Eric Weinstein: Difficult Conversations, Freedom of Speech, and Physics | Lex Fridman Podcast #163

the following is a conversation with. eric weinstein. his fourth time on the podcast both. sadness. and hope run through his heart and his. mind. and the result is a complicated. brilliant human being. who i am fortunate to call a friend. quick mention of our sponsors indeed. hiring site. theragun muscle recovery device wine. access online wine store. and blinkist app that summarizes books. click the sponsor links to get a. discount and to support this podcast.

as a side note let me ask that whenever. we touch. difficult topics in this or other. conversations that you listen with an. open mind. and forgive me or the guest for a. misstep and an. imperfectly thought out statement to. have any chance of truth. i think we have to take risks and make. mistakes. in conversation and then learn from. those mistakes. please try not to close your mind and. heart to others because of a single. sentence. or an expression of an idea try to.

assume that the people in this. conversation. or just people in general are good but. not perfect. and far from it but always striving to. add a bit more love into the world. in whatever way we know how if you enjoy. this thing. subscribe on youtube review on apple. podcast follow on spotify. support on patreon or connect with me on. twitter at lex friedman. and now here's my conversation with eric. weinstein you often talk about getting.

off this planet. and i think you don't often talk. about extraterrestrial life intelligent. life out there. do you wonder about this kind of thing. about intelligent civilizations out. there. i do but i try to not wonder about it in. a particular way. um in a certain sense i do find that. speculating about bigfoot in the loch. ness monster and space aliens. is kind of a recreation for when things. aren't going very well. uh at least it gives us some meaning and.

purpose in our lives. so i worry about you for example the. simulation hypothesis is taking over. from religion you can't quite believe. enough to go to church or synagogue or. the mosque. on the weekend so then you just take up. an interest in. in the simulation theory because that's. something like what you do for your job. coding. i do think that in some sense the issue. of aliens. is a really interesting one but has been. spoiled by too much. sort of recreational escapism.

the key question that i find is. let's assume that it is possible to look. at the night sky. and see all of these distant worlds and. then go visit them. if that is possible it's almost. certainly possible through some. uh as yet uh unknown or. not accepted theory of physics beyond. einstein. and i mean it doesn't have to be that. way but probably is.

if that theory exists there would be a. percentage. of the worlds that have life and sort of. a drake equation kind of a way. that would have encountered the ability. to escape. soon enough after unlocking the power. of the atom at a minimum and whatever. they have that is probably analogous to. the cell. on that world so assuming. that life is a fairly generic thing that. arises.

probably not carbon-based probably. doesn't have dna but. that something that fits the pattern of. uh darwinian theory which is. descent with variation um differential. success. and thereby constantly improving and so. on that through. time there will be a trajectory where. there'll be something increasingly. complex and fascinating and beautiful. like us humans but much more. they can also off gas whatever entropy. it creates. to give an illusion that you're.

defeating thermodynamics right so. whatever. whatever these things are probably has. an analog of the bilipid layer. so that cells can get rid of the chaos. on one side of the barrier and keep. order on the other. whatever these things are that create. life assuming that there is a theory to. be found that allows. that civilization to diversify. um we would have to imagine that. such a civilization might have taken an. interest. in its concept of the universe and have.

come here. they would come here they would have a. deep understanding of the physics of the. universe sufficient to. have arrived here well there's two. questions whether they could arrive. physically and whether their. information could be sent here. and whether they could gain information. from us it's possible. that they would have a way of looking. into our world without actually reaching. it i don't know. but yes if my hope which is that we can.

escape this world. is can be realized if that's if that's. feasible. then you would have to imagine that the. reverse is true and that. somebody else should be here. first of all i want to say this my. purpose when i come on. to your show and i reframe the questions. is not. to challenge you i can sit inside all of. those it's to give you better audio and. video because i think we've been on an. incredible role i really love what you.

do and so i am trying to honor you by. being. as disagreeable about frame breaking as. possible i think some of your listeners. don't understand. that it's actually a sign of respect as. opposed to some sort of a. complex dynamic which is i think you can. play outside. of some of the frames and that these are. sort of offerings to get the. conversation started so let me try to. break that frame and give you something. different. beautiful i think what's going on here. is that i can prove. effectively that we're not thinking.

about this in very deep terms. as soon as i say we've got to get off. this planet the number of people who. assume that i'm talking about faster. than light travel. is very high and faster than light. travel. assumes some sort of einsteinian. paradigm that then is broken. by some small adjustment and i think. that. that's fascinating it shows me that our. failure to imagine what could be being. said. is profound we don't have an idea.

of all of the different different ways. in which. we might be able to visit distant worlds. all we think about is okay it must be it. must be einsteinian space times. and then some means of exceeding the. speed limit and it's just. it's fascinating to me that we don't. really have. we've lost the ability to just realize. we don't know the framework and what is.

what does it even mean so one of the. things i think about. a lot is worlds with more than one. temporal dimension. it's very hard to think about one more. than one temporal dimension. so that's a really strong mental. exercise. of breaking the framework in which we. think because uh. most of the frameworks would have a. single temporal dimension right well. first of all most of the frameworks in. which we think would have no temporal. dimension and have pure. like in mathematics the differential. geometry that. riemann came up with in the 1800s.

we don't usually talk about what we. would call split signature metrics. or lorentzian signature in fact if it. weren't for relativity this would be the. most. obscure topic out there almost all the. work we do is an euclidean signature and. then there's this one freakish case of. relativity theory in physics that uses. this one time and the rest spatial. dimensions. fascinating so it's usually momentary. and just looking at space.

yes you know we have these three kinds. of. uh equations that are very important to. us we have elliptic. hyperbolic and parabolic right and so. the idea is. if if i'm chewing gum after eating. garlic bread. when i open my mouth and i've got. chewing gum between my lips. maybe it's going to form an elliptic. object called a minimal surface. then when i pop that and blow through it.

you're going to hear a noise that's. going to travel to you by a wave. equation which is going to be hyperbolic. but then the garlic breath is going to. diffuse towards you and you're. eventually going to be very. upset with me according to a heat. equation which will be parabolic. so those are the three basic paradigms. for most of the work that we do. and a lot of the work that we do in. mathematics is elliptic. whereas the physicists are in the. hyperbolic case and i don't even know. what to do about more than one temporal. dimension because i think almost no one. studies that. i can't believe you just captured uh.

much of modern physics. in the example of chewing gum i have an. off-color one which i chose not to share. but. hopefully the kids at home can imagine. okay so okay that is the place where we. come from. now if we want to arrive at a. possibility of breaking the frameworks. at with two versus zero temporal. dimensions how do we even begin to think. about well let's think about it as. you and i getting together in new york.

city okay. so if you tell me uh eric i want to meet. you in new york city go to the corner. of i don't know 34th street. and third avenue and you'll find a. building on the northwest corner and go. up to the 17th floor. right so when we have third avenue. that's one coordinate 34th street that's. the second coordinate and go up to the. 17th. and what time is that oh 12 noon all. right well now imagine that we traded.

the ability to get up to a particular. height in the building it's all flat. land but. i'm going to give you two temporal cords. so meet me at 5 00 pm. and 12 noon at the corner of 34th and. 3rd. that gets to be too mind-blowing i've. got two separate watches. and presumably that's just specifying a. single point. in those two different dimensions but. then being able to travel along those. dimensions. let's let me see your right hand. you have no watch on that no okay i'm.

very. concerned lex that you're going through. life without. a wrist watch that is my favorite and. most valued wrist watch. i want you to wear it this guy is. funnier than basically any human on. earth. that has been in my family for months. it's a fitbit now what i want you to. understand is. lex fritman is now in a position to live. in two spatial and two temporal. dimensions unlike the rest of us.

i clearly am only fit for four four. spatial dimensions. so i'm frozen whereas you can double. move. i can double move yeah which is funny. because this is set in. uh austin time yes it's 4 00 p.m and. this is set. in los angeles times well that's just. with an affine shift in mod 12. but my point is is that wouldn't that be. interesting if there were two separate. time skills and you had to coordinate. both of those. but you didn't have to worry about what. floor of the building because everything. was on the ground floor. okay that is the confusion that we're.

having. and if you do one more show right then. they're gonna put a watch on your ankle. and you're only gonna have one spatial. dimension that you can move around. but my claim is is that all of these are. actually. sectors of of my theory in case we're. interested in that which is geometric. unity. there is a 2 2 sector and a 3 1 and a 1. 3 and a 0 4 and a 4 0 and all of these. sectors. have some physical reality we happen to. live in a 1-3 sector.

but that's the kind of thinking that we. don't do when i say we have to get off. this planet people imagine oh okay it's. just einstein plus some ability to break. the law. by the way even though you did this for. humor sake. i perhaps am tempted to pull a putin. uh who who i'm gonna get whacked. no not quite but he was given a. a super bowl ring to uh to look at. and he instead of just looking at it put.

it on his finger and walked away with it. robert robert craft that's right so. [Laughter]. in the same way i will if you don't mind. walk away with this fitbit and taking. the entirety of your life story with it. because there's all these steps on it. boy have you lost a lot of weight. [Laughter]. and where have i been exactly right. that's what. that's what we're talking about we're. talking about you want to get into. aliens let's have an interesting alien. conversation let's stop having. the typical free will conversation the. typical alien conversation the typical.

agi morality conference. it's like we have to recognize that. we're amusing ourselves because we're. not making progress. time to have better versions of all. these conversations is there. some version of the alien conversation. that could incorporate. the breaking of frameworks well i think. so i mean the key question would be. we've had the pentagon release multiple. videos of strange ufos. that undermined a lot of us i just think. it's also. really fascinating to talk about the. fact that those of us. who were trained to call bs on all of.

this stuff. just had the rug pulled out from under. us by the pentagon choosing to do this. and you know what the effect of that is. you've opened the door for every stupid. theory. known to man my aunt saw a ghost. okay now we're gonna have to listen to. well hey. the pentagon used to deny it then it. turned out there were ufos dude. whoever is in charge of lying to the. public. they need a cost function that.

incorporates the. damage and trust because i held this. line that this was all garbage and all. bs. now i don't know what to think there's a. fascinating aspect to this. alien discussion the breaking of. frameworks that involves the release of. videos. from the pentagon which is almost like. another dimension. that trust in itself or the nature of. truth and information. is a kind of dimension along which we're. traveling constantly. that is uh messing with my head to think. about because.

i mean like because it almost feels like. you need to incorporate that. into your study of the nature of reality. it's like. the constant shifting of the. notation the tools we use to communicate. that reality. and so like what am i supposed to think. about these videos is it. is it a complete distraction is it a. kind of cosmic joke. i don't know but you know what i'm tired. of these people just completely tired of. these the. the the people on the pentagon side or. the people who are interpreting the.

stuff on the pentagon side i'm tired of. the entirety i'm tired of the. authorities. playing games with what we can know. the fact that you and i don't do you. have a security clearance. some level of it for because i was. finding for darpa for a while. i don't have a security clearance you. know i. i am going to release whatever theory i. have. and my guess is is that there is zero. interest from our own government. and so the chinese will find out about. at the same time our government does.

because lord knows what they do in these. buildings i i watch. crazy people walk in and out of the. intelligence community walk in and out. of darpa and. i think wow you're talking to that. person that's really fascinating to me. we don't seem to have a clue as to who. might have the ball. complete lack of transparency do you. think it's possible there's. the government is in possession of. something. deeply fundamental to understanding of. the world. that they're not releasing so this is.

one one thing. is this is one of the famous. distractions that people play with the. narrative assume that that were true. of alien life forms uh spacecraft and. possession. that the government is in possession of. alien spacecraft that's assuming that. true narrative. yeah i don't think the government really. exists at the moment. i believe and this is not an idea that. was original to me. there was a guy named michael teitelbaum. who used to be at the sloan foundation. and at some point i pointed out the us.

government had completely contradictory. objectives when it came to the military. and science. and one one branch said this one branch. said that i said you know i i don't. understand. which is true what does the government. want he said do you think there's a. government. and i said what do you mean he said what. makes you think that the people in those. two offices have ever coordinated. what is it that allows each office to. have a coherent plan with respect to. every other office. and that's when i first started to. understand that there are periods where.

the government coheres. and then there are periods where the. coherence just decays and i think that. that's been going on since 1945. that there have been a few places where. there's been increased coherence but in. general everything is just getting less. and less coherent. and that what ward did was focus us on. the need. to have a government of people a mission. capacity. technology commitment ideology and then. as soon as that was gone. um you know different people those who'd. been. through world war ii had one set of.

beliefs those born in the 1950s. uh you know or late 40s by the time they. got to woodstock. uh they didn't buy any of that so. coherence is the. is that the complete opposite of like. per uh of bureaucracy being paralyzed by. bureaucracy. so coherence is efficient functional. government because when you say there's. no government meaning there's no. uh emergent function from a collection. of individuals.

it's just a bunch of individuals stuck. in their offices without any kind of. efficient communication with each other. on a single mission. and so a a government that is. truly at the epitome of what a. government is supposed to be. is when a bunch of people working. together what are we about are we about. freedom. are we about growth are we about decency. and fairness. uh are we about the absence of a. national culture so that we can all just. do our own thing. i've called this thing the usa and the. united states of absolutely nothing.

