Eric Weinstein: Revolutionary Ideas in Science, Math, and Society
政治与社会生物与进化音乐与艺术技术与编程历史与文明
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🔑 关键词
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💬 精彩语录
"because the toys that we've built are so impressive and the wisdom to accompany them has not materialized."
因为我们制造的玩具是如此令人印象深刻，而陪伴它们的智慧却尚未实现。
— Eric Weinstein （27:11.780）
"So in marriage, you fear the loss of independence, but even though the American therapeutic community"
所以在婚姻中，你担心失去独立性，但即使美国治疗界
— Eric Weinstein （22:33.660）
🎙️ 完整对话（1230 条）
Lex Fridman (00:00.000)
The following is a conversation with Eric Weinstein.
以下是与埃里克·韦恩斯坦的对话。
Lex Fridman (00:03.520)
He's a mathematician, economist, physicist, and the managing director of Teal Capital.
他是一位数学家、经济学家、物理学家，也是 Teal Capital 的董事总经理。
Lex Fridman (00:08.820)
He coined the term, and you can say, is the founder of the intellectual dark web, which
他创造了这个词，你可以说，他是知识分子暗网的创始人，
Lex Fridman (00:14.500)
is a loosely assembled group of public intellectuals that includes Sam Harris, Jordan Peterson,
是一个松散的公共知识分子群体，其中包括萨姆·哈里斯、乔丹·彼得森、
Lex Fridman (00:19.920)
Steven Pinker, Joe Rogan, Michael Shermer, and a few others.
史蒂文·平克 (Steven Pinker)、乔·罗根 (Joe Rogan)、迈克尔·舍默 (Michael Shermer) 以及其他一些人。
Eric Weinstein (00:24.920)
This conversation is part of the Artificial Intelligence Podcast at MIT and beyond.
这次对话是麻省理工学院及其他机构的人工智能播客的一部分。
Eric Weinstein (00:30.340)
If you enjoy it, subscribe on YouTube, iTunes, or simply connect with me on Twitter at Lex
如果您喜欢它，请在 YouTube、iTunes 上订阅，或者在 Twitter 上与我联系 Lex
Eric Weinstein (00:36.280)
Friedman, spelled F R I D.
弗里德曼，拼写为 F R I D。
Lex Fridman (00:39.320)
And now, here's my conversation with Eric Weinstein.
现在，这是我与埃里克·韦恩斯坦的对话。
Lex Fridman (00:44.600)
Are you nervous about this?
你对此紧张吗？
Lex Fridman (00:46.400)
Scared shitless.
吓得屁滚尿流。
Eric Weinstein (00:47.400)
Okay.
好的。
Lex Fridman (00:48.400)
You mentioned Kung Fu Panda as one of your favorite movies.
您提到《功夫熊猫》是您最喜欢的电影之一。
Eric Weinstein (00:54.660)
It has the usual profound master student dynamic going on.
它具有通常的深刻的硕士生动态。
Lex Fridman (00:58.180)
So who was, who has been a teacher that significantly influenced the direction of your thinking
那么谁曾经是、谁曾经是一位对你的思维方向产生重大影响的老师
Lex Fridman (01:04.080)
and life's work?
和一生的工作？
Lex Fridman (01:05.080)
So if you're the Kung Fu Panda, who was your Shifu?
那么如果你是功夫熊猫，谁是你的师傅呢？
Eric Weinstein (01:08.080)
Oh, well, it's interesting because I didn't see Shifu as being the teacher.
哦，好吧，这很有趣，因为我不认为师父是老师。
Lex Fridman (01:12.240)
Who was the teacher?
老师是谁？
Eric Weinstein (01:13.240)
Oogway, Master Oogway.
乌龟，乌龟大师。
Lex Fridman (01:15.500)
The turtle.
Eric Weinstein (01:16.500)
Oh, the turtle.
Lex Fridman (01:17.500)
Right.
Eric Weinstein (01:18.500)
They only meet twice in the entire film.
Lex Fridman (01:21.260)
And the first conversation sort of doesn't count.
Lex Fridman (01:25.180)
So the magic of the film, in fact, its point is that the teaching that really matters is
Lex Fridman (01:33.100)
transferred during a single conversation and it's very brief.
Lex Fridman (01:40.140)
And so who played that role in my life?
Eric Weinstein (01:42.660)
I would say, uh, either, uh, my grandfather, uh, Harry Rubin and his wife, Sophie Rubin,
Eric Weinstein (01:51.220)
my grandmother, or Tom Lehrer.
Lex Fridman (01:54.300)
Tom Lehrer?
Eric Weinstein (01:56.100)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (01:57.460)
In which way?
Eric Weinstein (01:58.460)
If you give a child Tom Lehrer records, what you do is you destroy their ability to be
Lex Fridman (02:05.380)
taken over by later malware.
Lex Fridman (02:08.660)
And it's so irreverent, so witty, so clever, so obscene that it destroys the ability to
Lex Fridman (02:17.420)
lead a normal life for many people.
Lex Fridman (02:19.380)
So if I meet somebody who's usually really shifted from any kind of neurotypical presentation,
Lex Fridman (02:27.060)
I'll often ask them, uh, are you a Tom Lehrer fan?
Lex Fridman (02:31.100)
And the odds that they will respond are quite high.
Lex Fridman (02:34.220)
Tom Lehrer is, uh, poisoning pigeons in the park, Tom Lehrer.
Eric Weinstein (02:38.280)
That's very interesting.
Eric Weinstein (02:39.280)
There are a small number of Tom Lehrer songs that broke into the general population, poisoning
Eric Weinstein (02:44.120)
pigeons in the park, the element song, and perhaps the Vatican rag.
Eric Weinstein (02:48.140)
Uh, so when you meet somebody who knows those songs but doesn't know, oh, you're judging
Lex Fridman (02:53.180)
me right now, aren't you?
Lex Fridman (02:55.220)
Harshly.
Eric Weinstein (02:56.220)
Uh, no, but you're a Russian, so I doubt as the, you know, Nikolai Ivanovich Lubachevsky,
Lex Fridman (03:00.340)
that song.
Eric Weinstein (03:01.340)
Yeah.
Eric Weinstein (03:02.340)
Um, so that was a song about plagiarism that was in fact plagiarized, which most people
Eric Weinstein (03:06.100)
don't know from Danny Kay, uh, where Danny Kay did a song called Stanislavsky of the
Lex Fridman (03:11.540)
Muskie arts.
Lex Fridman (03:13.340)
And so Tom Lehrer did this brilliant job of plagiarizing a song about and making it about
Eric Weinstein (03:19.120)
plagiarism and then making it about this mathematician who worked in non Euclidean geometry.
Eric Weinstein (03:24.860)
That was like, uh, giving heroin to a child.
Eric Weinstein (03:27.580)
It was extremely addictive and eventually led me to a lot of different places, one of
Eric Weinstein (03:33.660)
which may have been a PhD in mathematics.
Lex Fridman (03:36.620)
And he was also at least a lecturer in mathematics, I believe at Harvard, something like that.
Eric Weinstein (03:41.700)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (03:42.700)
I just had dinner with him.
Eric Weinstein (03:43.700)
In fact, uh, when my son turned 13, we didn't tell him, but, um, his bar mitzvah present
Lex Fridman (03:51.740)
was dinner with his hero, Tom Lehrer.
Lex Fridman (03:54.700)
And Tom Lehrer was 88 years old, sharp as a tack, irreverent and funny as hell.
Lex Fridman (04:01.020)
And just, you know, there are very few people in this world that you have to meet while
Eric Weinstein (04:05.860)
they're still here.
Lex Fridman (04:07.020)
And that was definitely one for our family.
Lex Fridman (04:09.420)
So that wit is a reflection of intelligence in some kind of deep way, like where that
Lex Fridman (04:16.700)
would be a good test of intelligence, whether you're a Tom Lehrer fan.
Lex Fridman (04:20.260)
So what do you think that is about wit, about that kind of humor, ability to see the absurdity
Lex Fridman (04:27.500)
in existence?
Eric Weinstein (04:28.500)
Well, do you think that's connected to intelligence or are we just two Jews on a mic that appreciate
Lex Fridman (04:33.540)
that kind of humor?
Eric Weinstein (04:34.540)
No, I think that it's absolutely connected to intelligence.
Lex Fridman (04:37.580)
So you can, you can see it.
Eric Weinstein (04:40.140)
There's a place where Tom Lehrer decides that he's going to lampoon Gilbert of Gilbert and
Lex Fridman (04:45.260)
Sullivan and he's going to outdo Gilbert with clever, meaningless wordplay.
Lex Fridman (04:49.540)
And he has, forget the, well, let's see, he's doing Clementine as if Gilbert and Sullivan
Lex Fridman (04:55.540)
wrote it.
Eric Weinstein (04:56.540)
That I misunderstood depressed her young sister named Mr. This Mr. Depester, she tried pestering
Eric Weinstein (05:00.540)
sisters of festering blister you best to resist or say I, the sister persisted the Mr. Resisted
Eric Weinstein (05:04.940)
I kissed her all loyalty slip when he said, when she said I could have her, her sister's
Lex Fridman (05:07.900)
cadaver must surely have turned in its crypt.
Eric Weinstein (05:10.860)
That's so dense.
Eric Weinstein (05:11.980)
It's so insane that that's clearly intelligence because it's hard to construct something like
Eric Weinstein (05:19.180)
that.
Eric Weinstein (05:20.180)
If I look at my favorite Tom Lehrer, Tom Lehrer lyric, you know, there's a perfectly absurd
Eric Weinstein (05:26.380)
one, which is once all the Germans were warlike and mean, but that couldn't happen again.
Lex Fridman (05:30.300)
We taught them a lesson in 1918 and they've hardly bothered us since then, right?
Eric Weinstein (05:34.740)
That is a different kind of intelligence.
Eric Weinstein (05:36.900)
You know, you're taking something that is so horrific and you're, you're sort of making
Eric Weinstein (05:41.780)
it palatable and funny and demonstrating also, um, just your humanity.
Eric Weinstein (05:47.780)
I mean, I think the thing that came through as, as Tom Lehrer wrote all of these terrible,
Eric Weinstein (05:53.660)
horrible lines was just what a sensitive and beautiful soul he was, who was channeling
Lex Fridman (05:59.340)
pain through humor and through grace.
Eric Weinstein (06:02.820)
I've seen throughout Europe, throughout Russia, that same kind of humor emerged from the generation
Lex Fridman (06:07.900)
of world war II.
Eric Weinstein (06:09.260)
It seemed like that humor is required to somehow deal with the pain and the suffering of that,
Lex Fridman (06:14.660)
that war created.
Eric Weinstein (06:16.700)
You do need the environment to create the broad Slavic soul.
Eric Weinstein (06:19.700)
I don't think that many Americans really appreciate, um, Russian humor, how you had to joke during
Eric Weinstein (06:30.780)
the time of, let's say article 58 under Stalin, you had to be very, very careful.
Eric Weinstein (06:35.700)
You know, the concept of a Russian satirical magazine like Crocodile, uh, doesn't make
Eric Weinstein (06:40.500)
sense.
Lex Fridman (06:41.500)
So you have this cross cultural problem that there are certain areas of human experience
Eric Weinstein (06:48.680)
that it would be better to know nothing about.
Lex Fridman (06:51.420)
And quite unfortunately, Eastern Europe knows a great deal about them, which makes the,
Eric Weinstein (06:56.780)
you know, the songs of Vladimir Vysotsky so potent, the, uh, you know, the pros of Pushkin,
Eric Weinstein (07:02.940)
whatever it is, uh, you have to appreciate the depth of the Eastern European experience.
Lex Fridman (07:09.020)
And I would think that perhaps Americans knew something like this around the time of the
Eric Weinstein (07:14.160)
civil war or merit maybe, um, you know, under slavery and Jim Crow or even the, uh, harsh
Eric Weinstein (07:22.580)
tyranny of, uh, the coal and steel employers during the labor wars.
Eric Weinstein (07:28.500)
Um, but in general, I would say it's hard for us to understand and imagine the collective
Eric Weinstein (07:34.940)
culture unless we have the system of selective pressures that, for example, uh, Russians
Lex Fridman (07:40.660)
were subjected to.
Eric Weinstein (07:41.660)
Yeah, so if there's one good thing that comes out of war, it's literature, art, and humor
Lex Fridman (07:49.820)
and music.
Eric Weinstein (07:50.820)
Oh, I don't think so.
Lex Fridman (07:52.380)
I think almost everything is good about war except for death and destruction.
Eric Weinstein (07:57.660)
Right.
Lex Fridman (07:59.380)
Without the death, it would bring, uh, the romance of it.
Eric Weinstein (08:02.720)
The whole thing is nice.
Eric Weinstein (08:03.720)
Well, this is why we're always caught up in war and we have this very ambiguous relationship
Eric Weinstein (08:07.900)
to it is that it makes life real and pressing and meaningful and at an unacceptable price
Lex Fridman (08:15.820)
and the price has never been higher.
Lex Fridman (08:17.820)
So just jump in, uh, into AI a little bit.
Eric Weinstein (08:22.860)
You, uh, in one of the conversations you had or one of the videos, you described that one
Eric Weinstein (08:28.740)
of the things AI systems can't do and biological systems can is self replicate in the physical
Lex Fridman (08:34.480)
world.
Eric Weinstein (08:35.480)
Oh no, no.
Lex Fridman (08:37.400)
In the physical world.
