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EPISODE LINKS:
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OUTLINE:
0:00 - Introduction
1:38 - Philosophy becomes dangerous in difficult times
7:01 - The power of radical ideas
11:52 - Changing your mind
16:06 - Fear
17:45 - Labels
22:48 - Thomas Aquinas
27:18 - Nietzsche
31:49 - Nature of truth
34:09 - Jordan Peterson
39:41 - Mediums of communication
48:10 - Free will
52:34 - Simulation
56:51 - Transcending the limits of human life
59:56 - Elon Musk
1:04:17 - Aliens
1:07:48 - Is math invented or discovered?
1:10:22 - Theory of everything
1:12:17 - Eric Weinstein as a dad
1:28:04 - Music
1:35:19 - Advice for young people
1:37:18 - Mortality
1:41:05 - Meaning of life

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The following is a conversation with Zev Weinstein, a young man with a brilliant, bold, and hopeful mind that I had the great fortune of talking to on a recent afternoon.

He happens to be Eric Weinstein's son, but I invited Zev not because of that, but because I got a chance to listen to him speak on a few occasions and was captivated by how deeply he thought about this world at such a young age.

And I thought that it might be fun to explore this world of ours together with him for a time through this conversation.

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And if you wish, click the sponsor links below to get a discount and to support this podcast.

As a side note, let me say that Zev acknowledges the fear associated with participating in public discourse and is brave enough to join in at a young age, to push forward, to change his mind publicly, to learn, to articulate difficult, nuanced ideas, and grow from the conversations that follow.

In this, I hope he leads the next generation of minds that is joining and steering the collective intelligence of this big ant colony we think of as our human civilization.

If you enjoy this thing, subscribe on YouTube, review it on Apple Podcast, follow us on Spotify, support on Patreon, or connect with me on Twitter, Lex Friedman.

And now, here's my conversation with Zev Weinstein.

You've said that philosophy becomes more dangerous in difficult times.

Interestingly, I think I mean 2 things by that.

And I think firstly, I should clarify, when I say philosophy, I sort of mean in a very traditional sense, just thinking, ideation, and that could be reconsidering our notions of self in a very traditional sense, which we consider philosophy or that could be like technological innovation.

I think it's important to recognize all of these as philosophies that we can not question whether it's important to promote thought.

I think the other thing I should clarify is when I say difficult times, I mean times when nothing is growing and so the risk for real conflict is much greater because people are incentivized to fight over the things which already exist.

I think when times are not difficult, the people with the greatest power are usually the people who are very creative, generating a lot, and that really requires ideation or philosophy of some sort.

I think when times become stagnant, the important successful people become the people who are very good at protecting their own pieces of the pie and taking others, I think that those people have to be very opposed to any sort of thinking that could restructure society or conventions about who should succeed.

And so, firstly, I mean by that that it becomes much more dangerous for a person to think deeply and question during a time when the important people are those concerned with making sure no 1 rocks the boat.

1 example of this would be Socrates and his execution because everyone was happy enough to sit through his questions before there was war and poverty and distress, and afterwards it just became too dangerous.

The other thing I mean by that is that the consequences of thinking deeply carry much greater potential for real catastrophe when everyone is desperate.

So, like, for example, you know, the Communist Manifesto was probably much more dangerous during early 1900s Russia than it was during the 1848 revolutions, because I think people were in much worse shape.

And desperate people are very willing to dive into anything new that might bring the future without fully calculating whatever the consequences or risks might be.

So it is both more dangerous for a person to have creative ideas, and those ideas are more dangerous when times are tough.

And by dangerous you mean it challenges the people with power who want to maintain that power in times of stagnation, when there's not much growth, innovation, creativity, all that kind of stuff.

Right, and we know that if nothing new is created, people have promises that they've made about what will be paid to whom, what debt structure is.

The only possibility if stagnation lasts for long enough is really some kind of great conflict, great war because people have to take from others to make good on their own promises.

So we know that by denying any sort of grand ideation, we are accepting that there will be some kind of great catastrophe.

And so we have to understand that philosophy is the most important when we've seen too much stagnation for too long, it is also very dangerous.

And it's dangerous for the people who are doing it, and it's dangerous for the people who believe it, but it's kind of our only way out ever.