these are all different visions for our. country. so it's possible that there's a alien. spacecraft somewhere. and there's of like 20 people that know. about it. and then they're kind of it like as you. communicate further and further into the. offices. that information dissipates it gets. distorted in some kind of way and then. it's completely lost the power the. possibility of that information is lost. we bought a house and i had this idea. that i wanted to find out what all the. switches did.

and i quickly found out that your house. doesn't keep updating its plans. as people do modifications they just do. the modifications and they don't. actually record. why they were doing what they were doing. or what things lead you so they're all. sorts of bizarre. like there's a switch in my house that. says privacy. i don't know what privacy is does it. turn on an electromagnetic field that. is some lead shielding go over the house. um that's what we have we have a system. in which the people who've inherited.

these structures have no idea why their. grandparents built them. i'd be fine if there's a freedom of. speech switch that you could also. control. and it would be perfect for well that's. different because. what they figured out is is that if they. can just make sure that we don't have. any public options for communication. then. hey every pri uh thing that we say to. each other goes to a private company. private companies can do whatever they. want. and this is like one of the greatest. moves that we didn't really notice. uh electronic and digital speech makes.

every other kind of speech irrelevant. and because there is no public option. uh guess what there's always somebody. named sundar. or jack or mark who controls whether or. not you can speak and. what it appears to be that is being said. and whose stuff is weighted more highly. than other. it's an absolute nightmare and by the. way the silicon valley. intellectual elite lord knows what is. going on people are so busy making money.

that they are not actually upholding any. of the values. so silicon valley is sort of maximally. against it it has this kind of. libertarian. uh free progressive. sheen to it when it goes to burning man. and then it quickly just. imposes rules on all of the rest of us. as to what we can say to each other if. we're not part of the inner elite. so what do you think the ideal of the. freedom of speech means. well this is very interesting i keep. getting lectured on social media by. people who have no idea how much power.

the supreme. court has to abstract things right now. you have the concept of the letter of. the law and the spirit of the law. and the spirit of the law would have to. say that our speech that matters is free. at least at the level of ideas i don't. claim that i have the right. to endanger your life with speech or to. reveal your private information. so i really am not opining about. directed. speech intended to smear you and that. that's a different. kettle of fish and maybe i have some.

rights to do that but i don't think that. they're infinite. um what i am saying is is that the. freedom of speech for ideas. is essential that the court abstracted. and. shove it down the throat of google. facebook twitter. amazon whoever these infrastructure. companies are. because it really matters which. abstraction you use the the case that i. really like. is search and seizure if i have private.

data. that i entered in my house that is. stored on a server that you. hold outside of my house but. i view the is the abstraction that it's. only the perimeter of my house that i. have the right to protect. or does my password extend. the perimeter of my house to the data on. the server that is located outside of my. house. these are court our choices for the. court and the court is supposed to. pretend that they can divine the true. intent of the framers.

but all of the sort of and i've taken. the calling this the problem of internet. hyenas people with ready-made answers. and. lols and you're such a these folks. love to remind you it's a private. company dude it can do whatever it wants. no the court has to figure out what the. abstractions are and just the way for. example. the griswold decision um found that. there was a penumbra because there was. too little in the constitution therefore. there were all sorts of things implied. that couldn't be in the document.

somebody needs to come up with the. abstraction right now. that says jack cannot do whatever he. wants. it's really you say the courts but it's. also us. people who think about the world see you. it's the courts. but the courts don't do this we're toast. but we can still think about it i mean i. i'll sure. but i i don't feel like going down the. drain here's what i'm thinking about. because it's tricky how far. it should extend i mean that's an.

ongoing conversation don't you think the. interpretation of the law. i think i'm trying to say something very. simple and it's just not going to be. popular for a while. tech dwarfs previous forms of. communication. print or shouting in a public park. and so you know i can go to a public. park and i can shout if i get a permit. even there i think was in the ninth late. 1980s in atlanta. we came up with free speech zones where. you can't protest at a convention you.

bet you can go to a park 23 miles out. and they'll fence off a little area. where you can have your free speech. no speech is dangerous ideas are. dangerous. we are a country about danger and risk. and yes i agree that targeted speech at. individuals trying to reveal their. private. stuff and all that kind of that is very. different so forget. a lot of that stuff but free speech for. ideas is meant to be dangerous. and people will die as a result of free.

speech. the idea that one life is too much is. preposterous like why did we send. if one life is preposterous why do we. send anyone to the beaches of normandy i. just don't get this. so one thing that i was clearly bothered. by and maybe you could be my therapist. as well. i thought you were mine this is this is. a little bit of a miscommunication. on both of our parts then uh. because who's paying who for this.

i was really bothered by uh amazon. banning parlor from aws because my. assumption was. that the infrastructure i drew a. distinction between aws. the infrastructure on which competing. platforms could be created is different. than the actual platforms so i. the standard of the ideal of freedom of. speech. i in my mind in a shallow way perhaps.

apply differently. to aws than i did to twitter. it felt that we've created a more. dangerous world. that freedoms were violated by banning. a parlor from aws which i saw as the. computing infrastructure which enables. the competition. of tools the competition of frameworks. of communication. what do you think about this first of. all let me give you the the. internet hyena answer i understand dude.

just build your own amazon yeah right. yes. well so that's a very shallow statement. but it's also. one that has some legitimacy we can't. completely dismiss it. because uh there's levels to this. to this game yes and no but if you. really wanted to chase that down. yeah one of the great things about a. person-to-person conversation as opposed. to like. let's have 30 of our closest friends. whenever we have a conversation with 30. of our closest friends. you know what happens it's like passing. light through a prism.

every person says something interesting. and as a result it's always muddled. you like nothing ever resolves well one. of my. conversational techniques you mentioned. uh you push back is uh. uh first this childlike naivete and. curiosity. but also you are simulated real i'm. afraid. real all right so in this paradigm yeah. how could you not see this coming i mean. this i did a show with. um ashley matthews who's the woman.

behind riley reed. and specifically about this it was about. the idea that if i. move away from politics and go towards. sex. i know that there's always a move to use. the infrastructure to shut down. sex workers and in this case. we had operation chokepoint under the. obama. uh administration we have a positive. passion. for people who want to solve problems.

that they. they don't like this company they don't. like that company payday loans would be. another. one and so you have legal companies. that are harassed by our financial. system that her. you can't you know as riley reed. ashley couldn't get a mailchimp account. according to her if i understand. her correctly and this idea that you. charge these people. higher rates because of supposed. chargebacks on credit cards even if. their chargebacks are low. yes we have an unofficial policy of.

harassment. there's something about everybody who. shows up at davos. they get drunk in the swiss alps and. then they come back home. and they coordinate and they coordinate. things like build back better. we don't really understand what. buildback better is but my guess is is. that buildback better. has to do with extremism in america how. do we shut down the republican party. as the source of extremism now i do. think the republican party has got very. extreme. under trump and i do believe that that.

was responsive to how extreme the. democratic party. got under clinton first and then obama. and then hillary and in all of these. circumstances. it's amazing how much we want to wield. these things as weapons. well our extremism is fine because we. pretend that antifa doesn't exist and we. don't report what goes on in in portland. but your extremism my god that's. disgusting. this is the completely ridiculous place.

that we're in and by the way. our friends in part are coked up on tech. money. and they don't appear to hold the. courage of their convictions at a. political level because. it's not in keeping with shareholder. value you know at some level. shareholder value is the ultimate shield. with. which everyone can cloak themselves well. on that point donald trump was. banned from twitter and i'm not sure it.

was a good financial decision for. twitter. right uh but um perhaps you can correct. me if i'm wrong. but are you thinking locally or are you. thinking if twitter refused to. well if twitter refused to ban donald. trump what is the odds that. that the full force of the antitrust. division might find them i don't know oh. i see. i see so there's a complicated thing. well there's a. look these guys are all having a. discussion. in very practical terms you know you can. say you can imagine the sorts of. conversation.

jack marks under really glad you're all. here we're all trying to. sing from the same hymnal and row in the. same direction. we understand free speech we're. completely committed to it but. we have to draw along with extremism. guys we we just need. we need to make sure we're all on the. same page well they use the term. violence too and they i think over apply. it. so basically anybody. [Laughter]. i'm i'm telling you i'm i say dumb. things.

to uh to incentivize uh thoughtful. conversation well. whatever these things are there is no. trace. like how old are you lex you're in your. mid-30s yeah to late 40s. mid late 20s to late 40s yeah somewhere. in there that that's the demographic. i do think that partially what's. happened is that your group has never. seen functional institutions. these institutions have been so. compromised for so long. you've probably never seen an adult. sometimes i think elon looks like an.

adult. i know that he has a wild lifestyle but. i also. see him looking like an adult what does. an adult look like exactly oh. you know somebody who weighs things. speaks carefully. thinks about the future beyond their own. life's lifespan. somebody was a pretty good idea of how. to get things done. isn't wildly caught up in punitive. actions is more focused on. breaking new ground than playing. rent-seeking games. i mean i really had a positive i was so.

completely jazzed when elon musk ended. up as the world's richest person. he was like well that's interesting back. to work. it's just like that's that's what it is. that's what a grown-up would do and it. just made. you know weirdly i said something about. isn't it amazing that the world's. richest person knows what a lagrangian. is he made a terrible. lagrange joke about potentials but. yeah i mean i do think that ultimately. elon may be one of the closest things we. have to an adult.

and i can tell you that the internet. hyenas will immediately descend as to. what a fraudster he is for pumping his. stock price talking his book and all. this stuff. shut up just looking at the world. seriously and rigorously you're saying. that the. people who are running tech companies or. running. the mediums on which we can. exercise the idea of free speech are not. adults. i think not i think first of all a lot. of them are silicon valley. utopian businessmen where you talk a.

utopian line and you use it. you've heard my my take which is that. the idealism of every era is the cover. story of its greatest thefts. and i believe that in many ways the. idealism of silicon valley about. connecting the world a world of. abundance et cetera et cetera et cetera. is really about the uh software eating. the world as mark andreessen likes to. say. through all these legacy properties and. by simply being. a bad tech version of.

something that previously existed like a. newspaper you could immediately. start to dwarf that by aggregating. newspapers in their digital versions. because digital is so much more powerful. as a result yes we have lots of. man-children wandering around what once. was the bay area and is now austin and. miami and other places. um maybe singapore that um. all of these people that you know these. are friends of ours and they're. brilliant. with respect to a certain amount of.

stuff but none of them can get off the. drip. it's amazing that none of them have fu. money we've got billionaires who don't. have fu money. okay i think the argument used by jack. dorsey was that. there was an incitement of violence and. not just that growth. by everybody that was banning people. and then this word violence was used as. a kind of. uh just like extremism and so on to uh. without much reason behind it you think. it's impossible.

for jack dorsey anybody else to be as. you said an adult a grown grown-up. and jack is pretty close to being the. guardian he seems like he is yeah. he's oh he's as he's under pressures as. you've discussed. he it seems that he's been on the verge. of almost being. quite serious and transparent and real i. don't know where the jack dorsey that i. met. went and i worry that that must be. something behind the scenes that i can't. see from my perspective what i think.

is the stress the burden of that. when people are screaming at you it's uh. zen monk he really is yeah. jack is an incredibly impressive person. intellectually morally spiritually. at least for a couple of meetings. i don't know him very well but. i'm very impressed by the person i'm at. and i don't know where that person is. and that terrifies me but.

do you think somebody could step up in. that way no. you so it does can does a human being. have the capacity. to be transparent about the reasoning. behind the banning. or do you think all banning eventually. uh all banning of people from mediums of. communication. is eventually destructive or it's. impossible for human beings to reason. with ourselves about it well let's let's. see what the problem is.

so my phone has been on airplane mode. i'm going to unlock it. i'm going to take a picture of lex. ridden. now if i can i'm going to tweet that. picture out. great but here's the weird part about it. yeah um. that picture sitting. with lex today. this this ladies and gentlemen is called. the sausage is made. okay in so doing yes.

i have just sent um. a picture of you and a tiny piece of. text. all over the planet that has arrived. at if statistics tell the truth just. under half a million different accounts. and then more from sharing and so on and. we have well. been some of those accounts are dead we. don't really know how many places it. went yeah. but the key issue with that tweet is.

that. that is a non-local phenomenon. yes so i just. broadcasted to an entire planet somebody. in uganda. is reading that at the same time as. somebody in uruguay. there is no known solution. to have so many people with the ability. to communicate. non-locally because locality was part of. the implicit nature of speech. inside of the constitution friction.

locality there were all sorts of. other aspects to speech so if you think. about speech as a bundle. i like this then it got unbundled. and some of those aspects that we were. naturally counting on to. uh the impact of speech aren't present. and we don't have the courage to say i. wonder if the first amendment really. applies. in the modern era in the same way or we. have to work through an abstraction.

either we probably have to amend the. constitution or we have to abstract it. properly. and that issue is. not something we're facing up to i watch. us. constantly look backwards. we don't seem to try to come up with new. ideas and new theories nobody really. imagines that we're going to be able to. wisely amend the constitution anymore in. the inside of the united states many. people. abroad will say why are these guys. talking about the u.s it's a u.s centric.

program. well that's because nobody knows where. this program lives. the fact by the way that you and i. happen to be in a physical place. together. is also bizarre could be anywhere it. doesn't really matter that it happens to. be here. so the difference between logical. between physical local non-local. frictional non-fictional. it's the same thing with firearms. nobody imagined that the gatling gun. was going to be present when you had to. reload a musket.