Eric Weinstein (08:38.700)
Well, yes, the physical robots can't self replicate, but the fit, but you, this is a
Eric Weinstein (08:45.020)
very tricky point, which is that the only thing that we've been able to create that's
Eric Weinstein (08:50.940)
really complex that has an analog of our reproductive system is software.
Lex Fridman (08:57.440)
But nevertheless, software replicates itself.
Eric Weinstein (09:01.220)
Uh, if we're speaking strictly for the replication in this kind of digital space.
Lex Fridman (09:05.820)
So let me just to begin, let me ask a question.
Lex Fridman (09:08.700)
Do you see a protective barrier or a gap between the physical world and the digital world?
Lex Fridman (09:15.140)
Let's not call it digital.
Eric Weinstein (09:16.580)
Let's call it the logical world versus the physical world.
Lex Fridman (09:20.900)
Why logical?
Eric Weinstein (09:21.900)
Well, because even though we had, let's say Einstein's brain preserved, uh, it was meaningless
Eric Weinstein (09:28.080)
to us as a physical object because we couldn't do anything with what was stored in it at
Eric Weinstein (09:33.720)
a logical level.
Lex Fridman (09:35.660)
And so the idea that something may be stored logically and that it may be stored physically,
Eric Weinstein (09:40.380)
uh, are not necessarily, uh, we don't always benefit from synonymizing.
Eric Weinstein (09:45.740)
I'm not suggesting that there isn't a material basis to the logical world, but that it does
Eric Weinstein (09:51.060)
warrant identification with a separate layer that need not invoke logic gates and zeros
Lex Fridman (09:58.260)
and ones.
Lex Fridman (09:59.700)
And uh, so connecting those two worlds, the logical world and the physical world, or maybe
Lex Fridman (10:03.660)
just connecting to the logical world inside our brain, Einstein's brain.
Eric Weinstein (10:09.380)
You mentioned the idea of out, outtelligence.
Lex Fridman (10:14.740)
Artificial outtelligence.
Eric Weinstein (10:15.960)
Artificial outtelligence.
Lex Fridman (10:16.960)
Yes.
Eric Weinstein (10:17.960)
This is the only essay that John Brockman ever invited me to write that he refused to
Lex Fridman (10:22.660)
publish in Edge.
Lex Fridman (10:24.660)
Why?
Lex Fridman (10:25.660)
Well, maybe it wasn't, it wasn't well written, um, but I don't know.
Eric Weinstein (10:30.660)
The idea is quite compelling is quite unique and new and at least from my view of a stance
Lex Fridman (10:36.820)
point, maybe you can explain it.
Eric Weinstein (10:38.700)
Sure.
Lex Fridman (10:39.700)
What I was thinking about is why it is that we're waiting to be terrified by artificial
Eric Weinstein (10:45.360)
general intelligence when in fact, artificial life, uh, is terrifying in and of itself and
Lex Fridman (10:53.480)
it's already here.
Lex Fridman (10:54.620)
So in order to have a system of selective pressures, you need three distinct elements.
Lex Fridman (11:00.280)
You need variation within a population.
Eric Weinstein (11:04.400)
You need heritability and you need differential success.
Lex Fridman (11:08.580)
So what's really unique and I've made this point, I think elsewhere about software is
Eric Weinstein (11:16.140)
that if you think about what humans know how to build, that's impressive.
Lex Fridman (11:19.380)
So I always take a car and I say, does it have an analog of each of the physical physiological
Lex Fridman (11:25.340)
systems?
Lex Fridman (11:26.340)
Does it have a skeletal structure?
Eric Weinstein (11:27.340)
That's its frame.
Lex Fridman (11:28.340)
Does it have a neurological structure?
Eric Weinstein (11:30.380)
Has an on board computer, has a digestive system.
Lex Fridman (11:35.740)
The one thing it doesn't have is a reproductive system.
Lex Fridman (11:38.520)
But if you can call spawn on a process, effectively you do have a reproductive system and that
Eric Weinstein (11:47.460)
means that you can create something with variation, heritability and differential success.
Eric Weinstein (11:53.460)
Now the next step in the chain of thinking was where do we see inanimate, non intelligent
Lex Fridman (12:01.420)
life outwitting intelligent life?
Lex Fridman (12:05.700)
And um, I have two favorite systems and I try to stay on them so that we don't get distracted.
Lex Fridman (12:11.500)
One of which is the Ofres orchid, um, subspecies or subclade.
Eric Weinstein (12:16.980)
I don't know what to call it.
Lex Fridman (12:17.980)
There's a type of flower.
Eric Weinstein (12:18.980)
Yeah, it's a type of flower that mimics the female of a pollinator species in order to
Lex Fridman (12:23.940)
dupe the males into, uh, engaging.
Eric Weinstein (12:27.460)
It was called pseudo copulation with the fake female, which is usually represented by the
Lex Fridman (12:31.980)
lowest pedal.
Lex Fridman (12:34.040)
And there's also a pheromone component to fool the males into thinking they have a mating
Lex Fridman (12:37.420)
opportunity.
Lex Fridman (12:38.420)
But the flower doesn't have to give up energy energy in the form of nectar as a lure because
Lex Fridman (12:42.820)
it's tricking the males.
Eric Weinstein (12:45.320)
The other system is a particular species, uh, of muscle lampicillus in the clear streams
Lex Fridman (12:53.660)
of Missouri and it fools bass into biting a fleshy lip that contain its young.
Lex Fridman (13:02.060)
And when the bass see this fleshy lip, which looks exactly like a species of fish that
Eric Weinstein (13:07.100)
the bass like to eat, the, uh, the young explode and clamp onto the gills and parasitize the
Eric Weinstein (13:13.420)
bass and also lose the best redistribute them as they eventually release both of these systems.
Eric Weinstein (13:20.860)
You have a highly intelligent dupe being fooled by a lower life form and what is sculpting
Eric Weinstein (13:31.700)
these, these convincing lures.
Lex Fridman (13:34.780)
It's the intelligence of previously duped targets for these strategies.
Lex Fridman (13:41.540)
So when the target is smart enough to avoid the strategy, uh, those weaker mimics, uh,
Lex Fridman (13:48.980)
fall off.
Eric Weinstein (13:49.980)
They have terminal lines and only the better ones survive.
Lex Fridman (13:52.780)
So it's an arms race between the target species, uh, that is being parasitized, getting smarter
Lex Fridman (14:00.820)
and this other less intelligent or non intelligent object getting as if smarter.
Lex Fridman (14:09.000)
And so what you see is, is that artificial intelligence, artificial general intelligence
Eric Weinstein (14:13.700)
is not needed to parasitize us.
Lex Fridman (14:17.260)
It's simply sufficient for us to outwit ourselves.
Lex Fridman (14:22.120)
So you could have a program, let's say, you know, one of these Nigerian scams, um, that
Eric Weinstein (14:27.100)
writes letters and uses whoever sends it Bitcoin, uh, to figure out which aspects of the program
Eric Weinstein (14:36.060)
should be kept, which should be varied and thrown away.
Lex Fridman (14:38.900)
And you don't need it to be in any way intelligent in order to have a really nightmarish scenario
Eric Weinstein (14:43.340)
of being parasitized by something that has no idea what it's doing.
Lex Fridman (14:46.740)
So you, you, you phrased a few concepts really eloquently.
Lex Fridman (14:49.400)
So let me try to, uh, as a few directions this goes.
Lex Fridman (14:53.060)
So one first, first of all, in the way we write software today, it's not common that
Eric Weinstein (14:58.180)
we allow it to self modify.
Lex Fridman (15:01.180)
But we do have that ability.
Eric Weinstein (15:02.180)
Now we have the ability, it's just not common.
Lex Fridman (15:05.220)
It's not just common.
Eric Weinstein (15:06.220)
So, so your, your thought is that that is a serious worry.
Lex Fridman (15:13.100)
If there becomes, uh,
Eric Weinstein (15:15.400)
Self modifying code is, is available now.
Lex Fridman (15:18.540)
So there's, there's different types of self modification, right?
Eric Weinstein (15:21.220)
There's a personalization, you know, your email app, your Gmail is a self modifying
Lex Fridman (15:28.500)
to you after you log in or whatever you can think of it that way.
Lex Fridman (15:32.420)
But ultimately it's central, all the information is centralized, but you're thinking of ideas
Eric Weinstein (15:39.620)
where you're completely, so this is an unique entity, uh, operating under selective pressures
Lex Fridman (15:45.460)
and it changes.
Eric Weinstein (15:46.460)
Well, you just, if you think about the fact that our immune systems, uh, don't know what's
Eric Weinstein (15:52.520)
coming at them next, but they have a small set of spanning components and if it's, if
Eric Weinstein (15:58.740)
it's a sufficiently expressive system in that any shape, uh, or binding region can be approximated,
Eric Weinstein (16:06.660)
uh, with, with the Lego that is present, um, then you can have confidence that you don't
Eric Weinstein (16:13.100)
need to know what's coming at you because the combinatorics, um, are sufficient to reach
Eric Weinstein (16:20.580)
any configuration needed.
Lex Fridman (16:22.660)
Uh, so that's a beautiful thing.
Eric Weinstein (16:25.380)
Well, terrifying thing to worry about because it's so within our reach.
Eric Weinstein (16:30.700)
Whatever I suggest these things, I do always have a concern as to whether or not I will
Eric Weinstein (16:34.140)
bring them into being by talking about them.
Eric Weinstein (16:37.020)
So, uh, there's this thing from open AI, uh, next, next week to talk to the founder of
Eric Weinstein (16:43.300)
open AI, uh, this idea that, uh, their text generation, the new, uh, the new stuff they
Eric Weinstein (16:50.060)
have for generating texts is they didn't want to bring it, they didn't want to release it
Eric Weinstein (16:54.400)
because they're worried about the.
Lex Fridman (16:57.420)
I'm delighted to hear that, but they're going to end up releasing.
Eric Weinstein (17:00.660)
Yes.
Lex Fridman (17:01.660)
So that's the thing is I think talking about it, um, well, at least from my end, I'm more
Eric Weinstein (17:06.160)
a proponent of technology preventing tech, uh, so further innovation, preventing the
Lex Fridman (17:14.100)
detrimental effects of innovation.
Eric Weinstein (17:16.100)
Well, we're at a, we're sort of tumbling down a hill at accelerating speed.
Lex Fridman (17:22.300)
So whether or not we're proponents or it doesn't, it doesn't really, it may not matter, but
Eric Weinstein (17:27.020)
I, well, I do feel that there are people who've held things back and, uh, you know, died poor
Lex Fridman (17:33.580)
than they might've otherwise been.
Eric Weinstein (17:35.380)
We don't even know their names.
Eric Weinstein (17:37.380)
I don't think that we should discount the idea that having the smartest people showing
Eric Weinstein (17:43.740)
off how smart they are by what they've developed may be a terminal process.
Eric Weinstein (17:50.820)
I'm very mindful in particular of a beautiful letter that Edward Teller of all people wrote
Eric Weinstein (17:57.240)
to Leo Zillard and where Zillard was trying to figure out how to control the use of atomic
Eric Weinstein (18:02.060)
weaponry at the end of world war II and teller rather strangely because many of us view him
Eric Weinstein (18:08.020)
as a monster, um, showed some, a very advanced moral thinking talking about the slim chance
Lex Fridman (18:15.060)
we have for survival and that the only hope is to make Warren thinkable.
Eric Weinstein (18:19.100)
I do think that not enough of us feel in our gut what it is we are playing with when we
Lex Fridman (18:24.900)
are working on technical problems.
Lex Fridman (18:26.660)
And I would recommend to anyone who hasn't seen it, a movie called the bridge over the
Eric Weinstein (18:31.500)
bridge on the river Kwai about, I believe captured British POWs who just in a desire
Eric Weinstein (18:38.260)
to do a bridge well, end up over collaborating with their Japanese captors.
Eric Weinstein (18:43.180)
Well now you're making me a question the unrestricted open discussion of ideas and AI.
Eric Weinstein (18:51.100)
I'm not saying I know the answer, I'm just saying that I could make a decent case for
Eric Weinstein (18:55.980)
either our need to talk about this and to become technologically focused on containing
Eric Weinstein (19:00.020)
it or need to stop talking about this and try to hope that the relatively small number
Eric Weinstein (19:06.840)
of highly adept individuals who are looking at these problems is small enough that we
Eric Weinstein (19:11.100)
should in fact be talking about how to contain them.
Eric Weinstein (19:14.060)
Well the way ideas, the way innovation happens, what new ideas develop, Newton with calculus,
Eric Weinstein (19:20.380)
whether if he was silent, the idea would be, would emerge elsewhere in the case of Newton
Lex Fridman (19:26.940)
of course.
Lex Fridman (19:27.940)
But in the case of AI, how small is the set of individuals out of which such ideas would
Lex Fridman (19:34.980)
arise?
Eric Weinstein (19:35.980)
Well the idea is that the researchers we know and those that we don't know who may live
Eric Weinstein (19:42.060)
in countries that don't wish us to know what level they're currently at are very disciplined
Eric Weinstein (19:47.100)
in keeping these things to themselves.
Eric Weinstein (19:50.540)
Of course I will point out that there's a religious school in Kerala that developed
Eric Weinstein (19:57.180)
something very close to the calculus, certainly in terms of infinite series in I guess religious
Eric Weinstein (1:00:01.560)
The opposite of that, let me say what comforts me sort of biology or engineering, uh, at
Lex Fridman (1:00:08.020)
the end of the day, does the thing work?
