840)

and we're just going to, this is like,

Lex Fridman (1:22:40.040)

I've likened it to teenage girls in cutting.

Eric Weinstein (1:22:42.400)

We're just, all we're doing is destroying ourselves

Lex Fridman (1:22:46.440)

in search of perfection.

Lex Fridman (1:22:47.800)

And the answer is no, we're not perfect.

Lex Fridman (1:22:49.920)

We're flawed, we're screwed up.

Lex Fridman (1:22:52.160)

And we've always been this way.

Lex Fridman (1:22:53.480)

And we're not going to silence everyone

Eric Weinstein (1:22:55.360)

who you can point a laser beam at

Lex Fridman (1:22:57.560)

and say, well, that person, look at how bad that person is.

Eric Weinstein (1:23:00.440)

If we do that, kiss the whole thing goodbye.

Lex Fridman (1:23:03.720)

We might as well just, let's learn Chinese.

Lex Fridman (1:23:07.280)

But there is an art to having those messy conversations,

Lex Fridman (1:23:10.440)

whether with Alex or anybody else.

Eric Weinstein (1:23:13.200)

Okay, let's talk about Alex.

Lex Fridman (1:23:15.120)

There's particular stuff that Alex does

Eric Weinstein (1:23:16.960)

that's absolutely nauseating.

Lex Fridman (1:23:19.120)

And there's other stuff that he's doing that's funny.

Eric Weinstein (1:23:20.960)

The methodology of the way he carries.

Lex Fridman (1:23:23.160)

And sometimes he's talking about the truth.

Lex Fridman (1:23:25.440)

And sometimes he's talking about a conspiracy.

Lex Fridman (1:23:27.400)

His variance is incredibly high.

Eric Weinstein (1:23:30.360)

The right way to approach Alex Jones or James O. Keefe

Lex Fridman (1:23:33.240)

or the National Enquirer or anything you don't like

Eric Weinstein (1:23:36.160)

is to say, great, go long short.

Lex Fridman (1:23:40.120)

Well, if you invest in a mutual fund,

Eric Weinstein (1:23:43.840)

all the stocks in the mutual fund are held long.

Lex Fridman (1:23:46.840)

But if you invest in a hedge fund,

Eric Weinstein (1:23:48.880)

you do something called relative value trade.

Lex Fridman (1:23:51.160)

It's like, well, you long tech or short tech?

Eric Weinstein (1:23:54.320)

Well, actually I'm long Microsoft and I'm short Google.

Lex Fridman (1:23:59.320)

Why is that?

Eric Weinstein (1:24:00.280)

Oh, because I believe Google got way too much attention

Lex Fridman (1:24:03.760)

and that Microsoft has been unfairly maligned.

Lex Fridman (1:24:06.000)

And so this is really a play on legacy tech

Lex Fridman (1:24:08.760)

over more modern tech, okay?

Eric Weinstein (1:24:12.000)

Which part of Alex Jones are you long

Lex Fridman (1:24:14.520)

and which part are you short?

Eric Weinstein (1:24:15.600)

One of the things that should be a requirement

Lex Fridman (1:24:17.360)

for being a reporter is like,

Lex Fridman (1:24:18.560)

what did Donald Trump do that was good?

Lex Fridman (1:24:21.280)

Right. Nothing.

Eric Weinstein (1:24:22.720)

Okay, then you're not a reporter.

Lex Fridman (1:24:25.160)

What did Hitler do that was good?

Eric Weinstein (1:24:29.240)

The Rosenstrasse of protest.

Lex Fridman (1:24:34.560)

Non Jewish women campaign for their Jewish men

Eric Weinstein (1:24:37.360)

to be returned home to them

Lex Fridman (1:24:39.240)

from certain death almost in death camps.

Eric Weinstein (1:24:43.400)

It should have been that there were no death camps.

Lex Fridman (1:24:45.880)

It should have been that everybody was returned home.

Lex Fridman (1:24:48.760)

But you know what?

Lex Fridman (1:24:50.280)

The fact that the women of the Rosenstrasse protest,

Eric Weinstein (1:24:53.640)

I mean, sorry, I get very emotional about this.

Lex Fridman (1:24:56.440)

Some of the baddest ass chicks in the world

Eric Weinstein (1:24:59.880)

got their husbands returned to them.

Lex Fridman (1:25:03.600)

Kolokavod.

Lex Fridman (1:25:05.360)

And not, I'm not celebrating Hitler.

Lex Fridman (1:25:08.800)

Hitler's the worst of the worst.

Lex Fridman (1:25:11.720)

But God damn it, this idea that we can just say

Lex Fridman (1:25:15.600)

everything that person does is a lie.

Eric Weinstein (1:25:17.760)

Everything that person does is evil.

Lex Fridman (1:25:20.680)

This reflects a simplicity of mind

Eric Weinstein (1:25:23.360)

that humanity cannot afford.

Lex Fridman (1:25:26.560)

Is Google evil because it will sell you Mein Kampf?

Lex Fridman (1:25:30.720)

Is Amazon evil because it will sell you Mein Kampf?

Lex Fridman (1:25:32.960)

If you find out that Mein Kampf

Eric Weinstein (1:25:34.600)

rests on somebody's bookshelves,

Lex Fridman (1:25:35.760)

do you have any idea what it means?

Eric Weinstein (1:25:38.400)

If you find out that a scholar use the N word,

Lex Fridman (1:25:41.400)

should that person lose their job?

Eric Weinstein (1:25:43.120)

Come on.

Lex Fridman (1:25:44.840)

Grow the hell up.

Eric Weinstein (1:25:47.520)

I guess our responsibility to lead by example in that,

Lex Fridman (1:25:50.840)

because you have to acknowledge that the fact,

Eric Weinstein (1:25:53.520)

like the current public discourse.

Lex Fridman (1:25:55.360)

Have somebody on your podcast who you're worried about.

Lex Fridman (1:26:01.200)

But do it in a principled fashion.

Lex Fridman (1:26:03.720)

I mean, in other words, I'm not here to whitewash everything.

Eric Weinstein (1:26:08.480)

On the other hand, if somebody makes some allegations,

Lex Fridman (1:26:14.440)

I don't know that I'm obligated

Eric Weinstein (1:26:16.280)

to treat every set of allegations as if,

Lex Fridman (1:26:19.160)

no, how do you defend yourself against, no.

Eric Weinstein (1:26:21.600)

Allegations are so cheap to make at this moment.

Lex Fridman (1:26:24.640)

Well, my standard, I don't know,

Eric Weinstein (1:26:27.080)

maybe you could speak to it is,

Lex Fridman (1:26:29.080)

I don't care, like in the case of Alex Jones, for example,

Eric Weinstein (1:26:31.800)

I don't, I'm willing to have a conversation

Lex Fridman (1:26:35.280)

with Alex Jones and people like him.

Eric Weinstein (1:26:37.400)

If I know he's not going to try to manipulate me.

Lex Fridman (1:26:40.600)

Assume that he is gonna try to manipulate you.

Eric Weinstein (1:26:42.360)

I can't, then we're not going to be two humans.

Lex Fridman (1:26:45.320)

Okay, but Lex, I want you to think well of me.

Lex Fridman (1:26:48.240)

I put on a jacket, I don't usually wear a jacket, okay?

Lex Fridman (1:26:52.480)

Thank you, Eric.

Eric Weinstein (1:26:53.320)

All right, I'm trying to manipulate you.

Lex Fridman (1:26:55.800)

There's an entire field, no, there's an entire field

Eric Weinstein (1:26:59.240)

that says that speech may be best thought of

Lex Fridman (1:27:01.840)

as an attempt to manipulate each other.

Eric Weinstein (1:27:05.040)

This is too simplistic.

Lex Fridman (1:27:06.480)

Everything that we keep talking through.

Eric Weinstein (1:27:08.560)

Yes.

Lex Fridman (1:27:10.040)

You know better than this.

Eric Weinstein (1:27:11.560)

I disagree, I think there is ways,

Lex Fridman (1:27:15.720)

there's, of course, it's a gray area,

Lex Fridman (1:27:18.320)

but there is a threshold where your intent

Lex Fridman (1:27:21.640)

with which you come to a meeting, to an interaction,

Eric Weinstein (1:27:25.360)

is one that is not one that's grounded

Lex Fridman (1:27:29.160)

in like a respect for a common humanity,

Eric Weinstein (1:27:32.280)

like a love for each other, is deeply messy.

Lex Fridman (1:27:34.560)

If somebody is doing really bad stuff,

Eric Weinstein (1:27:36.680)

I expect you to try to keep them

Lex Fridman (1:27:38.720)

from doing really bad stuff.

Lex Fridman (1:27:40.720)

But just keep in mind that when I was a younger man,

Lex Fridman (1:27:45.880)

I saw an amazing anti pornography documentary,

Lex Fridman (1:27:50.520)

and it was called Rate It X,

Lex Fridman (1:27:52.600)

and I don't know where it went,

Lex Fridman (1:27:55.160)

but the conceit of it was we're going to get

Lex Fridman (1:27:57.840)

some pornographers in front of a camera

Eric Weinstein (1:28:00.400)

because they want to talk,

Lex Fridman (1:28:02.040)

and we're going to ask them about what they do

Eric Weinstein (1:28:03.520)

for a living and why it's okay.

Lex Fridman (1:28:07.800)

No commentary.

Eric Weinstein (1:28:13.080)

Okay.

Lex Fridman (1:28:13.960)

You could potentially,

Eric Weinstein (1:28:16.080)

if you really think Alex Jones is the worst,

Lex Fridman (1:28:18.040)

and again, I'm not intimately familiar with him,

Eric Weinstein (1:28:21.640)

you could decide to just let him talk.

Lex Fridman (1:28:25.640)

Just let him talk.

Eric Weinstein (1:28:29.800)

Now, I have decided not to do that with particular people.

Lex Fridman (1:28:33.920)

I've spoken to Stefan Molyneux.

Eric Weinstein (1:28:35.640)

Stefan Molyneux makes many good points,

Lex Fridman (1:28:38.000)

makes many bad points,

Lex Fridman (1:28:39.720)

and he makes many good points in bad ways,

Lex Fridman (1:28:42.600)

and I worry about it,

Lex Fridman (1:28:43.920)

and I don't feel that it's not my obligation

Lex Fridman (1:28:46.760)

to make sure that Stefan Molyneux

Eric Weinstein (1:28:48.480)

has a voice on the portal.

Lex Fridman (1:28:51.440)

But I did stand up and say I didn't want him banned

Eric Weinstein (1:28:55.200)

from social media,

Lex Fridman (1:28:57.400)

and I do think that a lot of the people

Eric Weinstein (1:28:59.120)

who are being banned from social media

Lex Fridman (1:29:00.800)

were worried that they're right

Eric Weinstein (1:29:02.000)

rather than that they're wrong.

Lex Fridman (1:29:03.920)

I certainly don't really think that I'm worried

Eric Weinstein (1:29:07.000)

in some sense that some of the really wrong people

Lex Fridman (1:29:10.840)

are wrong, but if you look at, for example, Curtis Yarvin,

Eric Weinstein (1:29:13.280)

there's a tremendous amount of interest.

Lex Fridman (1:29:15.200)

Is Eric going to speak to Curtis Yarvin?

Eric Weinstein (1:29:17.680)

Curtis Yarvin says many interesting things,

Lex Fridman (1:29:20.360)

and he says many horrible, stupid things, very provocative.

Lex Fridman (1:29:23.920)

And I haven't invited him onto the portal,

Lex Fridman (1:29:28.480)

but I haven't said I will never invite him onto the portal.

Eric Weinstein (1:29:32.160)

We are all in a difficult position.

Lex Fridman (1:29:35.080)

That's what I'm saying.

Eric Weinstein (1:29:35.920)

You're making it kind of,

Lex Fridman (1:29:37.360)

I think it's a much more difficult task

Lex Fridman (1:29:39.920)

and burden to carry as people who have conversations

Lex Fridman (1:29:43.120)

because Curtis Yarvin is a good example.

Lex Fridman (1:29:46.200)

How much work do I have to put in reading Curtis's work

Lex Fridman (1:29:50.160)

to really understand?

Eric Weinstein (1:29:51.480)

We should talk about the problem of Curtis Yarvin,

Lex Fridman (1:29:53.480)

I think it's probably illustrative.

Eric Weinstein (1:29:55.640)

There's this big question is why does somebody

Lex Fridman (1:29:57.800)

who says such stupid ass things listen to

Lex Fridman (1:30:00.440)

by so many people?

Lex Fridman (1:30:01.920)

Very smart people, people who are part of our daily lives

Eric Weinstein (1:30:04.800)

discuss Curtis Yarvin in hushed tones.

Lex Fridman (1:30:07.520)

Now, it's a good question.

Eric Weinstein (1:30:09.120)

My belief is that Curtis Yarvin has made a number

Lex Fridman (1:30:12.560)

of very interesting, provocative points,

Lex Fridman (1:30:15.840)

and they associate Curtis Yarvin as the person

Lex Fridman (1:30:18.840)

who has made these points,

Lex Fridman (1:30:20.520)

and they treat the completely asinine stuff

Lex Fridman (1:30:23.520)

that he says that's super dangerous as,

Lex Fridman (1:30:26.680)

well, that's Curtis, right?

Lex Fridman (1:30:29.840)

Right, they give him the credit for,

Eric Weinstein (1:30:31.720)

he's a kind of like, sorry to use the term,

Lex Fridman (1:30:34.160)

first principles deep thinker about the way the world,

Eric Weinstein (1:30:37.920)

in some space about the world.

Lex Fridman (1:30:40.280)

But as a result, we don't actually know

Lex Fridman (1:30:43.160)

why Curtis Yarvin is knocking around

Lex Fridman (1:30:45.840)

so many Silicon Valley luminaries lives.

Eric Weinstein (1:30:51.200)

See, you said that he said a lot of asinine stupid stuff,

Lex Fridman (1:30:54.480)

and that's the sense I got from a few things I've read,

Eric Weinstein (1:30:56.920)

not just about, this is not just like Wikipedia stuff,

Lex Fridman (1:31:00.000)

is he's a little, like I've said before,

Eric Weinstein (1:31:03.160)

he seems to be careless.

Lex Fridman (1:31:05.760)

I don't think he's, no, no, no, it's like Jim Watson.

Eric Weinstein (1:31:09.100)

Jim Watson wants to say very provocative things

Lex Fridman (1:31:12.360)

in order to prove that he's free.

Eric Weinstein (1:31:14.600)

It's not a question of careless.

Lex Fridman (1:31:15.840)

He enjoys the freedom to say these things.

Lex Fridman (1:31:20.560)

And the key point is, is that there's,

Lex Fridman (1:31:22.320)

I expect something more of Curtis.

Eric Weinstein (1:31:25.440)

I expect that if somebody is insightful

Lex Fridman (1:31:27.880)

about all sorts of things up to that point,

Eric Weinstein (1:31:32.000)

that they're going to have enough care.

Lex Fridman (1:31:33.280)

Now, I, for example, make this point repeatedly

Eric Weinstein (1:31:35.400)

that vaccines are not 100% safe.

Lex Fridman (1:31:38.160)

Most people who have an idea that anybody

Eric Weinstein (1:31:41.000)

who's an anti vaxxer should be silenced are in a position

Lex Fridman (1:31:44.720)

where they probably don't say vaccines are 100% safe,

Lex Fridman (1:31:48.040)

but you keep finding that statement over and over again,

Lex Fridman (1:31:50.320)

like believe all women, vaccines are 100% safe,

Eric Weinstein (1:31:53.360)

climate science is settled science.

Lex Fridman (1:31:55.760)

Whatever this Mont and Bailey is,

Eric Weinstein (1:31:57.500)

where you make extraordinarily vapid blanket claims,

Lex Fridman (1:32:02.680)

and then you retreat into something,

Eric Weinstein (1:32:04.280)

well, defund the, we don't want no more police,

Lex Fridman (1:32:07.160)

actually just means we want the police to not take

Eric Weinstein (1:32:11.520)

on mental health duties.

Lex Fridman (1:32:14.400)

We've come up with an incredibly disingenuous society.

Lex Fridman (1:32:17.640)

And what I'm claiming is, is that I might talk

Lex Fridman (1:32:21.120)

to Curtis Yarvin, but I have really very little interest

Eric Weinstein (1:32:25.400)

to talk to a guy who seems to be kind of giddy

Lex Fridman (1:32:28.280)

about who makes good slaves and who makes bad slaves.

Lex Fridman (1:32:31.480)

It's like, why do I want to do that on the portal?

Lex Fridman (1:32:34.280)

One, first of all, because just as you said,

Eric Weinstein (1:32:37.840)

that's not Curtis's main thing.

Lex Fridman (1:32:39.680)

He has a lot of ideas and what I've read of him,

Eric Weinstein (1:32:43.760)

which is not a huge amount, is he's very thoughtful

Lex Fridman (1:32:48.160)

about the way this world works.

Lex Fridman (1:32:50.500)

And on top of that, he's an important historical figure

Lex Fridman (1:32:54.620)

in the birth and the development of the alt right,

Eric Weinstein (1:32:57.880)

or what would be called the alt right.

Lex Fridman (1:32:59.320)

Or the new reactionary.

Eric Weinstein (1:33:00.440)

Yeah, and there's,

Lex Fridman (1:33:01.800)

so he's just an important intellectual.

Lex Fridman (1:33:05.520)

And so it makes sense to talk to him.

Lex Fridman (1:33:07.400)

The question is, how much work do you put in?

Eric Weinstein (1:33:10.860)

Well, this is the issue of fugu.

Lex Fridman (1:33:12.760)

I'm not a chef that necessarily can serve that fugu.

Lex Fridman (1:33:18.420)

So you have a puffer fish, you can eat the puffer fish.

Lex Fridman (1:33:21.560)

You can get kind of a tingly sensation on your tongue

Eric Weinstein (1:33:25.080)

if you get a little bit of the poison organ.

Lex Fridman (1:33:27.120)

But my point is, I don't know how to serve Curtis Yarvin

Lex Fridman (1:33:30.780)

so that, in fact, I'm not worried about what happens.

Lex Fridman (1:33:34.280)

And I believe that if somebody else was a student

Eric Weinstein (1:33:37.280)

of the new reactionary movement,

Lex Fridman (1:33:39.360)

that person might be in a better position

Eric Weinstein (1:33:41.400)

to host Curtis Yarvin.

Lex Fridman (1:33:42.980)

So somebody, that's a really good example,

Eric Weinstein (1:33:44.800)

somebody I think you've spoken with that's an intermediary,

Lex Fridman (1:33:49.240)

that's a powerful one, is Michael Malice.

Lex Fridman (1:33:50.840)

And he's spoken with Curtis Yarvin.

Lex Fridman (1:33:52.700)

And Michael wrote a book about.

Eric Weinstein (1:33:55.040)

By the way, Michael somewhat changed my mind

Lex Fridman (1:33:57.040)

about Michael Malice.

Eric Weinstein (1:33:58.640)

I'm glad he did.

Lex Fridman (1:33:59.720)

I think, I would call him a friend,

Lex Fridman (1:34:02.680)

and I think he's underneath it all

Lex Fridman (1:34:06.800)

a really kind human being.

Lex Fridman (1:34:08.680)

And I think your skepticism about him was initially

Lex Fridman (1:34:11.080)

from a surface level of, what did you call him,

Eric Weinstein (1:34:13.440)

hyenas, the trolls, and so on.

Lex Fridman (1:34:15.880)

I'm not happy about his.

Eric Weinstein (1:34:19.640)

It's been so long since I've seen good trolls.

Lex Fridman (1:34:23.180)

Yes.

Eric Weinstein (1:34:24.020)

So.

Lex Fridman (1:34:24.860)

He needs a higher quality of trolling.

Lex Fridman (1:34:28.840)

But he aspires to that.

Lex Fridman (1:34:30.320)

I mean, disagree or not,

Eric Weinstein (1:34:33.840)

I really enjoy how much care he puts

Lex Fridman (1:34:38.100)

into the work he does, like on North Korea

Lex Fridman (1:34:40.680)

and the study of the world,

Lex Fridman (1:34:42.240)

and how much privately, but also in public,

Eric Weinstein (1:34:45.780)

love he has for people, especially those who are powerless.

Lex Fridman (1:34:50.260)

Just a genuine admiration for them.

Eric Weinstein (1:34:55.320)

I think Curtis actually.

Lex Fridman (1:34:57.280)

Does too.

Eric Weinstein (1:34:58.120)

I don't know.

Lex Fridman (1:34:59.040)

I mean, you have to appreciate,

Eric Weinstein (1:34:59.960)

the first time I met Curtis, he introduced me,

Lex Fridman (1:35:02.400)

he says, I'm the most right wing person you've ever met.

Eric Weinstein (1:35:05.560)

I was just like, well,

Lex Fridman (1:35:06.640)

this is a conversation that's already over.

Eric Weinstein (1:35:09.160)

It's theatrical in a way that's not conducted

Lex Fridman (1:35:12.800)

to actually having a real human connection.

Eric Weinstein (1:35:14.680)

It turned me off because it was like,

Lex Fridman (1:35:18.120)

you need to be the most right wing person.

Lex Fridman (1:35:19.960)

And so it's like, I'm a troll, I'm a troll.

Lex Fridman (1:35:22.520)

Okay, why are we doing this?

Lex Fridman (1:35:24.340)

But what I'm trying to get at is different.

Lex Fridman (1:35:25.960)

I'm trying to say that Michael Malice is a friend of yours.

Eric Weinstein (1:35:29.160)

If you found out something terrible,

Lex Fridman (1:35:31.560)

you should still be a friend.

Eric Weinstein (1:35:32.680)

You should still continue to be his friend.

Lex Fridman (1:35:34.600)

And in Michael Malice's case,

Eric Weinstein (1:35:36.520)

it's very likely that we'll find out something terrible.

Lex Fridman (1:35:38.640)

Curtis is an acquaintance of mine

Eric Weinstein (1:35:40.200)

because he hangs around with some people that I know.

Lex Fridman (1:35:42.640)

I did not get it.

Eric Weinstein (1:35:44.360)

I've started to understand why the people in my life,

Lex Fridman (1:35:48.680)

some of them are Curtis Yarvin fans.

Eric Weinstein (1:35:51.000)

Many of them disregard the stupid stuff.

Lex Fridman (1:35:54.000)

But my feeling is that too much poison organ,

Eric Weinstein (1:35:58.000)

not enough fish.