and that's fascinating to think about i. mean. you you're exactly right that the nature. of this particular freedom that seems so. foundational to the. to this nation to what made. this nation great and perhaps much of. the world that is great made a great. is changing completely can we try to. reason through how the idea of. freedom of speech is to be changed i. mean. i guess i'm struggling it feels really. wrong. perhaps because i wasn't paying.

attention to it it feels really wrong to. ban. donald trump now from twitter. to to ban not just the president that's. really wrong. to me but this particular human for. being uh. divisive but then when there is an. incitement of violence. that is an overused claim but. perhaps there was uh actual uh brewing. of local violence happening so one of.

the things i know what's happening on. parlor. is people were uh. scheduling meetings together in physical. space so. you're now going going back from this. dynamic social large scale people from. uganda people from all over the world. being able to. communicate you're now mapping that into. now back. meeting in the physical space that is uh. similar to what the founding but the. violence were digital.

if ransomware suddenly was unleashed. um true the key issue is the. abstractions. so what was freedom of speech as a. bundle. and now it's and then how do we abstract. the bundle. into the digital era do you think we. just need to raise the question talk. about it do you have. do you have ideas because sure i have. ideas but the key point is. that i'm not even welcome in mainstream. media. i've never seen you on mainstream media. do you do mainstream media so we.

we exist in part of an alternate. universe because the mainstream media. is trying to have a coherent story which. i've called the gated institutional. narrative. and the institutions pretend that they. plug their fingers. uh in their ears and pretend that. nothing exists outside. of msnbc talking to cnn about what was. in the new york times. as covered by the washington post and so. that's effectively like a professional. wrestling promotion. where they you know the undertaker faces. off against hulk hogan and.

rowdy roddy piper okay well. that's very different than mma you've uh. recently been on. glenn beck's program yeah and there was. this. kind of one of the things you've talked. about. is being able to have this conversation. i don't know if you would put it as a. type of conversation that was happening. outside the mainstream media. but a conversation that reaches across. different world views you're right. having a nuanced.

or just like a respectful conversation. that's grounded and mutual. but we can't have the reality because. the main model is is. um the center both left and right is in. the process of stealing all the wealth. that we built up. and they've organized the extremes uh. into two larping teams that i've called. magistan and wikistan and. then you have everybody who isn't part. of that complex all seven of us. the number of us who are able to earn a.

living looking at all of these mad. people. playing this game you know there's a. phrase. inside finance when the investment banks. are. trying to look at price action and. somebody says this doesn't make any. sense. and somebody will say it's just the. locals stealing from each other and. that's really what we have we have we've. got the leaders of magastan and wikistan. uh you know championing these two teams. is sponsored by the center because it's. a distraction while they steal all the. silver and. cut the paintings out of the frames.

that's what we. you and i are looking at so when you ask. me like do you have any ideas about the. abstraction for free speech. i've never met mark zuckerberg i've. never met sunder pichai. i never met larry page i was once in a. room with sergey brin. i've never spoken to elon musk. i hang out with peter thiel but we have. a very deep relationship but i don't. really speak to that many other people. at you know sort of at this level.

we're not having any kind of smart. conversation. at a national level in fact it's almost. as if. we've destroyed every sandbox. in which we could play together there's. no place. that we actually talk except long-form. podcasting. and by the way they've found you see. what's going on with like alex stamos. and the hoover institution we've you. know that there's a loophole left. long-form podcasting allows people to.

speak. at levels above daytime cnn yeah it's. like. well why do you think they're not. watching daytime cnn. but you know that's that's just silly. journalism. they uh currently have no power to. displace podcasting that's why it's so. powerful rss feed i mean that's why the. big. challenge with joe rogan and spotify is. like there's this dance that's. fascinating to see. is joe rogan is not part of the system. and then he's also uncancelable and.

there's this. tension that's happening well howard. stern. howard stern became much less relevant. so if they can't control joe by bringing. him in house. the key question is is he going to. continue. like you know this joe says the thing. about fu money. yeah joe's one of the only people with. fu money who's actually said fu. yeah yeah i don't understand this.

i don't have fu money what what exactly. is can we break apart a few money. because. i always thought i've been fortunate. enough. to have always have fu money in the. sense that my standards were so low. that a basic salary in the united states. this is the stoic point. which is yeah you can live on rice and. beans right you're uncancelable because. you're always rich relative to your. needs. right isn't that fu fundamental if you. mind why do you say that tech. billionaires don't have fu money.

when you need to hire private security. to protect your family. how do you protect your two children i. don't have those yet bingo. yeah my point is is that fu money. insulates everything that you care about. it's not just about you. so you're saying as the level of. responsibility grows. the amount of money required for fu. we have a war going on the war is on. academic freedom. academic freedom used to be present in.

the system as a. in terms of the idea we we trust our. elite. now we have an idea like you want to be. the elite. you know you want a lord above us that's. like first of all there's like a. populist anti-elitist thing. then there's the idea that we're going. to defer. tenure for forever then we're going to. tell people stay in your lane your. tenure is only good for your own. particular tiny micro subject. then we're going to also control your. grants and we'll be able to. load up your teaching load if we don't. like who you are will make your life.

absolutely impossible we lost. academic freedom and we ushered in peer. review which was a disaster. and then we lost funding so that people. were. confident that they would have the. ability to do research. no matter what they said and as a result. what you find is is a world in which. there's no ability. to get people to say no i'm not going to. sign your diversity and inclusion. forced loyalty oath i won't sign any.

loyalty oath. get the hell out of my office. you a few and you you're connecting. money to that but. well my point is is that academic. freedom is. the the whole idea behind it was that. you will have the freedom of a. billionaire. on a much smaller salary right okay. we've lost that yeah the only reason in. part. that i wanted to go into. academic academics as a profession as.

opposed to. wanting to do physical or mathematical. research. the great prize was freedom and ralph. gomorry. uh of the sloan foundation previously of. ibm research pointed it. out he says if you lose freedom you lose. the only thing we had to offer top minds. top minds value their intellectual. freedom and their physical and. economic security at a different level. than other human beings. and so people say you know.

i understand dude you have the ability. to do x y and z what's the problem it's. like well i value my ability to raise. the middle finger as an american. practically above everything else i want. to talk to you about. freedom here in the context of something. you've mentioned. which is one way to take away freedom. is to put a human being into a cage. to create constraints the other one that. worries me is something that i think. you've spoken to to twitter a little bit.

on twitter is. we bleed freedom by. kind of slowly. uh scaring you into not. doing not expressing the full spectrum. of opportunities you can as freedom so. like when you ban donald trump. [Music]. when you uh ban uh parlor. you give a little doubt in the minds of. millions like.

me a person who's a tech person who's an. entrepreneur entrepreneur there's a. little that's what i'm afraid of when i. look in the mirror is there now a little. doubt in there. sure that that limits the amount of. options i will try. how certain are you that the covid. virus didn't come from the wuhan lab and. his biosafety level four. we both know that we're both supposed to. robotically say. the idea that the covet virus came from. a lab is a discredited conspiracy theory.

there is no evidence that suggests that. this is true. the world health organization and the. cdc have both opined this. to say otherwise would be incredibly. irresponsible and the threat of that. is the thing that ultimately limits. the the freedoms we feel i should be. tweeting about jeff epstein all the time. and you're afraid well it's awesome i. mean i said it. in the public yeah many times why is it. we don't ask where the. records are from villard house where. where are the financial records where.

the sec filings. yeah where are the questions on on the. record to the intelligence. uh agencies was he known to be part of. the intelligence community. so so we're we're not interested in. asking questions like am i going to die. as a result of asking the question was. jeff epstein part of the intelligence. community. of any nation is there a reason we're. not asking about the financial records. of the supposed hedge fund that he. didn't run.

just like the wuhan lab okay how do we. get to the core of the jeffrey epstein. the the truth behind jeffrey epstein in. a sense. i mean there's there's some things that. are just like useless conspiracy. theories around it even if they're true. there's some things that get through i. hate to say it you're not gonna like it. look at the 1971 media pennsylvania. break-in of the citizens committee to. investigate the fbi. those kids and by the way they weren't. all kids. did what had to be done they broke in.

they broke the law it was an incredible. act of civil disobedience. and god blessed judy feingold for taking. to her. she was going to take to her grave that. she'd been part of this like the coolest. thing of all time. they didn't say anything for forever so. civil disobedience. i mean you have to we are founded on. civil disobedience civil disobedience is. incredibly. you screw it up and you're just a vandal. you screw it up you're a hooligan.

yeah those those cats were so. disciplined it's an art form and it was. an art form. and they risked everything they were. willing to pay. with their freedom those. are the sorts of people who earned the. right by putting themselves at risk i. would not. do this i am not volunteering to break. into. anything i think it was uh william. davidon. who was a student of murray gelman and a. physics professor at haverford.

who corralled these people and led this. effort and right now what we need. is somebody to blow the lid off of what. is controlling everything. we have i i'm happy. to hear that it's a system of incentive. structures that it's a system of. selective pressures i'm happy to find. out that it's emergent. i'm happy to find that it's partially. directed by our own intelligence. community. i'm happy to hear that uh in fact we've. been penetrated.

by north korea iran china and russia but. i need to know. why people aren't like the firebombing. of the courthouse in portland oregon has. no explanation. and somehow this is normal this is not. normal to any human being. we have video that people don't believe. and you know i come back to the shaggy. defense. of it wasn't me you know so. it's like um. you remember that song shaggy yeah it.

wasn't me caught you. uh banging the counter on the couch yeah. exactly it wasn't me it wasn't me he. says but. his friend says well your strategy makes. no sense at all. this is what msnbc is doing. you dropped him from the graphic it. wasn't me it wasn't me you came up with. another yang. it wasn't me i will never see msnbc. the same again so you've spoken about. him before i think it'd be nice to. maybe honor him to break it apart a.

little bit. aaron schwartz yeah uh why was he a. special human being. in this ilk of what we're talking about. now. civil disobedience um how do we honor. him. now moving forward as human beings who. are. willing to take risks in this world well. i don't know. i mean are you inspired by aaron. schwartz. i am how do you feel about jstor let's. talk about jstor first. so let's let's let's say what jstor is. all about.

we the taxpayer pay for research. and then. the people who do the research do all. the work for a bunch of companies. who then charge us thirty dollars an. article. to read what it is that we already paid. for and if we don't cite these articles. we're told that we're in violation okay. i almost never call for civil. disobedience because i don't really want. to. but jstor.

elsevier springer who the. are these people yeah. get the smart people. need to take the greedy people behind. the woodshed and explain to them what. science is. i have a very old-fashioned idea that's. so out of favor. that i will immediately be seen as. knuckle dragger yeah. i believe in the great woman theory of. history and the great man theory of.

history. emmy nerder is fantastic. as an example and i believe in. editors over peer reviewers and i. believe that. wrong things should be allowed into the. literature and i believe that the. gatekeeping. should go towards zero because the costs. associated with distribution are very. very slight i believe that. um we should be looking at the perverse. incentives. of sending your paper blindly into your.

competitors clutches particularly if. you're a young person. being reviewed by an older person uh are. you familiar with the. the duatta senor are you familiar with. the legend of the magnaya. now the magnaya is the miller's daughter. and the largest. food fight in the entire universe i. believe. is held i think in italy uh it's called. the battle of the oranges. and it celebrates the miller's daughter.

who had fallen in love with her beloved. and when it came time for them to marry. the virginal magnaya was in fact. told that the lord of the land. had the right to have the first night. with the bride. well the magnaya had a different idea so. she seemed to consent to this. uh perhaps mythical right also called. the. the primonote the first night and.

by by legend she concealed a dagger. underneath her robes. and when it came time for the the hated. lord of the manor to extract. uh this right she pulled the knife out. and killed him. and i think it also echoes a little bit. of particularly wonderful scene from. game of thrones. but that inspired both men and women. and the magnaya is the legendary hero. right now what we need to do is we need.

to resist the primo note the right of. first look. right fu you don't have to write a first. look i don't want to send something. blindly to my competitors i don't want. to subject myself to you naming what. what work i've done why why are you in. my story. that's my question get out of my story. if i do work. and then you have an idea oh well it's. the matthew principle to him. who has much more will be given i've. gone to the national academy of sciences. and talked about these things.

and it's funny i've been laughed at by. the older people who think. well eric you know science proceeds. funeral by funeral that's plonk. you know the matthew principle you know. the matilda principle the things done by. women are attributed to men. these are not new you're like and you. guys just live like this. yeah so the revolutionary act now is to. resist all of these things that. we need these things that are not new so. you asked me about aaron schwartz aaron. schwartz was the magniah. one of the things you've done very. beautifully is to communicate.

love and i think about you know some of. our conversations. you got me to talk a little bit about my. own experiences and. 0 2 1 3 8 and 3 9. we are the product of our trauma. and what people don't understand is that. very often when you see people. taking counter measures against what. appear to be imaginary forces. they're really actually replaying things. that really happen to them.

and having been through this system and. watching all of the ways in which it. completely rewrites the lives of the. people who i'm counting on to cure our. diseases build our new industries keep. us safe from our foes. the amount of pressure the system is. putting on the. most hopeful minds is unimaginable. and so my my goal is to empower somebody. like. aaron schwartz in memory and. to talk about a jeffrey epstein.