And again, by philosophy you mean the bigger, so it's not academic philosophy or this kind of games played in the space of just like moral philosophy and all those metaphysics, all that kind of stuff.

You mean just thinking deeply about this world, thinking from first principles.

I think your Twitter line involves something about like a-

Trying to piece everything together from first principles.

So that's fundamentally what being philosophical about this world is, and that's where the people who are thinking deeply about this world are the ones who are feeding, who are the catalyst of this growth in society and so on.

Yeah, I mean, I also think that the real implication of moral philosophy can be something that most would consider like a real political implication.

So I think all philosophy really ties together because there has to be some sort of grand structure to all thought and how it relates.

Do you think this growth and innovation and improvement can last forever?

We've seen some incredible, you know, the things that humans have been able to accomplish over the past several hundred years.

And every moment in that history, it almost seemed like no more could be done.

Like we've solved all the problems that are to be solved.

I mean, there's just, historically, there's all these kind of ridiculous like Bill Gates style quotes, or like, it's obvious that we've, this new cool thing's not gonna take off.

And so there's a feeling of the same kind of pattern that we see in Moore's law, there's constant growth in different technologies in the modern day era, in any kind of automation over the past hundred years.

Do you think it's possible that we'll keep growing this way if we give power to the philosophers of our society?

I think the only way that we can keep growing this way is if we give power to real thinkers.

And there's no guarantee that that will work, but we sort of don't have any other choice.

And I think you're entirely right that this period of both understanding the universe at a rate which has never been seen before in invention and creativity that these past hundred years have been sort of uncharacteristic for the level of growth that we've seen in all of history.

And I think a lot of our promises rest on this sort of thing continuing.

I think that's very dangerous, but the 1 thing that can get us out of this is philosophy and being ready to radically restructure all of our notions about what should be, what is, I think that's very important.

So you think deeply about this world, you are clearly this embodiment of a thinker, of a philosopher, your dad is also 1 such guy, Eric Weinstein, do you have big disagreements with him on this topic in particular?

I think people should know he also happens to be in the room, but the mics can't pick him up so he can heckle, it doesn't even matter.

But do you have disagreements with him on this point?

Let me try to summarize his argument that we are actually based a lot of our American society on the belief that things will keep growing.

And yet it seems that however you break it apart, maybe from an economics perspective, that they're not growing currently.

And so that's where a lot of our troubles are at.

Do you have the same sense that there's a stagnation period that we're living through over the past couple of decades?

I think stagnation, modern stagnation, is completely undeniable, particularly scientifically, and I think there have been a few fields where tremendous progress has been made very recently.

I think my dad might feel that there is sort of an inevitability to the ending of this period, And I'm not so certain that the fall of this great time is completely inevitable because I don't know what thoughts we're capable of producing, what we're able to reconsider.

I think we really have to be open to the possibility that all of our standard frameworks where he will talk about embedded growth obligations.

If we continue within the same framework, then we're very susceptible to the dangers of whatever these embedded growth obligations are.

I think if we break the frameworks, we have no reason to believe that the problems we're experiencing with our current frameworks will follow us.

And I think that's the importance of radical thought is we don't know what the solution is, but if there is a solution, it will be born from some very fundamental thinking.

So you have optimism about sort of the power of a single radical idea or a single radical thinker to break our frameworks and break us out of this like spiral down due to whatever the economic forces that are creating this current stagnation.

So let me come back to something you've also talked about.

You have very little stuff out there currently, but the things you have out there, your thoughts, you could just tell how deeply you think about this world.

And 1 of the things you mentioned is, as you learn about this world, as you read, as you sort of go through different experiences, that you're open to changing your mind.

How often do you find yourself changing your mind?

Do you think Zev from 10 years into the future will look back at this conversation we're having now and disagree completely with everything you just said?

It's entirely possible, and that's 1 of the things that scares me so much about appearing publicly.

I think that the internet can be very intolerant of inconsistency, And I am entirely prepared to be very inconsistent because I know that whatever beliefs I have when subjected to scrutiny may change because that's really the only way to form your truest, most fundamental conceptions about the world around you.

And it would take an infinite amount of time to subject every single 1 of your beliefs to scrutiny.

And so that's a process that must follow me throughout my entire life.

And I know that means that my opinions and perspectives are always to be changing.