Lex Fridman (1:35:59.400)

I don't know how to serve that.

Eric Weinstein (1:36:00.480)

It's too intermingled.

Lex Fridman (1:36:01.320)

I'm not your chef.

Eric Weinstein (1:36:02.920)

Speaking for defending your friends,

Lex Fridman (1:36:04.760)

staying with your friends,

Lex Fridman (1:36:06.680)

and bringing the old band together again,

Lex Fridman (1:36:10.600)

you coined the term IDW, Intellectual Dark Web.

Eric Weinstein (1:36:15.400)

I like it.

Lex Fridman (1:36:16.480)

It represents a certain group of people

Eric Weinstein (1:36:19.200)

that are struggling with,

Lex Fridman (1:36:22.000)

that are almost like challenged the norms

Eric Weinstein (1:36:26.640)

of social and political discourse

Lex Fridman (1:36:29.400)

from all different angles.

Lex Fridman (1:36:31.760)

What do you think is the state of the IDW?

Lex Fridman (1:36:33.840)

What do you think is its future?

Lex Fridman (1:36:35.560)

Is it still a useful?

Lex Fridman (1:36:39.040)

Well, it never exists.

Lex Fridman (1:36:40.120)

Is it a protocol?

Lex Fridman (1:36:41.360)

Is it a collection of people featured in an article?

Lex Fridman (1:36:44.040)

What I learned very clearly

Lex Fridman (1:36:46.080)

is that there's a tremendous desire in the internet age

Eric Weinstein (1:36:49.040)

to pin people down.

Lex Fridman (1:36:50.080)

Well, what do you say?

Lex Fridman (1:36:50.920)

Who's in it?

Lex Fridman (1:36:51.760)

What are the criteria?

Eric Weinstein (1:36:53.240)

It's like, I understand.

Lex Fridman (1:36:55.520)

You wanna play the demarcation game

Lex Fridman (1:36:57.280)

and you wanna make everything that is demarcated

Lex Fridman (1:36:59.800)

instantly null and void.

Eric Weinstein (1:37:01.560)

No, thank you.

Lex Fridman (1:37:02.800)

So I resisted saying who was in it.

Eric Weinstein (1:37:06.160)

I resisted saying what it was.

Lex Fridman (1:37:07.800)

I resisted saying that Barry Weiss's article

Eric Weinstein (1:37:10.320)

was the definitive thing.

Lex Fridman (1:37:14.000)

They chose a ridiculous concept for the photographs

Eric Weinstein (1:37:17.080)

that we couldn't get out of.

Lex Fridman (1:37:18.360)

I did not want those photographs taken.

Eric Weinstein (1:37:20.480)

They decided that the Pulitzer Prize winning photographer

Lex Fridman (1:37:23.080)

needed to take them all at twilight.

Eric Weinstein (1:37:25.280)

I don't know, some such thing.

Lex Fridman (1:37:27.480)

I didn't even necessarily wanna do the article.

Eric Weinstein (1:37:29.880)

Barry convinced me that it was the right thing to do.

Lex Fridman (1:37:32.280)

Undoubtedly Barry was right.

Eric Weinstein (1:37:33.600)

I was wrong.

Lex Fridman (1:37:35.040)

But the key point is nothing can grow in this environment.

Eric Weinstein (1:37:40.640)

There's a reason we're not building.

Lex Fridman (1:37:43.240)

It does not appear that we found a way

Eric Weinstein (1:37:46.920)

to grow anything organic and good and decent

Lex Fridman (1:37:49.480)

that we need right now.

Lex Fridman (1:37:50.960)

And that's kind of the key issue.

Lex Fridman (1:37:52.920)

Who's the we?

Lex Fridman (1:37:53.760)

Do you mean us as a society?

Lex Fridman (1:37:55.200)

Those of us who wish to have a future

Eric Weinstein (1:37:57.600)

for our great grandchildren.

Lex Fridman (1:37:59.160)

Let's take the subset of people who are worried

Eric Weinstein (1:38:02.520)

about things long after their demise.

Lex Fridman (1:38:06.600)

But do you think it's useful to have a term like the IDW

Eric Weinstein (1:38:09.960)

to capture some set of people,

Lex Fridman (1:38:13.080)

some set of ideas

Eric Weinstein (1:38:17.680)

or maybe principles that capture what I think the IDW,

Lex Fridman (1:38:21.760)

okay, you can say it's not supposed to mean,

Eric Weinstein (1:38:23.960)

it doesn't exist, it doesn't mean anything,

Lex Fridman (1:38:25.720)

but to the public, to me, okay, I'll just speak to me,

Eric Weinstein (1:38:29.200)

it represented something.

Lex Fridman (1:38:30.560)

Yeah.

Eric Weinstein (1:38:31.400)

It represented, I think I just said this to you,

Lex Fridman (1:38:34.520)

in my first attempt to interview the great Eric Weinstein,

Eric Weinstein (1:38:39.960)

I said that, I spoke this about you,

Lex Fridman (1:38:42.040)

but IDW in general is trying to point out the elephant

Eric Weinstein (1:38:44.800)

in the room or that the emperor has no clothes.

Lex Fridman (1:38:46.720)

The set of people that do that in their own way.

Eric Weinstein (1:38:49.440)

If there are multiple elephants in the room,

Lex Fridman (1:38:52.160)

the point is that the IDW was more interested

Eric Weinstein (1:38:54.560)

in seeing the totality of elephants

Lex Fridman (1:38:56.840)

and trying to figure out how do we move forward

Eric Weinstein (1:38:59.200)

as opposed to saying I can spot the other guy's elephant

Lex Fridman (1:39:01.440)

in the room, but I can't see my own.

Lex Fridman (1:39:03.680)

And in large measure,

Lex Fridman (1:39:05.560)

we didn't represent an institutional base.

Lex Fridman (1:39:09.920)

And therefore it wasn't maximally important

Lex Fridman (1:39:12.440)

that we look at our own hypocrisy

Eric Weinstein (1:39:13.880)

because we weren't on the institutional spectrum.

Lex Fridman (1:39:18.640)

This is where friendship comes into play

Eric Weinstein (1:39:20.480)

with the different figures

Lex Fridman (1:39:21.520)

that are loosely associated with IDW

Eric Weinstein (1:39:24.320)

is you were somehow responsible for the exact thing

Lex Fridman (1:39:32.240)

that you said, did you hear what, I don't know,

Eric Weinstein (1:39:35.240)

I forget, oh, what Sam Harris said about IDW.

Lex Fridman (1:39:39.400)

Yeah.

Eric Weinstein (1:39:40.720)

That kind of thing is.

Lex Fridman (1:39:41.760)

I chuckled.

Eric Weinstein (1:39:42.600)

Lovingly or chuckle like, oh.

Lex Fridman (1:39:46.360)

I was angry at some people who had said things

Eric Weinstein (1:39:49.360)

that caused Sam to say what Sam said

Lex Fridman (1:39:51.240)

about turning his imaginary club membership into the IDW.

Eric Weinstein (1:39:55.840)

People said very silly things.

Lex Fridman (1:39:58.160)

And I think that there is just this confusion

Eric Weinstein (1:40:01.760)

that integrity means calling out your friends

Lex Fridman (1:40:06.120)

in front of the world.

Lex Fridman (1:40:08.360)

And I've been pretty clear about this.

Lex Fridman (1:40:12.280)

I try to choose my friends carefully.

Lex Fridman (1:40:13.880)

And if you would like to recuse me

Lex Fridman (1:40:16.240)

because I'm not a source of reliable information,

Eric Weinstein (1:40:18.720)

people that I know and love the most,

Lex Fridman (1:40:22.120)

maybe that's reasonable for you.

Eric Weinstein (1:40:23.920)

Maybe you prefer somebody who was willing

Lex Fridman (1:40:25.680)

to throw a friend under the bus

Eric Weinstein (1:40:27.400)

at the first sign of trouble.

Lex Fridman (1:40:29.160)

By all means, exit my feed.

Eric Weinstein (1:40:31.600)

You don't have to subscribe to me.

Lex Fridman (1:40:33.000)

If that's your concept of integrity,

Eric Weinstein (1:40:36.840)

you're barking up the wrong tree.

Lex Fridman (1:40:38.800)

What I will say is that I knew these people well enough

Eric Weinstein (1:40:41.280)

to know that they're all flawed.

Lex Fridman (1:40:44.640)

Thank you for the callback.

Lex Fridman (1:40:46.800)

But the issue is that I love people who are flawed.

Lex Fridman (1:40:52.640)

And I love people who have to earn a living,

Eric Weinstein (1:40:55.720)

even if you call them a grifter.

Lex Fridman (1:40:57.040)

And I love people who like the fact

Eric Weinstein (1:41:01.480)

that Donald Trump didn't get us into new wars,

Lex Fridman (1:41:03.520)

even if you call them alt right.

Eric Weinstein (1:41:05.600)

I love the fact that some people believe

Lex Fridman (1:41:09.640)

in structural oppression and wanna fight it,

Eric Weinstein (1:41:12.520)

even if they're not woke,

Lex Fridman (1:41:14.600)

because they don't believe that structural oppression

Eric Weinstein (1:41:16.400)

is hiding everywhere.

Lex Fridman (1:41:19.040)

I care and love different people in different ways.

Lex Fridman (1:41:21.760)

And I think that the overarching thing, Lex,

Lex Fridman (1:41:24.400)

that we're not getting at is that

Eric Weinstein (1:41:26.160)

we were sold a bill of goods

Lex Fridman (1:41:28.640)

that you can go through life like an ELISA program

Eric Weinstein (1:41:33.360)

with pre programmed responses.

Lex Fridman (1:41:35.640)

Well, it's what about ism, it's both sides ism,

Eric Weinstein (1:41:39.880)

it's alt right, it's the loony left, it's campus madness.

Lex Fridman (1:41:44.040)

It's like, okay, why don't you just empty

Lex Fridman (1:41:46.600)

the entire goddamn magazine?

Lex Fridman (1:41:51.480)

All of those pre recorded snips.

Eric Weinstein (1:41:57.600)

Now that you've done all of that,

Lex Fridman (1:42:00.480)

now we can have a conversation.

Eric Weinstein (1:42:02.240)

Your son put it really well, which is we should,

Lex Fridman (1:42:07.400)

in all things, resist labels.

Lex Fridman (1:42:09.960)

But we can't deal without labels, we have to generalize.

Lex Fridman (1:42:15.080)

But we also have to keep in mind

Eric Weinstein (1:42:17.680)

that just in the way in science,

Lex Fridman (1:42:19.560)

you deal with an effective theory

Eric Weinstein (1:42:20.880)

that isn't a fundamental one.

Lex Fridman (1:42:23.520)

In science, most of our theories,

Eric Weinstein (1:42:25.400)

we consider to be effective theories.

Lex Fridman (1:42:27.360)

If I generalize about Europe, about women,

Eric Weinstein (1:42:32.040)

about Christians, those things have to be understood

Lex Fridman (1:42:38.800)

to mean something and not to have their definitions

Eric Weinstein (1:42:42.400)

extend so broadly that they mean nothing at all,

Lex Fridman (1:42:46.840)

nor that they're so rigid that they're claims

Eric Weinstein (1:42:51.240)

that clearly won't bear scrutiny.

Lex Fridman (1:42:55.080)

Lex, what do you really wanna talk about?

Eric Weinstein (1:42:56.560)

That's always my question to you.

Lex Fridman (1:42:58.480)

That always gets me, maybe you are the therapist.

Lex Fridman (1:43:02.120)

But you and I could talk about anything.

Lex Fridman (1:43:04.520)

People love, up until now at least,

Eric Weinstein (1:43:07.240)

people have loved listening

Lex Fridman (1:43:08.600)

to the two of us in conversation.

Lex Fridman (1:43:10.680)

And my feeling is is that we're not talking

Lex Fridman (1:43:13.120)

about neural nets, and we're not talking

Eric Weinstein (1:43:17.600)

about geometric unity, and we're not talking

Lex Fridman (1:43:20.360)

about where distributed computing might go.

Lex Fridman (1:43:23.600)

And I don't think that we're really focused

Lex Fridman (1:43:25.800)

on some of the most exciting things

Eric Weinstein (1:43:29.520)

we could do to transform education.

Lex Fridman (1:43:30.960)

We're still caught in this world of other people

Eric Weinstein (1:43:34.520)

that we don't belong in.

Lex Fridman (1:43:36.040)

I don't belong in the world as it's been created.

Eric Weinstein (1:43:38.480)

I'm trying to build a new world,

Lex Fridman (1:43:39.820)

and I'm astounded that the people

Eric Weinstein (1:43:44.120)

with the independent means to help build that world

Lex Fridman (1:43:46.600)

are so demotivated that they don't wanna

Eric Weinstein (1:43:49.800)

build new structures.

Lex Fridman (1:43:52.200)

And the people who do wanna build new structures

Eric Weinstein (1:43:54.360)

seem to be wild eyed.

Lex Fridman (1:43:56.160)

Wild eyed, what do you mean by wild eyed?

Eric Weinstein (1:43:58.080)

They're not, they're not.

Lex Fridman (1:43:59.120)

I guarantee you that I will get some message

Eric Weinstein (1:44:01.120)

in my DMs that says, hey, Eric.

Lex Fridman (1:44:03.340)

You know, I'm a third year chemistry student

Eric Weinstein (1:44:06.520)

at South Dakota State, and I've got a great idea.

Lex Fridman (1:44:11.480)

I just need funding.

Eric Weinstein (1:44:12.480)

I wanna build.

Lex Fridman (1:44:13.320)

They don't have the means.

Lex Fridman (1:44:14.400)

So the people who have the means have become.

Lex Fridman (1:44:16.440)

Or the sophistication, it's like you're looking

Eric Weinstein (1:44:19.000)

for somebody who's proven themselves a few times

Lex Fridman (1:44:22.280)

to say, you know, I've got $4 billion behind me

Eric Weinstein (1:44:26.640)

that's soft circled.

Lex Fridman (1:44:27.840)

I wanna figure out what a new university would be

Lex Fridman (1:44:30.800)

and what it would take to protect academic freedom

Lex Fridman (1:44:33.400)

and who we would hire

Lex Fridman (1:44:34.340)

and what are the different characteristics

Lex Fridman (1:44:36.400)

because I can clearly see that everything

Eric Weinstein (1:44:37.960)

following the current model is falling apart.

Lex Fridman (1:44:40.020)

Nobody in my understanding is saying that.

Eric Weinstein (1:44:43.440)

Nobody is saying let's take that

Lex Fridman (1:44:47.600)

which is functioning independently

Lex Fridman (1:44:51.040)

and make it less vulnerable.

Lex Fridman (1:44:53.360)

Let's boost those signals.

Lex Fridman (1:44:55.920)

And a critical component as money, you think?

Lex Fridman (1:44:58.920)

It's not only that, but it's also a kind of

Eric Weinstein (1:45:01.580)

these people are mobbed up hands off.

Lex Fridman (1:45:04.040)

Let's imagine for the moment that Sundar Pichai,

Eric Weinstein (1:45:08.500)

Jack Dorsey, and Mark Zuckerberg

Lex Fridman (1:45:12.760)

founded a university come social media entity.

Lex Fridman (1:45:17.760)

And they said, the purpose of this is to make sure

Lex Fridman (1:45:20.760)

that academic freedom will not perish from this earth

Eric Weinstein (1:45:23.160)

because it's necessary to keep us from all going crazy.

Lex Fridman (1:45:26.520)

And we are going to lock ourselves out.

Eric Weinstein (1:45:29.440)

We've come up with this governance system.

Lex Fridman (1:45:32.240)

And the idea is that these people will be assigned

Eric Weinstein (1:45:35.760)

the difficult task of making sure that society

Lex Fridman (1:45:38.200)

doesn't go crazy in any particular direction.

Eric Weinstein (1:45:40.360)

That we have a fact based, reality based,

Lex Fridman (1:45:43.080)

feasibility based, understaffed,

Eric Weinstein (1:45:46.320)

theory based understanding.

Lex Fridman (1:45:48.360)

We can try to figure out where our real opportunities are.

Eric Weinstein (1:45:53.900)

It feels like everybody with the ability

Lex Fridman (1:45:56.960)

to do something like that,

Lex Fridman (1:45:58.360)

and with the brains and experience and the resources,

Lex Fridman (1:46:02.960)

would rather sit in the current system

Lex Fridman (1:46:06.280)

and hope to figure out where they can flee to

Lex Fridman (1:46:08.440)

if the whole thing comes apart.

Eric Weinstein (1:46:10.200)

Well, yeah, and maybe to push back in a little bit,

Lex Fridman (1:46:12.500)

I agree with you, but you know,

Eric Weinstein (1:46:14.440)

it feels like some people are trying that.

Lex Fridman (1:46:17.560)

So for example, Google purchased DeepMind.

Eric Weinstein (1:46:21.400)

DeepMind is a company that kind of represents

Lex Fridman (1:46:23.600)

a lot of radical ideas.

Eric Weinstein (1:46:25.360)

They've become acceptable, actually.

Lex Fridman (1:46:27.800)

AGI, artificial general intelligence,

Eric Weinstein (1:46:30.120)

used to be really radical of a thing to talk about.

Lex Fridman (1:46:35.140)

And DeepMind and OpenAI are two places

Eric Weinstein (1:46:38.160)

which has made it more acceptable.

Lex Fridman (1:46:39.800)

I know you can now start to criticize,

Eric Weinstein (1:46:43.880)

well, they're really, now that it's become acceptable,

Lex Fridman (1:46:46.600)

they're not taking the further step

Eric Weinstein (1:46:48.000)

of being more and more radical.

Lex Fridman (1:46:49.220)

But you know, that wasn't an attempt by Google

Eric Weinstein (1:46:51.360)

to say that let's try some wild stuff.

Lex Fridman (1:46:57.600)

Sort of like Boston Dynamics.

Eric Weinstein (1:46:59.340)

Sort of like Boston Dynamics.

Lex Fridman (1:47:01.520)

Boston Dynamics is a really good example

Eric Weinstein (1:47:04.040)

of trying radical ideas for perhaps no purpose whatsoever

Lex Fridman (1:47:09.760)

except to try out their ideas.

Eric Weinstein (1:47:13.160)

Well, the idea is that innovation is like dessert.

Lex Fridman (1:47:16.720)

You can have dessert after you solve the problem

Eric Weinstein (1:47:20.800)

of the main course, and the main course

Lex Fridman (1:47:22.440)

is a bunch of insoluble problems.

Lex Fridman (1:47:24.840)

So the idea is we can get into innovation

Lex Fridman (1:47:27.560)

once we perfect ourselves.

Lex Fridman (1:47:29.840)

And you're saying that we need to make innovation

Lex Fridman (1:47:32.440)

the main meal.

Eric Weinstein (1:47:33.480)

Well, I'm saying that there really is structural oppression.

Lex Fridman (1:47:37.000)

I mean, if you train a deep learning system

Eric Weinstein (1:47:44.400)

on exclusively white faces, it's gonna get confused.

Lex Fridman (1:47:47.940)

So let's not disagree that there are real issues

Eric Weinstein (1:47:51.440)

around this.

Lex Fridman (1:47:52.280)

In fact, that's an issue of innovation and data.

Eric Weinstein (1:47:55.480)

Your data should be responsive.

Lex Fridman (1:47:57.920)

On the other hand, there are things

Eric Weinstein (1:47:59.360)

we can't do anything about that are actually fundamental.

Lex Fridman (1:48:04.040)

And those things may have to do with the fact

Eric Weinstein (1:48:08.760)

that some of us taste cilantro as soap,

Lex Fridman (1:48:13.440)

and some of us don't.

Eric Weinstein (1:48:14.920)

Like there are differences between people,

Lex Fridman (1:48:16.880)

and some of them are in the hardware,

Eric Weinstein (1:48:18.720)

some of them are in the firmware,

Lex Fridman (1:48:19.760)

some of them are in the software that is the human mind.

Lex Fridman (1:48:23.520)

And this completely simplistic idea

Lex Fridman (1:48:27.000)

that every failure of an organization

Eric Weinstein (1:48:32.000)

to promote each person

Lex Fridman (1:48:34.360)

who has particular intersexual characteristics,

Eric Weinstein (1:48:38.000)

we cannot hold progress hostage to that.

Lex Fridman (1:48:42.320)

And you've talked about, perhaps we'll save this

Eric Weinstein (1:48:45.760)

for another time because it's such a fascinating conversation.

Lex Fridman (1:48:47.920)

You talked about this with Glenn Beck,

Eric Weinstein (1:48:51.520)

is the whole sort of stagnation of growth

Lex Fridman (1:48:53.600)

and all that kind of stuff.

Eric Weinstein (1:48:54.480)

Your idea is that in as much as the current situation

Lex Fridman (1:48:59.800)

is a kind of Ponzi scheme,

Eric Weinstein (1:49:01.720)

the current situation in the United States

Lex Fridman (1:49:03.760)

is a kind of Ponzi scheme built on the promise

Eric Weinstein (1:49:06.840)

of constant unending innovation,

Lex Fridman (1:49:10.120)

we need to fund the true innovators

Lex Fridman (1:49:17.080)

and encourage them and empower them

Lex Fridman (1:49:21.920)

and sort of culturally say that this is what

Eric Weinstein (1:49:23.880)

this country is about is the brilliant minds.

Lex Fridman (1:49:27.400)

We're gonna kill each other if we don't grow.

Eric Weinstein (1:49:31.320)

Growth is like an immune system

Lex Fridman (1:49:34.520)

and you always have pathogens present,

Lex Fridman (1:49:36.600)

but if you don't have growth present,

Lex Fridman (1:49:37.800)

you can't fight the pathogens in your society.

Lex Fridman (1:49:40.080)

And right now the pathogens are spreading everywhere.

Lex Fridman (1:49:43.600)

So if we don't get growth into our system fairly quickly,

Eric Weinstein (1:49:46.880)

we are in really seriously bad shape.

Lex Fridman (1:49:50.560)

So it's very important that if I had a horrible person

Eric Weinstein (1:49:54.520)

who was capable of building something

Lex Fridman (1:49:56.440)

that would give us all a certain amount

Eric Weinstein (1:49:59.000)

of what I've called financial beta

Lex Fridman (1:50:00.840)

to some new technology where we all benefit,

Eric Weinstein (1:50:03.720)

let's say quantum computing comes in

Lex Fridman (1:50:05.320)

and everybody, the dry cleaner

Lex Fridman (1:50:07.320)

has a quantum computing angle, right?