situation did you know that the first. person. outside of me to get a look. at geometric unity was jeffrey epstein. how did he know i was working on this i. don't know. so your ideas that formed geometric. community was something that uh his eyes. have seen. i was pushed to talk to jeffrey epstein. as one of the only people who could help. me. no no listen to this how does this yeah.

how does this connect okay. well first of all my old. synagogue my old shule was the. conservative minion at harvard hillel. and i believe it's called rusofsky hall. after henry rusofsky in the economics. department who was a japan scholar if. i'm correct. and he became provost or dean of harvard. i believe that that was built with. jeffrey epstein's money.

and i wondered in part whether the. jewish students. at harvard all sort of passed through a. bottleneck of harvard hilla. so that was something i found very. curious but i don't know much about it. i also found that jeffrey epstein. hanging around scientists i don't think. that either you or joe exactly. i mean got me correct uh in your. last interchange uh for the record for. people who haven't listened to joe rogan. program. joe has claimed that eric weinstein was. the only person who has gotten laid paid.

oh paid and you said you also got paid. as a young man. right i believe the word was laid but uh. allegedly. my hearing isn't so good at age 55. yeah. all right leaving that aside yes. um what was jeffrey epstein doing. hanging around. all of these scientists i don't think. that was the same program. that was about compromising political. leaders and business people. and entertainment figures i think these. are two different programs that were. being run through one individual.

and joe seemed to think that i didn't. think he was smooth i thought he was. glib. i think what joe is really trying to get. out of is that i found his. mysticism meretricious he had a ability. to deflect. every conversation that might go. towards revealing that he didn't know. what he was talking about every time you. started to get close. to something where the rubber hit the. road the rubber wouldn't hit the road. and yet can you help me untangle the the.

fact that you thought. deeply about the physics of the nature. of our universe and jeffrey epstein. was interested how did he know i wasn't. really talking about this stuff until. you know even my close friends didn't. really know what i was up to. and yet you're saying he he did not have. sufficient brilliance to understand when. the rubber hit the road so. why why did he have sufficient.

interest and tell me what i thought i've. been waiting to find out does my. government. even know i exist do you have an answer. to that question. i have a couple times the government has. reached out to me. in general there is zero interest in me. like less than zero interest. i find that fascinating as far as you. know right. i mean well that's what i'm trying to. say the question about not being able to. see through a half-silvered mirror.

you don't know what's going on behind. the half-silvered mirror to you it's a. it's all you see. is uh is your reflection but your. intuition still holds. like this is where i mentioned that i uh. this is where i'll say naive dumb. things but i still hold on to this. intuition that. jeff not i'm not confident in this but i. i'm. leaning towards that direction that. jeffrey epstein is the source of evil. not something that's. underlying him you have you have a bias.

it's different than mine arbazian priors. are tutored by different life. experiences. if i was mostly concerned like sam. harris was is concerned that people fill. their heads with nonsense. i would have a very strong sense that. people need order in the world. that they take mysterious situations. they build entire castles in the air and. then they go move in if they. really get crazy you know the old saying. is that neurotics. build castles in the air and psychotics.

move in coming from a progressive family. we had a different experience it's. really weird when the government is. actually out to get you when they. actually send a spy. when they actually engage in. disinformation campaigns when they smear. you. and if you've ever had that brought to. bear on your family you have a howard. zinn. sort of understanding of the country. which is different than having a. wow do people believe crazy stuff. because they watch too much tv. and both of these things have some merit.

to them but it's a question of regulated. expression when do you want to express. more sam harris and when do you want to. express more howard zinn. and you can express both correct the one. human being can just pass both sure but. there's a trade-off between them. in other words most of most people like. the michael shermers of the world are. going to tilt very strongly to. extraordinary claims require. extraordinary evidence you're going to. have that kind of energy. and then somebody else is going to say. how many times do i have to get hit on. uh. you know how many times i have to hammer. my own thumb before i realize that.

there's a problem. so you know my feeling about this is yes. people. see patterns in clouds they see faces. and scripture and all sorts of things. and it's just random cloud patterns. and it's also the case that there's. tremendous pressure not to see. conspiracies when conspiracies are. relatively more common. than the people who shout conspiracy. theory will claim. so both of these things are true and you. have to ask when do you express your. inner. zen and when you're in harris and those. are different. one fundamental difference you and i. biases aside.

is you've actually met jeffrey epstein. and i'm. uh listening to like reverberations. years later of stories and narratives. throughout the story luckily i only met. him once and i i think i had. one or perhaps two phone conversations. with him other than the one meeting. you can learn a lot in just a few words. right from a human being well that's. true but i think that. the bigger issue was i saw something. that i don't hear much remarked upon.

which is. jeffrey epstein is all there that there. is. in other words there's the national. science foundation national institute of. health howard hughes. there's all this stuff. that kind of has the same feel to it a. little bit of variation and difference. department of energy if you fall outside. of that. there's just jeffrey epstein that's what. you're told yes. that's not quite true there's kavli. maybe jim simons is now in the game. peter thiel has done some stuff you had.

yuri milner and. mark zuckerberg try so there is other. money running around. templeton but very strongly there was a. belief. that if you're doing something really. innovative and the system can't fund it. because it's. we've become jeffrey epstein's. your guy. because this funnel that you're supposed. to go through. that's right and the idea is that you. get called to the great man's house. and you know the sort of uh.

lubricious version of ralph lauren. you know takes you in and asks you. bizarre questions and maybe he has an. island maybe he has a plane. and you know when you're starved. uh you know somebody showing you a feast. or when you're. dehydrated in a death's door and. somebody says oh. you know i have a well. you know that's what it is and so the. thought is wow.

can you can somebody get some effing. money into the science system so that we. don't have. super creeps uh trying to learn all of. our secrets ahead of time. wtf what is your problem with. transparency and taxpayer dollars just. all of you you wouldn't have a country. you'd be speaking german. so essentially you believe that human. beings would not be able to. in the when the money is lacking in the. system like on research produce public. goods. you and i are meant to produce public. goods.

now i sell athletic greens and i sell. theragan and i sell unagi scooters. and chili pad i can't be honest i love. these products. but i didn't get into this game. for the purpose of selling i'm trying to. figure out. how do you have an fu lifestyle. but you know something lex i don't know. why you built this channel. it's kind of a mystery wait i don't know. why i'll tell you why i built my channel. the face it's gonna be a lot harder to.

roll me this time in an alley. yeah i got rolled multiple times and my. point is. i didn't want to become a celebrity i. didn't want to become well known. but it's a lot harder to roll somebody. who's getting you know i think i'm i. don't know if this is mistaken but i. think i'm the math phd with the largest. number of followers on twitter. and there was nothing you could do. before. i mean again to put a little. responsibility on you so you've created.

something. really special for the distribution of. your own ideas i mean. uh but because it's not necessarily. currently scalable. you also perhaps you and i have the. responsibility. of giving other people also a chance to. spread their ideas. i mean joe rogan did this very. effectively for a bunch of people. that that's why they're angry at him. because he's a gatekeeper. and he let all sorts of people through. that gate. from roger from roger penrose to alex.

jones. to uh jordan peterson to. i mean even first of all to you and to. abby martin. to abby martin to barry weiss yeah. that's the problem well but you. you have not successfully built up a. thing that allows that to carry. no no we are all. vulnerable to reputational attack. because what happens you see the problem. lexus is that you are now an institution.

at some level. you walk around with all this equipment. in a duffel bag. uh the last thing is the last suit. you'll ever need. and um you have the reach. of something like cnn to people who. matter. okay so now the question is how do we. control something. that doesn't have a board doesn't have. shareholders it doesn't have to make sec. files. fcc so the best.

answer they have is well. we just have to destroy reputations all. it takes is for us to take. something that gets said or done or. alleged. and i think it's incredibly important. one of the things people don't. understand is. that i'm i'm going to fight general. reputational attacks. not because some people don't deserve to. have their reputations drawn. dragged through the mud but because it's. too powerful of a tool. to hand it to cnn msnbc princeton.

harvard. the state department yes but is some of. it is also. jp morgan muhammad ali style. being good enough at. doing everything you need to do without. giving enough. meat for the reputational attacks not. being afraid but not giving enough. meat i don't see why the people who have. good ideas have to lead lives that are. that clean.

if you can do it you can be messy yeah. you should be able to be messy that. otherwise. we're we're suppressing too many people. too many two billion minds. yeah can you believe elon musk smoke the. blood. i still people tell me this that okay i. have discussions about elon. and people uh the. avi loeb the harvard scientist. you know who's talking about omoamoa. that it might be alien technology. he told me his.

this outside the box thinker yeah. when speaking to me about elon. said called him the guy who smoked. he smokes weed he's the blunt in a. dismissive way. like this guy is crazy because he smoked. some weed. i was looking at him i was like why. wow wow i think you should be able to. have. consensual drug-filled orgies.

perfect lives. yeah you should be allowed to be messy. you're right i take back my statement. i'm just saying. respectability is the unique prison. where all of the gates are open and the. inmates. beg to stay inside it's time to end. their prison of respectability because. it's too effective of a means of. sidelining and silencing people. including. it is better that we have bad people. in our system than this idea.

of no platforming people who are beyond. the pale. because it's such a simple technique so. how do we uh. what's the heroic action here on the. well for example having ashley matthews. on my program. by the way she was absolutely um. delightful as a guest she was. she is polite in the extreme far more. polite than i am. and i had her right after roger penrose. uh as a guest because i wanted to.

highlight this. program can go anywhere we can talk to. anyone what about social media you've. started highlighting people being banned. on social media. how do we fight this like if you get. banned from social media so you're. saying nobody will stand up to me. well just figure out what your incentive. structure is before assume that they're. assuming i get banned on social media. because somebody wants to make sure that. my message doesn't. uh interfere with the dominant narrative. okay. what will happen by the way i'm very.

glad to be able to explain this on your. show because. that video will presumably be archived. and they can't easily make. you take it down okay so. what's going to happen is that there'll. be a whole bunch of very low quality. bot like accounts that dog you every. time you talk about me. right dude it's getting old getting. boring we already heard you. dude that was like let it go not a good. look. not a good look it's one of my favorites. but what about the high profile ones.

well then you'll get a few high-profile. ones and some of the high-profile ones. command armies right like at some point. i had 10 000 people using exactly the. same templated tweet. uh tweeting at me it was just actually. it got to the point where it was funny. because. everybody said did you did you hear that. in hipster coffee shop i was like. why are you all suddenly talking about. hipster coffee hilarious. um those things will cause you to think. better of it. you'll start to see your follower can't.

go down because it's easy. to give you a bunch of bot like follows. and then just pull them. so i think it's pretty well known how. and then maybe your account will be. suspended and it can't be revoked and. you know et cetera et cetera and then. three days later you'll be told it was. an error. so let me push back i just don't see not. defending you. like okay so what are the things you. would do. that given that i can actually talk to. you yeah offline. that that would uh make me not defend.

you. uh well it's first of all i can't. i mean no but i can imagine some but all. of us have. things if somebody says do you hear what. your boy lex said about you. what what did lex say about me oh he. said you were flawed dude. oh yeah you know. they so distrust because none of us want. to stand behind flawed people. that's why you have everybody rushing to. say i neither condemn nor condone i know.

i don't condemn narc. you know why what is that we're all. trying to say for the record. i said that eric is smarter than me and. a brilliant human being. but flawed like all humans are my point. is. i've now come up with a new policy which. is i don't care. what my friends have done i am not. disavowing my friends. not because they didn't do the wrong. thing maybe they did do the wrong thing. i don't know what's the value of. friendship if you. if that's not that like for example. we've had the situation with brian cowan.

brian cowan was featured recently in the. los. angeles times i know nothing about the. allegations. i can't i didn't even know brian at the. time right i've known him for. roughly the time i've been in los. angeles maybe a year and a half. during that period of time never seen. anything wrong. now i'm in a situation what do you think. he did do you think he didn't like. you know what i don't know but i do know. this. everyone's entitled to have friends. because we can't afford isolated people. and if your friends do the wrong thing.

they're still your friends. yeah and if they do terrible terrible. things you bring that up with. them privately and it's not my. responsibility to disavow in public. you know we've had this situation that i. don't like. where you know particular people that. i've been close to. i'm put under tremendous pressure to. disavow them what do you think now about. your buddy. i like dave rube and all that kind of. stuff here's the thing. just because my friends are my friends i. don't disavow my friends.

we all need to make a statement. that we will not be brought under. pressure to disavow our friends. our family members because. mass murderers are dangerous. the more isolated they become it is not. a good idea. to constantly push to isolate people yes. and it's dangerous and so it sends a. signal to everybody else to uh. to fit in to be more extremely cynical.

about the human so my. i find out you've been selling heroin to. elementary school students. you're still my friend and i will not be. disavowing you and if i have a problem. with you selling heroin. to elementary school students during. school hours. i will bring it up with you privately. because we don't need to hear my voice. added to that condemnation are there. things that you could do. that would cause me to say actually f. this guy yeah. above and beyond that but simply doing.

the wrong. thing i think we've gone down a terrible. path. i think isolated people are about the. most dangerous thing we could have. in a heavily armed society so i i deeply. agree with you. on brian cowell and on all these people. that quote-unquote got canceled. uh and i'm not saying that they i don't. i don't know the truth value because we. can't. and even if i did know the truth value. i'm not setting up an incentive. structure. for the personal destruction as a means.