Lex Fridman (1:00:10.860)
Yeah.
Eric Weinstein (1:00:11.860)
You can test the crazies away and the crazy.
Eric Weinstein (1:00:15.580)
Well see now you're saying, but some ideas are truly crazy and some are, are actually
Eric Weinstein (1:00:19.700)
correct.
Lex Fridman (1:00:20.700)
So, well there's pre correct currently crazy.
Eric Weinstein (1:00:24.140)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:00:25.140)
Right.
Lex Fridman (1:00:26.140)
And so you don't want to get rid of everybody who's pre correct and currently crazy.
Eric Weinstein (1:00:30.020)
Um, the problem is, is that we don't have standards in general for trying to determine
Eric Weinstein (1:00:37.020)
who has to be put to the sword in terms of their career and who has to be protected,
Eric Weinstein (1:00:42.180)
uh, as some sort of giant time suck pain in the ass, uh, who may change everything.
Lex Fridman (1:00:47.940)
Do you think that's possible?
Lex Fridman (1:00:48.940)
Uh, creating a mechanism of those select?
Eric Weinstein (1:00:51.180)
Well, you're not going to like the answer, but here it comes.
Lex Fridman (1:00:53.860)
Oh boy.
Eric Weinstein (1:00:54.860)
It has to do with very human elements.
Lex Fridman (1:00:59.440)
We're trying to do this at the level of like rules and fairness.
Eric Weinstein (1:01:02.580)
That's not going to work cause the only thing that really understands this, you read the
Lex Fridman (1:01:10.980)
double helix?
Eric Weinstein (1:01:11.980)
It's a book.
Lex Fridman (1:01:12.980)
Oh, you have to read this book.
Eric Weinstein (1:01:16.140)
Not only did Jim Watson, uh, half discover this three dimensional structure of DNA, he's
Eric Weinstein (1:01:22.060)
also one hell of a writer before he became an ass, uh, that no, he's tried to destroy
Eric Weinstein (1:01:28.420)
his own reputation.
Lex Fridman (1:01:29.620)
I knew about the ass, I didn't know about the good writer.
Eric Weinstein (1:01:33.060)
Jim Watson is one of the most important people now living.
Lex Fridman (1:01:36.180)
And uh, as I've said before, Jim Watson is too important, a legacy to be left to Jim
Eric Weinstein (1:01:42.140)
Watson.
Lex Fridman (1:01:43.140)
Um, yeah, that book tells you more about what actually moves the dial, right?
Eric Weinstein (1:01:49.500)
There's another story about him, which I don't, don't agree with, which is that he stole everything
Lex Fridman (1:01:53.700)
from Rosalind Franklin.
Eric Weinstein (1:01:54.700)
I mean the, the problems that he had with Rosalind Franklin are real, but we should
Eric Weinstein (1:01:58.840)
actually honor that tension in our history by delving into it rather than having a simple
Eric Weinstein (1:02:04.260)
solution.
Eric Weinstein (1:02:05.260)
Jim Watson talks about Francis Crick being a pain in the ass that everybody secretly
Eric Weinstein (1:02:10.180)
knew was super brilliant.
Lex Fridman (1:02:12.840)
And there's an encounter between, uh, Chargaff, uh, who came up with the equimolar relations
Eric Weinstein (1:02:19.260)
between the nucleotides who should have gotten the structure of DNA and Watson and Crick.
Lex Fridman (1:02:25.140)
And you know, he talks about missing a shiver in the heartbeat of biology and stuff is so
Eric Weinstein (1:02:30.900)
gorgeous.
Lex Fridman (1:02:31.900)
It just makes you tremble even thinking about it.
Eric Weinstein (1:02:35.220)
Um, look, we know very often who is to be feared and we need to fund the people that
Lex Fridman (1:02:42.980)
we fear.
Eric Weinstein (1:02:45.160)
The people who are wasting our time need to be excluded from the conversation.
Lex Fridman (1:02:49.740)
You see, and you know, maybe we'll make some errors in both directions.
Lex Fridman (1:02:54.980)
But we have known our own people.
Eric Weinstein (1:02:58.200)
We know the pains in the asses that might work out and we know the people who are really
Eric Weinstein (1:03:02.500)
just blowhards who really have very little to contribute most of the time.
Lex Fridman (1:03:06.780)
It's not a hundred percent, but you're not going to get there with rules.
Eric Weinstein (1:03:10.140)
Right.
Lex Fridman (1:03:11.140)
It's a using some kind of instinct.
Eric Weinstein (1:03:12.620)
I mean, I, to be honest, I'm going to make you roll your eyes for a second, but uh, and
Eric Weinstein (1:03:18.500)
the first time I heard that there is a large community of people who believe the earth
Lex Fridman (1:03:21.760)
is flat actually made me pause and ask myself the question, why would there be such a community?
Lex Fridman (1:03:27.980)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:03:28.980)
Is it possible the earth is flat?
Lex Fridman (1:03:30.260)
So I had to like, wait a minute.
Eric Weinstein (1:03:33.140)
I mean, then you go through a thinking process that I think is really healthy.
Lex Fridman (1:03:37.620)
It ultimately ends up being a geometry thing.
Eric Weinstein (1:03:39.580)
I think, uh, it's an interesting, it's an interesting thought experiment at the very
Lex Fridman (1:03:43.340)
least.
Eric Weinstein (1:03:44.340)
Well, I don't, I do a different version of it.
Lex Fridman (1:03:46.540)
I say, why is this community stable?
Eric Weinstein (1:03:48.460)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:03:49.460)
That's a good, uh, way to analyze it.
Eric Weinstein (1:03:51.020)
Well, interesting that whatever we've done has not erased the community.
Lex Fridman (1:03:56.020)
So you know, they're taking a long shot bet that won't pan out, you know, maybe we just
Eric Weinstein (1:04:00.660)
haven't thought enough about the rationality of the square root of two and somebody brilliant
Lex Fridman (1:04:04.580)
will figure it out.
Lex Fridman (1:04:05.580)
Maybe we will eventually land one day on the surface of Jupiter and explore it, right?
Lex Fridman (1:04:11.540)
These are crazy things that will never happen.
Lex Fridman (1:04:14.220)
So much of social media operates by AI algorithms.
Lex Fridman (1:04:17.580)
You talked about this a little bit, uh, recommending the content you see.
Lex Fridman (1:04:21.980)
So on this idea of radical thought, how much should AI show you things you disagree with
Lex Fridman (1:04:28.180)
on Twitter and so on in a Twitter word verse in this question?
Eric Weinstein (1:04:34.460)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:04:35.460)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:04:36.460)
Cause you don't know the answer?
Lex Fridman (1:04:37.460)
No, no, no, no.
Eric Weinstein (1:04:38.460)
Look, we've been, they've pushed out this cognitive Lego to us that will just lead to
Lex Fridman (1:04:44.460)
madness.
Eric Weinstein (1:04:45.940)
It's good to be challenged with things that you disagree with.
Eric Weinstein (1:04:49.460)
The answer is no, it's good to be challenged with interesting things with which you currently
Eric Weinstein (1:04:53.900)
disagree, but that might be true.
Lex Fridman (1:04:56.700)
So I don't really care about whether or not I disagree with something or don't disagree.
Eric Weinstein (1:05:00.380)
I need to know why that particular disagreeable thing is being pushed out.
Lex Fridman (1:05:05.460)
Is it because it's likely to be true?
Lex Fridman (1:05:07.140)
Is it because, is there some reason?
Eric Weinstein (1:05:09.900)
Because I can write, I can write a computer generator, uh, to come up with an infinite
Eric Weinstein (1:05:14.380)
number of disagreeable statements that nobody needs to look at.
Lex Fridman (1:05:17.740)
So please, before you push things at me that are disagreeable, tell me why.
Eric Weinstein (1:05:22.920)
There is an aspect in which that question is quite dumb, especially because it's being
Eric Weinstein (1:05:26.220)
used to, uh, almost, um, uh, very generically by these different networks to say, well,
Eric Weinstein (1:05:34.140)
we're trying to work this out.
Lex Fridman (1:05:35.620)
But you know, basically, uh, how much do you see the value of seeing things, uh, you don't
Eric Weinstein (1:05:43.100)
like, not you disagree with, because it's very difficult to know exactly what you articulated,
Eric Weinstein (1:05:47.660)
which is, uh, the stuff that's important for you to consider that you disagree with.
Eric Weinstein (1:05:53.460)
That's really hard to figure out.
Lex Fridman (1:05:55.040)
The bottom line is this stuff you don't like.
Eric Weinstein (1:05:57.240)
If you're a, uh, uh, Hillary Clinton supporter, you may not want to, it might not make you
Lex Fridman (1:06:03.040)
feel good to see anything about Donald Trump.
Eric Weinstein (1:06:05.980)
That's the only thing algorithms can really optimize for currently.
Lex Fridman (1:06:08.420)
They really can't.
Eric Weinstein (1:06:09.420)
Now they can do better.
Lex Fridman (1:06:10.660)
This is where we're.
Lex Fridman (1:06:11.660)
You think so?
Eric Weinstein (1:06:12.660)
No, we're engaged in some moronic back and forth where I have no idea why people who
Eric Weinstein (1:06:21.660)
are capable of building Google, Facebook, Twitter are having us in these incredibly
Lex Fridman (1:06:27.580)
low level discussions.
Lex Fridman (1:06:28.940)
Do they not know any smart people?
Lex Fridman (1:06:31.260)
Do they not have the phone numbers of people who can elevate these discussions?
Eric Weinstein (1:06:36.140)
They do, but this, they're optimizing for a different thing and they're pushing those
Lex Fridman (1:06:41.220)
people out of those rooms.
Eric Weinstein (1:06:42.500)
They're, they're optimizing for things we can't see.
Lex Fridman (1:06:47.140)
And yes, profit is there.
Eric Weinstein (1:06:48.580)
Nobody, nobody's questioning that, but they're also optimizing for things like political
Lex Fridman (1:06:54.620)
control or the fact that they're doing business in Pakistan.
Lex Fridman (1:06:57.640)
And so they don't want to talk about all the things that they're going to be bending to
Lex Fridman (1:07:01.300)
in Pakistan.
Lex Fridman (1:07:03.340)
So we're involved in a fake discussion.
Lex Fridman (1:07:06.860)
You think so?
Lex Fridman (1:07:07.960)
You think these conversations at that depth are happening inside Google?
Lex Fridman (1:07:11.340)
You don't think they have some basic metrics under user engagements?
Eric Weinstein (1:07:15.820)
You're having a fake conversation with us guys.
Lex Fridman (1:07:18.320)
We know you're having a fake conversation.
Eric Weinstein (1:07:19.860)
I do not wish to be part of your fake conversation.
Eric Weinstein (1:07:23.700)
You know how to cool, you know, these units, you know, high availability, like nobody's
Eric Weinstein (1:07:28.980)
business.
Lex Fridman (1:07:29.980)
My Gmail never goes down.
Eric Weinstein (1:07:31.780)
Almost.
Lex Fridman (1:07:32.780)
So you think just because they can do incredible work on the software side with infrastructure,
Eric Weinstein (1:07:38.380)
they can also deal with some of these difficult questions about human behavior, human understanding.
Lex Fridman (1:07:46.420)
You're not.
Eric Weinstein (1:07:47.420)
I mean, I've seen the, I've seen the developers screens that people take shots of inside of
Lex Fridman (1:07:53.900)
Google.
Lex Fridman (1:07:55.380)
And I've heard stories inside of Facebook and Apple.
Lex Fridman (1:07:58.540)
We're not, we're engaged.
Eric Weinstein (1:08:00.720)
They're engaging us in the wrong conversations.
Lex Fridman (1:08:04.100)
We are not at this low level.
Eric Weinstein (1:08:06.220)
Here's one of my favorite questions.
Lex Fridman (1:08:08.260)
Why is every piece of hardware that I purchase in tech space equipped as a listening device?
Lex Fridman (1:08:17.340)
Where's my physical shutter to cover my lens?
Eric Weinstein (1:08:19.780)
We had this in the 1970s, cameras that had lens caps, you know, how much would it cost
Lex Fridman (1:08:26.060)
to have a security model pay five extra bucks?
Lex Fridman (1:08:29.900)
Why is my indicator light software controlled?
Lex Fridman (1:08:33.100)
Why when my camera is on, do I not see that the light is on by putting it as something
Lex Fridman (1:08:37.980)
that cannot be bypassed?
Lex Fridman (1:08:39.780)
Why have you set up my, all of my devices at some difficulty to yourselves as listening
Lex Fridman (1:08:45.460)
devices and we don't even talk about this.
Eric Weinstein (1:08:47.780)
This is, this thing is total fucking bullshit.
Lex Fridman (1:08:50.820)
Well, I hope these discussions are happening about privacy.
Lex Fridman (1:08:55.420)
Is there a more difficult thing you're giving them credit for?
Lex Fridman (1:08:57.100)
It's not just privacy.
Eric Weinstein (1:08:59.140)
It's about social control.
Lex Fridman (1:09:01.140)
We're talking about social control.
Lex Fridman (1:09:03.700)
Why do I not have controls over my own levers?
Eric Weinstein (1:09:07.260)
Just have a really cute UI where I can switch, I can dial things or I can at least see what
Eric Weinstein (1:09:11.780)
the algorithms are.
Lex Fridman (1:09:13.460)
You think that there is some deliberate choices being made here.