Lex Fridman (1:50:09.760)

Yes. Okay.

Eric Weinstein (1:50:11.880)

That's necessary to keep this system that we built going.

Lex Fridman (1:50:15.520)

We can try to redesign the system,

Lex Fridman (1:50:17.400)

but our system expects growth

Lex Fridman (1:50:19.240)

and we've started it for growth

Lex Fridman (1:50:21.120)

and the madness that we're seeing

Lex Fridman (1:50:23.040)

is the failure of our immune system

Eric Weinstein (1:50:24.760)

to be able to handle the pathogens

Lex Fridman (1:50:26.200)

that have always been present.

Lex Fridman (1:50:28.280)

So people can say, well, this was always there.

Lex Fridman (1:50:30.440)

Yes, it was.

Eric Weinstein (1:50:31.280)

What's changed was your immune system.

Lex Fridman (1:50:34.040)

We have got to make sure that one,

Eric Weinstein (1:50:37.960)

we understand why diversity

Lex Fridman (1:50:39.960)

is potentially really important.

Eric Weinstein (1:50:42.960)

We have mined certain communities to death.

Lex Fridman (1:50:45.240)

You and I are Ashkenazi Jews.

Eric Weinstein (1:50:47.440)

Everyone knows that Ashkenazi Jews

Lex Fridman (1:50:49.560)

are good at technical stuff.

Eric Weinstein (1:50:52.200)

We know that the Chinese are good at technical stuff.

Lex Fridman (1:50:54.600)

The Indians have many people

Eric Weinstein (1:50:56.120)

who are good at technical stuff as the Japanese.

Lex Fridman (1:50:58.600)

So I also believe that we have communities

Eric Weinstein (1:51:02.960)

where if you think about the Pareto idea

Lex Fridman (1:51:05.520)

of diminishing returns,

Eric Weinstein (1:51:06.840)

if you've never mined a community,

Lex Fridman (1:51:09.720)

many of the people you're gonna get at the beginning

Eric Weinstein (1:51:11.360)

are gonna be amazing because that community,

Lex Fridman (1:51:13.840)

it's like, did you drill for more oil in Texas?

Eric Weinstein (1:51:16.600)

Texas is pretty thoroughly picked over.

Lex Fridman (1:51:19.080)

Do you find someplace that's completely insane?

Lex Fridman (1:51:23.040)

Maybe there's oil there, who knows?

Lex Fridman (1:51:24.840)

And in particular, I would like to displace our reliance

Eric Weinstein (1:51:30.000)

on our military competitors in Asia

Lex Fridman (1:51:32.200)

in our scientific laboratories with women,

Eric Weinstein (1:51:35.360)

with African Americans, with Latinos,

Lex Fridman (1:51:38.000)

people who are in different categories

Eric Weinstein (1:51:40.640)

than we have traditionally sourced.

Lex Fridman (1:51:42.040)

And I would like to get them the money

Eric Weinstein (1:51:44.160)

that the market would normally give these fields

Lex Fridman (1:51:48.080)

were we not using visas in place of payment, right?

Eric Weinstein (1:51:52.560)

Now, I have a crazy idea,

Lex Fridman (1:51:57.080)

which is that I play, you and I both play music,

Lex Fridman (1:51:59.800)

and I find the analytic work that I do

Lex Fridman (1:52:02.400)

when I'm trying to figure out chord progressions

Lex Fridman (1:52:04.200)

and symmetries and tritones, all these sorts of things

Lex Fridman (1:52:06.600)

to be very similar to the work that I do

Eric Weinstein (1:52:08.080)

when I do physics or math.

Lex Fridman (1:52:10.840)

I believe that one of the things that is true

Eric Weinstein (1:52:13.800)

is that the analytic contributions of African Americans

Lex Fridman (1:52:17.560)

to music are probably fungible to science.

Eric Weinstein (1:52:20.120)

I don't know that that's true.

Lex Fridman (1:52:23.640)

It's true I haven't done controlled research,

Lex Fridman (1:52:26.400)

but I believe that it is very important

Lex Fridman (1:52:28.320)

to let the People's Republic of China know

Eric Weinstein (1:52:31.080)

that they are not staffing our laboratories anymore,

Lex Fridman (1:52:34.600)

and that we need to look to our own people.

Lex Fridman (1:52:36.840)

And in particular, we are going to get a huge benefit

Lex Fridman (1:52:39.880)

for making sure that women, Black Americans, Latinos

Eric Weinstein (1:52:45.480)

are in a position to take over some of these things

Lex Fridman (1:52:49.520)

because many of these communities have been underutilized.

Eric Weinstein (1:52:52.840)

Now, I don't know if that's an insane idea.

Lex Fridman (1:52:55.200)

I want to hear somebody tell me why it's an insane idea,

Lex Fridman (1:52:58.520)

but I believe that part of what we need to do

Lex Fridman (1:53:00.760)

is we need to recognize that there are security issues,

Eric Weinstein (1:53:03.920)

there are geopolitical issues with the funding of science,

Lex Fridman (1:53:07.320)

and that what we've done is we've starved our world

Eric Weinstein (1:53:10.520)

for innovation, and if we don't get back

Lex Fridman (1:53:12.360)

to the business of innovation,

Eric Weinstein (1:53:13.480)

we should be doing diversity and inclusion

Lex Fridman (1:53:15.640)

out of greed rather than guilt.

Eric Weinstein (1:53:18.040)

Now, part of the problem with this

Lex Fridman (1:53:20.360)

is that a lot of the energy behind diversity and inclusion

Eric Weinstein (1:53:23.880)

is based on guilt and accusation.

Lex Fridman (1:53:26.960)

And what I want is I want to kick ass,

Lex Fridman (1:53:30.800)

and my hope is that diminishing returns favors

Lex Fridman (1:53:33.960)

mining the communities that have not been traditionally mined

Eric Weinstein (1:53:37.640)

in order to extract output from those communities,

Lex Fridman (1:53:41.960)

unless there's a flaw in that plan.

Eric Weinstein (1:53:43.440)

If there's a flaw, somebody needs to tell me.

Lex Fridman (1:53:45.200)

If there isn't a flaw, we need to get greedy

Eric Weinstein (1:53:48.600)

about innovation rather than guilty about innovation.

Lex Fridman (1:53:51.600)

That's really brilliantly put.

Eric Weinstein (1:53:53.400)

My biggest problem with what I see

Lex Fridman (1:53:55.320)

is it exactly speaks to that in the discussion of diversity.

Eric Weinstein (1:53:59.720)

It's used, when it's grounded in guilt,

Lex Fridman (1:54:02.200)

it's then used as a hammer to shame people

Eric Weinstein (1:54:05.480)

that don't care about diversity enough.

Lex Fridman (1:54:06.880)

F that shit, okay?

Lex Fridman (1:54:10.440)

So my point is I'm excited about the idea

Lex Fridman (1:54:13.320)

of Jimi Hendrix doing quantum field theory.

Eric Weinstein (1:54:15.880)

I'm excited about the idea of Art Tatum

Lex Fridman (1:54:19.360)

trying to figure out what the neural nets

Eric Weinstein (1:54:24.480)

figured out about protein folding.

Lex Fridman (1:54:26.600)

I have some idea of the level of intellect

Eric Weinstein (1:54:29.240)

of people who have not found their way into STEM subjects

Lex Fridman (1:54:32.320)

in incredibly technically demanding areas.

Lex Fridman (1:54:35.240)

And if there's a flaw in that theory,

Lex Fridman (1:54:37.760)

I want somebody to present the flaw.

Lex Fridman (1:54:40.080)

But right now, my belief is that

Lex Fridman (1:54:43.400)

these things are merit based.

Lex Fridman (1:54:45.880)

And if you really believe in structural oppression,

Lex Fridman (1:54:48.600)

you do not want an affirmative action program.

Eric Weinstein (1:54:51.360)

You wanna make sure that people have huge amounts

Lex Fridman (1:54:53.640)

of resources to get themselves into position.

Eric Weinstein (1:54:56.680)

I wanna push out,

Lex Fridman (1:54:58.160)

I just tried this on this Clubhouse application.

Eric Weinstein (1:55:01.000)

I wanna push out Klein bottles as a secret sign

Lex Fridman (1:55:04.560)

inside of rap videos in hip hop, right?

Eric Weinstein (1:55:07.520)

I want people to have an idea

Lex Fridman (1:55:09.120)

that there's an amazing world.

Lex Fridman (1:55:10.480)

And I wanna get the people who,

Lex Fridman (1:55:12.960)

hopefully I'm trying to lure into science and engineering.

Eric Weinstein (1:55:16.640)

I want to get them paid.

Lex Fridman (1:55:18.200)

I don't want them as the cheap substitutes

Eric Weinstein (1:55:20.840)

for the fleeing white males who've learned

Lex Fridman (1:55:25.440)

that they can't make any money in science and engineering.

Lex Fridman (1:55:29.240)

So the problem is that we need to take over the ship Lex.

Lex Fridman (1:55:34.280)

And it doesn't need to be you and me

Eric Weinstein (1:55:36.200)

because quite honestly, I have no desire to administer.

Lex Fridman (1:55:38.880)

I don't wanna be the chief executive officer of anything.

Lex Fridman (1:55:41.200)

What I do want is I want the baby boomers

Lex Fridman (1:55:44.480)

who've made this mess and can't see it to be gone.

Eric Weinstein (1:55:48.960)

They had almost all of our universities

Lex Fridman (1:55:51.840)

and I want fresh blood, fresh resources.

Eric Weinstein (1:55:56.040)

I want academic freedom and I want greed for our country

Lex Fridman (1:56:00.600)

and for the future to determine diversity inclusion

Eric Weinstein (1:56:03.840)

as opposed to shame and guilt,

Lex Fridman (1:56:05.120)

which is destroying our fabric.

Eric Weinstein (1:56:06.780)

That's as good of a diversity statement as I've ever heard.

Lex Fridman (1:56:13.220)

This is a U turn, but somebody commented on the tweet

Eric Weinstein (1:56:17.580)

you sent that as one of the top comments,

Lex Fridman (1:56:20.900)

they definitely have to ask you about cryptocurrency.

Lex Fridman (1:56:24.180)

So it's a U turn, but not really.

Lex Fridman (1:56:27.540)

Since you're an economist, since you're deep,

Eric Weinstein (1:56:29.960)

not an economist.

Lex Fridman (1:56:31.340)

I mean, I pretend to be an economist,

Eric Weinstein (1:56:33.740)

hoping that the economists will take issue

Lex Fridman (1:56:36.980)

that I'm not an economist so that I can advance

Eric Weinstein (1:56:39.280)

gauge theoretic and field theoretic economics,

Lex Fridman (1:56:41.940)

which the economics profession has failed to acknowledge

Eric Weinstein (1:56:45.500)

was a major innovation

Lex Fridman (1:56:46.900)

that happened approximately 25 years ago.

Eric Weinstein (1:56:49.700)

I don't think that economists understand

Lex Fridman (1:56:51.560)

what a price index is that measures inflation,

Eric Weinstein (1:56:53.740)

nor do I think economists understand what a growth index

Lex Fridman (1:56:58.180)

or a product, a quantity index is that measures GDP.

Eric Weinstein (1:57:04.180)

I think that they don't even understand the basics

Lex Fridman (1:57:07.700)

of price and quantity index construction.

Lex Fridman (1:57:10.620)

And therefore they can't possibly review

Lex Fridman (1:57:16.100)

field theoretic economics.

Eric Weinstein (1:57:17.460)

They can't review gauge theoretic economics.

Lex Fridman (1:57:19.740)

They're intellectually not in a position

Eric Weinstein (1:57:21.840)

to manage their own field.

Lex Fridman (1:57:23.260)

You talked about that there's a stagnation

Eric Weinstein (1:57:25.220)

in growth currently.

Lex Fridman (1:57:26.660)

I looked at, from my microeconomics,

Eric Weinstein (1:57:29.100)

macroeconomics in college perspective,

Lex Fridman (1:57:31.820)

GDP doesn't seem to capture the productivity,

Eric Weinstein (1:57:36.300)

the full, the spectrum of what I think is

Lex Fridman (1:57:40.980)

as a functioning successful society.

Lex Fridman (1:57:43.900)

What do you think is broken about GDP?

Lex Fridman (1:57:46.700)

What does it need to include?

Lex Fridman (1:57:49.540)

These indices, like what?

Lex Fridman (1:57:51.500)

Let me explain what they don't understand to begin with.

Eric Weinstein (1:57:53.680)

Sure.

Lex Fridman (1:57:54.520)

Imagine that all prices and all quantities of output

Eric Weinstein (1:58:02.280)

are the same at the end of the year

Lex Fridman (1:58:04.320)

as they are at the beginning.

Lex Fridman (1:58:06.960)

And you ask what happened during that year?

Lex Fridman (1:58:09.060)

Was there inflation?

Eric Weinstein (1:58:11.200)

They meandered over the course of the year,

Lex Fridman (1:58:12.780)

but miraculously they all came back to exactly their values.

Eric Weinstein (1:58:17.300)

The amount produced at the end of the year

Lex Fridman (1:58:20.740)

is the same as at the beginning in every single quantity.

Eric Weinstein (1:58:24.000)

Typically the claim would be that the price index

Lex Fridman (1:58:26.120)

should be 1.0 and that the quantity index should be 1.0.

Eric Weinstein (1:58:30.180)

That's clearly wrong.

Lex Fridman (1:58:32.720)

Why?

Eric Weinstein (1:58:34.240)

Well, it's much easier to see with,

Lex Fridman (1:58:37.900)

it speaks to a fundamental confusion that economists have.

Eric Weinstein (1:58:41.800)

They don't understand that the economy is curved

Lex Fridman (1:58:44.200)

and not flat.

Eric Weinstein (1:58:46.840)

In a curved economy, everything should be path dependence,

Lex Fridman (1:58:50.720)

but they view path dependence as a problem

Eric Weinstein (1:58:53.060)

because they are effectively the flat earth society

Lex Fridman (1:58:55.880)

of market analysis.

Eric Weinstein (1:58:57.640)

They don't understand that what they've called,

Lex Fridman (1:58:59.800)

and they've actually called it the cycling problem,

Eric Weinstein (1:59:02.560)

is exactly what they need to understand

Lex Fridman (1:59:04.960)

to advance their field.

Lex Fridman (1:59:06.600)

So I'll give you a very simple example, okay?

Lex Fridman (1:59:09.440)

Let's imagine that we have Bob and Carol in one hedge fund

Lex Fridman (1:59:13.440)

and Ted and Alice in another.

Lex Fridman (1:59:15.060)

In both cases, the females, that is, Alice and Carol,

Eric Weinstein (1:59:20.060)

are the chief investment officers,

Lex Fridman (1:59:23.280)

and Bob and Ted are the chief marketing officers

Eric Weinstein (1:59:26.960)

in charge of trying to get money into the fund

Lex Fridman (1:59:29.040)

and trying to get people not to, in fact,

Lex Fridman (1:59:34.040)

remove their money from the funds, okay?

Lex Fridman (1:59:38.640)

If you, in fact, had a hedge fund

Eric Weinstein (1:59:43.640)

with Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice,

Lex Fridman (1:59:47.240)

and both hedge funds were invested in assets

Eric Weinstein (1:59:51.280)

whose prices came back to the same levels

Lex Fridman (1:59:53.480)

and whose exposures were in the same quantities,

Eric Weinstein (20:00.260)

Electronic and digital speech

Lex Fridman (20:01.940)

makes every other kind of speech irrelevant.

Lex Fridman (20:04.220)

And because there is no public option, guess what?

Lex Fridman (20:08.540)

There's always somebody named Sundar or Jack or Mark

Eric Weinstein (20:12.940)

who controls whether or not you can speak

Lex Fridman (20:15.260)

and what it appears to be that is being said

Lex Fridman (20:17.740)

and whose stuff is weighted more highly than others.

Lex Fridman (20:20.420)

It's an absolute nightmare.

Lex Fridman (20:22.180)

And by the way, the Silicon Valley intellectual elite,

Lex Fridman (20:26.660)

Lord knows what is going on.

Eric Weinstein (20:28.180)

People are so busy making money

Lex Fridman (20:30.700)

that they are not actually upholding any of the values.

Lex Fridman (20:34.260)

So Silicon Valley is sort of maximally against,

Lex Fridman (20:36.660)

it has this kind of libertarian, free, progressive sheen

Eric Weinstein (20:42.900)

to it when it goes to Burning Man.

Lex Fridman (20:44.380)

And then it quickly just imposes rules

Eric Weinstein (20:46.500)

on all of the rest of us as to what we could say

Lex Fridman (20:48.420)

to each other if we're not part of the inner elite.

Lex Fridman (20:51.060)

So what do you think the ideal

Lex Fridman (20:53.260)

of the freedom of speech means?

Eric Weinstein (20:55.540)

Well, this is very interesting.

Lex Fridman (20:57.300)

I keep getting lectured on social media

Eric Weinstein (20:59.380)

by people who have no idea how much power

Lex Fridman (21:01.620)

the Supreme Court has to abstract things.

Eric Weinstein (21:04.580)

Right now, you have the concept of the letter of the law

Lex Fridman (21:07.940)

and the spirit of the law.

Lex Fridman (21:09.260)

And the spirit of the law would have to say

Lex Fridman (21:12.220)

that our speech that matters is free,

Eric Weinstein (21:14.660)

at least at the level of ideas.

Lex Fridman (21:16.180)

I don't claim that I have the right

Eric Weinstein (21:17.860)

to endanger your life with speech

Lex Fridman (21:19.660)

or to reveal your private information.

Lex Fridman (21:22.020)

So I really am not opining about directed speech

Lex Fridman (21:25.820)

intended to smear you.

Lex Fridman (21:27.260)

And that's a different kettle of fish.

Lex Fridman (21:30.020)

And maybe I have some rights to do that,

Lex Fridman (21:31.540)

but I don't think that they're infinite.

Lex Fridman (21:34.740)

What I am saying is that the freedom of speech for ideas

Eric Weinstein (21:41.020)

is essential that the court abstract it

Lex Fridman (21:43.900)

and shove it down the throat of Google, Facebook, Twitter,

Eric Weinstein (21:48.140)

Amazon, whoever these infrastructure companies are

Lex Fridman (21:52.580)

because it really matters which abstraction you use.

Eric Weinstein (21:56.220)

The case that I really like is search and seizure.

Lex Fridman (21:59.620)

If I have private data that I entered in my house

Eric Weinstein (22:02.700)

that is stored on a server that you hold outside of my house,

Lex Fridman (22:07.380)

but I view is the abstraction

Eric Weinstein (22:09.980)

that it's only the perimeter of my house

Lex Fridman (22:12.100)

that I have the right to protect,

Eric Weinstein (22:13.540)

or does my password extend the perimeter of my house

Lex Fridman (22:18.740)

to the data on the server

Lex Fridman (22:20.220)

that is located outside of my house?

Lex Fridman (22:22.940)

These are choices for the court, and the court is supposed

Eric Weinstein (22:26.740)

to pretend that they can divine the true intent

Lex Fridman (22:29.420)

of the framers.

Lex Fridman (22:30.660)

But all of the sort of, and I've taken to calling this

Lex Fridman (22:33.620)

the problem of internet hyenas,

Eric Weinstein (22:35.220)

people with readymade answers and LOLs,

Lex Fridman (22:37.900)

and you're such a moron.

Eric Weinstein (22:39.940)

These folks love to remind you, it's a private company,

Lex Fridman (22:42.700)

dude, it can do whatever it wants.

Eric Weinstein (22:44.580)

No, the court has to figure out what the abstractions are.

Lex Fridman (22:48.540)

And just the way, for example,

Eric Weinstein (22:50.620)

the Griswold decision found that there was a penumbra

Lex Fridman (22:54.300)

because there was too little in the Constitution,

Eric Weinstein (22:56.420)

therefore there were all sorts of things implied

Lex Fridman (22:58.380)

that couldn't be in the document.

Eric Weinstein (23:00.820)

Somebody needs to come up with the abstraction right now

Lex Fridman (23:04.260)

that says Jack cannot do it if he wants.

Eric Weinstein (23:09.020)

It's really, so you say the courts,

Lex Fridman (23:11.460)

but it's also us, people who think about the world,

Eric Weinstein (23:15.060)

it's you. No, no, no.

Lex Fridman (23:16.100)

It's the courts.

Lex Fridman (23:17.220)

But the courts don't do this.

Lex Fridman (23:19.620)

We're toast.

Lex Fridman (23:20.660)

But we can still think about it.

Lex Fridman (23:22.420)

I mean, I'll...

Eric Weinstein (23:23.500)

Sure, but I don't feel like going down the drain.

Lex Fridman (23:25.740)

Here's what I'm thinking about,

Eric Weinstein (23:26.900)

because it's tricky how far it should extend.

Lex Fridman (23:29.820)

I mean, that's an ongoing conversation.

Eric Weinstein (23:31.500)

Don't you think the interpretation of the law...

Lex Fridman (23:34.300)

I think I'm trying to say something very simple,

Lex Fridman (23:36.300)

and it's just not gonna be popular for a while.

Lex Fridman (23:41.220)

Tech dwarfs previous forms of communication.

Eric Weinstein (23:46.060)

Print or shouting in a public park.

Lex Fridman (23:48.220)

And so I can go to a public park

Lex Fridman (23:51.300)

and I can shout if I get a permit.

Lex Fridman (23:53.020)

Even there, I think it was in the late 1980s in Atlanta,

Eric Weinstein (23:56.380)

we came up with free speech zones

Lex Fridman (23:58.220)

where you can't protest at a convention.

Eric Weinstein (23:59.980)

You bet you can go to a park 23 miles out

Lex Fridman (24:02.420)

and they'll fence off a little area

Eric Weinstein (24:04.300)

where you can have your free speech.

Lex Fridman (24:07.300)

No, speech is dangerous.

Eric Weinstein (24:09.140)

Ideas are dangerous.

Lex Fridman (24:10.460)

We are a country about danger and risk.

Lex Fridman (24:13.740)

And yes, I agree that targeted speech at individuals

Lex Fridman (24:17.100)

trying to reveal their private stuff

Lex Fridman (24:19.420)

and all that kind of...

Lex Fridman (24:20.260)

That is very different.

Lex Fridman (24:21.180)

So forget a lot of that stuff.

Lex Fridman (24:24.340)

But free speech for ideas is meant to be dangerous

Lex Fridman (24:28.100)

and people will die as a result of free speech.