I'm prepared to accept that about myself.

Whether other people are prepared to accept that my public opinions may change very greatly over time is something I don't know.

I don't know how tolerant the world will be, but I'm very prepared to change anything I believe in if I think deeply enough about it or a good enough argument is made so that I might reconsider.

Well, there's certainly is currently an intolerance and that's 1 of the problems of our age.

You talked about, sort of, we like to bin each other into different categories, blue or red or whatever the different categorization is.

But it seems like the task before you as a young person defining our future is to make a tolerance of change the norm.

Doing this podcast, for example, and then changing your mind 1 or 2 years later and doing so publicly without a big dramatic thing, or maybe changing it on a daily basis and just being open about it, being transparent about your thought process.

Maybe that is the beacon of hope for the philosophical way, the path of the philosopher.

So that's your task in a sense, is to change your mind openly and bravely.

You know, you're right, and maybe I will just have to endure some sort of criticism for doing that, but I think that's very important.

I think this ties back to this previous facet of our conversation where we were discussing if thinkers would win over systems that are devoted to preventing radical thought or if, you know, who will win, the systems or the thinkers.

I think it's crucial that my generation take up a hand in this fight.

And I think it's important that I'm a part of that because I know that I have some opportunity to.

I think it is my obligation as a member of a generation whose only real hope is to think outside of a system because whatever systems exist are collapsing.

I think it is really my obligation to try to play some role, whatever role I can, and being an instrument in that change.

Are you, as a young mind, do you have a sense of fear about just, like how afraid were you to do this podcast conversation?

Do you have a sense of fear of thinking publicly?

Yeah, I don't even think that that fear is irrational.

It's very difficult to exist publicly in any form now because it's very easy for anyone to take cheap shots at something which is difficult.

And as I said, the people who are trying to have the difficult ideas in conversations are perhaps putting others in actual danger because everyone is so desperate that they might be willing to try anything.

So there's a certain amount of responsibility which 1 has to take going before the public, and there is a certain amount of ridicule, which will be completely unwarranted that anyone must endure for it.

And I think that means that 1 has to be afraid because they could both ruin the world and be ruined by the world in an unwarranted and undeserved fashion.

I would like to believe in myself enough to try to accept this as a task because I think people need to try or there's no getting out

of this and we will end in some kind of crazy, brilliant war.

You've said also that in these times we can't have labels because it holds us back.

Maybe we've already talked about it a little bit, but this idea of labels is really interesting.

I think many underestimate the extent to which language and communication really impacts and shapes the ideas and thoughts which are being communicated.

And I think if we're willing to accept imperfect labels to categorize particular people or thoughts, in some sense we are corrupting an abstraction in order to represent it and communicate about it.

And I think as we've discussed, those abstractions are particularly important when everything is on fire.

We should not be sacrificing grand thought for the ability to express it, I think everyone should work much harder, including myself, to really be thinking abstractly in abstract terms instead of using concrete terms to discuss abstraction while ruining it slightly.

So 1 really difficult example in the recent time that maybe you can comment on if you have been thinking about it as just politics.

And there's a lot of labels in politics that it takes a lot of skill to be able to communicate difficult ideas without labels being attached to you.

That's something I've been sort of thinking about a lot in trying to express, for example, how much I love various aspects of the foundational ideas of this country, like freedom, and just saying I love America, a simple statement, I love the ideas that we're finding to America, will often in the current time, will people will try, they'll desperately try to attach a label to me for example, for saying I love America, that I'm a Republican, a Donald Trump supporter.

And it takes elegance and grace and skill to like avoid those labels so that people can actually listen to the contents of your words versus the summarization that results from just the labels that they can pin on you.

Are you cognizant of the skill required there of being able to communicate without being branded a Republican or a Democrat in this particular set of conversations, I'm sure there's other dangerous labels that could be attached.

I don't think there's any way of avoiding that right now.

It might not be anyone's best effort to really try.

I think the thing I can say which will most speak to that, which I truly believe, is that participating in modern conventional politics is not being inherently political in a generative sense.

It's this repeated trope where politics now is not about creating new political ideologies.

It's about defending ideologies which already exist so that everyone can keep what they have.

And that's where all of the name calling and the labeling really comes in.