of letting. institutions combat the fact that. individuals are the last thing that can. say none of you guys make any sense. i don't treat these things like you know. i had a conversation where kevin spacey. was at the dinner table when i came down. from a hotel room. and i had a very long conversation with. kevin spacey i will not. detail because i don't do that as to. what we discussed. but we talked very specifically about. him being cancelled. and i don't think that the world has. heard that story in part because.

there is a very strong sense that he has. to be outgrouped. and as a result you know i mean do we. want. do we want to disavow the space program. because it touched verner von braun do. we want to disavow quantum mechanics. because pascal jordan and werner. heisenberg pass through it. is erin fess theorem false because he. murdered his child. i mean at what point do we recognize. that. we are the problem humans are humans and. there is no perfect there is no perfect.

group of people even all of the most. oppressed people the supposed victims of. the world who we now have fetishized. into thinking that they're all. oracles because their lived experience. informs us. and their pain is more salient than. everyone else's pain. those people aren't necessarily great. people you know. it's like none none of us we can't we. can't do this. in this fashion so when we sit down to. have a conversation. across the table from somebody you. should be willing to.

like you should not have npr in your. mind you should be willing to take the. full risk. and to see the good in the person. without with limited information. and to do your best to understand that. person everybody is entitled to a. hypocrisy budget. i don't believe this is of institutions. yeah okay. everybody is entitled to a certain. amount of screwing up in life. you're entitled to a mendacity budget. you're entitled to an aggression budget.

the idea of getting rid of everybody is. you know people haven't even blown. through their budgets and we're already. yeah i i think about for example one. person uh. i'd be curious to get your thoughts. about alex jones. let's not talk about alex jones for a. second let's talk about the national. enquirer. is everything the national enquirer says. false. uh no okay do you remember the john. edwards story. uh his wife sorry he had a child from an.

extramarital affair. yes i believe that the national enquirer. broke the story. and then what does the new york times do. the new york times i think is. allowed to report that the national. maguire is making a claim. that way they don't have to substantiate. the story so. why is the new york times talking to. mike cernovich. or using the national enquirer as a. source are they using alex jones as the. source. who here's the big problem that we're.

having. why are certain people entitled to talk. to everybody. and other people are entitled to talk to. no one i don't really understand. this is an indulgence system this is how. the catholic church used to do things. it's hard to fight the system because. the reason you don't talk to alex jones. is because the platforms on which you do. the communication will. will de-platform but i'm not platformed. i used to. i used to do npr and i used to do the. newshour. and i used to provide stories to.

washington post new york times that has. gone away they've circled the wagons. closer and closer. and more of us are unacceptable and. right now i have no question that. they're. going through anybody who has a platform. trying to say okay what do we have. against that person in case we need to. shut that down. we have to make a different decision lex. and the different decision. is that it doesn't matter how many times. joe said the n word yeah it doesn't. matter.

that somebody else you know. like with mathematical theorems if the. worst person in the world proves a. mathematical theorem like the unabomber. we can't undo the theorem yeah you know. and i point out charles manson's song. look at your game girl is an amazing. song. it's a really good song i don't think. it's one of the greatest songs ever. but it happens that he wasn't a no. talent. and you know i don't know how hitler was. as an artist. it's actually not bad okay we've got to.

get past this. we've got to get past this idea that. we're going to purge ourselves of our. badness and we're just gonna. this is like i've likened it to teenage. girls and cutting we're just. all we're doing is destroying ourselves. in search of perfection. and the answer is no we're not perfect. we're flawed we're screwed up. and we've always been this way and we're. not going to silence everyone. who you can point a laser beam at and. say well that person. look at how bad that person is if we do.

that. kiss the whole thing goodbye we might as. well just let's learn chinese. but there is an art to having those. messy conversations. whether with with alex or anybody else. okay let's talk about alex. yeah there's particular stuff that alex. does that's absolutely nauseating. and there's other stuff that he's doing. that's funny the methodology of. of the way he carries and sometimes he's. talking about the truth. and sometimes he's talking about a. conspiracy theory his variance is. incredibly high.

the right way to approach alex jones or. james o'keefe or the national enquirer. anything you don't like. is to say great go long short. i mean well if you invest in a mutual. fund. all the stocks in the mutual fund are. held long. but if you invest in a hedge fund you do. something called relative value trade. it's like well you long tech or short. tech. well actually i'm long microsoft and i'm. short google why is that oh because i.

believe google got way. too much attention and that microsoft. has been unfairly maligned. and so this is really a play on legacy. tech over. more modern tech okay which part of alex. jones are you long and which part are. you short one of the things that should. be a requirement for being a reporter is. like what. what did donald trump do that was good. nothing. okay then you're not a reporter what did. hitler do that was good. the rosenstrasse protest.

non-jewish women campaign for their. jewish men to be returned home to them. from certain death almost in death camps. it should have been that not there were. no death camps it should have been that. everybody was returned home. but you know what the fact that the the. women of the rosen straw support. i mean sorry i get very emotional about. you know some of the baddest ass. chicks in the world got.

their husbands returned to them cola. could vote. and not i'm not celebrating hitler. hitler's. the worst of the worst but god damn it. you know. this idea that we can just say. everything that person does is a lie. everything that person does is evil. this reflects a simplicity of mind that. humanity cannot afford. or is is google evil because it will. sell you mind conf.

is amazon evil because it will sell you. mind conf if you find out that mineconf. rests on somebody's bookshelf do you. have any idea what it means. if you find out that a scholar used the. n-word. should that person lose their job come. on. grow the hell up i guess our. responsibility to lead by example on. that. because you have to acknowledge that the. fact like the. the current have somebody on your. podcast who you're worried about.

and but but yeah but do it in a. principled fashion i mean in other words. i'm not here to whitewash. yeah everything on the other hand. if somebody makes you know some. allegations. i don't know that i'm obligated to treat. every set of allegations as if. now how do you defend yourself against. no allegations are so cheap to make at. this moment. well my sort of my standard i don't know. maybe you could speak to it is. i don't care like in the case of alex.

jones for example i don't. i'm willing to have a conversation with. alex jones and people like him. if i know he's not going to try to. manipulate me. assume that he is going to try to. manipulate you i can't then then we're. not going to be two humans. okay but lex i want you to think well of. me i put on a jacket i don't usually. wear. a jacket okay um thank you eric. all right i'm trying to manipulate you. there's an entire. field no there's an entire field that. says that. speech may be best thought of as an.

attempt to manipulate. each other this is too simplistic. everything that we keep talking through. yes you know better than this i disagree. i i think. i think there's ways there's. of course it's a gray area but there is. a threshold. where your intent with which you come to. a meeting to an. interaction is one that is not. one that's grounded in like a respect.

for a common humanity like a love for. each other as deeply messy. if somebody is doing really bad stuff i. expect you to try to keep them from. doing really bad stuff. but you know just keep in mind that when. i was a. younger man i saw an amazing. anti-pornography document documentary. and it was called rate it x and i don't. know where it went. but the conceit of it was we're going to. get some pornographers. in front of a camera because they want.

to talk and we're going to ask them. about what they do for a living. and why it's okay. no commentary. okay you could potentially if you really. think alex jones is the worst and. again i'm not intimately familiar with. him. you could decide to. um let him talk. now i have decided not to do that with.

particular people. you know i've spoken to stefan molyneux. stefan molyneux makes many. good points and makes many bad points. and he makes many good points in bad. ways. and i worry about it and i don't feel. that it's it's not my obligation to make. sure that. stefan molyneux has a voice on the. portal. but i did stand up and say i didn't want. him banned from social media. and i do think that a lot of the people. who are being banned from social media.

were worried that they're right rather. than that they're wrong. i certainly don't really think that i'm. worried. in some sense that some of the really. wrong people are wrong but you know if. you look at for example curtis yarvin. there's a tremendous amount of interest. is eric gonna speak to curtis jarvin. curtis yarman says many interesting. things. and he says many horrible stupid things. very provocative. and i don't i haven't even i haven't. invited him onto the portal. but i haven't said i will never invite.

him on to the portal. we are all in a difficult position. that's what i'm saying. you're making it kind of i think it's a. much more difficult task. that and burden will carry as people who. have conversations because. courtesy aaron is a good example how. much. work do i have to put in reading. curtis's work to really. understand about the problem of curtis. jarvin yes because i think it's probably. illustrative there's this big question. is why does somebody who says such. stupid ass things listened to by so many.

people. very smart people people who are part of. our daily lives discuss. curtis yarvin in hush tones now let's. see a question. my belief is that curtis yarvin has made. a. number of very interesting provocative. points. and they associate curtis yarvin as the. person who has made these points. and they treat the completely asinine. stuff that he says that's super. dangerous. as well that's curtis. right right they give him the credit for.

he he's he's. kind of like sorry to use the term first. principles deep thinker about. in some way in some space about the. world. yeah but as a result we don't actually. know. why curtis yarvin is knocking around. so many silicon valley luminaries lives. what's see see you said that he said a. lot of sni stupid stuff and that's the. sense i got from a few things i've read. not just about it this is not just like. wikipedia stuff. is he he's a little like i've said.

before. he seems to be careless i don't think. he's care. no no it's like jim watson jim watson. wants to say very provocative things in. order to prove that he's free. it's not question of careless he enjoys. yeah the freedom. to say these things yeah and the key. point is is that there's i expect. something more of curtis. i expect that if somebody is insightful. about all sorts of things. up to that point that they're going to.

have enough care now i for example make. this point repeatedly that vaccines are. not 100. safe most people who have an idea that. anybody is an anti-vaxxer should be. silenced. are in a position where they they they. probably don't say vaccines are 100 say. but. you keep finding that statement over and. over again like believe all women. vaccines are 100 safe climate science is. settled science. whatever this mountain bailey is where. you make extraordinarily.

vapid blanket claims and then you. retreat into something well defund the. pull you know we don't want. no more police actually just means we. want the police to not take on mental. health duties. we've come up with an incredibly. disingenuous society. and what i'm claiming is is that i might. talk to curtis yarvin. but i have really very little interest. to talk to a guy. who seems to be kind of giddy about who. makes good slaves and who makes bad.

slaves. it's like why do i want to do that on. the portal. one first of all because just as you. said. that's not curtis's main thing he has a. lot of ideas and. uh what i've read of him which is not a. huge amount. is there's he's very thoughtful about. the way this world. works and on top of that he's an. important historical figure. in the birth and the development of the. alt-right or. what would be called our right the new. reaction yeah and there's.

so he's just an important intellectual. and so it makes sense to talk to him the. question is. how much work do you put in well this is. the issue of fugu. i'm not a chef that necessarily can. serve that. fugu so you have you have a puffer fish. you can eat the puffer fish you can you. can get a kind of a tingly sensation on. your tongue. if you get a little bit of the poison. organ but my point is i don't know how. to serve. curtis yarvin yeah so that in fact i'm.

not worried. about what happens and i believe that if. somebody else. was a student of the new reactionary. movement. that person might be in a better. position to host curtis yarwin. so somebody that's a really good example. somebody i think you've spoken with. uh that's an intermediary that's a. powerful one is michael malus and he's. spoken with curtis jarvin. and uh michael wrote a book about by the. way michael somewhat changed my mind. about michael malus. i'm glad he did i think i i would call.

him. a friend and i think he's a underneath. it all. a really kind human being and i think. your skepticism about him was initially. from a surface level of what did you. call him hyenas. the trolls and so on i'm not happy about. his. it's been so long since i've seen good. trolls. yes so he. he needs a higher quality of trolling. but he aspires to that.

i mean it you know disagree or not. i really enjoy how much care. he puts into the work he does like on. north korea and. study of the world and how much. privately. but also in public love he has for. people. especially those who are powerless yeah. just like genuine. admiration for them uh for but yeah. i think curtis actually does too i don't. know. i mean you have to appreciate the first.

time i met curtis he introduced to me. says. i'm the most right-wing person you've. ever met i was just like. well this is a conversation that's. already over it's theatrical. in a way that's not conducted to. actually having a real well it just. actually. turned me so it turned me off because it. was like. you need to be the most right-wing. person and so it's like i'm a troll i'm. a troll. yeah okay why are we doing this yeah but. what i'm trying to get is different. i'm trying to say that michael malus is. a friend of yours if you found out. something terrible.

you should be a friend you should still. continue to be his friend. and you know and michael's case is very. likely that we'll find. out something curtis is an acquaintance. of mine because he hangs around with. some people that i know. i did not get it i've started to. understand why the people in my life. some of them are curtis yarvin fans many. of them disregard the stupid stuff. but my feeling is is that too much. poison organ not enough fish. i don't know how to serve that too.

intermingled i'm not your chef. speaking for defending your friends. staying with your friends. and uh bringing the old band uh together. again you uh coined the term idw. intellectual dark web. uh i like it it's it represents a. certain group of. people that are struggling with the. that are almost like a challenge. the norms of social and political. discourse. from all different angles right what do.

you think is the state of the idw what. do you think is its future. is it still a useful. well it never exists is it a protocol is. it a collection of people featured in an. article. what i learned very clearly is that. there's a tremendous desire in the. internet. age to pin people down what do you say. who's in it what are the criterion. it's like i understand you want to play. the demarcation game and you want to. make everything that is demarcated. instantly null and void no thank you so.