Eric Weinstein (1:09:17.540)
There's emergence and there is intention.
Lex Fridman (1:09:21.700)
There are two dimensions.
Eric Weinstein (1:09:23.000)
The vector does not collapse onto either axis, but the idea that anybody who suggests that
Lex Fridman (1:09:29.260)
intention is completely absent is a child.
Eric Weinstein (1:09:34.580)
That's really beautifully put and uh, like many things you've said is going to make me
Lex Fridman (1:09:38.820)
can I turn this around slightly?
Eric Weinstein (1:09:40.900)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:09:41.900)
I sit down with you and you say that you're obsessed with my feed.
Eric Weinstein (1:09:45.660)
I don't even know what my feed is.
Lex Fridman (1:09:47.740)
What are you seeing that I'm not?
Eric Weinstein (1:09:49.700)
I was obsessively looking through your feed on Twitter because it was really enjoyable
Lex Fridman (1:09:54.860)
because there's the Tom layer element is the humor in it.
Eric Weinstein (1:09:58.300)
By the way, that feed is Eric R. Weinstein on Twitter at Eric R. Weinstein.
Lex Fridman (1:10:03.180)
No, but seriously, why?
Lex Fridman (1:10:06.720)
Why did I find it enjoyable or what was I seeing?
Lex Fridman (1:10:10.180)
What are you looking for?
Lex Fridman (1:10:11.180)
Why are we doing this?
Lex Fridman (1:10:13.020)
What is this podcast about?
Eric Weinstein (1:10:14.780)
I know you've got all these interesting people.
Lex Fridman (1:10:16.460)
I'm just some guy who's sort of a podcast guest.
Eric Weinstein (1:10:18.900)
Sort of a podcast.
Lex Fridman (1:10:21.420)
You're not even wearing a tie.
Eric Weinstein (1:10:22.420)
I mean, it's not even a serious interview.
Eric Weinstein (1:10:25.740)
I'm searching for meaning, for happiness, for a dopamine rush, so short term, long term.
Lex Fridman (1:10:34.540)
And how are you finding your way to me?
Lex Fridman (1:10:37.340)
I don't honestly know what I'm doing to reach you.
Eric Weinstein (1:10:41.460)
The representing ideas which feel common sense to me and not many people are speaking.
Lex Fridman (1:10:48.000)
So it's kind of like the intellectual dark web folks, right?
Eric Weinstein (1:10:54.700)
These folks from Sam Harris to Jordan Peterson to yourself are saying things where you're
Lex Fridman (1:11:00.580)
like saying, look, there's an elephant and he's not wearing any clothes.
Lex Fridman (1:11:05.420)
And I say, yeah, yeah, let's have more of that conversation.
Lex Fridman (1:11:09.580)
That's how I'm finding you.
Eric Weinstein (1:11:10.940)
I'm desperate to try to change the conversation we're having.
Lex Fridman (1:11:14.700)
I'm very worried we've got an election in 2020.
Eric Weinstein (1:11:17.340)
I don't think we can afford four more years of a misinterpreted message, which is what
Lex Fridman (1:11:23.960)
Donald Trump was.
Lex Fridman (1:11:25.820)
And I don't want the destruction of our institutions.
Lex Fridman (1:11:28.420)
They all seem hell bent on destroying themselves.
Lex Fridman (1:11:30.740)
So I'm trying to save theoretical physics, trying to save the New York Times, trying
Lex Fridman (1:11:34.920)
to save our various processes.
Lex Fridman (1:11:38.320)
And I think it feels delusional to me that this is falling to a tiny group of people
Eric Weinstein (1:11:44.540)
who are willing to speak out without getting so freaked out that everything they say will
Eric Weinstein (1:11:49.780)
be misinterpreted and that their lives will be ruined through the process.
Eric Weinstein (1:11:52.980)
I mean, I think we're in an absolutely bananas period of time and I don't believe it should
Eric Weinstein (1:11:57.580)
fall to such a tiny number of shoulders to shoulder this way.
Lex Fridman (1:12:02.580)
So I have to ask you on the capitalism side, you mentioned that technology is killing capitalism
Eric Weinstein (1:12:08.140)
or it has effects that are unintended, well, not unintended, but not what economists would
Lex Fridman (1:12:15.240)
predict or speak of capitalism creating.
Eric Weinstein (1:12:18.740)
I just want to talk to you about in general, the effect of even then artificial intelligence
Eric Weinstein (1:12:23.540)
or technology automation taking away jobs and these kinds of things and what you think
Eric Weinstein (1:12:28.980)
is the way to alleviate that, whether the Andrew Ng presidential candidate with universal
Lex Fridman (1:12:34.240)
basic income, UBI, what are your thoughts there?
Lex Fridman (1:12:38.780)
How do we fight off the negative effects of technology that...
Lex Fridman (1:12:41.940)
All right, you're a software guy, right?
Eric Weinstein (1:12:43.980)
Yep.
Eric Weinstein (1:12:44.980)
A human being is a worker is an old idea, a human being has a worker is a different
Lex Fridman (1:12:52.180)
object, right?
Lex Fridman (1:12:53.180)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:12:54.180)
So if you think about object oriented programming as a paradigm, a human being has a worker
Lex Fridman (1:12:59.420)
and a human being has a soul.
Eric Weinstein (1:13:01.940)
We're talking about the fact that for a period of time, the worker that a human being has
Lex Fridman (1:13:07.740)
was in a position to feed the soul that a human being has.
Eric Weinstein (1:13:11.700)
However, we have two separate claims on the value in society.
Eric Weinstein (1:13:18.300)
One is as a worker and the other is as a soul and the soul needs sustenance, it needs dignity,
Eric Weinstein (1:13:23.460)
it needs meaning, it needs purpose.
Eric Weinstein (1:13:27.500)
As long as your means of support is not highly repetitive, I think you have a while to go
Eric Weinstein (1:13:34.700)
before you need to start worrying.
Lex Fridman (1:13:37.020)
And if what you do is highly repetitive and it's not terribly generative, you are in the
Eric Weinstein (1:13:41.820)
cross hairs of for loops and while loops.
Lex Fridman (1:13:46.080)
And that's what computers excel at, repetitive behavior and when I say repetitive, I may
Eric Weinstein (1:13:51.940)
mean things that have never happened through combinatorial possibilities, but as long as
Lex Fridman (1:13:55.340)
it has a looped characteristic to it, you're in trouble.
Eric Weinstein (1:13:59.080)
We are seeing a massive push towards socialism because capitalists are slow to address the
Eric Weinstein (1:14:07.240)
fact that a worker may not be able to make claims, a relatively undistinguished median
Eric Weinstein (1:14:13.700)
member of our society is still has needs to reproduce, needs to have to dignity.
Lex Fridman (1:14:20.900)
And when capitalism abandons the median individual or the bottom 10th or whatever it's going
Eric Weinstein (1:14:28.900)
to do, it's flirting with revolution.
Lex Fridman (1:14:32.780)
And what concerns me is that the capitalists aren't sufficiently capitalistic to understand
Eric Weinstein (1:14:37.660)
this.
Eric Weinstein (1:14:39.380)
You really want to court authoritarian control in our society because you can't see that
Eric Weinstein (1:14:45.200)
people may not be able to defend themselves in the marketplace because the marginal product
Lex Fridman (1:14:50.020)
of their labor was too low to feed their dignity as a soul.
Lex Fridman (1:14:55.140)
So my great concern is that our free society has to do with the fact that we are self organized.
Eric Weinstein (1:15:02.320)
I remember looking down from my office in Manhattan when Lehman brothers collapsed and
Eric Weinstein (1:15:06.520)
thinking who's going to tell all these people that they need to show up at work when they
Lex Fridman (1:15:12.000)
don't have a financial system to incentivize them to show up at work.
Lex Fridman (1:15:17.520)
So my complaint is first of all, not with the socialists, but with the capitalists,
Lex Fridman (1:15:22.040)
which is you guys are being idiots.
Eric Weinstein (1:15:24.640)
You're courting revolution by continuing to harp on the same old ideas that, well, you
Lex Fridman (1:15:30.780)
know, try, try harder, bootstrap yourself.
Eric Weinstein (1:15:32.820)
Yeah, to an extent that works to an extent, but we are clearly headed in a place that
Eric Weinstein (1:15:38.000)
there's nothing that ties together our need to contribute and our need to consume.
Lex Fridman (1:15:45.540)
And that may not be provided by capitalism because it may have been a temporary phenomena.
Lex Fridman (1:15:49.540)
So check out my article on anthropic capitalism and the new gimmick economy.
Eric Weinstein (1:15:55.480)
I think people are late getting the wake up call and we would be doing a better job saving
Eric Weinstein (1:16:00.320)
capitalism from itself because I don't want this done under authoritarian control.
Lex Fridman (1:16:05.840)
And the more we insist that everybody who's not thriving in our society during their reproductive
Lex Fridman (1:16:11.080)
years in order to have a family is failing at a personal level.
Eric Weinstein (1:16:15.280)
I mean, what a disgusting thing that we're saying.
Lex Fridman (1:16:18.840)
What horrible message who, who the hell have we become that we've so bought into the Chicago
Eric Weinstein (1:16:23.440)
model that we can't see the humanity that we're destroying in that process.
Lex Fridman (1:16:28.220)
And it's, I hate, I hate the thought of communism.
Eric Weinstein (1:16:31.240)
I really do.
Lex Fridman (1:16:32.240)
My family has flirted with it decades past.
Eric Weinstein (1:16:34.640)
It's a wrong, bad idea, but we are going to need to figure out how to make sure that those
Lex Fridman (1:16:39.820)
souls are nourished and respected and capitalism better have an answer.
Lex Fridman (1:16:45.160)
And I'm betting on capitalism, but I've got to tell you, I'm pretty disappointed with
Lex Fridman (1:16:48.120)
my team.
Lex Fridman (1:16:49.120)
So you're still on the capitalism team.
Lex Fridman (1:16:52.200)
You just, uh, there's a theme here.
Eric Weinstein (1:16:55.280)
Radical capitalism.
Lex Fridman (1:16:56.280)
Hyper capitalism.
Eric Weinstein (1:16:57.280)
Yeah.
Eric Weinstein (1:16:58.280)
I want, I think hyper capitalism is going to have to be coupled to hyper socialism.
Eric Weinstein (1:17:02.060)
You need to allow the most productive people to create wonders and you've got to stop bogging
Lex Fridman (1:17:07.600)
them down with all of these extra nice requirements.
Eric Weinstein (1:17:11.040)
You know, nice is dead.
Lex Fridman (1:17:13.360)
Good has a future.
Eric Weinstein (1:17:14.760)
Nice doesn't have a future because nice ends up with, with gulags.
Lex Fridman (1:17:18.680)
Damn, that's a good line.
Eric Weinstein (1:17:21.080)
Okay.
Lex Fridman (1:17:22.080)
Last question.
Eric Weinstein (1:17:23.080)
You tweeted today a simple, quite insightful equation saying, uh, imagine that every unit
Lex Fridman (1:17:30.520)
F of fame you picked up as stalkers and H haters.
Lex Fridman (1:17:35.760)
So I imagine S and H are dependent on your path to fame perhaps a little bit.
Lex Fridman (1:17:39.640)
Well, it's not as simple.
Eric Weinstein (1:17:40.640)
I mean, people always take these things literally when you have like 280 characters to explain
Lex Fridman (1:17:44.520)
yourself.
Lex Fridman (1:17:45.520)
So you mean that that's not a mathematical, uh, no, there's no law.
Lex Fridman (1:17:50.520)
Oh, okay.
Eric Weinstein (1:17:51.520)
All right.
Lex Fridman (1:17:52.520)
So I put the word imagine because I still have a mathematician's desire for precision.
Eric Weinstein (1:17:56.760)
Imagine that this were true, but it was a beautiful way to imagine that there is a law
Lex Fridman (1:18:00.880)
that has those variables in it.
Lex Fridman (1:18:03.720)
And uh, you've become quite famous these days.
Lex Fridman (1:18:06.880)
So how do you yourself optimize that equation with the peculiar kind of fame that you have
Lex Fridman (1:18:12.640)
gathered along the way?
Lex Fridman (1:18:13.720)
I want to be kinder.
Eric Weinstein (1:18:14.760)
I want to be kinder to myself.
Lex Fridman (1:18:16.160)
I want to be kinder to others.
Eric Weinstein (1:18:17.380)
I want to be able to have heart, compassion, or these things are really important.
Lex Fridman (1:18:24.920)
And uh, I have a pretty spectrumy kind of approach to analysis.
Eric Weinstein (1:18:28.960)
I'm quite literal.
Lex Fridman (1:18:29.960)
I can go full rain man on you at any given moment.
Eric Weinstein (1:18:32.920)
No, I can't.
Lex Fridman (1:18:33.920)
I can't.
Eric Weinstein (1:18:34.920)
Uh, it's facultative autism if you like, and people are gonna get angry because they want
Lex Fridman (1:18:37.960)
autism to be respected.
Lex Fridman (1:18:39.960)
So when you see me coding or you see me doing mathematics, I'm, you know, I speak with speech
Eric Weinstein (1:18:47.000)
apnea, uh, be right down to dinner, you know, we have to try to integrate ourselves and
Eric Weinstein (1:18:54.360)
those tensions between, you know, it's sort of back to us as a worker and us as a soul.
Lex Fridman (1:19:00.920)
Many of us are optimizing one to the, at the expense of the other.