Lex Fridman (24:31.940)

The idea that one life is too much is preposterous.

Eric Weinstein (24:35.500)

Like why did we send...

Lex Fridman (24:36.820)

If one life is preposterous,

Lex Fridman (24:38.100)

why did we send anyone to the beaches of Normandy?

Lex Fridman (24:39.980)

I just don't get this.

Lex Fridman (24:41.580)

So one thing that I was clearly bothered by,

Lex Fridman (24:45.940)

and maybe you can be my therapist as well.

Eric Weinstein (24:49.060)

I thought you were mine.

Lex Fridman (24:50.740)

This is a little bit of a miscommunication

Eric Weinstein (24:53.980)

on both of our parts then.

Lex Fridman (24:57.060)

Because who's paying who for this?

Eric Weinstein (25:00.740)

I was really bothered by Amazon banning Parler from AWS

Lex Fridman (25:06.780)

because my assumption was that the infrastructure...

Eric Weinstein (25:11.260)

I drew a distinction between AWS,

Lex Fridman (25:14.340)

the infrastructure on which competing platforms

Eric Weinstein (25:18.220)

could be created is different than the actual platforms.

Lex Fridman (25:24.020)

So the standard of the ideal of freedom of speech,

Eric Weinstein (25:28.460)

I, in my mind, in a shallow way perhaps,

Lex Fridman (25:31.900)

applied differently to AWS than I did to Twitter.

Eric Weinstein (25:36.660)

It felt that we've created a more dangerous world,

Lex Fridman (25:41.020)

that freedoms were violated by banning Parler from AWS,

Eric Weinstein (25:46.140)

which I saw as the computing infrastructure

Lex Fridman (25:48.140)

which enables the competition of tools,

Eric Weinstein (25:50.900)

the competition of frameworks of communication.

Lex Fridman (25:54.940)

What do you think about this?

Eric Weinstein (25:56.580)

First of all, let me give you the internet hyena answer.

Lex Fridman (26:00.900)

I don't understand, dude, just build your own Amazon.

Lex Fridman (26:03.780)

Yeah. Right?

Lex Fridman (26:04.620)

Yes. Well, so that's a very shallow statement,

Lex Fridman (26:07.220)

but it's also one that has some legitimacy.

Lex Fridman (26:10.580)

We can't completely dismiss it

Eric Weinstein (26:12.300)

because there's levels to this game.

Lex Fridman (26:16.620)

Yes and no, but if you really wanted to chase that down,

Eric Weinstein (26:19.900)

one of the great things about a person to person conversation

Lex Fridman (26:22.380)

as opposed to let's have 30 of our closest friends,

Eric Weinstein (26:25.660)

whenever we have a conversation

Lex Fridman (26:26.660)

with 30 of our closest friends, you know what happens?

Eric Weinstein (26:29.100)

It's like passing light through a prism.

Lex Fridman (26:31.500)

Every person says something interesting.

Lex Fridman (26:34.340)

And as a result, it's always muddled.

Lex Fridman (26:36.820)

Nothing ever resolves.

Eric Weinstein (26:38.420)

Well, one of my conversational techniques you mentioned,

Lex Fridman (26:42.260)

you pushed back is first this childlike naivety

Lex Fridman (26:46.780)

and curiosity, but also.

Lex Fridman (26:49.020)

Real or simulated?

Eric Weinstein (26:50.180)

Real, I'm afraid.

Lex Fridman (26:51.500)

I would say 80% real.

Eric Weinstein (26:53.180)

All right.

Lex Fridman (26:54.020)

So in this paradigm, how could you not see this coming?

Eric Weinstein (26:58.060)

I mean, I did a show with Ashley Matthews,

Lex Fridman (27:01.780)

who's the woman behind Riley Reid.

Lex Fridman (27:03.820)

And specifically about this, it was about the idea

Lex Fridman (27:06.580)

that if I move away from politics and go towards sex,

Eric Weinstein (27:10.740)

I know that there's always a move to use the infrastructure

Lex Fridman (27:14.580)

to shut down sex workers.

Lex Fridman (27:18.580)

And in this case, we had Operation Choke Point

Lex Fridman (27:21.780)

under the Obama administration.

Eric Weinstein (27:24.980)

We have a positive passion for people

Lex Fridman (27:28.420)

who want to solve problems,

Eric Weinstein (27:30.540)

that they don't like this company,

Lex Fridman (27:31.980)

they don't like that company,

Eric Weinstein (27:32.940)

payday loans would be another one.

Lex Fridman (27:35.220)

And so you have legal companies

Eric Weinstein (27:37.140)

that are harassed by our financial system

Lex Fridman (27:39.660)

that you can't, as Riley Reid,

Eric Weinstein (27:44.260)

Ashley couldn't get a Mailchimp account according to her,

Lex Fridman (27:47.460)

if I understand her correctly.

Lex Fridman (27:49.340)

And this idea that you charge these people higher rates

Lex Fridman (27:53.340)

because of supposed chargebacks on credit cards,

Eric Weinstein (27:56.700)

even if their chargebacks are low.

Lex Fridman (27:59.020)

Yes, we have an unofficial policy of harassment.

Eric Weinstein (28:02.780)

There's something about everybody who shows up at Davos,

Lex Fridman (28:07.180)

they get drunk in the Swiss Alps,

Lex Fridman (28:09.300)

and then they come back home and they coordinate,

Lex Fridman (28:12.620)

and they coordinate things like Build Back Better.

Eric Weinstein (28:15.340)

We don't really understand what Build Back Better is,

Lex Fridman (28:17.060)

but my guess is that Build Back Better

Eric Weinstein (28:19.340)

has to do with extremism in America.

Lex Fridman (28:21.780)

How do we shut down the Republican Party

Lex Fridman (28:24.260)

as the source of extremism?

Lex Fridman (28:26.420)

Now, I do think the Republican Party

Eric Weinstein (28:28.300)

got very extreme under Trump.

Lex Fridman (28:30.780)

And I do believe that that was responsive

Eric Weinstein (28:32.500)

to how extreme the Democratic Party got under Clinton first

Lex Fridman (28:38.580)

and then Obama and then Hillary.

Lex Fridman (28:42.100)

And in all of these circumstances,

Lex Fridman (28:44.900)

it's amazing how much we want

Eric Weinstein (28:46.460)

to wield these things as weapons.

Lex Fridman (28:48.740)

Well, our extremism is fine

Eric Weinstein (28:50.700)

because we pretend that Antifa doesn't exist

Lex Fridman (28:53.060)

and we don't report what goes on in Portland,

Lex Fridman (28:55.700)

but your extremism, my God, that's disgusting.

Lex Fridman (28:59.500)

This is the completely ridiculous place that we're in.

Lex Fridman (29:02.260)

And by the way, our friends in part

Lex Fridman (29:07.060)

are coked up on tech money,

Lex Fridman (29:08.820)

and they don't appear to hold the courage

Lex Fridman (29:12.540)

of their convictions at a political level

Eric Weinstein (29:14.420)

because it's not in keeping with shareholder value.

Lex Fridman (29:18.060)

At some level, shareholder value is the ultimate shield

Eric Weinstein (29:21.460)

with which everyone can cloak themselves.

Lex Fridman (29:24.780)

Well, on that point, Donald Trump was banned from Twitter,

Lex Fridman (29:29.780)

and I'm not sure it was a good financial decision

Lex Fridman (29:32.020)

for Twitter, right?

Eric Weinstein (29:35.340)

Perhaps you can correct me if I'm wrong.

Lex Fridman (29:37.460)

Well, are you thinking locally,

Eric Weinstein (29:38.780)

or are you thinking if Twitter refused to ban Donald Trump,

Lex Fridman (29:43.460)

what is the odds that the full force

Lex Fridman (29:45.900)

of the antitrust division might find them?

Lex Fridman (29:47.740)

I don't know.

Eric Weinstein (29:48.580)

Oh, I see, I see.

Lex Fridman (29:49.420)

So there's a complicated thing.

Eric Weinstein (29:51.260)

Well, look, these guys are all having a discussion

Lex Fridman (29:55.020)

in very practical terms.

Eric Weinstein (29:56.820)

You can imagine the sorts of things

Lex Fridman (29:58.980)

and imagine the sorts of conversation.

Lex Fridman (2:00:00.160)

and you wanted to compensate these two hedge funds,

Lex Fridman (2:00:02.880)

would you compensate them the same necessarily?

Lex Fridman (2:00:06.200)

What if, for example, Carol was killing it

Lex Fridman (2:00:11.640)

in terms of investments?

Eric Weinstein (2:00:12.760)

Every time she bought some sort of security,

Lex Fridman (2:00:16.000)

the price of that security went up, okay?

Lex Fridman (2:00:20.580)

But Bob was the worst marketing officer,

Lex Fridman (2:00:25.440)

and as chief marketing officer,

Eric Weinstein (2:00:26.680)

there were tons of redemptions

Lex Fridman (2:00:28.080)

because Bob was constantly drunk,

Eric Weinstein (2:00:30.960)

Bob was making off color comments.

Lex Fridman (2:00:33.800)

Now, as a result, at the end of the year,

Eric Weinstein (2:00:36.520)

the fund hasn't grown in size

Lex Fridman (2:00:38.560)

because even though Carol was crushing it

Eric Weinstein (2:00:40.800)

in terms of the investments,

Lex Fridman (2:00:43.000)

Bob was screwing up everything

Lex Fridman (2:00:45.200)

and the redemptions were legendary,

Lex Fridman (2:00:47.520)

so people were making money

Lex Fridman (2:00:48.660)

and still pulling it out of the fund.

Lex Fridman (2:00:51.440)

In the other fund, Alice can't seem to buy a base hit

Eric Weinstein (2:00:57.160)

every time she gets into a security, the thing plummets,

Lex Fridman (2:01:00.720)

but Ted's amazing marketing skills allowed the fund

Eric Weinstein (2:01:05.520)

to get all sorts of new subscriptions

Lex Fridman (2:01:07.240)

and halted the redemptions as people hoped

Eric Weinstein (2:01:09.760)

that the fund would get its act together, okay.

Lex Fridman (2:01:14.960)

Price indices should be how Carol and Alice are compensated,

Lex Fridman (2:01:25.080)

and quantity indices should be how Bob and Ted

Lex Fridman (2:01:30.120)

are compensated, so even though both funds

Eric Weinstein (2:01:34.240)

had closed loops that come back to the original states,

Lex Fridman (2:01:38.560)

what happened during the period that they were active

Eric Weinstein (2:01:41.640)

tells you how people are supposed to be compensated.

Lex Fridman (2:01:47.000)

Now, we know that whatever the increase

Eric Weinstein (2:01:49.000)

in the price index is, is compensated by a decrease

Lex Fridman (2:01:53.640)

in the quantity index or conversely,

Eric Weinstein (2:01:56.900)

because prices and quantities

Lex Fridman (2:01:58.080)

return to their original values.

Eric Weinstein (2:02:00.140)

You could have another fund where nothing much happened,

Lex Fridman (2:02:02.040)

there were no redemptions, no subscriptions,

Eric Weinstein (2:02:04.920)

the fund remained in cash the whole time.

Lex Fridman (2:02:08.080)

So in that third fund, you know,

Lex Fridman (2:02:10.920)

let's call that Tristan and Isolde, right?

Lex Fridman (2:02:13.940)

That fund should have no bonuses paid

Eric Weinstein (2:02:17.080)

because nobody did anything,

Lex Fridman (2:02:18.120)

but nobody should be fired either.

Eric Weinstein (2:02:20.400)

Now, the fact that the economists don't even understand

Lex Fridman (2:02:24.360)

that this is what their price and quantity indices

Eric Weinstein (2:02:26.520)

were intended to do, that they don't understand

Lex Fridman (2:02:29.600)

that you can actually give what would be called

Eric Weinstein (2:02:31.500)

ordinal agents the freedom to change their preferences

Lex Fridman (2:02:35.160)

and still have something defined as a

Eric Weinstein (2:02:38.640)

CONUS cost of living adjustment.

Lex Fridman (2:02:41.160)

They don't even understand the mathematics of their field.

Lex Fridman (2:02:43.940)

So the indices need to be able to capture

Lex Fridman (2:02:46.000)

some kind of dynamics that...

Eric Weinstein (2:02:48.080)

We have had indices that capture these dynamics

Lex Fridman (2:02:51.200)

due to the work of Francois de Vizier since 1925.

Lex Fridman (2:02:55.320)

But the economists have not even understood

Lex Fridman (2:02:57.720)

what de Vizier's index truly represent.

Lex Fridman (2:02:59.800)

What do you miss with such crude indices then?

Lex Fridman (2:03:04.020)

Well, you miss the fact that you're supposed

Eric Weinstein (2:03:06.440)

to have a field theoretic subject.

Lex Fridman (2:03:09.240)

The representative consumer should actually

Eric Weinstein (2:03:11.120)

be a probability distribution on the space

Lex Fridman (2:03:13.500)

of all possible consumers weighted by the probability

Eric Weinstein (2:03:16.160)

of getting any particular pull from the distribution.

Lex Fridman (2:03:19.660)

We should not have a single gauge of inflation.

Lex Fridman (2:03:23.120)

What is that in 1973 dollars?

Lex Fridman (2:03:25.200)

Any more than you should be able to say

Eric Weinstein (2:03:28.380)

it was 59 degrees Fahrenheit on earth yesterday.

Lex Fridman (2:03:31.160)

So when we get to the cryptocurrency,

Lex Fridman (2:03:34.960)

what I'm going to say is that

Lex Fridman (2:03:37.040)

because we didn't found economic theory

Eric Weinstein (2:03:39.940)

on the proper marginal revolution,

Lex Fridman (2:03:41.880)

because we missed the major opportunity,

Eric Weinstein (2:03:44.000)

which is that the differential calculus of markets

Lex Fridman (2:03:47.240)

is gauge theory.

Eric Weinstein (2:03:48.320)

It's not ordinary differential calculus.

Lex Fridman (2:03:53.620)

We found that out in finance

Eric Weinstein (2:03:55.560)

that it was stochastic differential calculus.

Lex Fridman (2:03:58.220)

We have the wrong version of the differential calculus

Eric Weinstein (2:04:00.720)

underneath all of modern economic theory.

Lex Fridman (2:04:03.760)

And part of what I've been pushing for in cryptocurrencies

Eric Weinstein (2:04:06.720)

is the idea that we should be understanding

Lex Fridman (2:04:09.000)

that gold is a gauge theory,

Eric Weinstein (2:04:11.500)

just as modern economic theory

Lex Fridman (2:04:13.700)

is supposed to be a gauge theory.

Lex Fridman (2:04:15.600)

And that we should be looking to liberate cryptocurrencies

Lex Fridman (2:04:18.960)

and more importantly distributed computing

Eric Weinstein (2:04:22.440)

from the problem of this unwanted global aspect,

Lex Fridman (2:04:25.660)

which is the blockchain.

Eric Weinstein (2:04:26.800)

The thing that is most celebrated in some sense

Lex Fridman (2:04:29.520)

about Bitcoin is in fact the reason

Eric Weinstein (2:04:31.600)

that I'm least enthusiastic about it.

Lex Fridman (2:04:33.400)

I'm hugely enthusiastic about what Satoshi did.

Lex Fridman (2:04:38.020)

But it's an intermediate step towards trying to figure out

Lex Fridman (2:04:40.820)

what should digital gold actually be?

Eric Weinstein (2:04:43.680)

If physical gold is a collection of up quarks

Lex Fridman (2:04:49.160)

and down quarks in the form of protons and neutrons

Eric Weinstein (2:04:52.560)

held together, the quarks by gluons

Lex Fridman (2:04:55.180)

with electrons orbiting and held together by photons

Eric Weinstein (2:04:57.780)

with the occasional weak interaction beta decay,

Lex Fridman (2:05:01.020)

all of those are gauge theories.

Lex Fridman (2:05:02.720)

So gold is actually coming from gauge theory

Lex Fridman (2:05:06.240)

and markets are coming from gauge theory.

Lex Fridman (2:05:08.280)

And the opportunity to do locally enforced conservation laws,

Lex Fridman (2:05:12.420)

which effectively is what a Bitcoin transaction is,

Eric Weinstein (2:05:15.680)

should theoretically be founded on a different principle

Lex Fridman (2:05:19.780)

that is not the blockchain.

Eric Weinstein (2:05:21.400)

It should be a gauge theoretic concept

Lex Fridman (2:05:23.880)

in which effectively the tokens are excitations

Eric Weinstein (2:05:27.560)

on a network of computer nodes.

Lex Fridman (2:05:30.480)

And the fact that, let's imagine that this is some token.

Eric Weinstein (2:05:35.920)

By moving it from my custodianship to your custodianship,

Lex Fridman (2:05:39.560)

effectively I pushed that glass as a gauge theory

Eric Weinstein (2:05:43.040)

towards your region of the table.

Lex Fridman (2:05:45.280)

We should be recognizing the gauge theory

Eric Weinstein (2:05:47.600)

is the correct differential calculus for the 21st century.

Lex Fridman (2:05:51.380)

In fact, it should have been there in the 20th century.

Eric Weinstein (2:05:53.280)

You're saying it captures these individual dynamics,

Lex Fridman (2:05:57.880)

much richer.

Lex Fridman (2:05:58.720)

Why should my giving you a token have to be,

Lex Fridman (2:06:01.840)

why should we alert the global community

Lex Fridman (2:06:05.120)

in this token that that occurred?

Lex Fridman (2:06:06.800)

You can talk about side chains,

Eric Weinstein (2:06:08.000)

you can talk about any means of doing this,

Lex Fridman (2:06:10.040)

but effectively we have a problem,

Eric Weinstein (2:06:11.520)

which is if I think about this differently,

Lex Fridman (2:06:13.880)

I have a glass that is extant,

Eric Weinstein (2:06:16.960)

you have a glass that is abstent.

Lex Fridman (2:06:19.740)

We're supposed to call the constructor method

Eric Weinstein (2:06:23.080)

on your glass at the same moment

Lex Fridman (2:06:24.720)

we call the destructor method on my glass

Eric Weinstein (2:06:26.840)

in order to have a conservation principle.

Lex Fridman (2:06:29.280)

It would be far more efficient to do this

Eric Weinstein (2:06:32.080)

with the one system that is known

Lex Fridman (2:06:34.720)

never to throw an exception, which is nature.

Lex Fridman (2:06:37.120)

And nature has chosen gauge theory and geometry

Lex Fridman (2:06:39.280)

for her underlying language.

Eric Weinstein (2:06:41.460)

We now know due to work of Pia Malani at Harvard

Lex Fridman (2:06:45.360)

in economics in the mid 1990s, which I was her coauthor on,

Lex Fridman (2:06:49.720)

but I wish to promote her as well as this being my idea.

Lex Fridman (2:06:57.480)

We know that modern economic theory

Eric Weinstein (2:06:59.720)

is a naturally occurring gauge theory.

Lex Fridman (2:07:01.880)

And the failure of that community to acknowledge

Eric Weinstein (2:07:04.320)

that that work occurred and that it was put down

Lex Fridman (2:07:06.940)

for reasons that make no analytic sense

Eric Weinstein (2:07:10.720)

is important in particular due to the relatively

Lex Fridman (2:07:13.480)

new innovation of distributed computing

Lex Fridman (2:07:15.800)

and Satoshi's brainchild.

Lex Fridman (2:07:17.560)

So you're thinking we need to have the mathematics

Eric Weinstein (2:07:20.040)

that captures, that enforces cryptocurrency

Lex Fridman (2:07:23.200)

as a distributed system as opposed to a centralized one

Eric Weinstein (2:07:25.760)

where the blockchain says that crypto should be centralized.

Lex Fridman (2:07:30.240)

The abundance economy much discussed in Silicon Valley

Eric Weinstein (2:07:35.000)

or what's left of it is actually a huge threat

Lex Fridman (2:07:38.960)

to the planet because what it really is

Eric Weinstein (2:07:41.200)

is that it is what Marc Andreessen

Lex Fridman (2:07:43.240)

has called software eating the world.

Lex Fridman (2:07:45.520)

And what that means is that you're gonna push

Lex Fridman (2:07:47.520)

things from being private goods and services

Eric Weinstein (2:07:49.360)

into public goods and services and public goods

Lex Fridman (2:07:51.440)

and services cannot have price and value tied together.

Eric Weinstein (2:07:55.840)

Ergo, people will produce things of incredible value

Lex Fridman (2:07:59.060)

to the world that they cannot command a price

Lex Fridman (2:08:01.860)

and they will not be able to capture the value

Lex Fridman (2:08:03.740)

that they have created or a significant enough

Eric Weinstein (2:08:05.920)

fraction of it.

Lex Fridman (2:08:07.080)

The abundance economy is a disaster.

Eric Weinstein (2:08:09.820)

It will lead to a reduction in human freedom.

Lex Fridman (2:08:13.220)

The great innovation of Satoshi is locally enforced

Eric Weinstein (2:08:16.720)

or semi locally enforced conservation laws

Lex Fridman (2:08:20.440)

where the idea is just as gold is hard,

Lex Fridman (2:08:22.760)

why is gold hard to create or destroy?

Lex Fridman (2:08:24.960)

It's because it's created not only in stars

Lex Fridman (2:08:26.720)

but in violent events involving stars

Lex Fridman (2:08:28.680)

like supernova collisions.

Eric Weinstein (2:08:31.760)

When gold is created and we transact,

Lex Fridman (2:08:35.440)

we're using conservation laws.

Eric Weinstein (2:08:38.080)

The physics determines the custodianship,

Lex Fridman (2:08:41.280)

whatever it is that I don't have, you now have

Lex Fridman (2:08:43.920)

and conversely, in such a situation,

Lex Fridman (2:08:47.400)

we should be looking for the abstraction

Eric Weinstein (2:08:49.760)

that most closely matches the physical world

Lex Fridman (2:08:52.100)

because the physical world is known

Eric Weinstein (2:08:53.480)

not to throw an exception.

Lex Fridman (2:08:55.240)

The blockchain is a vulnerability.

Eric Weinstein (2:08:57.200)

The idea that the 51% problem isn't solved,

Lex Fridman (2:09:00.720)

that you could have crazy race conditions,

Eric Weinstein (2:09:03.600)

all of these things, we know that they're solved

Lex Fridman (2:09:06.880)

inside of gauge theory somehow.