i resisted saying who was in it i. resisted saying what it was. i resisted saying that barry weiss's. article was the definitive thing. you know they chose a ridiculous concept. for the photographs that we couldn't get. out of. i did not want those photographs taken. and they decided that the pulitzer. prize-winning photographer needed to. take them all at twilight. you know i don't know some such thing i. didn't even necessarily want to do the. article. um barry convinced me that it was the.

right thing to do. undoubtedly barry was right i was wrong. but. the key point is nothing can grow in. this environment. there's a reason we're not building it. does not appear. that we found a way to grow anything. organic and good and decent that we need. right now and that's kind of the key. issue who's the we do you mean us as a. society those of us who wish to have. a future for our great grandchildren. let's let's let's take the subset of.

people who are worried. about things long after their demise. but do you think it's useful to have a. term like the idw to capture some. set of people some set of ideas. or maybe principles that capture what i. think the idw. okay you can say it's not supposed to. mean it doesn't exist it doesn't mean. anything. but to the public to me okay i'll just. speak to me. it represented something yeah i i it uh.

represented i think i just said this to. you. it's my in my first attempt. to interview the great eric weinstein uh. i said that. uh i spoke this about you but iew in. general is trying to point out the. elephant in the room. or that the emperor has no clothes the. set of people that do that in their own. way. if there are multiple elephants in the. room yes the point is is that the idw. was more interested in seeing the. totality of elephants and trying to. figure out. how do we move forward as opposed to. saying i can spot the other guy's.

elephant in the room but i can't see my. own. right and you know in large measure we. didn't represent. an institutional base and therefore it. wasn't. maximally important that we look at our. own hypocrisy because. we weren't on the institutional spectrum. this is where friendship comes into play. with the different figures that. are loosely associated with idw is you. were somehow. uh responsible for.

you know the the exactly thing that you. said did you hear what. i don't know i forgive you dame oh who. what sam harris said about. idw yeah that that kind of thing is. why chuckled lovingly or chuckled like. or i was angry at some people who had. said things that caused sam to say what. sam said about. turning his imaginary club membership. into the idw. people said very silly things and. you know i think that there is just this.

confusion that. um integrity means calling out your. friends in. in front of the world right and you know. i've been pretty clear about this uh i. try to choose my friends carefully. and if you would like to recuse me. because i'm not a source of reliable. information. people that i know and love the most um. maybe that's reasonable for you maybe. you prefer somebody who was willing to. throw a friend. under the bus at the first sign of. trouble by all means.

uh exit my feed you don't have to. subscribe to me if that's. if that's your concept of integrity. you're barking up the wrong tree what i. will say is that i knew these people. well enough to know that they're all. flawed. thank you for the call back and uh but. the issue is. that um i love people who are flawed. and i love people who have to earn a. living. even if you call them a grifter and i. love people who. uh you know like the fact that donald.

trump didn't get us into new wars even. if you call. them alt-right i love the fact that. some people believe in structural. oppression and want to fight it even if. they're not woke because they don't. believe that structural oppression is. hiding everywhere. i care and love different people in. different ways and i just. i think that you know the overarching. thing lacks that we're not getting at is. that. we were sold a bill of goods that you. can go through life.

like an eliza program with. pre-programmed. responses well it's what about ism. it's both scientism it's all right. it's the looney left it's campus madness. you know it's like. okay why don't you just empty the entire. goddamn. magazine all of those. pre-recorded snips. now that you've done all of that now we.

can have a conversation. your son put it really well which is we. should in all things resist labels. but we can't deal without labels we have. to generalize. but we also have to keep in mind that. just the way in science you deal with an. effective theory that isn't a. fundamental one. in science most of our theories we. consider to be effective theories. if i generalize about about europe.

about women about. you know christians those things. have to be understood to mean something. and not to have their. definitions extend so broadly that they. mean. nothing at all nor um. that they're so rigid that their claims. that clearly won't bear scrutiny. lex what do you really want to talk. about that's my always my question to. you. that always gets me that's a good thing. maybe you are the therapist.

but like you and i could talk about. anything people love. up until now at least people have loved. listening to the two of us in. conversation. and my feeling is is that we're not. talking about neural nets. we're not talking about geometric unity. and we're not talking about where. distributed computing might go. and i don't think that we're really. focused on. some of the most exciting things we. could do to transform education we're.

still caught. in this world of other people that we. don't belong. i don't belong in the world as it's been. created i'm trying to build a new world. and i'm astounded. that the people with the independent. means to help build that world are so. demotivated. that they don't want to build new. structures. and the people who do want to build new. structures seem to be wild-eyed. while i do what do you mean by wild eyed. they're not they're not i guarantee you. that i will get some message in my dms.

it says hey eric. you know i'm a third year chemistry. student. at uh you know south dakota state and. i've got a great idea i just need. funding i want to build. they don't have the means so the people. who have the means. or the sophistication you know it's like. you're looking for somebody. who's proven themselves a few times to. say you know i've got four billion. dollars behind me. that's soft circled i want to figure out. what a new university would be.

and what it would take to protect. academic freedom and who we would hire. and what. what are the different characteristics. because i can clearly see that. everything following the current model. is falling apart. nobody in my understanding is saying. that. nobody is saying um. let's take that which is functioning. independently. and make it less vulnerable let's boost. those. those signals and a critical component. as money you think. it's not only that but it's also a kind.

of these people. are mobbed up hands off let's imagine. for the moment. that sunder pichai jack dorsey and mark. zuckerberg. founded a university come. social media entity. and they said this is the purpose of. this is to make sure that academic. freedom will not perish from this earth. because it's necessary to keep us from. all going crazy. we are going to lock ourselves out we've.

come up with this. governance system and the idea is is. that these people will be. assigned the difficult task of making. sure that society doesn't go crazy in. any particular direction that we have a. fact-based reality-based. feasibility-based understanding we can. try to figure out where our real. opportunities are. so it feels like everybody with a posi. with the ability to do something like. that. and with the with the brains and. experience and the resources.

would rather sit in the current system. and hope to figure out where they can. flee to if the whole thing comes apart. well yeah and maybe to push back in a. little bit i i agree with you but. you know it feels like there some people. are trying that so for example google. purchased deep mind uh deepmind is a. company that kind of represents. a lot of radical ideas they're they've. become acceptable actually. agi artificial general intelligence used.

to be. really radical of a thing to talk about. and deepmind and openai are two places. which has made it more acceptable i know. you can now start to criticize well. they're really. now that it's become acceptable they're. not taking the further step of being. more radical but. you know that was an attempt by google. to say. uh that let's let's try some wild stuff. sort of like boston dynamics sort of. like boston dynamics.

boston dynamics is a really good example. of uh. trying radical ideas for. perhaps no purpose whatsoever except to. try to try. out their ideas the idea is that. innovation. is like dessert you can have dessert. after you solve. the problem of the main course and the. main course is a bunch of insoluble. problems. so that is we can get into innovation. sure once we be. once we perfect ourselves and you're.

you're saying that we need to make. innovation. the the main meal well i'm saying that. there really is. structural oppression i mean if you. train. uh a a. deep learning system on exclusively. white faces it's going to get confused. yeah so let's not disagree that there. are real issues around this. in fact that's an issue of innovation. and data. your data should be responsive on the. other hand. there are things we can't do anything.

about that are actually. you know fundamental and um. those things may have to do with the. fact that uh you know some of us. uh taste cilantro as soap and some of us. don't. like there are differences between. people and some of them are in the. hardware some of them are in the. firmware some of them are in the. software. that is the human mind and. this completely simplistic idea that. every failure. of of an organization.

to promote each person who has. particular intersexual characteristics. we cannot hold progress hostage to that. and you've talked about perhaps we'll. save this for another time because it's. such a fascinating conversation we. talked about. this with uh glenn beck is the whole. stagnation of growth and all that kind. of stuff your idea is that. in as much as the current situation. is a kind of ponzi scheme the current.

situation in the united states. is a kind of ponzi scheme built on the. promise of. constant unending innovation. we need uh we need to. fund the true innovators and. uh encourage them and empower them. and sort of culturally say that this is. what this country is about. is let's put it this way the brilliant. minds we're gonna kill each other. if we don't grow growth is like an.

immune system. and you always have pathogens present. but if you don't have growth present you. can't fight the pathogens in your. society. and right now the pathogens are. spreading everywhere. so if we don't get growth into our. system fairly quickly. we are in really seriously bad shape. so it's very important that if i had a. horrible person who was capable of. building something that would give us. all. a certain amount of what i've called. financial beta to some new technology.

where we all. benefit let's say quantum computing. comes in and everybody. the dry cleaner has a quantum computing. angle right yes. okay that's necessary to keep this. system that we built. going we can try to redesign the system. but our system expects growth and we've. started. starved it for growth and the madness. that we're seeing is the failure of. our immune system to be able to handle. the pathogens that have always been. present. so people you know can say well this was. always there yes it was what's changed.

was your immune system. we have got to make sure that. one we understand why diversity is. potentially really important. we have mined certain communities to. death you and i are ashkenazi jews. everyone knows that ashkenazi jews are. good at technical stuff. we know that the chinese are good at. technical stuff the indians have many. people who are good at technical stuff. as. the japanese i also believe.

that we have communities where if you. think about the pareto. idea of diminishing returns if you've. never mined a community. many of the people you're going to get. at the beginning are going to be amazing. because that community it's like did you. drill for more oil in texas texas is. pretty. thoroughly picked over do you find some. place that's you know. completely insane maybe there's oil. there who knows. in particular i would like to displace. our reliance. on our military competitors in asia in.

our scientific laboratories. with women with african americans with. latinos. people who are in different categories. than we have traditionally sourced and i. would like to get them the money. that the market would normally give. these fields were we not using visas in. place of payment. right now. i particular i have crazy idea which is. that i play. you you and i both play music and i find.

the analytic work that i do when i'm. trying to figure out chord progressions. and symmetries and tritones all these. sorts of things to be very similar to. the work that i do when i do physics or. math. i believe that one of the things that is. true is. that the analytic contributions of. african americans. to music are probably fungible to. science. i don't know that that's true it's true. i haven't done. controlled research but i believe it is. very important to let the people's. republic of china.

know that they are not staffing our. laboratories anymore. and that we need to look to our own. people and in particular. we are going to get a huge benefit from. making sure that women. black americans latinos are in a. position. to take over some of these things. because many of these communities have. been. underutilized now i don't know if that's. an insane idea. i want to hear somebody tell me why it's. an insane idea. but i believe that part of what we need.

to do is we need to recognize that there. is there are. security issues there are geopolitical. issues with the funding of science. and that what we've done is we've. starved our world for innovation and if. we don't get. back to the business of innovation we. should be doing diversity and inclusion. out of greed rather than guilt. now part of the problem with this is. that a lot of the energy. in behind diversity and inclusion is. based on guilt. and accusation yeah and what i want. is i want to kick ass and my hope is is.

that diminishing returns. favors mining the communities that have. not been traditionally mined. in order to extract um. output from those communities unless. there's a flaw in that plan if there's a. flaw somebody needs to tell me if there. isn't a flaw. we need to get greedy about innovation. rather than guilty about innovation. that's really brilliantly put my biggest. problem with what i see is. it exactly speaks to that and in the. discussion is diversity. it's used when it's grounded in guilt.

it's then. used as a hammer to shame people that. don't care about diversity enough. that okay. so my point is i'm excited about the. idea of jimi hendrix doing quantum field. theory. i'm excited about the idea of of uh art. tatum trying to figure out. uh what the. neural nets figured out about protein. folding i have some idea of the level of. intellect. of people who have not found their way.

into stem subjects. in incredibly technically demanding. areas and. if there's a flaw in that theory i want. somebody to present the flaw. but right now my belief is is that. these things are merit-based and if you. really believe in structural oppression. you do not want an affirmative action. program you want to make sure that. people have huge amounts of resources to. get themselves into position. i want to push out i just tried this on. this clubhouse application.

i want to push out klein bottles as a. secret sign. inside of rap videos in hip-hop right i. want people to have an idea that there's. an amazing world and i want to get the. people. who hopefully i'm trying to lure into. science and engineering. i want to get them paid i don't want. them as the cheap substitutes for the. fleeing. white males who have learned that they. can't make any money in science and. engineering. yeah so the problem is is that we need.

we need to take over the ship lex. and it doesn't need to be you and me. because quite honestly i have no desire. to administer i don't want to be the. chief executive officer of anything what. i do want. is i want the baby boomers who've made. this mess and can't see. it to be gone they they had almost all. of our universities. and i want fresh blood fresh resources. i want academic freedom and i want greed. for our country and for the future to.

determine diversity inclusion as opposed. to shame and guilt which is destroying. our fabric. that's as good of a diversity statement. as i've ever heard. this is a u-turn but somebody commented. on the tweet you sent that as one of the. top comments that i definitely have to. ask you about cryptocurrency. so it's a u-turn but not really. okay since you're an economist since. you're deep not an economist.

you i mean i i pretend to be an. economist hoping that the economists. will. take issue that i'm not an economist so. that i can advance. gauge theoretic and field theoretic. economics which the economics profession. has failed to acknowledge was a major. innovation. that happened approximately 25 years ago. i don't think that economists. understand what a price index is that. measures inflation nor do i think. economists understand. what a growth index or a product.