Lex Fridman (1:19:06.000)
And I struggle with social media and I struggle with people making threats against our families
Lex Fridman (1:19:11.720)
and I struggle with, um, just how much pain people are in.
Lex Fridman (1:19:15.840)
And if there's one message I would like to push out there, um, you're responsible, everybody,
Eric Weinstein (1:19:21.960)
all of us, myself included with struggling, struggle, struggle mightily because you, it's
Eric Weinstein (1:19:27.640)
nobody else's job to do your struggle for you.
Eric Weinstein (1:19:30.880)
Now with that said, if you're struggling and you're trying and you're trying to figure
Eric Weinstein (1:19:34.360)
out how to better yourself and where you failed and where you've let down your family, your
Lex Fridman (1:19:38.640)
friends, your workers, all this kind of stuff, give yourself a break.
Eric Weinstein (1:19:43.520)
You know, if, if, if it's not working out, I have a lifelong relationship with failure
Lex Fridman (1:19:48.880)
and success.
Eric Weinstein (1:19:49.880)
There's been no period of my life where both haven't been present in one form or another.
Lex Fridman (1:19:56.300)
And I do wish to say that a lot of times people think this is glamorous.
Eric Weinstein (1:20:00.680)
I'm about to go, you know, do a show with Sam Harris.
Lex Fridman (1:20:04.640)
People are going to listen in on two guys having a conversation on stage.
Eric Weinstein (1:20:07.360)
It's completely crazy when I'm always trying to figure out how to make sure that those
Lex Fridman (1:20:10.180)
people get maximum value.
Lex Fridman (1:20:12.600)
And uh, that's why I'm doing this podcast, you know, just give yourself a break.
Lex Fridman (1:20:18.360)
You owe us, you owe us your struggle.
Eric Weinstein (1:20:20.580)
You don't owe your family or your coworkers or your lovers or your family members success.
Eric Weinstein (1:20:26.200)
Um, as long as you're in there and you're picking yourself up, recognize that this,
Eric Weinstein (1:20:31.420)
this new situation with the economy that doesn't have the juice to sustain our institutions
Eric Weinstein (1:20:37.040)
has caused the people who've risen to the top of those institutions to get quite brutal
Lex Fridman (1:20:41.780)
and cruel.
Lex Fridman (1:20:43.800)
Everybody is lying at the moment.
Eric Weinstein (1:20:45.400)
Nobody's really a truth teller.
Lex Fridman (1:20:47.280)
Um, try to keep your humanity about you.
Eric Weinstein (1:20:50.280)
Try to recognize that if you're failing, if things aren't where you want them to be and
Eric Weinstein (1:20:55.200)
you're struggling and you're trying to figure out what you're doing wrong, which you could
Eric Weinstein (1:20:57.800)
do, it's not necessarily all your fault.
Lex Fridman (1:21:01.360)
We are in a global situation.
Eric Weinstein (1:21:02.960)
I have not met the people who are honest, kind, good, successful.
Lex Fridman (1:21:08.640)
Nobody that I've met is checking all the boxes.
Eric Weinstein (1:21:13.040)
Nobody's getting all tens.
Lex Fridman (1:21:14.580)
So I just think that's an important message that doesn't get pushed out enough.
Eric Weinstein (1:21:18.960)
Either people want to hold society responsible for their failures, which is not reasonable.
Eric Weinstein (1:21:24.040)
You have to struggle, you have to try, or they want to say you're a hundred percent
Eric Weinstein (1:21:27.740)
responsible for your failures, which is total nonsense.
Lex Fridman (1:21:31.960)
Beautifully put.
Eric Weinstein (1:21:32.960)
Eric, thank you so much for talking today.
Lex Fridman (1:21:33.960)
Thanks for having me, buddy.
Eric Weinstein (20:05.980)
prayer and rhyme and prose.
Lex Fridman (20:10.420)
So it's not that Newton had any ability to hold that back and I don't really believe
Eric Weinstein (20:16.300)
that we have an ability to hold it back.
Eric Weinstein (20:17.580)
I do think that we could change the proportion of the time we spend worrying about the effects
Eric Weinstein (20:23.020)
of what if we are successful rather than simply trying to succeed and hope that we'll be able
Lex Fridman (20:26.420)
to contain things later.
Eric Weinstein (20:27.900)
Beautifully put.
Lex Fridman (20:29.300)
So on the idea of intelligence, what form, treading cautiously as we've agreed as we
Eric Weinstein (20:35.660)
tumbled down the hill, what form...
Lex Fridman (20:38.060)
We can't stop ourselves, can we?
Eric Weinstein (20:39.620)
We cannot.
Lex Fridman (20:42.000)
What form do you see it taking?
Lex Fridman (20:43.540)
So one example, Facebook, Google, do want to, I don't know a better word, you want to
Eric Weinstein (20:52.040)
influence users to behave a certain way and so that's one kind of example of how intelligence
Eric Weinstein (20:59.580)
is systems perhaps modifying the behavior of these intelligent human beings in order
Lex Fridman (21:05.940)
to sell more product of different kinds.
Lex Fridman (21:08.460)
But do you see other examples of this actually emerging in...
Eric Weinstein (21:13.060)
Just take any parasitic system, make sure that there's some way in which that there's
Eric Weinstein (21:18.680)
differential success, heritability, and variation.
Lex Fridman (21:25.180)
And those are the magic ingredients and if you really wanted to build a nightmare machine,
Eric Weinstein (21:29.380)
make sure that the system that expresses the variability has a spanning set so that it
Lex Fridman (21:36.780)
can learn to arbitrary levels by making it sufficiently expressive.
Eric Weinstein (21:41.920)
That's your nightmare.
Lex Fridman (21:43.240)
So it's your nightmare, but it could also be, it's a really powerful mechanism by which
Eric Weinstein (21:49.060)
to create, well, powerful systems.
Lex Fridman (21:52.360)
So are you more worried about the negative direction that might go versus the positive?
Lex Fridman (21:59.100)
So you said parasitic, but that doesn't necessarily need to be what the system converges towards.
Lex Fridman (22:05.140)
It could be, what is it?
Lex Fridman (22:07.780)
And the dividing line between parasitism and symbiosis is not so clear.
Lex Fridman (22:13.700)
That's what they tell me about marriage.
Eric Weinstein (22:15.060)
I'm still single, so I don't know.
Eric Weinstein (22:17.540)
Well yeah, we could go into that too, but no, I think we have to appreciate, are you
Lex Fridman (22:27.580)
infected by your own mitochondria?
Lex Fridman (22:30.660)
Right.
Lex Fridman (22:31.660)
Right?
Lex Fridman (22:32.660)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (22:33.660)
So in marriage, you fear the loss of independence, but even though the American therapeutic community
Eric Weinstein (22:42.580)
may be very concerned about codependence, what's to say that codependence isn't what's
Eric Weinstein (22:47.420)
necessary to have a stable relationship in which to raise children who are maximally
Eric Weinstein (22:52.780)
case selected and require incredible amounts of care because you have to wait 13 years
Eric Weinstein (22:57.260)
before there's any reproductive payout and most of us don't want our 13 year olds having
Lex Fridman (23:00.700)
kids.
Eric Weinstein (23:01.700)
That's a very tricky situation to analyze and I would say that predators and parasites
Eric Weinstein (23:08.940)
drive much of our evolution and I don't know whether to be angry at them or thank them.
Eric Weinstein (23:14.020)
Well ultimately, I mean nobody knows the meaning of life or what even happiness is, but there
Lex Fridman (23:19.620)
is some metrics.
Lex Fridman (23:20.620)
They didn't tell you?
Lex Fridman (23:21.620)
They didn't.
Eric Weinstein (23:22.620)
They didn't.
Eric Weinstein (23:23.620)
That's why all the poetry and books are about, you know, there's some metrics under which
Eric Weinstein (23:29.460)
you can kind of measure how good it is that these AI systems are roaming about.
Lex Fridman (23:35.060)
So you're more nervous about software than you are optimistic about ideas of, yeah, self
Eric Weinstein (23:44.380)
replicating largely.
Lex Fridman (23:45.380)
I don't think we've really felt where we are.
Eric Weinstein (23:50.420)
You know, occasionally we get a wake up, 9 11 was so anomalous compared to everything
Eric Weinstein (23:57.660)
else we've experienced on American soil that it came to us as a complete shock that that
Eric Weinstein (24:03.540)
was even a possibility.
Lex Fridman (24:05.060)
What it really was was a highly creative and determined R and D team deep in the bowels
Eric Weinstein (24:11.620)
of Afghanistan showing us that we had certain exploits that we were open to that nobody
Lex Fridman (24:18.200)
had chosen to express.
Eric Weinstein (24:19.380)
I can think of several of these things that I don't talk about publicly that just seem
Eric Weinstein (24:23.700)
to have to do with, um, how relatively unimaginative those who wish to cause havoc and destruction
Eric Weinstein (24:32.140)
have been up until now.
Lex Fridman (24:33.860)
But the great mystery of our time of this particular little era is how remarkably stable
Eric Weinstein (24:43.780)
we've been since 1945 when we demonstrated the ability to use a nuclear weapons in anger.
Lex Fridman (24:50.780)
And we don't know why things like that haven't happened since then.
Eric Weinstein (24:58.440)
We've had several close calls, we've had mistakes, we've had a brinksmanship.
Lex Fridman (25:03.780)
And what's now happened is that we've settled into a sense that, Oh, it's, it'll always
Eric Weinstein (25:09.820)
be nothing.
Eric Weinstein (25:10.820)
It's been so long since something was at that level of danger that we've got a wrong idea
Eric Weinstein (25:20.260)
in our head.
Lex Fridman (25:21.260)
And that's why when I went on the Ben Shapiro show, I talked about the need to resume above
Eric Weinstein (25:25.500)
ground testing of nuclear devices because we have people whose developmental experience
Eric Weinstein (25:30.460)
suggests that when let's say Donald Trump and North Korea engage on Twitter, Oh, it's
Eric Weinstein (25:37.580)
nothing.
Lex Fridman (25:38.580)
It's just posturing.
Eric Weinstein (25:39.580)
Everybody's just in it for money.
Eric Weinstein (25:41.140)
There's, there's an, a sense that people are in a video game mode, which has been the right
Eric Weinstein (25:46.860)
call since 1945.
Lex Fridman (25:49.500)
We've been mostly in video game mode.
Eric Weinstein (25:51.140)
It's amazing.
Lex Fridman (25:52.140)
So you're worried about a generation which has not seen any existential.
Eric Weinstein (25:57.140)
We've lived under it.
Lex Fridman (25:58.300)
You see, you're younger.
Eric Weinstein (26:00.260)
I don't know if, if, and again, you came from, from Moscow.
Eric Weinstein (26:05.860)
There was a TV show called the day after that had a huge effect on a generation growing
Eric Weinstein (26:13.540)
up in the U S and it talked about what life would be like after a nuclear exchange.
Eric Weinstein (26:21.020)
We have not gone through an embodied experience collectively where we've thought about this.
Lex Fridman (26:27.500)
And I think it's one of the most irresponsible things that the elders among us have done,
Eric Weinstein (26:32.780)
which is to provide this beautiful garden in which the thorns are cut off of the, of
Eric Weinstein (26:41.820)
the Rose bushes and all of the edges are rounded and sanded.
Lex Fridman (26:47.860)
And so people have developed this, this totally unreal idea, which is everything's going to
Eric Weinstein (26:52.140)
be just fine.
Lex Fridman (26:54.240)
And do I think that my leading concern is AGI or my leading concern is a thermonuclear
Lex Fridman (27:01.180)
exchange or gene drives or any one of these things?
Eric Weinstein (27:04.060)
I don't know, but I know that our time here in this very long experiment here is finite
Eric Weinstein (27:11.780)
because the toys that we've built are so impressive and the wisdom to accompany them has not materialized.
Lex Fridman (27:19.340)
And I think it's, we actually got a wisdom uptick since 1945.
Eric Weinstein (27:24.300)
We had a lot of dangerous skilled players on the world stage who nevertheless, no matter
Lex Fridman (27:29.980)
how bad they were managed to not embroil us in something that we couldn't come back from
Eric Weinstein (27:38.140)
the cold war.
Eric Weinstein (27:39.140)
Yeah, and the distance from the cold war, you know, I'm very mindful of a, there was
Eric Weinstein (27:46.660)
a Russian tradition actually of on your wedding day, going to visit a memorial to those who
Lex Fridman (27:54.980)
gave their lives.
Lex Fridman (27:55.980)
Can you imagine this where you, on the happiest day of your life, you go and you pay homage
Lex Fridman (28:02.800)
to the people who fought and died in the battle of Stalingrad.
Eric Weinstein (28:08.980)
I'm not a huge fan of communism, I got to say, but there were a couple of things that
Lex Fridman (28:13.460)
the Russians did that were really positive in the Soviet era.
Lex Fridman (28:18.860)
And I think trying to let people know how serious life actually is, is the Russian model
Lex Fridman (28:25.060)
of seriousness is better than the American model.
Lex Fridman (28:28.660)
And maybe like you mentioned, there was a small echo of that after 9 11.
Lex Fridman (28:34.340)
But we wouldn't let it form.
Eric Weinstein (28:36.180)
We talk about 9 11, but it's 9 12 that really moved the needle when we were all just there
Lex Fridman (28:42.860)
and nobody wanted to speak.
Eric Weinstein (28:46.140)
We witnessed something super serious and we didn't want to run to our computers and blast
Lex Fridman (28:55.580)
out our deep thoughts and our feelings.