Lex Fridman (2:09:10.080)

So the important thing is to recognize

Lex Fridman (2:09:12.200)

that one of the greatest intellectual feats ever

Eric Weinstein (2:09:15.140)

in the history of economic theory took place already

Lex Fridman (2:09:18.840)

and was essentially instantly buried

Lex Fridman (2:09:22.040)

and I will stand by those comments.

Lex Fridman (2:09:24.120)

Satoshi, wherever you are, I probably know you.

Lex Fridman (2:09:28.320)

Are you Satoshi?

Lex Fridman (2:09:29.420)

No.

Eric Weinstein (2:09:31.160)

No, no, no, I don't have that kind of ability.

Lex Fridman (2:09:33.000)

I really don't.

Eric Weinstein (2:09:34.360)

I do other things.

Lex Fridman (2:09:36.520)

Speaking of Satoshi and gauge theory,

Eric Weinstein (2:09:38.520)

you've mentioned to Brian Keating

Lex Fridman (2:09:43.240)

that you may be releasing a geometric unity paper this year

Eric Weinstein (2:09:47.360)

or some other form of additional material on the topic.

Lex Fridman (2:09:51.800)

What is your thinking around this?

Eric Weinstein (2:09:54.120)

What's the process you're going through now

Lex Fridman (2:09:56.320)

in preparing this?

Eric Weinstein (2:09:58.760)

I used April 1st to try to start a tradition

Lex Fridman (2:10:02.040)

which I hope to use to liberate mankind.

Eric Weinstein (2:10:04.860)

The tradition is that at least one day a year,

Lex Fridman (2:10:10.180)

you should be able to say heretical things

Lex Fridman (2:10:13.220)

and not have Jack Dorsey boot you off or Mark Zuckerberg.

Lex Fridman (2:10:16.900)

Your provost shouldn't call you up and say,

Lex Fridman (2:10:18.580)

what did you say?

Lex Fridman (2:10:20.660)

We need at some level to have a jubilee

Eric Weinstein (2:10:23.660)

from centralized control.

Lex Fridman (2:10:26.540)

And so my hope is that,

Lex Fridman (2:10:28.780)

you know what a tradition is in America?

Lex Fridman (2:10:30.940)

Something a baby boomer did twice.

Eric Weinstein (2:10:35.860)

Impeachment.

Lex Fridman (2:10:37.020)

That's very funny.

Eric Weinstein (2:10:41.220)

Anyway, so I'm not a baby boomer, but as an exer,

Lex Fridman (2:10:46.620)

I've thought about whether or not April 1st

Eric Weinstein (2:10:48.820)

would be a good date on which to release a printed version

Lex Fridman (2:10:52.740)

of what I already said in lecture form.

Eric Weinstein (2:10:55.180)

Because I think it's hysterically funny

Lex Fridman (2:10:56.980)

that the physics community claims

Eric Weinstein (2:10:59.260)

that it can't decode a lecture.

Lex Fridman (2:11:03.500)

It must be paper.

Lex Fridman (2:11:04.580)

And you know what?

Lex Fridman (2:11:05.700)

There will be a steady stream of new complaints

Eric Weinstein (2:11:08.540)

up until the point that they fit it into a narrative

Lex Fridman (2:11:10.820)

that they like.

Eric Weinstein (2:11:13.700)

Yeah, I'm thinking about April 1st

Lex Fridman (2:11:16.220)

as a date in which to release a document

Lex Fridman (2:11:19.340)

and it won't be perfectly complete,

Lex Fridman (2:11:21.100)

but it'll be very complete.

Lex Fridman (2:11:22.960)

And then they'll try to say, it's wrong.

Lex Fridman (2:11:26.560)

Or you already did it.

Eric Weinstein (2:11:27.580)

Or no, that was dumb,

Lex Fridman (2:11:29.420)

but what we just did on top of it is brilliant.

Eric Weinstein (2:11:31.660)

Or it doesn't match experiment.

Lex Fridman (2:11:34.500)

Or who knows what.

Eric Weinstein (2:11:35.340)

They'll go through all of their usual nonsense.

Lex Fridman (2:11:38.780)

It's time to go.

Eric Weinstein (2:11:40.300)

Is there still puzzles in your own mind

Lex Fridman (2:11:43.240)

that need to be figured out

Lex Fridman (2:11:44.460)

for you to try to put it on paper?

Lex Fridman (2:11:46.120)

I mean, those are different mediums, right?

Eric Weinstein (2:11:48.220)

It was a great question.

Lex Fridman (2:11:50.220)

I did not count on something

Eric Weinstein (2:11:51.820)

that turns out to be important.

Lex Fridman (2:11:54.700)

When you work on your own outside of the system

Eric Weinstein (2:11:57.100)

for a long time,

Lex Fridman (2:11:58.820)

you probably don't think you're gonna be doing this

Eric Weinstein (2:12:00.780)

as a 55 year old man.

Lex Fridman (2:12:03.940)

And I have been so long outside

Eric Weinstein (2:12:06.020)

of math and physics departments,

Lex Fridman (2:12:07.380)

and I've been occupied with so many other things

Eric Weinstein (2:12:09.020)

as you can see,

Lex Fridman (2:12:10.540)

that the old idea that I had was

Eric Weinstein (2:12:14.260)

if I always did it in little pieces,

Lex Fridman (2:12:17.380)

then I was always safe because it wouldn't be stealable.

Lex Fridman (2:12:21.460)

And so now those pieces never got assembled completely.

Lex Fridman (2:12:26.100)

In essence, I have all the pieces

Lex Fridman (2:12:29.060)

and I can fit them together.

Lex Fridman (2:12:32.540)

But there's probably a small amount of glue code.

Eric Weinstein (2:12:35.760)

Like there are a few algebraic things

Lex Fridman (2:12:37.260)

I've forgotten how to do.

Eric Weinstein (2:12:38.340)

I may or may not figure them out

Lex Fridman (2:12:39.940)

between now and April 1st.

Lex Fridman (2:12:41.940)

But it's pretty complete.

Lex Fridman (2:12:43.500)

But that's the puzzle you're kind of struggling

Eric Weinstein (2:12:46.400)

to now figure out,

Lex Fridman (2:12:47.940)

to get it all in the same, the glue together.

Eric Weinstein (2:12:50.820)

I can't tell you whether the theory

Lex Fridman (2:12:52.460)

is correct or incorrect.

Lex Fridman (2:12:54.220)

But for example, there's what's the exact form

Lex Fridman (2:12:56.400)

of the supersymmetry algebra,

Eric Weinstein (2:12:57.900)

or what's the rule for passing a minus sign

Lex Fridman (2:13:00.780)

through a particular operator.

Lex Fridman (2:13:02.900)

And all of that stuff got a lot more difficult

Lex Fridman (2:13:05.820)

because I didn't do it every,

Eric Weinstein (2:13:09.220)

look, it's a little bit like if you're a violinist

Lex Fridman (2:13:14.220)

and you don't touch your violin regularly for 15 years,

Eric Weinstein (2:13:17.700)

you come back to it and you pretty much know the pieces,

Lex Fridman (2:13:19.940)

sort of, but there's lots of stuff that's missing,

Eric Weinstein (2:13:21.800)

your tone is off and that kind of stuff.

Lex Fridman (2:13:24.040)

I would say I'll get the ship to the harbor

Lex Fridman (2:13:27.020)

and it'll require a tugboat probably to get it in.

Lex Fridman (2:13:30.420)

And if the tugboat doesn't show up,

Eric Weinstein (2:13:31.740)

then I'll pilot the thing right into the dock myself.

Lex Fridman (2:13:34.540)

But it's not a big deal.

Eric Weinstein (2:13:35.780)

I think that it is essentially complete.

Lex Fridman (2:13:38.480)

Psychologically, just as a human being,

Eric Weinstein (2:13:41.300)

this is, I remember perhaps by accident,

Lex Fridman (2:13:45.500)

but maybe there's no accidents in the universe.

Eric Weinstein (2:13:48.660)

I was tuned in, I don't remember where,

Lex Fridman (2:13:51.380)

on April 1st to you, oh, I think on your Discord,

Eric Weinstein (2:13:58.020)

kind of thinking about, thinking through this release.

Lex Fridman (2:14:00.980)

I mean, it wasn't like,

Eric Weinstein (2:14:03.180)

it wasn't obvious that you were going to do it,

Lex Fridman (2:14:04.860)

you were thinking through it.

Lex Fridman (2:14:05.860)

And I remember there was intellectual,

Lex Fridman (2:14:08.500)

personal, psychological struggle with this, right?

Eric Weinstein (2:14:11.420)

Well, because I thought it was dangerous.

Lex Fridman (2:14:13.260)

If this turns out to be right,

Eric Weinstein (2:14:14.980)

I don't know what it unlocks.

Lex Fridman (2:14:16.500)

If it's wrong, I think I understand where we are.

Eric Weinstein (2:14:23.200)

If it's wrong, it'll be the first fool's gold

Lex Fridman (2:14:29.000)

that really looks like a theory of everything.

Eric Weinstein (2:14:33.360)

It'll be the iron pyrites of physics.

Lex Fridman (2:14:35.600)

And we haven't even had fool's gold in my opinion yet.

Eric Weinstein (2:14:39.600)

Got it.

Lex Fridman (2:14:40.440)

So what is your intuition why this looks right to you?

Eric Weinstein (2:14:45.360)

Like why it feels like it would be,

Lex Fridman (2:14:48.320)

if wrong, the first fool's gold.

Eric Weinstein (2:14:49.160)

I can say it very simply.

Lex Fridman (2:14:51.120)

It's way smarter than I am.

Lex Fridman (2:14:53.280)

Can you break that apart a little more?

Lex Fridman (2:14:55.440)

Every time you poke at it,

Eric Weinstein (2:14:56.880)

it's giving you intuitions that follow

Lex Fridman (2:14:58.720)

with the currently known physics.

Eric Weinstein (2:15:00.400)

Let's put it in computer science terms.

Lex Fridman (2:15:02.400)

Yes, please.

Eric Weinstein (2:15:03.240)

Okay, there's a concept of technical debt

Lex Fridman (2:15:05.640)

that computer scientists struggle with.

Eric Weinstein (2:15:07.980)

As you commit crimes,

Lex Fridman (2:15:09.180)

you have to pay those crimes back at a later date.

Eric Weinstein (2:15:11.680)

In general, most of the problem with physical theories

Lex Fridman (2:15:15.440)

is that as you try to do something that matches reality,

Eric Weinstein (2:15:20.360)

you usually have to go into some structure

Lex Fridman (2:15:23.120)

that gets you farther away.

Lex Fridman (2:15:25.140)

And your hope is, is that you're gonna be able

Lex Fridman (2:15:26.680)

to pay back the technical debt.

Lex Fridman (2:15:28.240)

And in general, these wind up as check hiding schemes

Lex Fridman (2:15:33.200)

or like you're funding a startup

Lex Fridman (2:15:34.560)

and there are too many pivots, right?

Lex Fridman (2:15:37.000)

So you keep adding epicycles in order to cover,

Eric Weinstein (2:15:41.600)

things that have gone wrong.

Lex Fridman (2:15:44.000)

My belief is, is that this thing

Eric Weinstein (2:15:49.920)

represents something like a summit to me.

Lex Fridman (2:15:53.040)

And I'm very proud of having found a route up this summit.

Lex Fridman (2:15:58.720)

But the root is what's due to me.

Lex Fridman (2:16:01.500)

The summit can't possibly be due to me.

Eric Weinstein (2:16:06.280)

You know, like Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay

Lex Fridman (2:16:09.680)

did not create Mount Everest.

Eric Weinstein (2:16:13.180)

They know that they didn't create that.

Lex Fridman (2:16:14.460)

They figured out a way up.

Eric Weinstein (2:16:18.780)

You gotta tell me what Mount Everest

Lex Fridman (2:16:20.900)

is in this metaphor relative

Lex Fridman (2:16:22.860)

and also connected to the technical debt.

Lex Fridman (2:16:24.620)

So technical debt is a negative thing that it's kind of,

Eric Weinstein (2:16:28.100)

you will eventually have to pay it.

Lex Fridman (2:16:30.500)

Are you saying in the,

Eric Weinstein (2:16:32.660)

in the ascent that you're seeing now in the theory

Lex Fridman (2:16:35.500)

is you do not have much technical debt.

Eric Weinstein (2:16:37.620)

Well, that's right.

Lex Fridman (2:16:38.460)

That what happens is, is that early on what I would say is,

Eric Weinstein (2:16:43.460)

I believe now that the physics community

Lex Fridman (2:16:48.620)

has said many things incorrectly

Eric Weinstein (2:16:51.940)

about the current state of the universe.

Lex Fridman (2:16:54.600)

They're not wildly off, which is why,

Eric Weinstein (2:16:57.820)

like for example, the claim is that

Lex Fridman (2:16:59.340)

there are three generations of matter.

Eric Weinstein (2:17:01.460)

I do not believe that there are three generations of matter.

Lex Fridman (2:17:03.520)

I believe that there are two generations of matter

Lex Fridman (2:17:05.340)

and there's a third collection

Lex Fridman (2:17:08.920)

that looks like a generation of matter as the first two,

Eric Weinstein (2:17:13.100)

only at low energy.

Lex Fridman (2:17:15.440)

Okay, well, that's not a frequent claim.

Eric Weinstein (2:17:18.400)

People imagine that there are three

Lex Fridman (2:17:19.820)

or more generations of matter.

Eric Weinstein (2:17:21.540)

I would claim that that's false.

Lex Fridman (2:17:23.020)

People claim that the matter is chiral.

Eric Weinstein (2:17:25.100)

That is, it knows it's left from its right.

Lex Fridman (2:17:28.360)

I would claim that the chirality is not fundamental,

Lex Fridman (2:17:31.100)

but it is emergent.

Lex Fridman (2:17:32.120)

But we could keep going at all these sorts of things.

Eric Weinstein (2:17:36.160)

People think that space time

Lex Fridman (2:17:38.280)

is the fundamental geometrical construct.

Eric Weinstein (2:17:41.220)

I do not agree.

Lex Fridman (2:17:42.060)

I think it's something that I've termed the observers.

Eric Weinstein (2:17:45.520)

All of these different things

Lex Fridman (2:17:48.560)

represent a series of overinterpretations of the world

Eric Weinstein (2:17:55.080)

that preclude progress.

Lex Fridman (2:17:56.720)

So you gave, I think you gave some credit

Eric Weinstein (2:18:01.080)

to string theory as, string theory,

Lex Fridman (2:18:03.800)

I think loop quantum gravity, if I remember correctly,

Eric Weinstein (2:18:06.840)

as like getting close to the fool's gold.

Lex Fridman (2:18:11.600)

Well, I said that Garrett Lisi, phenomenologically,

Eric Weinstein (2:18:16.080)

gets a lot of things right.

Lex Fridman (2:18:18.080)

He gets, he's got a reason for chirality,

Eric Weinstein (2:18:20.600)

a reason for uniqueness using E8.

Lex Fridman (2:18:23.360)

In fact, E8 uses something called vial fermions,

Eric Weinstein (2:18:25.920)

which are chiral.

Lex Fridman (2:18:27.720)

He has a way of getting geometry

Eric Weinstein (2:18:30.880)

to get Riemann's geometry underneath general relativity

Lex Fridman (2:18:36.200)

to play with Erisman's geometry,

Eric Weinstein (2:18:38.160)

which is underneath the standard model,

Lex Fridman (2:18:39.560)

using something called Cartan connections

Eric Weinstein (2:18:41.360)

that are out of favor.

Lex Fridman (2:18:42.720)

He's figured out something involving super connections

Eric Weinstein (2:18:46.000)

to make sure that the fermion,

Lex Fridman (2:18:47.480)

the matter in the system isn't quantized

Eric Weinstein (2:18:49.980)

the same way as the bosons were,

Lex Fridman (2:18:51.520)

which is a problem in his old theory.

Eric Weinstein (2:18:53.920)

He's got something about three generations for triality.

Lex Fridman (2:18:56.440)

He's got a lot of phenomenological hits.

Eric Weinstein (2:18:59.600)

I don't think Garrett's theory works.

Lex Fridman (2:19:01.320)

It also has a very simple Lagrangian.

Eric Weinstein (2:19:02.960)

He's basically using the Yang Mills norm squared,

Lex Fridman (2:19:05.680)

the same thing you would use as a cost function

Lex Fridman (2:19:09.440)

if you were doing neural nets, okay?

Lex Fridman (2:19:14.440)

The string theorists have a different selling point,

Eric Weinstein (2:19:16.480)

which is that they may have gotten

Lex Fridman (2:19:18.120)

a renormalizable theory of gravity

Eric Weinstein (2:19:20.280)

if quantum gravity was what we were meant to do.

Lex Fridman (2:19:22.640)

And they've done some stuff with black holes

Eric Weinstein (2:19:24.480)

that they can get some solutions correct.

Lex Fridman (2:19:28.320)

And then they have lots of agreements

Eric Weinstein (2:19:29.920)

with where they show mathematical truths

Lex Fridman (2:19:33.040)

that mathematicians didn't even know.

Eric Weinstein (2:19:36.320)

I'm very underwhelmed by string theory

Lex Fridman (2:19:39.000)

based on how many people have worked on it

Lex Fridman (2:19:41.200)

and how little is supporting the claims

Lex Fridman (2:19:43.480)

to it being a theory of everything.

Lex Fridman (2:19:45.760)

But those are the two that I take quite seriously.

Lex Fridman (2:19:50.360)

I don't yet take Wolfram's quite seriously

Eric Weinstein (2:19:53.320)

because if he really finds one of these cellular automata

Lex Fridman (2:19:57.280)

that are really distinct and generative,

Eric Weinstein (2:20:00.040)

it'll be amazing.

Lex Fridman (2:20:01.160)

But he's looking for such a thing.

Eric Weinstein (2:20:02.920)

I don't think he's found anything.

Lex Fridman (2:20:05.000)

Tegmark, I view as a philosopher

Eric Weinstein (2:20:07.840)

who is somehow taking credit for Platonism,

Lex Fridman (2:20:10.800)

which I don't see any reason for fighting with Max

Eric Weinstein (2:20:13.720)

because I like Max, but if it ever comes time,

Lex Fridman (2:20:16.400)

I'm putting a post it note that I'm not positive

Eric Weinstein (2:20:18.760)

the mathematical universe hypothesis

Lex Fridman (2:20:21.320)

is really anything new.

Lex Fridman (2:20:24.400)

And in general, loop quantum gravity really,

Lex Fridman (2:20:28.400)

I think grew out of some hopes

Eric Weinstein (2:20:29.880)

that the general relativistic community had

Lex Fridman (2:20:32.600)

that they would be able to do particle theory.

Lex Fridman (2:20:34.240)

And I don't think that they've shown

Lex Fridman (2:20:36.080)

any particle theoretic realism.

Lex Fridman (2:20:37.880)

So essentially, here's what I really think, Lex.

Lex Fridman (2:20:44.320)

I think we didn't understand how big the difference

Eric Weinstein (2:20:46.880)

between an effective theory and a theory of everything

Lex Fridman (2:20:49.440)

is conceptually.

Eric Weinstein (2:20:51.040)

Maybe it's not mathematically that different,

Lex Fridman (2:20:54.080)

but conceptually trying to figure out

Lex Fridman (2:20:56.400)

what a theory of every, how does the universe,

Lex Fridman (2:20:58.360)

and I've compared it to Escher's drawing hands.

Lex Fridman (2:21:01.280)

How do two hands draw themselves into existence?

Lex Fridman (2:21:04.720)

That's the puzzle that I think has just been wanting.

Lex Fridman (2:21:08.720)

And I'll be honest, I'm really surprised

Lex Fridman (2:21:11.840)

that the theoretical physics community didn't even get up

Eric Weinstein (2:21:19.840)

on their high horse and say,

Lex Fridman (2:21:21.600)

this is the most stupid nonsense imaginable,

Eric Weinstein (2:21:25.200)

because clearly I always say I'm not a physicist.

Lex Fridman (2:21:28.480)

So I'm an amateur with a heart as big as all outdoors.

Lex Fridman (2:21:33.800)

So in your journey of releasing this,

Lex Fridman (2:21:35.960)

and I'm sure further maybe it will be

Eric Weinstein (2:21:39.960)

another American tradition on April 1st

Lex Fridman (2:21:42.160)

that will continue for years to come.

Eric Weinstein (2:21:43.760)

I hope so.

Lex Fridman (2:21:49.320)

There's sort of crumbs along the way

Eric Weinstein (2:21:53.840)

that I'm hoping to collect in my naive view of things

Lex Fridman (2:21:58.680)

of the beauty that, in your geometric view of the universe.

Lex Fridman (2:22:03.680)

So one question I'd like to ask is

Lex Fridman (2:22:11.640)

if you were to challenge me to visualize something beautiful,

Eric Weinstein (2:22:15.640)

something important about geometric unity

Lex Fridman (2:22:18.040)

in my struggle to appreciate some of its beauty

Lex Fridman (2:22:21.480)

from the outsider's perspective, what would that thing be?

Lex Fridman (2:22:26.760)

Interesting question.

Eric Weinstein (2:22:27.760)

Perhaps we can both have a journey

Lex Fridman (2:22:29.960)

towards April 1st.

Eric Weinstein (2:22:35.120)

Take a look at that.

Lex Fridman (2:22:38.520)

Some kind of a scrunchie that I picked up on Melrose,

Eric Weinstein (2:22:41.880)

not Melrose, Montana in Santa Monica.

Lex Fridman (2:22:45.800)

Now you'll notice that all of those disks

Eric Weinstein (2:22:48.760)

rotate independently.

Lex Fridman (2:22:51.480)

Yes.

Eric Weinstein (2:22:54.360)

If you rotate groups of those in a way that is continuous,

Lex Fridman (2:22:59.360)

but not uniform everywhere,

Lex Fridman (2:23:01.200)

what you're doing is a so called gauge transformation

Lex Fridman (2:23:04.800)

on the torus seen as a U1 bundle over a U1 space time.

Lex Fridman (2:23:09.560)

So the concept of space time here

Lex Fridman (2:23:12.880)

in a very simplified case isn't four dimensional,

Lex Fridman (2:23:15.960)

but it's one dimensional, it's just a circle.

Lex Fridman (2:23:18.520)

And there's a circle above every point in the circle

Eric Weinstein (2:23:21.720)

represented by those little disks.

Lex Fridman (2:23:23.560)

So imagine if you will, that we took a rubber band

Lex Fridman (2:23:31.600)

and placed it around here and decided

Lex Fridman (2:23:33.680)

that that was a function from the circle

Eric Weinstein (2:23:36.800)

into the circle that is representing a Y axis

Lex Fridman (2:23:42.040)

that's wrapped around itself.