It's an attempt to constrict whatever may be generated to standard conversations and discussions so that arguments can be strawmanned and defeated and people can keep what they have because everyone's very, very scared.

I want to be very political, but not in a standard political sense where I'm defending a particular party or place on a spectrum.

I would like to play some role in inventing new spectrums, and I think that's most important politically because above most else, politics is about real power and conventional politicians have real power, and that power will find terrible outlets if new spectrums for that power to live are not invented.

So you're not afraid of politics, political discourse, at the deepest, richest level

of what political discourse is supposed to mean.

Actually, I'm very afraid of it, but once again,

That's not paralyzing for you, that you feel like it's a responsibility, you're ready to take it on.

Okay, let's talk maybe fun, maybe profound.

We talked about philosophers, philosophy.

Like somebody in your current time, been either influential or you just enjoy his, her ideas or writing or anything like that.

I'll give an answer which sort of doesn't have much to do with whom I might imagine myself to be.

I think he's very inspirational to me given what we're going through.

That's not because his particular ideas of religion or God or unmoved movers are particularly inspirational to me.

I don't even think they were necessarily right.

But he was introducing aspects of the scientific method during 1 of the darkest periods in human history when we had lost all hope and reason and ability to think logically.

So I think he was really something of a light in the dark, and I think we need to look to people like that at the moment.

The other reason why I think I need to learn from him is that even though he was doing something which really needed to be done and introducing scientific thought and reason to a time that lacked it, He was not saying anything that would have been offensive to whatever powers were in play during his time.

He was writing about the importance of faith in God and how we could prove it.

And so it's important to remember, I suppose, that having ideas that shape the world and which bring the world closer to what we can prove it's supposed to be and how it's supposed to work does not always take some sort of grand contradiction of whatever's in play.

And the most courageous thing to do may not always be the most helpful thing to do.

And I think It's very easy for anyone with ideas about how everything is broken to become very cynical and say, oh, the system, man, they're all wrong.

I think it takes another kind of discipline to be a person with real ideas and to make the world better without stepping on anyone's toes or contradicting anyone.

So being able to be, when it's within your principles to operate within the current system of thought?

Yeah, and not offend anyone, not say anything outlandish, but introduce the method by which progress must be achieved.

I think that takes a kind of maturity which is found very rarely now.

And I really look to him for inspiration despite whatever disagreements I may have with the minute details of his philosophy.

Yeah, it takes a lot of skill, a lot of character, and yeah, deep thinking to be able to operate within the system when needed, and having the fortitude and just the boldness to step outside and to burn the system down when needed, but rarely, and opportune moments that would actually have impact.

I mean, it's ultimately about impact within the society that you live in, not just making a statement that has no impact.

Yeah, and we were talking about how dangerous it is to do real philosophy at dangerous, broken times.

He was going through the most broken time in history and He questioned the methods which made a broken system able to survive, and he was so skilled and so graceful that he became a saint in that tradition.

And there's something for me to really learn from there.

Do you draw any inspiration, have any interest in the sort of more modern philosophers, maybe the existentialists?

I mean, Nietzsche is 1 of the early ones.

Do you have thoughts on the guy in general or any of the other existentialists?

Well, with regard to Nietzsche, I think Yeats might've said that he's the worst.

You know, he was certainly filled with passionate intensity.

Yates had this big line, that the best lack all conviction, the worst are filled with passionate intensity.

So I think Nietzsche was destroyed by the horrors of everything that went on around him and I think he never really recovered from it.

I think that's because if you think about Nietzsche's philosophy, he was very opposed to any sort of acceptance of what 1 had.

1 should always envy those who have more and use that envy to fuel their growth and accept whatever the human condition and desires are and use those desires to want more and more and make use of your greed, I think it's very difficult to be truly happy if the thing which you pride yourself most on is never being satisfied.

And I think Nietzsche was never satisfied and that was the danger of his philosophy.

I think also with his amoralism, There is no good or evil.

I sort of disagree with that on a pretty fundamental basis.

I think that our notion of morality is by no means subjective.

It's really the proxy for the fitness of a society.

I think whatever we consider ethical, like don't steal, don't murder, don't do this, Societies have a very difficult time running.

It's very hard to run a civilization when everyone is stealing from everyone else and people are murdering each other and committing these things which we would consider atrocities.