Lex Fridman (28:59.260)
And it was profound because we woke up briefly, you know, I talk about the gated institutional
Lex Fridman (29:05.740)
narrative that sort of programs our lives.
Eric Weinstein (29:08.980)
I've seen it break three times in my life, one of which was the election of Donald Trump.
Eric Weinstein (29:15.260)
Another time was the fall of Lehman Brothers when everybody who knew that Bear Stearns
Eric Weinstein (29:21.300)
wasn't that important knew that Lehman Brothers met AIG was next.
Lex Fridman (29:27.380)
And the other one was 9 11.
Lex Fridman (29:29.460)
And so if I'm 53 years old and I only remember three times that the global narrative was
Eric Weinstein (29:35.260)
really interrupted, that tells you how much we've been on top of developing events.
Eric Weinstein (29:42.980)
You know, I mean we had the Murrow federal building explosion, but it didn't cause the
Lex Fridman (29:46.580)
narrative to break.
Eric Weinstein (29:47.580)
It wasn't profound enough.
Eric Weinstein (29:49.580)
Around 9 12 we started to wake up out of our slumber and the powers that be did not want
Eric Weinstein (29:58.820)
to coming together.
Lex Fridman (29:59.820)
They, you know, the admonition was go shopping.
Lex Fridman (30:03.780)
And the powers that be was what is that force as opposed to blaming individuals?
Lex Fridman (30:07.820)
We don't know.
Lex Fridman (30:08.920)
So whatever that, whatever that force is, there's a component of it that's emergent
Lex Fridman (30:13.460)
and there's a component of it that's deliberate.
Lex Fridman (30:15.780)
So give yourself a portfolio with two components.
Eric Weinstein (30:18.840)
Some amount of it is emergent, but some amount of it is also an understanding that if people
Eric Weinstein (30:23.900)
come together, they become an incredible force.
Lex Fridman (30:27.880)
And what you're seeing right now I think is there are forces that are trying to come together
Lex Fridman (30:34.660)
and there are forces that are trying to push things apart.
Lex Fridman (30:39.500)
And you know, one of them is the globalist narrative versus the national narrative where
Eric Weinstein (30:43.540)
to the global, uh, globalist perspective, uh, the nation nations are bad things in essence
Eric Weinstein (30:50.080)
that they're temporary, they're nationalistic, they're jingoistic, it's all negative to people
Eric Weinstein (30:56.300)
in the national, more in the national idiom, they're saying, look, this is where I pay
Lex Fridman (30:59.420)
my taxes.
Eric Weinstein (31:00.420)
This is where I do my army service.
Lex Fridman (31:02.660)
This is where I have a vote.
Eric Weinstein (31:04.340)
This is where I have a passport.
Eric Weinstein (31:06.180)
Who the hell are you to tell me that because you've moved into someplace that you can make
Eric Weinstein (31:10.220)
money globally, that you've chosen to abandon other people to whom you have a special and
Lex Fridman (31:15.580)
elevated duty.
Lex Fridman (31:16.580)
And I think that these competing narratives have been pushing towards the global perspective,
Eric Weinstein (31:22.140)
uh, from the elite and a larger and larger number of disenfranchised people are saying,
Eric Weinstein (31:27.660)
hey, I actually live in a, in a place and I have laws and I speak a language, I have
Lex Fridman (31:32.060)
a culture.
Lex Fridman (31:33.660)
And who are you to tell me that because you can profit in some far away land that my obligations
Lex Fridman (31:40.300)
to my fellow countrymen are so, so much diminished.
Lex Fridman (31:43.260)
So these tensions between nations and so on, ultimately you see being proud of your country
Lex Fridman (31:47.940)
and so on, which creates potentially the kind of things that led to wars and so on.
Eric Weinstein (31:53.700)
They, they ultimately, it is human nature and it is good for us for wake up calls of
Lex Fridman (31:58.420)
different kinds.
Eric Weinstein (31:59.420)
Well, I think that these are tensions and my point isn't, I mean, nationalism run amok
Lex Fridman (32:05.020)
is a nightmare and internationalism run amok is a nightmare.
Lex Fridman (32:09.980)
And the problem is we're trying to push these pendulums, uh, to some place where they're
Eric Weinstein (32:16.820)
somewhat balanced, where we, we have a higher duty of care to those, uh, who share our log,
Eric Weinstein (32:24.260)
our laws and our citizenship, but we don't forget our duties of care to the global system.
Eric Weinstein (32:30.940)
I would think this is elementary, but the problem that we're facing concerns the ability
Eric Weinstein (32:37.660)
for some to profit at the, by abandoning their obligations, uh, to others within their system.
Lex Fridman (32:45.540)
And that's what we've had for decades.
Eric Weinstein (32:48.580)
You mentioned nuclear weapons.
Eric Weinstein (32:50.220)
I was hoping to get answers from you since one of the many things you've done as a economics
Lex Fridman (32:55.860)
and maybe you can understand human behavior of why the heck we haven't blown each other
Lex Fridman (33:00.500)
up yet.
Lex Fridman (33:01.500)
But okay.
Lex Fridman (33:02.500)
So, uh, we'll get back.
Eric Weinstein (33:03.500)
I don't know the answer.
Lex Fridman (33:04.500)
Yes.
Eric Weinstein (33:05.500)
It's a, it's a fast.
Lex Fridman (33:06.500)
It's really important to say that we really don't know.
Eric Weinstein (33:07.500)
A mild uptick in wisdom.
Lex Fridman (33:09.500)
A mild uptick in wisdom.
Eric Weinstein (33:10.820)
Well, Steven Pinker, who I've talked with has a lot of really good ideas about why,
Lex Fridman (33:17.300)
but I don't trust his optimism.
Eric Weinstein (33:20.060)
Listen, I'm Russian, so I never trust a guy who was that optimistic.
Lex Fridman (33:24.860)
No, no, no.
Eric Weinstein (33:25.860)
It's just that you're talking about a guy who's looking at a system in which more and
Eric Weinstein (33:31.260)
more of the kinetic energy like war has been turned into potential energy, like unused
Eric Weinstein (33:37.740)
nuclear weapons.
Lex Fridman (33:38.740)
Beautifully put.
Eric Weinstein (33:39.740)
You know, now I'm looking at that system and I'm saying, okay, well, if you don't have
Lex Fridman (33:42.900)
a potential energy term, then everything's just getting better and better.
Eric Weinstein (33:46.060)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (33:47.060)
Wow.
Eric Weinstein (33:48.060)
That's beautifully put.
Lex Fridman (33:49.060)
Only a physicist could.
Eric Weinstein (33:50.060)
Okay.
Lex Fridman (33:51.060)
I'm not a physicist.
Lex Fridman (33:52.060)
Is that a dirty word?
Lex Fridman (33:55.060)
No, no.
Eric Weinstein (33:56.060)
I wish I were a physicist.
Lex Fridman (33:57.060)
Me too.
Eric Weinstein (33:58.060)
My dad's a physicist.
Lex Fridman (33:59.060)
I'm trying to live up that probably for the rest of my life.
Eric Weinstein (34:02.900)
He's probably gonna listen to this too.
Lex Fridman (34:04.500)
So.
Eric Weinstein (34:05.500)
He did.
Lex Fridman (34:06.500)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (34:07.500)
So your friend, Sam Harris, uh, worries a lot about the existential threat of AI.
Eric Weinstein (34:13.940)
Not in the way that you've described, but in the more, well, he hangs out with Elon.
Eric Weinstein (34:18.060)
I don't know Elon.
Lex Fridman (34:20.380)
So are you worried about that kind of, uh, you know, about the, um, about either robotic
Eric Weinstein (34:30.020)
systems or, you know, traditionally defined AI systems essentially becoming a super intelligent,
Eric Weinstein (34:35.660)
much more intelligent than human beings and, uh, getting, well, they already are and they're
Eric Weinstein (34:40.700)
not when, when seen as a, um, a collective, you mean, well, I mean, I, I can mean all
Eric Weinstein (34:47.420)
sorts of things, but certainly many of the things that we thought were peculiar to general
Eric Weinstein (34:54.420)
intelligence or do not require general intelligence.
Lex Fridman (34:57.340)
So that's been one of the big awakenings that you can write a pretty convincing sports story
Eric Weinstein (35:04.160)
from stats alone, uh, without needing to have watched the game.
Lex Fridman (35:10.700)
So you know, is it possible to write lively pros about politics?
Eric Weinstein (35:13.900)
Yeah, no, not yet.
Lex Fridman (35:17.580)
So we were sort of all over the map.
Eric Weinstein (35:20.480)
One of the, one of the things about chess that you'll, there's a question I once asked
Eric Weinstein (35:24.020)
on Quora that didn't get a lot of response, which was what is the greatest brilliancy
Eric Weinstein (35:29.220)
ever produced by a computer in a chess game, which was different than the question of what
Lex Fridman (35:32.860)
is the greatest game ever played.
Lex Fridman (35:35.540)
So if you think about brilliancies is what really animates many of us to think of chess
Lex Fridman (35:39.180)
as an art form.
Eric Weinstein (35:42.240)
Those are those moves and combinations that just show such flair, panache and, and, and
Lex Fridman (35:47.380)
in soul, um, computers weren't really great at that.
Eric Weinstein (35:50.500)
They were great positional monsters and you know, recently we, we've started seeing brilliancies
Lex Fridman (35:56.820)
and so.
Eric Weinstein (35:57.820)
The grandmasters have identified with, uh, with alpha zero that things were quite brilliant.
Lex Fridman (36:03.100)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (36:04.100)
So that's, that's, that's a, you know, that's an example of something we don't think that
Eric Weinstein (36:06.780)
that's AGI, but in a very restricted set, a set of rules like chess, you're starting
Eric Weinstein (36:12.220)
to see poetry, uh, of a high order.
Eric Weinstein (36:15.980)
And, and so I'm not, I don't like the idea that we're waiting for AGI, AGI is sort of
Eric Weinstein (36:22.740)
slowly infiltrating our lives in the same way that I don't think a worm should be, you
Eric Weinstein (36:29.780)
know, the C elegans shouldn't be treated as non conscious because it only has 300 neurons.
Eric Weinstein (36:34.760)
Maybe it just has a very low level of consciousness because we don't understand what these things
Lex Fridman (36:39.080)
mean as they scale up.
Lex Fridman (36:40.860)
So am I worried about this general phenomena?
Lex Fridman (36:43.700)
Sure.
Lex Fridman (36:44.700)
But I think that one of the things that's happening is that a lot of us are fretting
Lex Fridman (36:48.240)
about this, uh, in part because of human needs.
Lex Fridman (36:53.620)
We've always been worried about the Golem, right?
Eric Weinstein (36:56.220)
Well, the Golem is the artificially created life, you know, it's like Frankenstein.
Eric Weinstein (37:01.660)
Yeah, sure.
Lex Fridman (37:02.660)
It's a Jewish version and, um, Frankenberg, Frankenstein, yeah, that's makes sense, right?
Lex Fridman (37:10.760)
So the, uh, but we've always been worried about creating something like this and it's
Lex Fridman (37:16.920)
getting closer and closer and there are ways in which
Eric Weinstein (37:23.460)
we have to realize that the whole thing is kind of, the whole thing that we've experienced
Lex Fridman (37:27.260)
are the context of our lives is almost certainly coming to an end.
Lex Fridman (37:32.140)
And I don't mean to suggest that, uh, we won't survive.
Lex Fridman (37:37.700)
I don't know.
Lex Fridman (37:39.060)
And I don't mean to suggest that it's coming tomorrow and it could be 300, 500 years, but
Eric Weinstein (37:43.900)
there's no plan that I'm aware of if we have three rocks that we could possibly inhabit
Eric Weinstein (37:49.600)
that are, uh, sensible within current technological dreams, the earth, the moon and Mars.
Lex Fridman (37:58.300)
And we have a very competitive civilization that is still forced into violence to sort
Eric Weinstein (38:04.860)
out disputes that cannot be arbitrated.
Eric Weinstein (38:06.860)
It is not clear to me that we have a longterm future until we get to the next stage, which
Eric Weinstein (38:13.000)
is to figure out whether or not the Einsteinian speed limit can be broken.
Lex Fridman (38:18.180)
And that requires our source code.
Eric Weinstein (38:21.620)
Our source code, the stuff in our brains to figure out what do you mean by our source
Lex Fridman (38:25.720)
code?
Eric Weinstein (38:26.720)
The source code of the context, whatever it is that produces the quarks, the electrons,
Lex Fridman (38:30.940)
the neutrinos.
Eric Weinstein (38:31.940)
Oh, our source code.
Lex Fridman (38:33.380)
I got it.
Lex Fridman (38:34.380)
So this is,
Lex Fridman (38:35.380)
You're talking about stuff that's written in a higher level language.
Eric Weinstein (38:38.100)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (38:39.100)
Yeah.
Eric Weinstein (38:40.100)
That's right.
Lex Fridman (38:41.100)
You're talking about the low level, the bits.
Eric Weinstein (38:42.100)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (38:43.100)
That's what is currently keeping us here.
Eric Weinstein (38:46.600)
We can't even imagine, you know, we have harebrained schemes for staying within the Einsteinian
Lex Fridman (38:53.500)
speed limit.