Eric Weinstein (2:23:44.240)

Well, you would have an idea of what it means

Lex Fridman (2:23:46.120)

for a function to be constant,

Eric Weinstein (2:23:47.880)

if it just went all around the outside.

Lex Fridman (2:23:50.240)

But what happens if I turn this a little bit?

Eric Weinstein (2:23:53.840)

Then the function would be mostly constant.

Lex Fridman (2:23:55.600)

We'd have a little place where it dipped and it went back.

Eric Weinstein (2:23:58.480)

It turns out that you can transform that function

Lex Fridman (2:24:03.440)

and transform the derivative that says that function

Eric Weinstein (2:24:06.760)

is equal to zero when I take its derivative

Lex Fridman (2:24:09.960)

at the same time.

Eric Weinstein (2:24:11.400)

That's what a gauge transformation is.

Lex Fridman (2:24:14.040)

Amazing to me that we don't have a simple video,

Eric Weinstein (2:24:19.040)

visualizing things that I've already had built

Lex Fridman (2:24:24.280)

and that I can clearly demonstrate.

Eric Weinstein (2:24:26.280)

When you do that Taurus,

Lex Fridman (2:24:28.480)

who's the code of the Taurus is itself generating.

Eric Weinstein (2:24:31.800)

The Taurus.

Lex Fridman (2:24:32.640)

The spinning Taurus.

Eric Weinstein (2:24:33.480)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (2:24:34.320)

This is a U1 principle bundle.

Lex Fridman (2:24:36.720)

And the world needs to know what a gauge theory is,

Lex Fridman (2:24:39.080)

not by analogy, not with Lawrence Krauss saying,

Eric Weinstein (2:24:41.920)

it's like a checkerboard.

Lex Fridman (2:24:42.880)

If you change some of the colors this way,

Eric Weinstein (2:24:44.520)

not saying that it's a local symmetry involving,

Lex Fridman (2:24:50.280)

it's none of those things.

Eric Weinstein (2:24:51.800)

It's a theory of differential calculus

Lex Fridman (2:24:53.840)

where the functions and the derivatives

Eric Weinstein (2:24:56.800)

are both subject to a particular kind of change

Lex Fridman (2:25:00.160)

so that if a function was constant under one derivative,

Eric Weinstein (2:25:03.200)

then the new function is constant under the new derivative

Lex Fridman (2:25:07.120)

transformed in the same fashion.

Lex Fridman (2:25:09.280)

And would you put that under the category

Lex Fridman (2:25:11.080)

of just gauge transformations?

Eric Weinstein (2:25:12.880)

Yes, that would be gauge transformations

Lex Fridman (2:25:15.120)

applied to sections and connections

Eric Weinstein (2:25:17.080)

where connections are the derivatives in the theory.

Lex Fridman (2:25:21.000)

This is easily explained.

Eric Weinstein (2:25:23.200)

It is pathological that the community of people

Lex Fridman (2:25:26.680)

who understand what I'm saying have never bothered

Eric Weinstein (2:25:29.000)

to do this in a clear fashion for the general public.

Lex Fridman (2:25:31.600)

You and I could visualize this overnight.

Eric Weinstein (2:25:35.640)

This is not hard.

Lex Fridman (2:25:38.160)

The public needs to know in some sense

Eric Weinstein (2:25:41.200)

that let's say quantum electrodynamics,

Lex Fridman (2:25:43.880)

the theory of photons and electrons,

Eric Weinstein (2:25:45.600)

more or less electrons are functions

Lex Fridman (2:25:48.080)

and photons are derivatives.

Eric Weinstein (2:25:50.560)

Now there's some, you can object in some ways,

Lex Fridman (2:25:53.640)

but basically a gauge theory is the way

Eric Weinstein (2:25:55.720)

in which you can translate a shift

Lex Fridman (2:26:00.120)

in the definition of the functions

Lex Fridman (2:26:02.320)

and the shift of the definition of the derivatives

Lex Fridman (2:26:04.440)

so that the underlying physics is not harmed or changed.

Lex Fridman (2:26:08.880)

So you have to do both at the same time.

Lex Fridman (2:26:10.600)

Now you and I can visualize that.

Lex Fridman (2:26:12.120)

So if what you wanted to do rather than going directly

Lex Fridman (2:26:15.280)

to geometric unity is that I could sit down with you

Lex Fridman (2:26:18.760)

and I could say here are the various components

Lex Fridman (2:26:20.640)

of geometric unity and if the public needs a visualization

Eric Weinstein (2:26:24.520)

in order to play along, we've got a little over two months

Lex Fridman (2:26:27.800)

and I'd be happy to work with you.

Eric Weinstein (2:26:29.880)

I love that as a challenge and I'll take it on

Lex Fridman (2:26:32.480)

and I hope we do make it happen.

Lex Fridman (2:26:33.760)

And David Goggins, if Lex doesn't do some super macho thing

Lex Fridman (2:26:38.280)

because he's gotta work to get some of this stuff done,

Eric Weinstein (2:26:42.240)

you'll understand he'll be available to you after April.

Lex Fridman (2:26:45.200)

Thank you for the escape clause.

Eric Weinstein (2:26:47.720)

I really needed that escape clause.

Lex Fridman (2:26:49.320)

I'm glad that's on record.

Eric Weinstein (2:26:50.160)

I'm worried 48 miles in 48 hours.

Lex Fridman (2:26:53.000)

By the way, I just wanna say how much I admire

Eric Weinstein (2:26:56.600)

your willingness to keep this kind of hardcore attitude.

Lex Fridman (2:27:01.800)

I know that Russians have it and Russian Jews have it

Eric Weinstein (2:27:04.120)

in spades, but it's harder to do in a society that's sloppy

Lex Fridman (2:27:08.320)

and that's weak and that's lazy.

Lex Fridman (2:27:11.080)

And the fact that you bring so much heart to saying,

Lex Fridman (2:27:14.440)

I'm gonna bring this to jujitsu,

Eric Weinstein (2:27:16.400)

I'm gonna bring this to guitar, I'm gonna bring this to AI,

Lex Fridman (2:27:18.920)

I'm gonna bring this to podcasting.

Eric Weinstein (2:27:21.240)

It comes through loud and clear.

Lex Fridman (2:27:22.680)

I just find it completely and utterly inspiring

Eric Weinstein (2:27:25.080)

that you keep this kind of hardcore aspect at the same time

Lex Fridman (2:27:28.800)

that you're the guy who's extolling the virtue of love

Eric Weinstein (2:27:31.000)

in a modern society and doing it at scale.

Lex Fridman (2:27:33.280)

Thank you.

Eric Weinstein (2:27:34.120)

That means a lot.

Lex Fridman (2:27:34.960)

I don't know why I'm doing it,

Lex Fridman (2:27:36.040)

but I'm just following my heart on it

Lex Fridman (2:27:37.840)

and just going with the gut.

Eric Weinstein (2:27:40.080)

It seems to make sense somehow.

Lex Fridman (2:27:43.720)

I personally think we better get tougher

Eric Weinstein (2:27:45.840)

or we're gonna get in a world of pain.

Lex Fridman (2:27:47.920)

And I do think that when it comes time to lead,

Eric Weinstein (2:27:51.560)

it's great to have people who you know

Lex Fridman (2:27:53.600)

don't crack under pressure.

Lex Fridman (2:27:55.960)

Do you mind if we talk about love

Lex Fridman (2:27:59.160)

and what it takes to be a father for a bit?

Eric Weinstein (2:28:01.280)

Sure.

Lex Fridman (2:28:02.120)

Do you mind if Zev joins us?

Eric Weinstein (2:28:03.920)

I'd be an honor.

Lex Fridman (2:28:07.680)

So Eric, I've talked to your son Zev,

Eric Weinstein (2:28:11.560)

who's an incredible human being,

Lex Fridman (2:28:14.080)

but let me ask you,

Eric Weinstein (2:28:19.960)

this might be difficult

Lex Fridman (2:28:21.080)

because you're both sitting together.

Lex Fridman (2:28:24.120)

What advice do you have for him

Lex Fridman (2:28:27.920)

as he makes his way in this world,

Eric Weinstein (2:28:31.080)

especially given that, as we mentioned before on Joe Rogan,

Lex Fridman (2:28:35.280)

you're flawed in that just like all humans, you're mortal.

Eric Weinstein (2:28:39.920)

Well, at some level, I guess one of my issues

Lex Fridman (2:28:44.640)

is that I've got to stop giving quite so much advice.

Eric Weinstein (2:28:48.760)

Early on, I was very worried

Lex Fridman (2:28:50.520)

that I could see Zev's abilities

Lex Fridman (2:28:52.760)

and I could see his challenges

Lex Fridman (2:28:55.320)

and I saw them in terms of myself.

Lex Fridman (2:28:57.880)

So a certain amount of Zev rhymes with

Lex Fridman (2:29:01.200)

whatever I went through as a kid.

Lex Fridman (2:29:02.720)

And I don't wanna doom him to the same outcomes

Lex Fridman (2:29:07.040)

that sufficed for me.

Eric Weinstein (2:29:08.960)

I think that he's got a much better head on his shoulders

Lex Fridman (2:29:11.840)

at age 15, he's much better adjusted.

Lex Fridman (2:29:14.800)

And in part, it's important for me to recognize

Lex Fridman (2:29:19.240)

that because I think I did a reasonably decent job early on,

Eric Weinstein (2:29:22.640)

I don't need to get this part right.

Lex Fridman (2:29:26.400)

And I'm looking at Zev's trajectory and saying,

Eric Weinstein (2:29:33.440)

you're gonna need to be incredibly

Lex Fridman (2:29:36.040)

and even pathologically self confident.

Eric Weinstein (2:29:38.920)

The antidote for that is gonna be something

Lex Fridman (2:29:41.080)

you're gonna need to carry on board,

Eric Weinstein (2:29:42.400)

which is radical humility.

Lex Fridman (2:29:45.720)

And you're gonna have to have those

Eric Weinstein (2:29:46.640)

in a dialectical tension, which is never resolved,

Lex Fridman (2:29:49.080)

which is a huge burden.

Eric Weinstein (2:29:51.000)

You are going to have to forgive people

Lex Fridman (2:29:53.480)

who do not appreciate your gifts

Eric Weinstein (2:29:55.520)

because your gifts are clearly evident.

Lex Fridman (2:29:57.560)

And many people will have to pretend not to see them

Eric Weinstein (2:29:59.880)

because if they see your gifts,

Lex Fridman (2:30:02.520)

then they're gonna have to question their entire approach

Eric Weinstein (2:30:04.560)

to education or employment or critical thinking.

Lex Fridman (2:30:08.840)

And what my hope is, is that you can just forgive those

Eric Weinstein (2:30:12.720)

who don't see them and who complicate

Lex Fridman (2:30:14.760)

and frustrate your life and realize

Eric Weinstein (2:30:16.280)

that you're gonna have to take care of them too.

Lex Fridman (2:30:18.400)

Zev, let me ask you the more challenging question

Eric Weinstein (2:30:20.480)

because the guy's sitting right here.

Lex Fridman (2:30:22.360)

What advice do you have for your dad?

Eric Weinstein (2:30:25.000)

Since after talking to you,

Lex Fridman (2:30:26.560)

I realize you're the more brilliant

Eric Weinstein (2:30:30.680)

aside from the better looking member of the family.

Lex Fridman (2:30:38.920)

It's a bit of an odd question.

Eric Weinstein (2:30:43.000)

Sorry.

Lex Fridman (2:30:43.840)

You can say anything you want.

Eric Weinstein (2:30:44.680)

This is the last time we're gonna be seeing left.

Lex Fridman (2:30:46.000)

It's gonna be an awkward drive home.

Eric Weinstein (2:30:49.800)

I think sort of a new perspective I've taken on parenting

Lex Fridman (2:30:57.600)

is that it is a task for which no human

Eric Weinstein (2:31:01.560)

is really supposed to be prepared.

Lex Fridman (2:31:04.640)

You know, there are in Jewish tradition, for example,

Eric Weinstein (2:31:08.160)

there are myriad analogies in the Torah and the Talmud

Lex Fridman (2:31:12.960)

that compare the role of a parent to the role of a God,

Lex Fridman (2:31:18.080)

right?

Lex Fridman (2:31:18.920)

That no human is prepared to play God

Lex Fridman (2:31:21.560)

and create and guide a life,

Lex Fridman (2:31:23.840)

but somehow we're forced into it as people.

Lex Fridman (2:31:29.040)

And I think sometimes it's hard for children to understand

Lex Fridman (2:31:33.560)

that however their parents are failing

Eric Weinstein (2:31:38.260)

sort of has to be.

Lex Fridman (2:31:39.100)

It's a theme here.

Eric Weinstein (2:31:40.560)

Is something for which we must budget

Lex Fridman (2:31:43.960)

because our parents play a role in our lives

Eric Weinstein (2:31:46.560)

of which they're not worthy

Lex Fridman (2:31:49.640)

and they devote themselves to regardless

Eric Weinstein (2:31:52.720)

because that becomes who they are in a certain sense.

Lex Fridman (2:31:55.940)

So I hope to have realistic expectations of you as a human

Eric Weinstein (2:32:08.720)

because I think too often it's easy

Lex Fridman (2:32:12.000)

to have godly expectations of people

Eric Weinstein (2:32:14.720)

who are far from such a role.

Lex Fridman (2:32:18.020)

And I think I'm really happy

Eric Weinstein (2:32:20.600)

that you've been as open as you have with me

Lex Fridman (2:32:23.760)

about the fact that, you know, you really,

Eric Weinstein (2:32:28.640)

you don't pretend to be a God in my life.

Lex Fridman (2:32:31.120)

You are a guide who allows me to see myself

Lex Fridman (2:32:38.600)

and that's been very important considering the fact

Lex Fridman (2:32:41.160)

that by your self teaching paradigm I will have to,

Eric Weinstein (2:32:47.240)

I will have to guide myself and being able to see it

Lex Fridman (2:32:50.800)

and see myself accurately has been one of the greatest gifts

Eric Weinstein (2:32:53.900)

that you've given me.

Lex Fridman (2:32:55.640)

So I'm very appreciative.

Lex Fridman (2:32:57.760)

And I want you to know that I don't buy into the role

Lex Fridman (2:33:02.760)

that you're supposed to sort of fake your way through

Eric Weinstein (2:33:14.520)

in my life but I am unbelievably happy

Lex Fridman (2:33:22.040)

with a more realistic connection

Eric Weinstein (2:33:25.680)

that we've been able to build in lieu of it, so.

Lex Fridman (2:33:29.080)

I think it's been easier on you actually

Eric Weinstein (2:33:31.160)

as you come to realize what I don't know,

Lex Fridman (2:33:34.000)

what I can't do and that there's been a period of time,

Eric Weinstein (2:33:37.160)

I guess, that's fascinating to me

Lex Fridman (2:33:38.880)

where you're sort of surprised

Eric Weinstein (2:33:41.960)

that I don't know the answer to a certain thing

Lex Fridman (2:33:45.120)

as well as you do.

Lex Fridman (2:33:46.100)

And that I remember going through this

Lex Fridman (2:33:50.120)

with a particular mathematician who I held,

Eric Weinstein (2:33:52.360)

I still hold in awe, named David Kajdan.

Lex Fridman (2:33:55.440)

And, you know, he famously said to,

Lex Fridman (2:33:58.320)

and weirdly our family knew his family

Lex Fridman (2:34:00.120)

in the Soviet Union.

Lex Fridman (2:34:01.160)

But he said, you know, Eric,

Lex Fridman (2:34:05.440)

I always appreciate you coming to my office

Eric Weinstein (2:34:07.480)

because I always find what you have to say interesting

Lex Fridman (2:34:10.440)

but you have to realize that in the areas

Eric Weinstein (2:34:11.800)

that you're talking about, you are no longer the student,

Lex Fridman (2:34:14.000)

you are actually my teacher.

Lex Fridman (2:34:16.120)

And I wasn't prepared to hear that.

Lex Fridman (2:34:18.840)

And there are many ways in which,

Eric Weinstein (2:34:20.400)

as I was just saying with the Mozart,

Lex Fridman (2:34:22.840)

I am learning at an incredible rate from you.

Eric Weinstein (2:34:27.960)

I used to learn from you

Lex Fridman (2:34:28.920)

because I didn't understand what was possible.

Eric Weinstein (2:34:30.600)

You were very much, I mean, this is the weird thing.

Lex Fridman (2:34:33.840)

There used to be this thing called Harvey,

Eric Weinstein (2:34:35.400)

the invisible rabbit.

Lex Fridman (2:34:36.400)

This guy had a rabbit that was like six feet tall

Eric Weinstein (2:34:39.000)

that only he could see maybe was talking.

Lex Fridman (2:34:41.680)

And that was like you at age four.

Eric Weinstein (2:34:44.780)

You were saying batshit crazy things

Lex Fridman (2:34:47.280)

that were all totally sensible

Lex Fridman (2:34:48.920)

and nobody else could put them together.

Lex Fridman (2:34:50.760)

And so what's wonderful is that the world hasn't caught on,

Lex Fridman (2:34:55.340)

but enormous numbers of people are starting to.

Lex Fridman (2:34:58.560)

And I really do hope that that genuineness of spirit

Lex Fridman (2:35:03.720)

and that outside the box intellectual commitment

Lex Fridman (2:35:08.380)

serves you well as the world starts to appreciate

Eric Weinstein (2:35:13.200)

that I think you're a very trustworthy voice.

Lex Fridman (2:35:16.040)

You don't get everything right,

Lex Fridman (2:35:17.360)

but the idea that we have somebody at your age

Lex Fridman (2:35:20.160)

who's embedded in your generation

Eric Weinstein (2:35:21.640)

who can tell us something about what's happening

Lex Fridman (2:35:23.840)

is really valuable to me.

Lex Fridman (2:35:25.000)

And I do hope that you'll consider boosting that voice

Lex Fridman (2:35:28.320)

more than just at the dinner table.

Eric Weinstein (2:35:31.800)

I apologize for saying this four letter word,

Lex Fridman (2:35:36.480)

but do you love Zev?

Eric Weinstein (2:35:41.080)

Was really worried it was gonna be another four letter word.

Lex Fridman (2:35:44.240)

There's so many to choose from.

Eric Weinstein (2:35:46.320)

It doesn't even rise to the level of the question.

Lex Fridman (2:35:49.120)

I mean, I just, there are a tiny number of people

Eric Weinstein (2:35:53.800)

with whom you share so much life

Lex Fridman (2:35:56.560)

that you can't even think of yourself in their absence.

Lex Fridman (2:36:01.340)

And I don't know if Zev would find that,

Lex Fridman (2:36:04.540)

but it's, you can have a kid

Lex Fridman (2:36:08.780)

and never make this level of connection.

Lex Fridman (2:36:11.780)

I think even right down to the fact

Eric Weinstein (2:36:14.300)

that when Zev chooses boogie woogie piano

Lex Fridman (2:36:20.180)

for his own set of reasons,

Lex Fridman (2:36:22.380)

why I would choose boogie woogie piano

Lex Fridman (2:36:24.020)

if I could play in any style, it's a question

Eric Weinstein (2:36:28.620)

about a decrease in loneliness.

Lex Fridman (2:36:30.820)

You know, like my grandfather played the mandolin

Lex Fridman (2:36:34.180)

and I had to learn some mandolin

Lex Fridman (2:36:35.820)

because otherwise that instrument would go silent.

Eric Weinstein (2:36:39.940)

You don't expect that you get this much of a chance

Lex Fridman (2:36:42.620)

to leave this much of yourself in another person

Eric Weinstein (2:36:45.660)

who is choosing it and recreating it

Lex Fridman (2:36:50.580)

rather than it being directly instilled.

Lex Fridman (2:36:54.940)

And my proudest achievement is in a certain sense

Lex Fridman (2:36:59.820)

having not taught him and having shared this much.

Eric Weinstein (2:37:04.980)

So, you know, it's not even love, it's like well beyond.

Lex Fridman (2:37:09.780)

So you mentioned love for you making a less lonely world.

Eric Weinstein (2:37:14.780)

I think I speak for, I would argue,

Lex Fridman (2:37:20.020)

probably millions of people that you, Eric,

Eric Weinstein (2:37:22.860)

because this is a conversation with you,

Lex Fridman (2:37:24.940)

have made for many people, for me, a less lonely world.

Lex Fridman (2:37:30.220)

And I can't wait to see how you develop as an intellect,

Lex Fridman (2:37:35.740)

but also I'm so heartworn by the optimism

Lex Fridman (2:37:40.940)

and the hopefulness that was in you

Lex Fridman (2:37:43.420)

that I hope develops further.

Lex Fridman (2:37:45.940)

And lastly, I'm deeply thankful that you, Eric are my friend

Lex Fridman (2:37:52.420)

and would give me, would honor me with this watch.

Eric Weinstein (2:37:57.540)

It means more than words can say.

Lex Fridman (2:38:00.100)

Thanks guys, thanks for talking today.

Eric Weinstein (2:38:01.980)

Thank you.

Lex Fridman (2:38:03.540)

Thanks for listening to this conversation

Eric Weinstein (2:38:05.100)

with Eric Weinstein and thank you to our sponsors,

Lex Fridman (2:38:08.180)

Indeed Hiring Site, Theragun Muscle Recovery Device,

Eric Weinstein (2:38:12.540)

Wine Access Online Wine Store,

Lex Fridman (2:38:14.860)

and Blinkist app that summarizes books.

Eric Weinstein (2:38:17.980)

Click the sponsor links to get a discount

Lex Fridman (2:38:20.140)

and to support this podcast.

Lex Fridman (2:38:22.140)

And now let me leave you with some words from Socrates.

Lex Fridman (2:38:25.360)

To find yourself, think for yourself.

Eric Weinstein (2:38:28.240)

Thanks for listening and hope to see you next time.

Lex Fridman (30:01.340)

Jack, Mark, Zunder, we're really glad you're all here.

Eric Weinstein (30:03.740)

We're all trying to sing from the same hymnal

Lex Fridman (30:06.340)

and row in the same direction.

Eric Weinstein (30:08.780)

We understand free speech.

Lex Fridman (30:09.820)

We're completely committed to it,

Lex Fridman (30:11.180)

but we have to draw a line with extremism, guys.

Lex Fridman (30:13.740)

We just need to make sure that we're all on the same page.