So I think we also, we know this because I think very similar notions of morality have evolved convergently from different traditions.

I think Good is a proxy for a civilization's fitness, and the good news is that that means that evil in being anathema to that good must therefore be the opposite of stable in whatever way that it's evil, and that means that good will always be more stable than evil, and the only way evil can really win is if everyone dies.

Good is a proxy for the stability and fitness of a civilization.

Sorry, sorry to interrupt your flow there, but it's just a damn good line.

So in that sense, that's a kind of optimistic view that if by definition good is a proxy for stability, then it's going to be stable unless the entire world just blows itself up.

Or No, well, good wins unless it all goes to complete destruction.

On the topic of sort of good and evil being, human illusions, You've said that more broadly than that about truth, that it is easier in some ways to be unified under truth because it is universal than it is to be unified under belief, which at times can be completely subjective.

Can we understand the world objectively or is most of what we can understand about the world is just subjective opinions that we kind of all agree on in these little collectives, and over time it kind of evolves, completely detached from objective reality.

I think this is the greatest argument for objectivity, is that something that is objectively true cannot be true to me and untrue to you.

You can feel that it's untrue, but that would be unproductive and create unnecessary tension and conflict.

I think this is 1 reason for the importance of science as a tool for stability.

If Science is the search for truth, and truth can never really be, I shouldn't say that, truth should never be an engine of conflict because no 2 people should disagree on something which is objectively true.

Then in some sense, search for truth is searching for a common ground where we can all exist and live without contradicting or attacking each other.

Do you have a hope that there is a lot of common ground to be discovered?

mean, if we continue scientifically, we are discovering truth, and in that discovering common ground on which we can all agree.

That's 1 reason why I think caring about science, if you have a culture which cares very deeply about science, that's a culture which is not necessarily bound to endure unwarranted internal conflict.

I think that's 1 reason that I'm so passionate about science is its search for universal ground.

Let me just throw out an example of a modern day philosophical thinker.

We'll keep your dad, Eric Weinstein, out of the picture for a sec.

But he does happen to be an example of 1.

But Jordan Peterson is an example of another, somebody who thinks deeply about this world.

His ideas are, by a certain percent of the population, sort of speaking of truth, are labeled as dangerous.

Why do you think his ideas, or just ideas of these kinds of deep thinkers in general are labeled as dangerous in our modern world?

Is it similar to what you've been discussing, that in difficult times philosophers become dangerous?

Or is there something specific about these particular thinkers in our time?

Well, I think Jordan Peterson is very anti-establishment in a lot of his beliefs.

He's an unconventional thinker, and I think we need, regardless of whatever Jordan's particular views and beliefs are, and if they bring about more danger than truth, or if they don't, it's very important to have fundamental thinkers who exist outside of a conventional framework.

I think by existing outside of a system which is known, he is dangerous.

And I think we have to, In some sense, we have to welcome danger in that capacity because it will be our only way out of this.

Right or wrong, I'm pretty adamant about the fact that we need to support thought which may rescue us.

And that thought can appear radical or dangerous at times.

But ultimately, if you allow for it, this is kind of the difficult discussion of free speech and so on, is ultimately difficult ideas will pave the way for progress.

Yeah, and I'd actually, I'd like to slow you down there because I think like 1 of the issues we were discussing previously was the fact that language often destroys our ability to think.

When we're talking about whether his ideas are radical, I don't know if we mean radical in the traditional sense of having to do with the root of a problem or in the more modern sense of being very extreme.

I think fundamental thought, which semantically would once be considered radical thought became very dangerous, and now it's become synonymous with extreme or dangerous thought, which means that anyone who considers themselves a radical thinker is semantically also a dangerous or extreme thinker.

These are not helpful labels in a sense, that the moment you say radical or extremist thinker, then you're just, Well, how do I put it?

You're not helping the public discourse exchange of ideas.

But through no fault of our own, the concept of radical as having to do with a root is It's an obvious concept for which there must be language and a lot of the attack on thought has to do with attacking language which communicates conceptually.

So this is an example of how our world is becoming increasingly Orwellian.

It's just language is being used to destroy our ability to think.

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Zev Weinstein: The Next Generation of Big Ideas and Brave Minds | Lex Fridman Podcast #158