Eric Weinstein (38:54.500)
Uh, you know, maybe if we could just drug ourselves and go into a suspended state or
Eric Weinstein (38:58.780)
we could have multiple generations of that, I think all that stuff is pretty silly, but
Eric Weinstein (39:03.620)
I think it's also pretty silly to imagine that our wisdom is going to increase to the
Eric Weinstein (39:07.740)
point that we can have the toys we have and, uh, we're not going to use them for 500 years.
Eric Weinstein (39:14.140)
Speaking of Einstein, I had a profound breakthrough when I realized you're just one letter away
Lex Fridman (39:18.700)
from the guy.
Eric Weinstein (39:19.700)
Yeah, but I'm also one letter away from Feinstein.
Lex Fridman (39:22.740)
It's, well, you get to pick.
Eric Weinstein (39:25.740)
Okay.
Lex Fridman (39:26.740)
So unified theory, you know, you've worked, uh, you, you enjoy the beauty of geometry.
Eric Weinstein (39:32.620)
I don't actually know if you enjoy it.
Lex Fridman (39:34.420)
You certainly are quite good at it.
Eric Weinstein (39:35.980)
I tremble before it.
Lex Fridman (39:36.980)
If you're religious, that is one of the, I don't have to be religious.
Eric Weinstein (39:42.180)
It's just so beautiful.
Lex Fridman (39:43.180)
You will tremble anyway.
Eric Weinstein (39:44.180)
I mean, I just read Einstein's biography and one of the ways, uh, one of the things you've
Eric Weinstein (39:50.940)
done is try to explore a unified theory, uh, talking about a 14 dimensional observers that
Eric Weinstein (39:59.060)
has the 4d space time continuum embedded in it.
Eric Weinstein (40:02.220)
I, I'm just curious how you think and how philosophically at a high level about something
Lex Fridman (40:09.260)
more than four dimensions, uh, how do you try to, what, what does it make you feel?
Eric Weinstein (40:17.000)
Talking in the mathematical world about dimensions that are greater than the ones we can perceive.
Lex Fridman (40:23.460)
Is there something that you take away that's more than just the math?
Lex Fridman (40:27.140)
Well, first of all, stick out your tongue at me.
Eric Weinstein (40:32.700)
Okay.
Eric Weinstein (40:33.700)
Now on the front of that time, yeah, there was a sweet receptor and next to that were
Eric Weinstein (40:41.260)
salt receptors and two different sides, a little bit farther back.
Eric Weinstein (40:45.460)
There were sour receptors and you wouldn't show me the back of your tongue where your
Eric Weinstein (40:48.300)
bitter receptor was.
Lex Fridman (40:50.300)
Show the good side always.
Eric Weinstein (40:51.300)
Okay.
Lex Fridman (40:52.300)
So you had four dimensions of taste receptors, but you also had pain receptors on that tongue
Lex Fridman (40:58.820)
and probably heat receptors on that time.
Lex Fridman (41:01.240)
So let's assume that you had one of each, that would be six dimensions.
Lex Fridman (41:05.400)
So when you eat something, you eat a slice of pizza and it's got some, some, uh, some
Eric Weinstein (41:12.260)
hot pepper on it, maybe some jalapeno, you're having a six dimensional experience, dude.
Lex Fridman (41:17.740)
Do you think we overemphasize the value of time as one of the dimensions or space?
Eric Weinstein (41:23.900)
Well, we certainly overemphasize the value of time cause we like things to start and
Eric Weinstein (41:27.580)
end or we really don't like things to end, but they seem to.
Lex Fridman (41:30.660)
Well, what if you flipped one of the spatial dimensions into being a temporal dimension?
Lex Fridman (41:37.020)
And you and I were to meet in New York city and say, well, where, where and when should
Lex Fridman (41:41.660)
we meet?
Lex Fridman (41:42.660)
What about, I'll meet you on a 36 in Lexington at two in the afternoon and uh, 11 oclock
Lex Fridman (41:50.580)
in the morning.
Eric Weinstein (41:53.300)
That would be very confusing.
Lex Fridman (41:55.300)
Well, so it's convenient for us to think about time, you mean.
Eric Weinstein (41:59.340)
We happen to be in a delicious situation in which we have three dimensions of space and
Eric Weinstein (42:03.580)
one of time and they're woven together in this sort of strange fabric where we can trade
Eric Weinstein (42:07.960)
off a little space for a little time, but we still only have one dimension that is picked
Lex Fridman (42:11.820)
out relative to the other three.
Eric Weinstein (42:13.480)
It's very much Gladys Knight and the pips.
Lex Fridman (42:15.660)
So which one developed for who?
Eric Weinstein (42:17.700)
Do we develop for these dimensions or did the dimensions or were they always there and
Lex Fridman (42:22.820)
it doesn't?
Eric Weinstein (42:23.820)
Well, do you imagine that there isn't a place where there are four temporal dimensions or
Eric Weinstein (42:27.300)
two and two of space and time or three of time and one of space and then would time
Lex Fridman (42:31.820)
not be playing the role of space?
Lex Fridman (42:33.960)
Why do you imagine that the sector that you're in is all that there is?
Eric Weinstein (42:37.580)
I certainly do not, but I can't imagine otherwise.
Eric Weinstein (42:40.820)
I mean, I haven't done ayahuasca or any of those drugs that hope to one day, but instead
Eric Weinstein (42:46.180)
of doing ayahuasca, you could just head over to building two.
Lex Fridman (42:49.660)
That's where the mathematicians are?
Eric Weinstein (42:50.780)
Yeah, that's where they hang.
Lex Fridman (42:52.260)
Just to look at some geometry.
Eric Weinstein (42:53.260)
Well, just ask about pseudo Ramanian geometry.
Lex Fridman (42:55.620)
That's what you're interested in.
Eric Weinstein (42:57.620)
Okay.
Lex Fridman (42:58.620)
Or you could talk to a shaman and end up in Peru.
Lex Fridman (43:01.660)
And then it's an extra money for that trip.
Eric Weinstein (43:03.140)
Yeah, but you won't be able to do any calculations if that's how you choose to go about it.
Eric Weinstein (43:06.460)
Well, a different kind of calculation, so to speak.
Lex Fridman (43:09.100)
Yeah.
Eric Weinstein (43:10.100)
One of my favorite people, Edward Frankel, Berkeley professor, author of Love and Math,
Eric Weinstein (43:14.020)
great title for a book, said that you are quite a remarkable intellect to come up with
Eric Weinstein (43:20.260)
such beautiful original ideas in terms of unified theory and so on, but you're working
Lex Fridman (43:25.660)
outside academia.
Lex Fridman (43:28.260)
So one question in developing ideas that are truly original, truly interesting, what's
Eric Weinstein (43:33.940)
the difference between inside academia and outside academia when it comes to developing
Lex Fridman (43:39.660)
such ideas?
Lex Fridman (43:40.660)
Oh, it's a terrible choice.
Eric Weinstein (43:41.860)
Terrible choice.
Lex Fridman (43:43.260)
So if you do it inside of academics, you are forced to constantly show great loyalty to
Eric Weinstein (43:55.220)
the consensus and you distinguish yourself with small, almost microscopic heresies to
Lex Fridman (44:03.020)
make your reputation in general.
Lex Fridman (44:07.220)
And you have very competent people and brilliant people who are working together, who form
Eric Weinstein (44:14.180)
very deep social networks and have a very high level of behavior, at least within mathematics
Lex Fridman (44:22.780)
and at least technically within physics, theoretical physics.
Lex Fridman (44:27.880)
When you go outside, you meet lunatics and crazy people, madmen.
Lex Fridman (44:35.260)
And these are people who do not usually subscribe to the consensus position and almost always
Lex Fridman (44:41.220)
lose their way.
Lex Fridman (44:44.360)
And the key question is, will progress likely come from someone who has miraculously managed
Eric Weinstein (44:52.380)
to stay within the system and is able to take on a larger amount of heresy that is sort
Lex Fridman (44:59.100)
of unthinkable?
Eric Weinstein (45:01.260)
In which case, that will be fascinating, or is it more likely that somebody will maintain
Eric Weinstein (45:07.860)
a level of discipline from outside of academics and be able to make use of the freedom that
Lex Fridman (45:15.780)
comes from not having to constantly affirm your loyalty to the consensus of your field?
Lex Fridman (45:21.500)
So you've characterized in ways that academia in this particular sense is declining.
Eric Weinstein (45:28.460)
You posted a plot, the older population of the faculty is getting larger, the younger
Eric Weinstein (45:34.900)
is getting smaller and so on.
Lex Fridman (45:37.260)
So which direction of the two are you more hopeful about?
Eric Weinstein (45:40.540)
Well, the baby boomers can't hang on forever.
Lex Fridman (45:42.660)
First of all, in general, true, and second of all, in academia.
Lex Fridman (45:46.440)
But that's really what this time is about.
Lex Fridman (45:51.540)
We're used to financial bubbles that last a few years in length and then pop.
Eric Weinstein (45:57.180)
The baby boomer bubble is this really long lived thing, and all of the ideology, all
Lex Fridman (46:04.020)
of the behavior patterns, the norms.
Eric Weinstein (46:07.260)
For example, string theory is an almost entirely baby boomer phenomenon.
Eric Weinstein (46:11.660)
It was something that baby boomers were able to do because it required a very high level
Eric Weinstein (46:16.620)
of mathematical ability.
Lex Fridman (46:20.620)
You don't think of string theory as an original idea?
Eric Weinstein (46:24.260)
Oh, I mean, it was original to Veneziano, probably is older than the baby boomers.
Lex Fridman (46:29.900)
And there are people who are younger than the baby boomers who are still doing string
Eric Weinstein (46:32.780)
theory.
Lex Fridman (46:33.780)
And I'm not saying that nothing discovered within the large string theoretic complex
Eric Weinstein (46:37.920)
is wrong.
Lex Fridman (46:38.920)
Quite the contrary.
Eric Weinstein (46:39.920)
A lot of brilliant mathematics and a lot of the structure of physics was elucidated by
Lex Fridman (46:44.500)
string theorists.
Lex Fridman (46:46.940)
What do I think of the deliverable nature of this product that will not ship called
Lex Fridman (46:51.560)
string theory?
Eric Weinstein (46:52.560)
I think that it is largely an affirmative action program for highly mathematically and
Eric Weinstein (46:57.540)
geometrically talented baby boomer physics physicists so that they can say that they're
Eric Weinstein (47:03.240)
working on something within the constraints of what they will say is quantum gravity.
Eric Weinstein (47:10.480)
Now there are other schemes, you know, there's like asymptotic safety, there are other things
Eric Weinstein (47:15.460)
that you could imagine doing.
Eric Weinstein (47:17.100)
I don't think much of any of the major programs, but to have inflicted this level of loyalty
Eric Weinstein (47:26.780)
through a shibboleth.
Lex Fridman (47:27.780)
Well, surely you don't question X.
Eric Weinstein (47:29.420)
Well, I question almost everything in the string program.
Lex Fridman (47:32.380)
And that's why I got out of physics.
Eric Weinstein (47:34.300)
When you called me a physicist, it was a great honor, but the reason I didn't become a physicist
Lex Fridman (47:39.060)
wasn't that I fell in love with mathematics.
Eric Weinstein (47:41.340)
I said, wow, in 1984, 1983, I saw the field going mad and I saw that mathematics, which
Lex Fridman (47:49.060)
has all sorts of problems, was not going insane.
Lex Fridman (47:52.980)
And so instead of studying things within physics, I thought it was much safer to study the same
Lex Fridman (47:57.500)
objects within mathematics.
Eric Weinstein (47:59.900)
There's a huge price to pay for that.
Lex Fridman (48:01.220)
You lose physical intuition.
Lex Fridman (48:03.740)
But the point is, is that it wasn't a North Korean reeducation camp either.
Eric Weinstein (48:08.260)
Are you hopeful about cracking open the Einstein unified theory in a way that has been really,
Eric Weinstein (48:15.500)
really understanding whether this, uh, uniting everything together with quantum theory and
Lex Fridman (48:21.420)
so on?
Eric Weinstein (48:22.420)
I mean, I'm trying to play this role myself to do it to the extent of handing it over
Lex Fridman (48:28.340)
to the more responsible, more professional, more competent community.
Eric Weinstein (48:34.300)
Um, so I think that they're wrong about a great number of their belief structures, but
Eric Weinstein (48:40.540)
I do believe, I mean, I have a really profound love, hate relationship with this group of
Eric Weinstein (48:45.660)
people.
Eric Weinstein (48:46.660)
I think the physics side, cause the mathematicians actually seem to be much more open minded
Lex Fridman (48:51.780)
and uh, well they are and they aren't, they're open minded about anything that looks like
Lex Fridman (48:55.940)
great math.
Eric Weinstein (48:56.940)
Right.
Lex Fridman (48:57.940)
Right.
Eric Weinstein (48:58.940)
They'll study something that isn't very important physics, but if it's beautiful mathematics,
Eric Weinstein (49:01.820)
then they'll have a, they have great intuition about these things as good as the mathematicians
Eric Weinstein (49:07.780)
are.
Lex Fridman (49:08.780)
And I might even intellectually at some horsepower level, give them the edge.
Eric Weinstein (49:12.780)
The theoretical theoretical physics community is bar none.
Lex Fridman (49:16.700)
The most profound intellectual community that we have ever created.
Eric Weinstein (49:22.020)
It is the number one.
Eric Weinstein (49:23.700)
There's nobody in second place as far as I'm concerned, like in their spare time and the
Eric Weinstein (49:28.460)
spare time they invented molecular biology.