Eric Weinstein (30:17.380)

Well, they use the term violence, too,

Lex Fridman (30:19.340)

and they, I think, over apply it.

Lex Fridman (30:21.900)

So basically, anybody...

Lex Fridman (30:23.540)

I'm telling you, I say dumb things

Eric Weinstein (30:30.900)

to incentivize thoughtful conversation.

Lex Fridman (30:34.340)

Well, whatever these things are, there is no trace.

Lex Fridman (30:38.660)

Like, how old are you, Lex?

Lex Fridman (30:39.740)

You're in your mid 30s?

Eric Weinstein (30:41.260)

Yeah, to late 40s.

Lex Fridman (30:43.260)

Mid, late 20s to late 40s, somewhere in there.

Eric Weinstein (30:46.620)

That's the demographic, yes.

Lex Fridman (30:47.700)

I do think that partially what's happened

Eric Weinstein (30:49.380)

is that your group has never seen functional institutions.

Lex Fridman (30:52.900)

These institutions have been so compromised for so long.

Eric Weinstein (30:56.620)

You've probably never seen an adult.

Lex Fridman (30:59.540)

Sometimes I think Elon looks like an adult.

Eric Weinstein (31:02.780)

I know that he has a wild lifestyle,

Lex Fridman (31:05.380)

but I also see it looking like an adult.

Lex Fridman (31:07.860)

What does an adult look like exactly?

Lex Fridman (31:09.340)

Oh, you know, somebody who weighs things, speaks carefully,

Eric Weinstein (31:13.060)

thinks about the future beyond their own lifespan.

Lex Fridman (31:17.140)

Somebody who has a pretty good idea of how to get things done,

Eric Weinstein (31:21.180)

isn't wildly caught up in punitive actions,

Lex Fridman (31:23.820)

is more focused on breaking new ground

Eric Weinstein (31:26.380)

than playing rent seeking games.

Lex Fridman (31:29.060)

I mean, I really had a positive...

Eric Weinstein (31:31.140)

I was so completely jazzed when Elon Musk ended up

Lex Fridman (31:34.620)

as the world's richest person.

Eric Weinstein (31:36.180)

He was like, well, that's interesting, back to work.

Lex Fridman (31:39.700)

It's just like, that's what an adult would do.

Lex Fridman (31:43.620)

And it just made, you know, weirdly,

Lex Fridman (31:45.580)

I said something about, isn't it amazing

Lex Fridman (31:47.260)

that the world's richest person knows what a Lagrangian is?

Lex Fridman (31:50.460)

And he made a terrible Lagrange joke about potentials.

Lex Fridman (31:54.220)

But yeah, I mean, I do think that ultimately,

Lex Fridman (31:57.180)

Elon may be one of the closest things we have to an adult.

Lex Fridman (32:00.100)

And I can tell you that the internet hyenas

Lex Fridman (32:02.060)

will immediately descend as to what a fraudster he is

Eric Weinstein (32:05.020)

for pumping his stock price,

Lex Fridman (32:06.340)

talking his book and all this stuff.

Eric Weinstein (32:08.220)

Shut up.

Lex Fridman (32:09.500)

Just looking at the world seriously and really saying,

Eric Weinstein (32:12.140)

you're saying that the people who are running tech companies

Lex Fridman (32:15.900)

or running the mediums on which we can exercise

Eric Weinstein (32:21.180)

the ideal of free speech are not adults.

Lex Fridman (32:24.500)

I think not.

Eric Weinstein (32:25.340)

I think, first of all, a lot of them

Lex Fridman (32:26.580)

are Silicon Valley utopian businessmen,

Eric Weinstein (32:30.620)

where you talk a utopian line and you use it.

Lex Fridman (32:33.660)

You've heard my take, which is that the idealism

Eric Weinstein (32:37.940)

of every era is the cover story of its greatest thefts.

Lex Fridman (32:41.180)

And I believe that in many ways,

Eric Weinstein (32:42.980)

the idealism of Silicon Valley about connecting the world,

Lex Fridman (32:45.460)

the world of abundance, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera,

Eric Weinstein (32:47.900)

is really about the software eating the world

Lex Fridman (32:51.940)

as Mark Andreessen likes to say,

Eric Weinstein (32:53.340)

that there were all these legacy properties

Lex Fridman (32:55.060)

and by simply being a bad tech version

Eric Weinstein (32:58.740)

of something that previously existed like a newspaper,

Lex Fridman (33:03.260)

you could immediately start to dwarf that

Eric Weinstein (33:05.780)

by aggregating newspapers and their digital versions

Lex Fridman (33:08.140)

because digital is so much more powerful.

Eric Weinstein (33:10.460)

As a result, yes, we have lots of man children

Lex Fridman (33:15.100)

wandering around what once was the Bay Area

Lex Fridman (33:18.100)

and is now Austin and Miami and other places,

Lex Fridman (33:22.140)

maybe Singapore, that all of these people,

Eric Weinstein (33:27.900)

these are friends of ours and they're brilliant

Lex Fridman (33:29.740)

with respect to a certain amount of stuff,

Lex Fridman (33:32.380)

but none of them can get off the drip.

Lex Fridman (33:34.380)

It's amazing that none of them have FU money.

Eric Weinstein (33:37.220)

We've got billionaires who don't have FU money.

Lex Fridman (33:39.820)

Okay, I think the argument used by Jack Dorsey

Eric Weinstein (33:43.020)

was that there was an incitement of violence

Lex Fridman (33:45.820)

and not just Jack Dorsey,

Lex Fridman (33:47.100)

but everybody that was banning people.

Lex Fridman (33:50.180)

And then this word violence was used

Eric Weinstein (33:53.180)

as a kind of just like extremism and so on

Lex Fridman (33:56.380)

to without much reason behind it.

Eric Weinstein (33:59.220)

You think it's impossible for Jack Dorsey

Lex Fridman (34:01.660)

or anybody else to be, as you said, an adult,

Eric Weinstein (34:04.780)

a grownup and reason.

Lex Fridman (34:06.220)

Well, Jack is pretty close to being a grownup.

Eric Weinstein (34:07.940)

It seems like he is.

Lex Fridman (34:08.780)

Yeah, but he's under pressures.

Eric Weinstein (34:11.580)

As you've discussed,

Lex Fridman (34:13.300)

it seems that he's been on the verge

Eric Weinstein (34:15.740)

of almost being quite serious and transparent

Lex Fridman (34:18.940)

and real with people.

Eric Weinstein (34:19.780)

I don't know where the Jack Dorsey that I met went.

Lex Fridman (34:23.140)

And I worry that that must be something behind the scenes

Eric Weinstein (34:27.380)

that I can't see.

Lex Fridman (34:29.140)

From my perspective, what I think is the stress,

Eric Weinstein (34:32.700)

the burden of that when people are screaming at you

Lex Fridman (34:37.380)

is overwhelming.

Eric Weinstein (34:38.220)

No, Jack is a Zen monk.

Lex Fridman (34:39.580)

He really is.

Eric Weinstein (34:41.660)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (34:42.820)

Jack is an incredibly impressive person intellectually,

Eric Weinstein (34:47.700)

morally, spiritually, at least for a couple of meetings.

Lex Fridman (34:52.740)

I don't know him very well,

Lex Fridman (34:54.140)

but I'm very impressed by the person I met

Lex Fridman (34:57.740)

and I don't know where that person is.

Lex Fridman (34:59.220)

And that terrifies me.

Lex Fridman (35:02.020)

But do you think somebody could step up in that way?

Eric Weinstein (35:04.540)

No.

Lex Fridman (35:05.740)

So does a human being have the capacity to be transparent

Lex Fridman (35:11.860)

about the reasoning behind the banning?

Lex Fridman (35:14.220)

Or do you think all banning of people

Eric Weinstein (35:19.460)

from mediums of communication is eventually destructive

Lex Fridman (35:24.140)

or it's impossible for human beings

Lex Fridman (35:25.980)

to reason with ourselves about it?

Lex Fridman (35:27.980)

Well, let's see what the problem is.

Lex Fridman (35:30.980)

So my phone has been on airplane mode.

Lex Fridman (35:33.380)

I'm gonna unlock it.

Lex Fridman (35:34.420)

And I'm gonna take a picture of Lex Fridman.

Lex Fridman (35:38.420)

Now, if I can, I'm gonna tweet that picture out.

Eric Weinstein (35:43.300)

Great.

Lex Fridman (35:44.140)

But here's the weird part about it.

Eric Weinstein (35:45.300)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (35:46.780)

That picture sitting with Lex today.

Eric Weinstein (35:55.940)

This, ladies and gentlemen, is how the sausage is made.

Lex Fridman (35:58.620)

Okay.

Eric Weinstein (35:59.460)

In so doing, I have just sent a picture of you

Lex Fridman (36:07.140)

and a tiny piece of text all over the planet

Eric Weinstein (36:10.540)

that has arrived at, if statistics tell the truth,

Lex Fridman (36:15.100)

just under half a million different accounts.

Lex Fridman (36:19.260)

And then more from sharing and so on.

Lex Fridman (36:22.220)

Well, and then some of those accounts are dead.

Eric Weinstein (36:23.980)

We don't really know how many places it went.

Lex Fridman (36:26.140)

But the key issue with that tweet

Eric Weinstein (36:28.820)

is that that is a nonlocal phenomenon.

Lex Fridman (36:33.700)

Yes.

Lex Fridman (36:34.540)

So I just broadcasted to an entire planet.

Lex Fridman (36:39.540)

Somebody in Uganda is reading that

Eric Weinstein (36:41.620)

at the same time as somebody in Uruguay.

Lex Fridman (36:45.020)

There is no known solution to have so many people

Eric Weinstein (36:50.820)

with the ability to communicate nonlocally

Lex Fridman (36:54.140)

because locality was part of the implicit nature of speech

Eric Weinstein (36:58.500)

inside of the constitution.

Lex Fridman (36:59.860)

Friction, locality, there were all sorts

Eric Weinstein (37:01.900)

of other aspects to speech.

Lex Fridman (37:04.140)

So if you think about speech as a bundle.

Eric Weinstein (37:08.900)

I like this.

Lex Fridman (37:10.700)

Then it got unbundled.

Lex Fridman (37:12.820)

And some of those aspects that we were naturally counting on

Lex Fridman (37:17.020)

to retard the impact of speech aren't present.

Lex Fridman (37:22.180)

And we don't have the courage to say,

Lex Fridman (37:23.980)

I wonder if the first amendment really applies

Eric Weinstein (37:26.940)

in the modern era in the same way,

Lex Fridman (37:28.860)

or we have to work through an abstraction.

Eric Weinstein (37:30.780)

Either we probably have to amend the constitution

Lex Fridman (37:33.100)

or we have to abstract it properly.

Lex Fridman (37:35.820)

And that issue is not something we're facing up to.

Lex Fridman (37:40.580)

I watch us constantly look backwards.

Eric Weinstein (37:46.300)

We don't seem to try to come up with new ideas

Lex Fridman (37:48.820)

and new theories.

Eric Weinstein (37:49.660)

Nobody really imagines that we're going to be able

Lex Fridman (37:52.340)

to wisely amend the constitution anymore

Eric Weinstein (37:54.780)

in the inside of the United States.

Lex Fridman (37:56.220)

Many people abroad will say,

Lex Fridman (37:57.780)

why are these guys talking about the US?

Lex Fridman (37:59.420)

It's a US centric program.

Eric Weinstein (38:01.140)

Well, it's because nobody knows where this program lives.

Lex Fridman (38:05.020)

The fact, by the way, that you and I happen to be

Eric Weinstein (38:06.900)

in a physical place together is also bizarre.

Lex Fridman (38:10.220)

It could be anywhere.

Eric Weinstein (38:11.060)

It doesn't really matter that it happens to be here.

Lex Fridman (38:13.780)

So the difference between logical and between physical,

Eric Weinstein (38:16.140)

local, nonlocal, frictional, nonfrictional,

Lex Fridman (38:18.860)

it's the same thing with firearms.

Eric Weinstein (38:21.540)

Nobody imagined that the Gatling gun

Lex Fridman (38:25.660)

was gonna be present when you had to reload a musket.

Lex Fridman (38:29.460)

And that's fascinating to think about.

Lex Fridman (38:33.460)

I mean, you're exactly right that the nature

Eric Weinstein (38:37.220)

of this particular freedom that seems so foundational

Lex Fridman (38:39.860)

to this nation, to what made this nation great

Lex Fridman (38:44.260)

and perhaps much of the world that is great,

Lex Fridman (38:46.460)

made it great, is changing completely.

Eric Weinstein (38:49.460)

Can we try to reason through how the ideal freedom

Lex Fridman (38:52.060)

of speech is to be changed?

Eric Weinstein (38:54.220)

I mean, I guess I'm struggling.

Lex Fridman (38:57.620)

It feels really wrong, perhaps because I wasn't

Eric Weinstein (39:00.860)

paying attention to it.

Lex Fridman (39:01.820)

It feels really wrong to ban Donald Trump from Twitter,

Eric Weinstein (39:06.900)

to ban not just the president.

Lex Fridman (39:08.700)

That's really wrong to me.

Lex Fridman (39:10.900)

But this particular human for being divisive.

Lex Fridman (39:15.540)

But then when there's an incitement of violence,

Eric Weinstein (39:20.140)

that is an overused claim.

Lex Fridman (39:23.500)

But perhaps there was actual brewing

Eric Weinstein (39:29.500)

of local violence happening.

Lex Fridman (39:31.620)

So one of the things I know was happening on Parler

Eric Weinstein (39:34.220)

is people were scheduling meetings together

Lex Fridman (39:39.340)

in physical space.

Lex Fridman (39:40.380)

So you're now going back from this dynamic, social,

Lex Fridman (39:46.100)

large scale, people from Uganda, people from all

Eric Weinstein (39:48.860)

over the world being able to communicate.

Lex Fridman (39:51.340)

You're now mapping that into now back meeting

Eric Weinstein (39:54.020)

in the physical space that is similar

Lex Fridman (39:57.300)

to what the founding of this nation was.

Eric Weinstein (39:58.780)

The violence would be digital

Lex Fridman (40:00.620)

if ransomware suddenly was unleashed.

Eric Weinstein (40:04.720)

True.

Lex Fridman (40:05.560)

The key issue is the abstractions.

Lex Fridman (40:07.360)

So what was freedom of speech as a bundle?

Lex Fridman (40:10.740)

And now it's...

Lex Fridman (40:12.020)

And then how do we abstract the bundle

Lex Fridman (40:14.540)

into the digital era?

Lex Fridman (40:16.680)

Do you think we just need to raise the question

Lex Fridman (40:18.500)

and talk about it?

Lex Fridman (40:19.340)

Do you have ideas?

Lex Fridman (40:20.580)

Well, sure I have ideas.

Lex Fridman (40:21.720)

But the key point is that I'm not even welcome

Lex Fridman (40:24.260)

in mainstream media.

Eric Weinstein (40:26.700)

I've never seen you on mainstream media.

Lex Fridman (40:28.400)

Do you do mainstream media?

Lex Fridman (40:29.600)

So we exist in part of an alternate universe

Lex Fridman (40:32.500)

because the mainstream media is trying to have

Eric Weinstein (40:35.020)

a coherent story, which I've called

Lex Fridman (40:37.740)

the gated institutional narrative.

Lex Fridman (40:39.500)

And the institutions pretend that,

Lex Fridman (40:41.340)

they plug their fingers in their ears

Lex Fridman (40:43.460)

and pretend that nothing exists outside

Lex Fridman (40:46.140)

of MSNBC talking to CNN about what was

Eric Weinstein (40:49.400)

in the New York Times as covered by the Washington Post.

Lex Fridman (40:52.860)

And so that's effectively like a professional

Eric Weinstein (40:54.980)

wrestling promotion where they, you know,

Lex Fridman (40:57.180)

the Undertaker faces off against Hulk Hogan

Lex Fridman (40:59.820)

and Rowdy Roddy Piper.

Lex Fridman (41:01.800)

Okay, well, that's very different than MMA.

Eric Weinstein (41:05.900)

You've recently been on Glenn Beck's program.

Lex Fridman (41:08.740)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (41:09.740)

And there was this kind of, one of the things

Lex Fridman (41:12.860)

you've talked about is being able to have

Eric Weinstein (41:15.520)

this conversation, I don't know if you would put it

Lex Fridman (41:19.260)

as a type of conversation that was happening

Eric Weinstein (41:21.280)

outside the mainstream media, but a conversation

Lex Fridman (41:23.740)

that reaches across different world views.

Eric Weinstein (41:27.780)

You're right.

Lex Fridman (41:28.620)

Being a nuanced, or just like a respectful conversation

Eric Weinstein (41:33.300)

that's grounded in mutual.

Lex Fridman (41:35.220)

But we can't have the reality because the main model

Eric Weinstein (41:37.900)

is the center, both left and right,

Lex Fridman (41:42.220)

is in the process of stealing all the wealth

Eric Weinstein (41:44.300)

that we built up.

Lex Fridman (41:46.260)

And they've organized the extremes into two LARPing teams

Eric Weinstein (41:50.240)

that I've called Magistan and Wokistan.

Lex Fridman (41:53.140)

And then you have everybody who isn't part

Eric Weinstein (41:55.880)

of that complex, all seven of us.

Lex Fridman (41:58.260)

The number of us who are able to earn a living

Eric Weinstein (42:00.780)

looking at all of these mad people playing this game.

Lex Fridman (42:05.820)

There's a phrase inside finance when the investment banks

Eric Weinstein (42:09.500)

are trying to look at price action.

Lex Fridman (42:12.540)

And somebody says, this doesn't make any sense.

Lex Fridman (42:14.900)

And somebody will say, it's just the locals

Lex Fridman (42:16.340)

stealing from each other.

Lex Fridman (42:17.780)

And that's really what we have.

Lex Fridman (42:20.020)

We've got the leaders of Magistan and Wokistan,

Eric Weinstein (42:23.920)

championing these two teams is sponsored by the center

Lex Fridman (42:27.020)

because it's a distraction while they steal all the silver

Lex Fridman (42:29.340)

and cut the paintings out of the frames.

Lex Fridman (42:31.460)

That's what you and I are looking at.

Lex Fridman (42:33.660)

So when you ask me, do you have any ideas

Lex Fridman (42:35.460)

about the abstraction for free speech?

Eric Weinstein (42:39.140)

I've never met Mark Zuckerberg.

Lex Fridman (42:41.260)

I've never met Sundar Pichai.

Eric Weinstein (42:43.260)

I never met Larry Page.

Lex Fridman (42:45.140)

I was once in a room with Sergey Brin.

Eric Weinstein (42:47.500)

I've never spoken to Elon Musk.

Lex Fridman (42:50.820)

I hang out with Peter Thiel,

Lex Fridman (42:52.180)

but we have a very deep relationship,

Lex Fridman (42:54.440)

but I don't really speak to that many other people

Eric Weinstein (42:58.180)

at sort of at this level.

Lex Fridman (43:00.420)

We're not having any kind of smart conversation

Eric Weinstein (43:04.220)

at a national level.

Lex Fridman (43:05.540)

In fact, it's almost as if we've destroyed every sandbox

Eric Weinstein (43:11.500)

in which we could play together.

Lex Fridman (43:13.300)

There's no place that we actually talk

Eric Weinstein (43:15.740)

except long form podcasting.

Lex Fridman (43:18.180)

And by the way, they've found,

Eric Weinstein (43:20.300)

you see what's going on with like Alex Stamos

Lex Fridman (43:23.220)

and the Hoover Institution.

Eric Weinstein (43:26.700)

There's a loophole left.

Lex Fridman (43:28.160)

Long form podcasting allows people to speak

Eric Weinstein (43:31.700)

at levels above daytime CNN.

Lex Fridman (43:34.260)

It's like, well, why do you think

Lex Fridman (43:35.940)

they're not watching daytime CNN?

Lex Fridman (43:39.020)

But that's just silly journalism.

Eric Weinstein (43:42.260)

They currently have no power to displace podcasting.

Lex Fridman (43:45.940)

That's why it's so powerful, RSS feed.

Eric Weinstein (43:47.780)

I mean, that's why the big challenge with Joe Rogan

Lex Fridman (43:50.320)

and Spotify is like, there's this dance that's fascinating

Eric Weinstein (43:53.500)

to see is Joe Rogan is not part of the system

Lex Fridman (43:57.980)

and then he's also uncancellable

Lex Fridman (44:00.660)

and there's this tension that's happening.

Lex Fridman (44:03.580)

It's fascinating.

Eric Weinstein (44:04.420)

Well, think about what happened to Howard Stern though.

Lex Fridman (44:05.420)

Howard Stern became much less relevant.

Lex Fridman (44:08.900)

So if they can't control Joe by bringing him in house,

Lex Fridman (44:13.240)

the key question is, is he going to continue,

Eric Weinstein (44:17.500)

like Joe says this thing about FU money.

Lex Fridman (44:22.220)

Joe's one of the only people with FU money

Eric Weinstein (44:24.380)

who's actually said FU.

Lex Fridman (44:28.740)

I don't understand this.

Eric Weinstein (44:30.560)

I don't have FU money.

Lex Fridman (44:32.100)

What exactly is, can we break apart FU money?

Eric Weinstein (44:36.420)

Because I always thought I've been fortunate enough

Lex Fridman (44:41.420)

to always have FU money in the sense

Eric Weinstein (44:45.020)

that my standards were so low that a basic salary

Lex Fridman (44:48.260)

in the United States.

Eric Weinstein (44:49.100)

Well, this is the stoic point,

Lex Fridman (44:50.300)

which is if you can live on rice and beans,

Eric Weinstein (44:53.020)

you're uncancellable because you're always rich

Lex Fridman (44:54.980)

relative to your needs.

Lex Fridman (44:56.220)

Isn't that FU fundamental, FU money?

Lex Fridman (44:57.940)

Why do you say that tech billionaires don't have FU money?

Eric Weinstein (45:01.540)

When you need to hire private security

Lex Fridman (45:03.600)

to protect your family,

Lex Fridman (45:05.080)

how do you protect your two children?

Lex Fridman (45:07.020)

I don't have those yet.

Eric Weinstein (45:08.060)

Bingo.

Lex Fridman (45:09.060)

Yeah.

Eric Weinstein (45:10.140)

My point is that FU money insulates everything

Lex Fridman (45:14.540)

that you care about.

Eric Weinstein (45:15.500)

It's not just about you.