a quantity index is that measures gdp. i think that they don't even understand. the basics. of price and quantity index construction. and therefore. they can't possibly review. field theoretic economics they can't. review gauge theoretic economics. they're intellectually not in a position. to manage their own field. you talked about there's a stagnation. and growth currently. i looked at from my microeconomics. macroeconomics and college perspective.

gdp doesn't seem to capture the. productivity. the full the spectrum of what i think is. as a functioning successful society what. do you think is broken about gdp. what does it need to include uh these. indices. like let me let me explain what they. don't understand to begin with sure. imagine that all prices. and all quantities uh of output.

are the same at the end of the year as. they are at the beginning. and you ask what happened during that. year was there inflation. they meandered over the course of the. year but miraculously they all came. back to exactly their values the amount. produced at the end of the year is the. same as at the beginning in every single. quantity. typically the claim would be that the. price index should be 1.0. and that the quantity index should be. 1.0 that's.

clearly wrong why. well it's much easier to see. with it speaks to a fundamental. confusion that economists have they. don't understand that the economy is. curved and not flat. in a curved economy everything should be. path dependence but they. view path dependence as a problem. because they are effectively the flat. earth society. of market analysis they don't understand. that what they've called. and they've actually called it the.

cycling problem is exactly what they. need to understand to advance their. field. so i'll give you a very simple example. okay let's imagine that we have bob and. carol. in one hedge fund and ted and alice in. another. in both cases the females that is. alice and carol are the chief investment. officers. and bob and ted are the chief marketing. officers in.

charge of trying to get money into the. fund and trying to get people not. um to in fact. remove their their money from the funds. okay. if you in fact had uh. bob and caroline's head in alice and. both hedge funds. were invested in assets whose prices. came back to the same levels and whose. exposures were in the same quantities.

and you wanted to compensate these two. hedge funds would you compensate them. the same necessarily. what if for example. carol was killing it in terms of. investments every time she bought. some sort of security the price of that. security went up. okay but bob was the worst marketing. officer and as chief marketing officer. there were tons of redemptions because. bob was constantly drunk.

bob was making off-color comments now. as a result at the end of the year the. fund hasn't grown in size. because even though carol was crushing. it in terms of the investments. bob was screwing up everything be and. the redemptions were legendary. so people were making money and still. pulling it out of the fund. in the other fund. alice can't seem to buy a base hit every. time she gets into a security the thing. plummets.

but ted's amazing marketing skills. allowed. the fund to get all sorts of new. subscriptions and halted the redemptions. as people. hoped that the fund would get its act. together. okay price indices. should be how carol. and alice are compensated. and quantity indices should be how. um bob and ted are compensated.

so even though both funds had closed. loops that come back to the original. states. what happened during the period that. they were active. tells you how people are supposed to be. compensated. now we know that whatever the increase. in the price indus. index is is compensated by a decrease. in the quantity index or conversely. because prices and quantities return to. their original values.

you could have another fund where. nothing much happened there were no. redemptions no subscriptions. prices the fund remained in cash the. whole time so in that third fund. you know let's call that tristan is. older right. that fund should have no bonuses paid. because nobody did anything but nobody. should be fired either. now the fact that the economists don't. even understand that this is what their. price and quantity indices. were intended to do that they don't. understand that you can actually give.

what would be called. ordinal agents the freedom to change. their preferences. and still have something defined as a. conus cost of living adjustment they. don't even understand the mathematics of. their field. so the indices need to be able to. capture some kind of dynamics. uh that we have had indices that capture. these dynamics. due to the work of francois division. since 1925. but the economists have not even. understood what divisius index truly. represented what do you miss with.

uh with uh such crude indices then. well you miss the fact that you're. supposed to have a field theoretic. subject. the representative consumer should. actually be a probability distribution. on the space of all possible consumers. weighted by the probability of getting. any particular pull from the. distribution. we should not have a single gauge of. inflation like. what is that in 1973 dollars any more. than you should be able to say. it was 59 degrees fahrenheit on earth.

yesterday. so when we get to the cryptocurrency. what i'm going to say. is is that because we didn't found. economic theory on the proper marginal. revolution because we missed the major. opportunity which is is that. the differential calculus of markets is. gage theory. it's not ordinary uh. differential calculus we found that out. in in finance that it was stochastic. differential calculus. we have the wrong version of the. differential calculus underneath.

all of modern economic theory and part. of what i've been pushing for in. cryptocurrencies. is the idea that we should be. understanding that gold. is a gauge theory just as modern. economic theory is supposed to be a. gauge theory. and that we should be looking to. liberate cryptocurrencies. and more importantly distributed. computing. from the problem of this unwanted global. aspect which is the blockchain the thing. that is most celebrated. in some sense about bitcoin is in fact.

the reason that i'm least enthusiastic. about it i'm. hugely enthusiastic about what satoshi. did but it's an intermediate step. towards trying to figure out what should. digital gold. actually be if physical gold. is a collection of uh up quarks and down. quarks in the form of protons and. neutrons. held together the quarks by gluons with. electrons orbiting it held together by. photons with the occasional. weak interaction beta decay all of those.

are gauge theories. so gold is actually coming from gage. theory. and markets are coming from gauge theory. and the opportunity. to do locally enforced conservation laws. which effectively is what a bitcoin. transaction is. should theoretically be founded on a. different principle that is not the. blockchain. it should be a gauge theoretic concept. in which. effectively the tokens are excitations. on a network of computer nodes.

and the fact that let's imagine that. this is some. token by moving it from. my custodianship to your custodianship. effectively i. pushed that glass as a gauge theory. towards your region of the table. we should be recognizing that gage. theory is the correct. differential calculus for the 21st. century in fact it should have been. there in the 20th century. you're saying it captures these. individual individual dynamics. richer why should my giving you a token.

have to be. why should we alert the global community. in this token that that occurred you can. talk about side chains you can talk. about any means of doing this. but effectively we have a problem which. is if i think about this differently. yeah i have a glass that is extant. you have a glass that is abstinent we're. supposed to call. the constructor method on your glass at. the same moment we call the destructor. method on my glass in order to have a. conservation principle. it would be far more efficient to do.

this with the one. series system that is known never to. throw an exception which is nature. and nature has chosen gauge theory and. geometry for her underlying language. we now know due to work of pia milani at. harvard. in economics in the mid-1990s which i. was her co-author on. but i i wish to promote her as as well. as this being my idea. we know that modern economic theory is a. naturally occurring gauge theory.

and the failure of that community to. acknowledge that that work occurred. and that it was put down for reasons. that make no analytic sense. is important in particular due to the. relatively new innovation of distributed. computing. and satoshi's brainchild so you're. thinking we need to have the mathematics. that captures. that enforces cryptocurrency as a. distributed system as opposed to a. centralized one where the blockchain. says that crypto should be uh. centralized the abundance economy.

much discussed in silicon valley or. what's left of it. is actually a huge threat to the planet. because what it really is is that it is. what marc andreessen is called software. eating the world. and what that means is that you're going. to push things from being private goods. and services into public goods and. services and public goods and services. cannot have price and value tied. together. ergo people will produce things of. incredible value. to to the world that they cannot command.

a price and they will not be able to. capture. the value that they have created or a. significant enough fraction of it. the abundance economy is a disaster it. will. lead to a reduction in human freedom the. great innovation of satoshi. is locally enforced or semi-locally. enforced. conservation laws where the idea is just. as gold as heart you know why is gold. hard. to create or destroy it's because it's. created not only in stars but in violent. events involving stars like supernova. collisions.

when gold is created and we transact. we're using conservation laws the. physics determines. the custodianship whatever it is that i. don't have you now have. and conversely in such a situation. we should be looking for the abstraction. that most closely matches the physical. world because the physical world is. known not to throw an exception. the blockchain is a vulnerability the. idea that the 51 percent problem isn't. solved.

that you could have crazy race. conditions all of these things we know. that they're solved. inside of gage theory somehow. so the important thing is to recognize. that one of the greatest. intellectual feats ever in the history. of economic theory. took place already and was essentially. instantly buried. and i will stand by those comments. satoshi wherever you are. i probably know you are you satoshi no.

no no i don't have that kind of ability. i really don't. i do other things speaking of satoshi. engaged theory. you've mentioned to brian keating. that you may be releasing a geometric. community paper. this year or some other form of. additional material. in the topic uh what is your thinking. around this. what's the process you're going through. now well i was very. trying this i i used april 1st to try to.

start a tradition. which i hope to use to liberate mankind. the tradition is that at least one day a. year. you should be able to say heretical. things. and not have jack dorsey boot you off or. mark zuckerberg. your provost shouldn't call you up and. say what did you say. we need at some level to have a jubilee. from. centralized control and so my. my hope is that you know what a. tradition is in america.

something a baby boomer did twice. impeachment that's very funny. anyway um so when i'm i'm not a baby. boomer but as an exer. i've thought about whether or not april. first would be a good date. on which to release a printed version of. what i already said in lecture form. because i think it's hysterically funny. that the physics community claims. that it can't decode video a lecture.

yeah i. it must be paper and you know what there. will be a steady stream of new. complaints. up until the point that they fit it into. a narrative that they like. um yeah i'm thinking about april 1st uh. as a date in which to release a document. and it won't be perfectly complete but. it'll be very complete. and then they'll try to say it's wrong. or. you already did it or no that was dumb. but what we just did on top of it is.

brilliant. or it doesn't match experiment or who. knows what they'll go through all of. their usual nonsense. it's time to go is there still puzzles. in your own mind. that need to be figured out for you to. try to put it on paper i mean. those are different mediums right it was. a great question. i did not count on something that turns. out to be important. when you work on your own outside of the. system for a long time. you probably don't think you're going to.

be doing this as a 55 year old. man and i have been so long outside of. math and physics departments and i've. been occupied with so many other things. as you can see. that the old idea that i had was if i. always did it in little pieces. then i was always safe because it. wouldn't be stealable. and so now those pieces never got. assembled. completely in essence i have all the. pieces. and i can fit them together.

but there's probably a small amount of. glue code. like there are a few algebraic things. i've forgotten how to do i may or may. not figure them out between now and. april 1st. but it's pretty complete but that's the. puzzle you're kind of uh. struggling to now figure out to get it. all on. the glue together i can't tell you. whether the theory is correct. or incorrect but like you know for. example there's what's the exact form of. the super symmetry algebra or. how what's the rule for passing a minus.

sign through a particular operator. and all of that stuff got a lot more. difficult because i didn't. i didn't do it ever look you know it's a. little bit like. uh if you're you know if you're a. violinist and you don't touch your. violin. regularly for 15 years you come back to. it you pretty much know the pieces sort. of but there's lots of stuff that's. missing your tone is off and that kind. of stuff. i would say i've got i'll get the ship. to the harbor and it'll. require a tugboat probably to get it in.

and if the tugboat doesn't show up then. i'll pilot the. thing right into the dock myself but. it's not a big deal i think that. it is essentially complete. psychologically. just as a human being this is uh i. remember. perhaps by accident but maybe there's no. accidents in the universe. i was tuned in i don't remember where on. april 1st. yeah to you uh oh i think i need discord. yeah uh kind of thinking about thinking. through this release i mean it wasn't.

like. uh it wasn't obvious that you were going. to do it you were thinking through it. and i remember there was. intellectual personal psychological. struggle with this. yeah right well because i did i thought. it was dangerous if this. turns out to be right i don't know what. it unlocks. i'm if it's wrong i think i. understand where we are if it's wrong. it'll be the first. fool's gold that really looks like a. theory of everything.

it'll be the iron pyrites of physics and. we haven't even had fool's gold in my. opinion yet. got it so what is your intuition why. this. looks right to you like why it feels. like. it would be if if wrong i can say it. very simply. it's way smarter than i am can you break. that apart a little more. like every time you poke at it it's. giving you intuitions that follow with. the. the currently known physics well let's.

put it in computer science terms. yes please okay there's a concept of. technical debt that computer scientists. struggle with as you commit crimes you. have to pay those crimes back at a later. date. in general most of the problem with. physical theories is that. as you try to do something that matches. reality you usually have to go into some. structure. that gets you farther away and your hope. is is that you're going to be able to. pay back the technical debt and. in general these will wind up as check.

hiding schemes. or like you're funding a startup and. they're too many pivots. right so you keep adding epicycles in. order to. to cover things that have gone wrong. my belief is is that. this thing represents something like a. summit. to me and i'm very proud of having found. a route up this summit. but the route is what's due to me the.

summit can't possibly. be due to me you know. like edmund hillary and tenzing norgay. did not create mount everest they know. that they didn't create math. they figured out a way up. you got to tell me what uh mon everest. is in this metaphor. relative and also connected to the. technical debt so technical debt is an. is a negative thing that it's kind of. you you'll eventually have to pay it.

are you saying in the in the ascent that. you're seeing. now the theory is you do not have much. technical debt well that's right i think. that what happens is that early on. what i would say is i believe now. that the physics community has said. many things incorrectly about the. current. state of the universe they're not wildly. off which is why. like for example the claim is that there. are three generations of matter.

i do not believe that there are three. generations matter i believe that there. are two generations of matter and there. is a third. collection that looks like a generation. of matter. as the first two only at low energy. okay well that's not a frequent claim. people imagine that there are three or. more generations of matter. i would claim that that's false people. claim that the matter is chiral that is. it knows it's left from its right. i would claim that the chirality is not.