Lex Fridman (49:30.620)
What, what was the origin of molecular biology?
Eric Weinstein (49:33.180)
You're saying something like Francis Crick.
Lex Fridman (49:34.700)
I mean, a lot of, a lot of the early molecular biologists were physicists.
Eric Weinstein (49:39.180)
Yeah.
Eric Weinstein (49:40.180)
I mean, you know, Schrodinger wrote what is life and that was highly inspirational.
Eric Weinstein (49:44.420)
I mean, you have to appreciate that there is no community like the basic research community
Eric Weinstein (49:53.340)
in theoretical physics and it's not something I'm highly critical of these guys.
Eric Weinstein (49:59.380)
I think that they would just wasted the decades of time with a near religious devotion to
Lex Fridman (50:08.420)
their misconception of where the problems were in physics.
Lex Fridman (50:13.340)
But this has been the greatest intellectual collapse ever witnessed within academics.
Lex Fridman (50:20.060)
You see it as a collapse or just a lull?
Eric Weinstein (50:22.300)
Oh, I'm terrified that we're about to lose the vitality.
Lex Fridman (50:26.020)
We can't afford to pay these people.
Eric Weinstein (50:29.340)
We can't afford to give them an accelerator just to play with in case they find something
Lex Fridman (50:33.420)
at the next energy level.
Eric Weinstein (50:35.300)
These people created our economy.
Lex Fridman (50:38.420)
They gave us the rad lab and radar.
Eric Weinstein (50:41.900)
They gave us two atomic devices to end world war two.
Eric Weinstein (50:45.620)
They created the semiconductor and the transistor to power our economy through Moore's law.
Eric Weinstein (50:51.700)
As a positive externality of particle accelerators, they created the worldwide web and we have
Lex Fridman (50:57.360)
the insolence to say, why should we fund you with our taxpayer dollars?
Lex Fridman (51:02.420)
No, the question is, are you enjoying your physics dollars?
Eric Weinstein (51:08.860)
These guys signed the world's worst licensing agreement and if they simply charged for every
Eric Weinstein (51:15.780)
time you used a transistor or a URL or enjoyed the piece that they have provided during this
Eric Weinstein (51:23.540)
period of time through the terrible weapons that they developed or your communications
Eric Weinstein (51:29.140)
devices, all of the things that power our economy, I really think came out of physics,
Eric Weinstein (51:34.060)
even to the extent the chemistry came out of physics and molecular biology came out
Eric Weinstein (51:37.020)
of physics.
Lex Fridman (51:38.020)
So, first of all, you have to know that I'm very critical of this community.
Eric Weinstein (51:42.780)
Second of all, it is our most important community.
Lex Fridman (51:45.180)
We have neglected it.
Eric Weinstein (51:46.180)
We've abused it.
Lex Fridman (51:47.660)
We don't take it seriously.
Lex Fridman (51:49.820)
We don't even care to get them to rehab after a couple of generations of failure, right?
Eric Weinstein (51:55.780)
No one, I think the youngest person to have really contributed to the standard model of
Lex Fridman (52:01.060)
theoretical level was born in 1951, right?
Eric Weinstein (52:05.780)
Frank Wilczek and almost nothing has happened that in theoretical physics after 1973, 74
Eric Weinstein (52:15.020)
that sent somebody to Stockholm for theoretical development that predicted experiment.
Lex Fridman (52:21.780)
So we have to understand that we are doing this to ourselves.
Eric Weinstein (52:24.580)
Now, with that said, these guys have behaved abysmally in my opinion because they haven't
Eric Weinstein (52:31.340)
owned up to where they actually are, what problems they're really facing, how definite
Eric Weinstein (52:35.540)
they can actually be.
Eric Weinstein (52:37.380)
They haven't shared some of their most brilliant discoveries, which are desperately needed
Eric Weinstein (52:40.820)
in other fields like gauge theory, which at least the mathematicians can, can share, which
Lex Fridman (52:45.740)
is an upgrade of the differential calculus of Newton and Leibniz.
Lex Fridman (52:49.180)
And they haven't shared the importance of renormalization theory.
Eric Weinstein (52:53.100)
Even though this should be standard operating procedure for people across the sciences dealing
Eric Weinstein (52:57.940)
with different layers and different levels of phenomena.
Lex Fridman (53:01.180)
And by shared, you mean communicated in such a way that it disseminates throughout the
Eric Weinstein (53:06.240)
different sizes.
Eric Weinstein (53:07.240)
These guys are sitting, both theoretical physicists and mathematicians are sitting on top of a
Lex Fridman (53:12.180)
giant stockpile of intellectual gold, right?
Lex Fridman (53:16.420)
They have so many things that have not been manifested anywhere.
Eric Weinstein (53:19.740)
I was just on Twitter, I think I mentioned the Habermann switch pitch that shows the
Lex Fridman (53:25.260)
self duality of the tetrahedron realized as a linkage mechanism.
Eric Weinstein (53:28.980)
Now this is like a triviality and it makes an amazing toy that's, you know, built a market,
Lex Fridman (53:36.540)
hopefully a fortune for Chuck Habermann.
Eric Weinstein (53:38.460)
Well, you have no idea how much great stuff that these priests have in their monastery.
Lex Fridman (53:44.740)
So it's truly a love and hate relationship for you.
Eric Weinstein (53:47.540)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (53:48.540)
Well, it sounds like it's more on the love side.
Eric Weinstein (53:49.540)
This building that we're in right here is the building in which I really put together
Eric Weinstein (53:54.740)
the conspiracy between the National Academy of Sciences and the National Science Foundation
Eric Weinstein (54:00.180)
through the government university industry research round table to destroy the bargaining
Eric Weinstein (54:04.400)
power of American academics, uh, using foreign labor with, uh, on microfeature in the base.
Eric Weinstein (54:10.980)
Oh yeah.
Lex Fridman (54:11.980)
That was done here in this building.
Lex Fridman (54:13.220)
Isn't that weird?
Lex Fridman (54:14.220)
And I'm, I'm truly speaking with a revolutionary and a radical, uh, no, no, no, no, no, no,
Eric Weinstein (54:19.220)
no, no, no, no, no, no.
Lex Fridman (54:20.220)
At an intellectual level, I am absolutely garden variety.
Eric Weinstein (54:25.220)
I'm just straight down the middle.
Lex Fridman (54:27.660)
The system that we are in this, this university is functionally insane.
Eric Weinstein (54:33.660)
Yeah.
Eric Weinstein (54:34.660)
Harvard is functionally insane and we don't understand that when we get these things wrong,
Eric Weinstein (54:41.140)
the financial crisis made this very clear.
Eric Weinstein (54:43.660)
There was a long period where every grownup, everybody with a tie, uh, who spoke in a,
Eric Weinstein (54:49.340)
you know, in Barrett, baritone tones, uh, with, with the right degree at the end of
Lex Fridman (54:54.820)
their name.
Eric Weinstein (54:55.820)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (54:56.820)
Uh, we're talking about how we banished volunteer volatility.
Eric Weinstein (54:59.420)
We were in the great moderation.
Lex Fridman (55:01.100)
Okay.
Eric Weinstein (55:02.260)
They were all crazy.
Lex Fridman (55:04.100)
And who was, who was right?
Eric Weinstein (55:05.100)
It was like Nassim Taleb, Nouriel Roubini.
Eric Weinstein (55:08.460)
Now what happens is, is that they claimed the market went crazy, but the market didn't
Eric Weinstein (55:13.980)
go crazy.
Lex Fridman (55:14.980)
The market had been crazy and what happened is, is that it suddenly went sane.
Eric Weinstein (55:18.620)
Well, that's where we are with academics.
Lex Fridman (55:21.660)
Academics right now is mad as a hatter and it's, it's absolutely evident.
Eric Weinstein (55:25.500)
I can show you graph after graph.
Lex Fridman (55:27.000)
I can show you the internal discussions.
Eric Weinstein (55:28.500)
I can show you the conspiracies.
Eric Weinstein (55:30.900)
Barrett's dealing with one right now over, uh, it's admissions policies for people, uh,
Eric Weinstein (55:35.380)
of color, uh, who happened to come from Asia.
Lex Fridman (55:38.300)
All of this madness is necessary to keep the game going.
Lex Fridman (55:41.420)
What we're talking about just on, well, we're on the topic of revolutionaries is we're talking
Lex Fridman (55:46.940)
about the danger of an outbreak of sanity.
Eric Weinstein (55:50.060)
Yeah.
Eric Weinstein (55:51.060)
You're, you're the guy pointing out the elephant in the room here and the elephant has no clothes.
Lex Fridman (55:57.020)
Is that how that goes?
Eric Weinstein (55:59.540)
I was going to talk a little bit to, uh, Joe Rogan about this, ran out of time, but I think
Eric Weinstein (56:07.980)
you're, you have some, you, just listening to you, you could probably speak really eloquently
Lex Fridman (56:13.420)
to academia on the difference between the different fields.
Lex Fridman (56:16.580)
So you think there's a difference between science, engineering, and then the humanities
Lex Fridman (56:21.740)
in academia in terms of tolerance that they're willing to tolerate?
Lex Fridman (56:25.940)
So from my perspective, I thought computer science and maybe engineering is more tolerant
Eric Weinstein (56:33.020)
to radical ideas, but that's perhaps innocent of me is that I always, you know, all the
Eric Weinstein (56:38.580)
battles going on now are a little bit more on the humanity side and gender studies and
Lex Fridman (56:42.380)
so on.
Eric Weinstein (56:43.380)
Have you seen the, uh, American mathematical society's publication of an essay called get
Lex Fridman (56:48.140)
out the way?
Eric Weinstein (56:49.140)
I have not.
Lex Fridman (56:50.140)
What's, what's the idea is that white men who hold, uh, positions.
Eric Weinstein (56:55.100)
Yeah.
Eric Weinstein (56:56.540)
Within universities and mathematics should vacate their positions so that young black
Eric Weinstein (57:01.300)
women can take over something like this.
Eric Weinstein (57:04.020)
That's in terms of diversity, which I also want to ask you about, but in terms of diversity
Eric Weinstein (57:07.240)
of strictly ideas, do you think, cause you're basically saying physics as a community has
Eric Weinstein (57:14.980)
become a little bit intolerant to some degree to new radical ideas, or at least you, uh,
Eric Weinstein (57:21.460)
you said it's changed a little bit recently, which is that even string theory is now admitting,
Lex Fridman (57:26.940)
okay, we don't look very promising in the short term, right?
Lex Fridman (57:32.960)
So the question is what compiles if you want to take the computer science metaphor, what
Lex Fridman (57:39.860)
will get you into a journal?
Eric Weinstein (57:42.060)
Will you spend your life trying to push some paper into a journal or will it be accepted
Lex Fridman (57:47.060)
easily?
Lex Fridman (57:48.060)
What about the characteristics of the submitter and what gets taken up and what does not?
Eric Weinstein (57:56.660)
All of these fields are experiencing pressure because no field is performing so brilliantly
Eric Weinstein (58:01.780)
well, um, that it's revolutionizing our way of speaking and thinking in the ways in which
Lex Fridman (58:11.320)
we've become accustomed.
Lex Fridman (58:12.900)
But don't you think even in theoretical physics, a lot of times, even with theories like string
Eric Weinstein (58:19.340)
theory, you could speak to this, it does eventually lead to what are the ways that this theory
Eric Weinstein (58:24.180)
would be testable.
Eric Weinstein (58:25.660)
Yeah, ultimately, although look, there's this thing about popper and the scientific method
Eric Weinstein (58:31.960)
that's a cancer and a disease and the minds of very smart people.
Lex Fridman (58:36.400)
That's not really how most of the stuff gets worked out.
Eric Weinstein (58:39.860)
It's how it gets checked.
Eric Weinstein (58:41.340)
All right, so, and there is a dialogue between theory and experiment, but everybody should
Eric Weinstein (58:47.380)
read Paul directs 1963 American scientific American article where he, he, you know, it's
Lex Fridman (58:56.980)
very interesting.
Eric Weinstein (58:57.980)
He talks about it as if it was about the Schrodinger equation and Schrodinger's failure to advance
Lex Fridman (59:03.160)
his own work because of his failure to account for some phenomenon.
Eric Weinstein (59:06.340)
The key point is that if your theory is a slight bit off, it won't agree with experiment,
Lex Fridman (59:10.400)
but it doesn't mean that the theory is actually wrong.
Eric Weinstein (59:12.940)
Um, but direct could as easily have been talking about his own equation in which he predicted
Lex Fridman (59:18.700)
that the electrons should have an antiparticle.
Lex Fridman (59:22.460)
And since the only positively charged particle that was known at the time was the proton,
Eric Weinstein (59:26.820)
Heisenberg pointed out, well, shouldn't your antiparticle, the proton have the same mass
Lex Fridman (59:30.780)
as the electron and doesn't that invalidate your theory?
Lex Fridman (59:33.660)
So I think the direct was actually being quite potentially quite sneaky, um, and, uh, talking
Eric Weinstein (59:38.860)
about the fact that he had been pushed off of his own theory to some extent by Heisenberg.
Eric Weinstein (59:42.980)
Um, but look, we've fetishized the scientific method and popper and falsification, um, because
Eric Weinstein (59:51.580)
it protects us from crazy ideas entering the field.
Lex Fridman (59:55.580)
So you know, it's a question of balancing type one and type two error.
Lex Fridman (59:58.420)
And we're pretty, we were pretty maxed out in one direction.
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