Lex Fridman (45:17.380)

So you're saying as the level of responsibility grows,

Eric Weinstein (45:20.940)

the amount of money required for FU.

Lex Fridman (45:24.600)

We have a war going on.

Eric Weinstein (45:26.060)

The war is on academic freedom.

Lex Fridman (45:28.660)

Academic freedom used to be present in the system

Eric Weinstein (45:31.540)

as a, in terms of the idea, we trust our elite.

Lex Fridman (45:35.820)

Now we have an idea like, you wanna be the elite.

Eric Weinstein (45:39.420)

You want a Lord above us.

Lex Fridman (45:40.980)

First of all, there's like a populist, anti elitist thing.

Eric Weinstein (45:43.940)

Then there's the idea

Lex Fridman (45:44.900)

that we're gonna defer tenure for forever.

Eric Weinstein (45:48.620)

Then we're gonna tell people, stay in your lane.

Lex Fridman (45:50.220)

Your tenure is only good

Eric Weinstein (45:51.400)

for your own particular tiny micro subject.

Lex Fridman (45:54.700)

Then we're gonna also control your grants

Lex Fridman (45:56.500)

and we'll be able to load up your teaching load.

Lex Fridman (45:59.000)

If we don't like who you are,

Eric Weinstein (46:00.140)

we'll make your life absolutely impossible.

Lex Fridman (46:03.480)

We lost academic freedom

Lex Fridman (46:06.280)

and we ushered in peer review, which was a disaster.

Lex Fridman (46:10.700)

And then we lost funding

Lex Fridman (46:12.820)

so that people were confident

Lex Fridman (46:14.580)

that they would have the ability to do research

Eric Weinstein (46:17.300)

no matter what they said.

Lex Fridman (46:20.060)

And as a result, what you find is,

Eric Weinstein (46:21.860)

is a world in which there's no ability

Lex Fridman (46:24.700)

to get people to say, no, I'm not gonna sign

Eric Weinstein (46:26.500)

your diversity and inclusion forced loyalty oath.

Lex Fridman (46:30.300)

I won't sign any loyalty oath.

Eric Weinstein (46:32.180)

Get the hell out of my office.

Lex Fridman (46:34.740)

FU.

Eric Weinstein (46:36.420)

FU, and you're connecting money to that, but.

Lex Fridman (46:39.160)

Well, my point is, is that academic freedom

Eric Weinstein (46:41.620)

is the, the whole idea behind it

Lex Fridman (46:45.420)

was that you will have the freedom of a billionaire

Eric Weinstein (46:48.460)

on a much smaller salary.

Lex Fridman (46:50.020)

Right.

Eric Weinstein (46:50.940)

Okay.

Lex Fridman (46:53.240)

We've lost that.

Eric Weinstein (46:54.140)

Yeah, the only reason in part

Lex Fridman (46:56.340)

that I wanted to go into academic,

Eric Weinstein (47:00.900)

academics as a profession,

Lex Fridman (47:02.260)

as opposed to wanting to do physical

Eric Weinstein (47:04.740)

or mathematical research.

Lex Fridman (47:07.340)

The great prize was freedom.

Lex Fridman (47:09.580)

And Ralph Gomery of the Sloan Foundation,

Lex Fridman (47:12.540)

previously of IBM research pointed it out.

Eric Weinstein (47:14.820)

He says, if you lose freedom,

Lex Fridman (47:17.300)

you lose the only thing we had to offer top minds.

Eric Weinstein (47:20.460)

Top minds value their intellectual freedom

Lex Fridman (47:23.180)

and their physical and economic security

Eric Weinstein (47:26.140)

at a different level than other human beings.

Lex Fridman (47:29.260)

And so people say, you know,

Eric Weinstein (47:32.580)

I don't understand, dude,

Lex Fridman (47:33.420)

and you have the ability to do X, Y, and Z.

Lex Fridman (47:35.220)

What's the problem?

Lex Fridman (47:36.060)

It's like, well, I value my ability

Eric Weinstein (47:37.900)

to raise the middle finger as an American,

Lex Fridman (47:41.180)

practically above everything else.

Eric Weinstein (47:44.160)

I want to talk to you about freedom here

Lex Fridman (47:46.900)

in the context of something you've mentioned,

Eric Weinstein (47:49.180)

which is one way to take away freedom

Lex Fridman (47:52.400)

is to put a human being into a cage

Eric Weinstein (47:55.860)

to create constraints.

Lex Fridman (47:57.380)

The other one that worries me

Eric Weinstein (47:58.660)

is something that I think you've spoken to

Lex Fridman (48:00.220)

to Twitter a little bit on Twitter,

Eric Weinstein (48:03.440)

is we bleed freedom by kind of slowly

Lex Fridman (48:12.900)

scaring you into not doing,

Eric Weinstein (48:16.620)

not expressing the full spectrum of opportunities

Lex Fridman (48:19.740)

you can as freedom.

Lex Fridman (48:20.580)

So like when you ban Donald Trump,

Lex Fridman (48:24.000)

when you ban Parler,

Eric Weinstein (48:27.360)

you give a little doubt in the minds of millions,

Lex Fridman (48:30.180)

like me, a person who's a tech person,

Eric Weinstein (48:33.060)

who's an entrepreneur,

Lex Fridman (48:35.780)

there's a little,

Eric Weinstein (48:36.620)

that's what I'm afraid of when I look in the mirror,

Lex Fridman (48:38.660)

is there now a little doubt in there

Lex Fridman (48:41.260)

that limits the amount of options I will try?

Lex Fridman (48:43.740)

How certain are you that the COVID virus

Eric Weinstein (48:47.500)

didn't come from the Wuhan lab

Lex Fridman (48:49.900)

and is biosafety level four?

Eric Weinstein (48:52.140)

We both know that we're both supposed to robotically say

Lex Fridman (48:57.000)

the idea that the COVID virus came from a lab

Eric Weinstein (48:59.580)

is a discredited conspiracy theory.

Lex Fridman (49:01.500)

There is no evidence that suggests that this is true.

Eric Weinstein (49:03.780)

The World Health Organization and the CDC

Lex Fridman (49:05.900)

have both opined this to say otherwise

Eric Weinstein (49:08.100)

would be incredibly irresponsible.

Lex Fridman (49:09.660)

And the threat of that is the thing

Eric Weinstein (49:11.900)

that ultimately limits the freedoms we feel.

Lex Fridman (49:16.780)

I should be tweeting about Jeff Epstein all the time.

Lex Fridman (49:20.660)

And you're afraid.

Lex Fridman (49:22.060)

It's also boring.

Eric Weinstein (49:23.500)

I mean, I said it in the public.

Lex Fridman (49:25.540)

Many times.

Lex Fridman (49:26.380)

Why is it we don't ask where the records are

Lex Fridman (49:28.820)

from Villard House?

Lex Fridman (49:29.700)

Where are the financial records?

Lex Fridman (49:30.860)

Where are the SEC filings?

Eric Weinstein (49:32.940)

Where are the questions on the record

Lex Fridman (49:35.540)

to the intelligence agencies?

Lex Fridman (49:39.220)

Was he known to be part of the intelligence community?

Lex Fridman (49:42.340)

So we're not interested in asking questions.

Eric Weinstein (49:46.060)

Like, am I gonna die as a result of asking the question,

Lex Fridman (49:51.180)

was Jeff Epstein part of the intelligence community

Lex Fridman (49:53.460)

of any nation?

Lex Fridman (49:54.980)

Is there a reason we're not asking

Eric Weinstein (49:56.240)

about the financial records of the supposed hedge fund

Lex Fridman (49:58.480)

that he didn't run?

Eric Weinstein (49:59.440)

It's just like the Wuhan lab.

Lex Fridman (50:02.900)

Okay, how do we get to the core of the Jeffrey Epstein,

Lex Fridman (50:05.580)

the truth behind Jeffrey Epstein in a sense?

Lex Fridman (50:08.820)

I mean, there's some things that are just like

Eric Weinstein (50:10.860)

useless conspiracy theories around it,

Lex Fridman (50:12.740)

even if they're true.

Eric Weinstein (50:13.720)

There's some things that get to say it.

Lex Fridman (50:14.560)

I hate to say it.

Eric Weinstein (50:15.500)

You're not gonna like it.

Lex Fridman (50:17.000)

Look at the 1971 media Pennsylvania break in

Eric Weinstein (50:20.600)

of the Citizens Committee to investigate the FBI.

Lex Fridman (50:24.220)

Those kids, and by the way, they weren't all kids,

Eric Weinstein (50:27.140)

did what had to be done.

Lex Fridman (50:31.540)

They broke in, they broke the law.

Eric Weinstein (50:33.760)

It was an incredible act of civil disobedience.

Lex Fridman (50:37.060)

And God bless Judy Feingold for taking to her,

Eric Weinstein (50:40.260)

she was going to take to her grave,

Lex Fridman (50:42.520)

that she'd been part of this,

Eric Weinstein (50:43.640)

like the coolest thing of all time.

Lex Fridman (50:45.360)

They didn't say anything for forever.

Lex Fridman (50:47.580)

So civil disobedience, I mean, you have to.

Lex Fridman (50:50.180)

We are founded on civil disobedience.

Eric Weinstein (50:52.300)

Civil disobedience is incredibly,

Lex Fridman (50:55.000)

you screw it up and you're just a vandal.

Eric Weinstein (50:59.880)

You screw it up, you're a hooligan.

Lex Fridman (51:01.560)

Yeah.

Eric Weinstein (51:02.400)

Those cats were so disciplined.

Lex Fridman (51:06.240)

It's an art form.

Eric Weinstein (51:07.080)

It was an art form and they risked everything.

Lex Fridman (51:09.760)

They were willing to pay with their freedom.

Eric Weinstein (51:14.100)

Those are the sorts of people who earned the right

Lex Fridman (51:17.400)

by putting themselves at risk.

Eric Weinstein (51:18.760)

I would not do this.

Lex Fridman (51:20.940)

I am not volunteering to break into anything.

Eric Weinstein (51:24.960)

I think it was William Davidon who was a student

Lex Fridman (51:28.680)

of Murray Gellman and a physics professor at Haverford

Eric Weinstein (51:32.080)

who corralled these people and led this effort.

Lex Fridman (51:36.040)

And right now, what we need is somebody to blow the lid

Eric Weinstein (51:40.840)

off of what is controlling everything.

Lex Fridman (51:43.120)

We have, I'm happy to hear that it's a system

Eric Weinstein (51:47.500)

of incentive structures,

Lex Fridman (51:48.720)

that it's a system of selective pressures.

Eric Weinstein (51:50.320)

I'm happy to find out that it's emergent.

Lex Fridman (51:52.240)

I'm happy to find that it's partially directed

Eric Weinstein (51:54.040)

by our own intelligence community.

Lex Fridman (51:56.520)

I'm happy to hear that, in fact, we've been penetrated

Eric Weinstein (52:00.160)

by North Korea, Iran, China, and Russia.

Lex Fridman (52:04.080)

But I need to know why people aren't,

Eric Weinstein (52:07.220)

like the firebombing of the courthouse in Portland, Oregon

Lex Fridman (52:09.960)

has no explanation.

Lex Fridman (52:12.360)

And somehow this is normal.

Lex Fridman (52:14.080)

This is not normal to any human being.

Eric Weinstein (52:17.280)

We have video that people don't believe.

Lex Fridman (52:19.320)

And I come back to the shaggy defense of it wasn't me.

Lex Fridman (52:24.680)

You know, so it's like, you remember that song?

Lex Fridman (52:30.240)

Shaggy, yeah, it wasn't me caught you banging

Eric Weinstein (52:33.680)

in the shower on the counter.

Lex Fridman (52:35.080)

Yeah, exactly, it wasn't me.

Eric Weinstein (52:36.760)

It wasn't me.

Lex Fridman (52:37.600)

He says, but his friend says,

Eric Weinstein (52:39.760)

well, your strategy makes no sense at all.

Lex Fridman (52:41.880)

Well, this is what MSNBC is doing.

Eric Weinstein (52:46.120)

You dropped it from the graphic, it wasn't me.

Lex Fridman (52:48.520)

It wasn't me.

Eric Weinstein (52:49.360)

You came up with another Yang, it wasn't me.

Lex Fridman (52:52.480)

I will never see MSNBC the same again.

Lex Fridman (52:55.480)

So you've spoken about him before.

Lex Fridman (52:57.720)

I think it'd be nice to maybe honor him

Eric Weinstein (53:00.520)

to break it apart a little bit.

Lex Fridman (53:02.320)

Aaron Schwartz.

Eric Weinstein (53:03.400)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (53:04.520)

Why was he a special human being in this ilk

Lex Fridman (53:08.640)

of what we're talking about now, civil disobedience?

Lex Fridman (53:11.720)

How do we honor him now moving forward as human beings

Lex Fridman (53:15.880)

who are willing to take risks in this world?

Lex Fridman (53:19.080)

Well, I don't know.

Lex Fridman (53:20.160)

I mean, are you inspired by Aaron Schwartz?

Lex Fridman (53:23.760)

I am.

Lex Fridman (53:24.600)

How do you feel about JSTOR?

Lex Fridman (53:25.720)

Let's talk about JSTOR first.

Lex Fridman (53:27.400)

So let's say what JSTOR is all about, right?

Lex Fridman (53:30.920)

We the taxpayer pay for research.

Lex Fridman (53:36.080)

And then the people who do the research

Lex Fridman (53:41.140)

do all the work for a bunch of companies

Eric Weinstein (53:43.360)

who then charge us $30 an article

Lex Fridman (53:47.020)

to read what it is that we already paid for.

Lex Fridman (53:48.940)

And if we don't cite these articles,

Lex Fridman (53:51.360)

we're told that we're in violation.

Eric Weinstein (53:53.400)

Okay.

Lex Fridman (53:55.280)

I almost never call for civil disobedience

Eric Weinstein (53:58.240)

because I don't really want to, but fuck JSTOR,

Lex Fridman (54:03.280)

fuck Elsevier, fuck Springer.

Lex Fridman (54:05.200)

Who the fuck are these people?

Lex Fridman (54:07.280)

Yeah.

Eric Weinstein (54:08.120)

Get the smart people need to take the greedy people

Lex Fridman (54:15.920)

behind the woodshed and explain to them what science is.

Eric Weinstein (54:19.680)

I have a very old fashioned idea that's so out of favor

Lex Fridman (54:23.440)

that I will immediately be seen as a knuckle dragger.

Eric Weinstein (54:26.200)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (54:27.680)

I believe in the great woman theory of history

Lex Fridman (54:29.800)

and the great man theory of history.

Lex Fridman (54:31.700)

Emmy Nerder is fantastic as an example.

Eric Weinstein (54:34.700)

As an example, and I believe in editors over peer reviewers.

Lex Fridman (54:41.420)

And I believe that wrong things should be allowed

Eric Weinstein (54:43.820)

into the literature.

Lex Fridman (54:45.180)

And I believe that the gatekeeping should go towards zero

Eric Weinstein (54:48.340)

because the costs associated with distribution

Lex Fridman (54:52.020)

are very, very slight.

Eric Weinstein (54:53.300)

I believe that we should be looking

Lex Fridman (54:57.020)

at the perverse incentives of sending your paper blindly

Eric Weinstein (55:01.180)

into your competitor's clutches,

Lex Fridman (55:02.620)

particularly if you're a young person being reviewed

Eric Weinstein (55:05.260)

by an older person.

Lex Fridman (55:07.460)

Are you familiar with the Duat de Senor?

Lex Fridman (55:11.920)

Are you familiar with the legend of the Magnaia?

Lex Fridman (55:15.820)

No, the Magnaia is the Miller's daughter

Lex Fridman (55:18.420)

and the largest food fight in the entire universe,

Lex Fridman (55:21.500)

I believe is held, I think in Italy,

Eric Weinstein (55:25.660)

it's called the Battle of the Oranges.

Lex Fridman (55:27.640)

And it celebrates the Miller's daughter

Eric Weinstein (55:31.420)

who had fallen in love with her beloved.

Lex Fridman (55:34.540)

And when it came time for them to marry,

Eric Weinstein (55:38.380)

the virginal Magnaia was in fact told

Lex Fridman (55:41.980)

that the Lord of the land had the right

Eric Weinstein (55:46.060)

to have the first night with the bride.

Lex Fridman (55:48.820)

Well, the Magnaia had a different idea.

Lex Fridman (55:51.340)

So she seemed to consent to this perhaps mythical right,

Lex Fridman (55:56.020)

also called the Prima Note, the first night.

Lex Fridman (55:59.220)

And by legend, she concealed a dagger underneath her robes.

Lex Fridman (56:05.580)

And when it came time for the hated Lord of the Manor

Eric Weinstein (56:08.460)

to extract this right, she pulled the knife out

Lex Fridman (56:13.700)

and killed him.

Lex Fridman (56:14.540)

And I think it also echoes a little bit

Lex Fridman (56:16.320)

of particularly wonderful scene from Game of Thrones.

Lex Fridman (56:20.320)

But that inspired both men and women.

Lex Fridman (56:23.580)

And the Magnaia is the legendary hero.

Lex Fridman (56:26.100)

So right now, what we need to do is we need

Lex Fridman (56:30.960)

to resist the Prima Note, the right of first look, right?

Eric Weinstein (56:36.160)

F you, you don't have the right of first look.

Lex Fridman (56:38.320)

I don't wanna send something blindly to my competitors.

Eric Weinstein (56:40.760)

I don't wanna subject myself to you naming

Lex Fridman (56:42.800)

what work I've done.

Lex Fridman (56:45.760)

Why are you in my story?

Lex Fridman (56:48.020)

That's my question, get out of my story.

Eric Weinstein (56:50.000)

If I do work and then you have an idea,

Lex Fridman (56:52.640)

oh, well, it's the Matthew principle.

Eric Weinstein (56:54.400)

To him who has much more will be given.

Lex Fridman (56:57.720)

I've gone to the National Academy of Sciences

Lex Fridman (56:59.640)

and talked about these things.

Lex Fridman (57:00.860)

And it's funny, I've been laughed at by the older people

Eric Weinstein (57:03.720)

who think, well, Eric, you know science proceeds

Lex Fridman (57:07.080)

funeral by funeral, that's Planck.

Eric Weinstein (57:09.720)

You know the Matthew principle,

Lex Fridman (57:11.080)

you know the Matilda principle,

Eric Weinstein (57:12.200)

the things done by women are attributed to men.

Lex Fridman (57:14.520)

That these are not new.

Lex Fridman (57:16.280)

And you guys just live like this?

Lex Fridman (57:17.760)

Yeah, so the Revolutionary Act now is to resist

Eric Weinstein (57:20.920)

all of these things that are not new.

Lex Fridman (57:23.920)

So you asked me about Aaron Schwartz.

Eric Weinstein (57:25.440)

Aaron Schwartz was the Magnaia.

Lex Fridman (57:27.240)

One of the things you've done very beautifully

Eric Weinstein (57:29.360)

is to communicate love.

Lex Fridman (57:31.880)

And I think about some of our conversations.

Lex Fridman (57:35.560)

And you got me to talk a little bit about

Lex Fridman (57:37.280)

my own experiences in 02138 and 39.

Eric Weinstein (57:45.360)

We are the product of our trauma.

Lex Fridman (57:48.760)

And what people don't understand is that very often

Eric Weinstein (57:51.160)

when you see people taking countermeasures

Lex Fridman (57:54.720)

against what appear to be imaginary forces,

Eric Weinstein (57:57.840)

they're really actually replaying things

Lex Fridman (57:59.720)

that really happened to them.

Lex Fridman (58:02.640)

And having been through this system and watching

Lex Fridman (58:05.480)

all of the ways in which it completely rewrites

Eric Weinstein (58:08.280)

the lives of the people who I am counting on

Lex Fridman (58:10.720)

to cure our diseases, build our new industries,

Eric Weinstein (58:12.760)

keep us safe from our foes,

Lex Fridman (58:15.800)

the amount of pressure the system is putting

Eric Weinstein (58:18.760)

on the most hopeful minds is unimaginable.

Lex Fridman (58:23.320)

And so my goal is to empower somebody

Eric Weinstein (58:26.680)

like an Aaron Schwartz in memory

Lex Fridman (58:29.560)

and to talk about a Jeffrey Epstein situation.

Lex Fridman (58:32.320)

Do you know that the first person outside of me

Lex Fridman (58:36.640)

to get a look at geometric unity was Jeffrey Epstein?

Lex Fridman (58:42.280)

How did he know I was working on this?

Lex Fridman (58:44.920)

I don't know.

Lex Fridman (58:46.000)

So your ideas that formed geometric unity

Lex Fridman (58:49.320)

was something that his eyes have seen?

Eric Weinstein (58:51.880)

I was pushed to talk to Jeffrey Epstein

Lex Fridman (58:55.120)

as one of the only people who could help me.

Eric Weinstein (58:59.120)

No, no, no, listen to this.

Lex Fridman (59:00.760)

Yeah, how does this connect?

Eric Weinstein (59:01.760)

Okay, well, first of all, my old synagogue,

Lex Fridman (59:06.400)

my old shul was the conservative minion at Harvard Hillel.

Lex Fridman (59:11.200)

And I believe it's called Rosovsky Hall

Lex Fridman (59:14.240)

after Henry Rosovsky in the economics department,

Eric Weinstein (59:17.240)

who was a Japan scholar, if I'm correct.

Lex Fridman (59:20.240)

And he became provost or dean of Harvard.

Eric Weinstein (59:25.160)

I believe that that was built with Jeffrey Epstein's money.

Lex Fridman (59:29.480)

And I wondered in part whether the Jewish students

Eric Weinstein (59:32.840)

at Harvard all sort of passed through a bottleneck

Lex Fridman (59:35.720)

of Harvard Hillel.

Lex Fridman (59:37.320)

So that was something I found very curious,

Lex Fridman (59:39.080)

but I don't know much about it.

Eric Weinstein (59:41.480)

I also found that Jeffrey Epstein hanging around

Lex Fridman (59:43.240)

scientists, I don't think that either you or Joe exactly,

Eric Weinstein (59:46.440)

I mean, got me correct in your last interchange.

Lex Fridman (59:51.440)

For the record, for people who haven't listened

Eric Weinstein (59:53.120)

to Joe Rogan program, Joe has claimed that Eric Weinstein

Lex Fridman (59:55.760)

was the only person who has gotten laid.

Eric Weinstein (59:57.960)

Paid.

Lex Fridman (59:58.800)

Oh, paid.