fundamental but it is emergent. we could keep going at all these sorts. of things people think that. space time is the fundamental geomatic. geometrical construct. i do not agree i think it's something. that i've termed the observers. all of these different things. represent a series of. over-interpretations. of the world that preclude progress. so you you gave i think you gave uh some.

credit to string theory. as uh string theory i think quantum. gravity if i remember correctly. as as like getting close to the. fool's uh gold well i said that garrett. lisey. apparently phenomenologically gets. a lot of things right he gets he's got a. reason for chirality. a reason for uniqueness using e8 in fact. e8 uses something called vial fermions. which are chiral. he has a way of getting geometry.

to get riemann's geometry underneath. general relativity to play with. aerosman's geniometry which is. underneath the standard model using. something called cartan connections that. are out of favor. he's figured out something involving. super connections. to make sure that the fermion the matter. in the system isn't quantized. the same way as the bosons were which is. a problem in his old theory. he's got something about three. generations for triality he's got a lot. of phenomenological hits. i don't think garrett's theory works it.

also has a very simple lagranges. basically using the yang mills. norm squared the same thing you would. use as a as a cost function. uh if you were doing neural nets okay. the string theorists have a different. selling point which is is that they may. have gotten a renormalizable theory of. gravity. if quantum gravity was what we were. meant to do. and they've done some stuff with black. holes that they can get some solutions. correct and then they have lots of.

agreements with where they show. mathematical. truths that mathematicians didn't even. know. i'm very underwhelmed by string theory. based on how many people have worked on. it. and how little is supporting the claims. to it being a theory of everything. but those are the two that i take. quite seriously i don't yet take. wolfram's. quite seriously because if he really. finds one of these. cellular automatons that are really. distinct and generative.

it'll be amazing but he's looking for. such a thing i don't think he's. found anything tegmark i view as a. philosopher. who is somehow taking credit for. platonism which. i don't see any reason for fighting with. max because i like max but. if it ever comes time i'm putting a. post-it note that i'm not positive the. mathematical universe hypothesis. is really anything new um and in general. uh loop quantum gravity really i think. grew out of some hopes that the general.

relativistic community had for. that they would be able to do particle. theory and i don't think that they've. shown. any particle theoretic realism so. essentially. here's what i really think lex. i think we didn't understand how big the. difference between. an effective theory and a theory of. everything is conceptually. maybe it's not mathematically that. different but conceptually. trying to figure out what a theory of. every how does the universe and i've. compared it to escher's drawing hands.

how do two hands draw themselves into. existence. that's the puzzle that i think has just. been wanting and i i'll be honest i'm. really surprised. that the theoretical physics community. didn't even get up on their high horse. and say this is. the most stupid nonsense imaginable. because clearly i'm i always say i'm not. a physicist. so i'm just a i'm i'm i'm an amateur.

with a heart as big as all outdoors. so in your journey of releasing this and. i'm sure that. further maybe uh it will be another. american tradition on april 1st. that will continue for years uh. in my uh there's sort of. uh crumbs along the way that i'm hoping. to uh collect in my naive view of things. of the beauty that.

in your geometric view of the universe. so uh one question. i'd like to ask is um. if you were to challenge me to visualize. something beautiful. something important about geometric. community in my struggle to. appreciate some of its beauty from the. outsider's perspective. what would that be thing be interesting. question. perhaps we can both have a journey.

towards april first. take a look at that. some kind of a scrunchie that i picked. up on melrose. not melrose montana in santa monica. now you'll notice that all of those. discs. rotate independently yes. if you rotate groups of those in a way. that is continuous but not uniform.

everywhere what you're doing is the. so-called gauge. transformation on the torus seen as a u1. bundle. over a u1 space time so. the concept of space-time here in a very. simplified case isn't four-dimensional. but it's one-dimensional it's just a. circle. and there's a circle above every point. in the circle represented by those. little discs. imagine if you will that. we took a rubber band.

and placed it around here and decided. that that was a function. from the circle into this circle that is. representing a y-axis that's wrapped. around itself. well you would have an idea of what it. means for a function to be constant. if it just went all around the outside. but what happens if i. turn this a little bit then the function. would be mostly constant it would have a. little place where it dipped. and it went back it turns out that you. can.

transform that function and transform. the derivative. that says that function is equal to zero. when i take its derivative. at the same time that's what a gauge. transformation is amazing to me. that we don't have a simple video. visualizing things that i've already. had built and that i can clearly. demonstrate. when you do that taurus who's the code.

of the taurus is itself. generating yeah this is a u1 principle. bundle. and the world needs to know what a gauge. theory is not by analogy. not with lawrence krauss saying it's. like a checkerboard if you change some. of the colors this way not saying. you know that it it's it's a. local symmetry involving it's none of. those things it's a theory of. differential calculus where the. functions. and the derivatives are both subject to. a particular kind of change.

so that if a function was constant under. one derivative. then the new function is constant under. the new derivative. transformed in the same fashion and. would you put that under the category of. just gauge transformations. yes that would be gauge transformations. applied to sections. and connections where connections are. the derivatives in the theory. this is easily explained it is. pathological that the community of. people who understand what i'm saying. have never bothered. to do this in a clear fashion for the.

general public you and i could visualize. this. overnight this is not hard. the public needs to know in some sense. that let's say quantum electrodynamics. the theory of photons and electrons more. or less electrons are functions. and photons are derivatives now there's. some. you can object in some ways but. basically a gauge theory. is the way in which you can translate uh. a shift in the definition of the.

functions and the shift. of the definition of the derivatives so. that the underlying physics is not. harmed. or changed so you have to do both at the. same time. now you and i can visualize that so if. what you wanted to do. rather than going directly to geometric. unity is that i could sit down with you. and i could say here are the various. components of geometric unity. and if the public needs a visualization. in order to play along. we've got a little over two months and. i'd be happy to work with you. i love that as a challenge and i'll take.

it on and i hope we do make it happen. and david goggins. if lex doesn't do some super macho thing. because he's got to work. uh to get some of this stuff down done. you'll understand he'll be available to. you after april. thank you for the thank you for the. escape clause i really needed that. escape clause i'm glad that i'm worried. 48 miles in 48 hours. by the way i just want to say how much i. admire. your willingness to keep this kind of. hardcore attitude.

um i know that russians have it and. russian jews have it in spades but it's. harder to do. in a society that's sloppy and that's. weak. and that's lazy and the fact that you. bring so much heart. to saying i'm going to bring this to jiu. jitsu i'm going to bring this to guitar. i'm going to bring this to ai i'm going. to bring this to podcasting. it comes through loud and clear i just. find it completely and utterly inspiring. that you keep this kind of hardcore. aspect at the same time that you're the. guy who's extolling the virtue of love.

in a modern society and doing it at. scale. thank you that means a lot i don't know. why i'm doing it but i'm just following. my heart on it. and just going with the gut it seems to. make sense somehow i i personally think. we better get tougher or we're going to. get in a world of pain and i. i do think that when it comes time to. lead uh it's great to have people who. you know don't crack under pressure do. you mind if we. talk about love and what it takes to be.

a father for a bit. sure do you mind if zev joins us i'd be. an honor. so eric i've talked to your son zev. who's an incredible. human being but let me uh. ask you this might be difficult because. you're both sitting together. what advice do you have for him. as he makes his way in this world.

especially given that as we mentioned. before on joe rogan. you're flawed in that just like all. humans you're mortal. well at some level i guess one of. my issues is that i've got to stop. giving quite so much advice. uh early on i was very worried. that i could see zeb's abilities and i. could see his. challenges and i saw them in terms of. myself. so a certain amount of zev rhymes with.

whatever i went through as a kid and. i don't want to doom him to the same. outcomes that. that sufficed for me i think that he's. got a much better head on his shoulders. at age 15 he's much better adjusted. and in part it's important for me to. recognize that because i think i did a. reasonably decent job early on i don't. need. to get this part right and. you know i'm looking at at zev's.

trajectory and saying. you're going to need to be incredibly. even pathologically self-confident. the antidote for that is going to be. something you're going to need to carry. on board which is radical humility. and you're going to have to have those. in a dialectical tension which is never. resolved which is a huge burden. you are going to have to forgive people. who do not appreciate your gifts. because your gifts are clearly evident. and many people will have to pretend not. to see them because if they.

see your gifts then they're gonna have. to question their entire approach to. education. or employment or critical thinking. and what my hope is is that you can just. forgive those who don't see them. and who complicate and frustrate your. life and realize that you're gonna have. to take care of them too. seth let me ask you the more challenging. question because the guy is sitting. right here. what advice do you have for your dad. since uh after talking to you i realize. you're the uh the more brilliant aside.

from the. the better looking uh member of the. family. um. odd question yeah um sorry i could say. anything you want is the last time we're. gonna be seeing left. awkward drive home. [Laughter]. i think sort of a new perspective. i've taken on parenting is that it. is a task for which no human is really.

supposed to be prepared you know there. are. in jewish tradition for example there. are. myriad analogies in the torah and the. talmud. that compare the role of a parent. to the role of a god right no human. is prepared to play god and create and. guide. a life but somehow we're forced into it. as. as people um and i think sometimes it's. hard for.

uh children to understand that however. their. their parents are failing um. is is something for for which we must. budget because our parents. play a role in our lives uh of which. they're. they're not worthy and they devote. themselves to. uh regardless because that becomes who. they are in a certain sense so. i hope to um.

i hope to have realistic realistic. expectations. of you as a human because i think. too often it's easy to have godly. expectations of people who are. far from such a role and i think. i'm really happy that you've been as. open as you have with me about. the fact that um. you know you really you don't pretend to. be a god in my life.

you you are. a guide who allows me to see myself. and that's been very important. considering the fact that. by your self-teaching paradigm. i will have to i will have to guide. myself. and being able to see it and see myself. accurately has been one of the greatest. gifts that you've. you've given me so i'm very appreciative. and uh i want you to know that.

i don't buy into the the role that. you're. you're supposed to um. sort of fake your way through uh in my. in my life but i. i'm unbelievably happy with. uh a more realistic connection that. we've been. able to build in lieu of it so i think. it's been easier on you.

actually as you come to realize what i. don't know what i can't do. and that there's been a period of time i. guess that's fascinating to me. where you're sort of surprised that i. don't know the answer to a certain. thing as well as you do and that. i remember going through this with a. particular mathematician who i held and. i still hold in awe. named david kajdan and you know he. famously. said to him and weirdly our family knew. his family in the soviet union but.

he said you know eric i always. appreciate you coming to my office. because i always find what you have to. say interesting but you have to realize. that in the areas that you're talking. about you are no longer the student you. are actually my teacher and i wasn't. prepared. to hear that and there are many ways in. which as i was just saying with the. mozart. i am learning at an incredible rate from. you. i used to learn from you because i. didn't understand what was possible you.

were. you were very much i mean this is the. weird thing there used to be this thing. called harvey the invisible rabbit this. guy. could had a rabbit that was like six. feet tall that only he could see maybe. he was. talking and that was like you at age. four. as you were saying batshit crazy things. that were all. totally sensible and nobody else could. put them together and so. what's wonderful is that the world. hasn't caught on. but enormous numbers of people are. starting to. and i really do hope that.

that genuineness of spirit and that. outside the box. intellectual commitment serves you well. as the world starts to appreciate. that i think you're a very trustworthy. voice you don't get everything right. but the idea that we have somebody at. your age who's embedded in your. generation who can tell. us something about what's happening is. really valuable to me and i do hope that. you'll. consider boosting that voice more than. just at the dinner table.

i apologize for saying this four-letter. word. but do you love. i was really worried it was going to be. another four-letter word. there's so many easy choices it doesn't. even rise. to the level of a question i mean i just. there are a tiny number of people with. whom. you share so much life that. you can't even think of yourself in.

their absence and. and i don't know if that would find that. but. it's you can have a kid and. never make this level of connection. i think i think even right down to the. fact that you know when. when zev chooses boogie woogie piano. for his own set of reasons why i would. choose boogie woogie piano if i could. play in any style. um it's a it's a question about a. decrease in loneliness.

you know like my grandfather played the. mandolin. and i had to learn some mandolin because. otherwise that instrument would go. silent. you don't expect that you get this much. of a chance to leave this much of. yourself. in another person who. is choosing it and recreating it rather. than it being. directly instilled and my proudest. achievement is in a certain sense having.

not. taught him and and have having shared. this much so. you know it's not even love it's like. well beyond. so you mentioned love. for you making a less lonely world. i think i speak for i would argue. probably. millions of people that you eric because. this is a conversation with you. have made for many people from me. a less lonely world and i can't wait to.

see how user developed as an intellect. but also. i'm so heartwarned by. the optimism and the hopefulness that. was in you. that i hope develops further and. lastly i'm deeply thankful that you eric. are. my friend and would give me. would honor me with this watch. it means more than words can say thanks.

guys thanks for talking today. thank you thanks for listening to this. conversation with eric weinstein and. thank you to our sponsors. indeed hiring site theragun muscle. recovery device. wine access online wine store and. blinkist app. that summarizes books click the sponsor. links to get a discount and to support. this podcast. and now let me leave you with some words. from socrates. to find yourself think for yourself. thanks for listening and hope to see you.

next time.