Eric Weinstein is a mathematician with a bold and piercing intelligence, unafraid to explore the biggest questions in the universe and shine a light on the darkest corners of our society. He is the host of The Portal podcast, a part of which, he recently released his 2013 Oxford lecture on his theory of Geometric Unity that is at the center of his lifelong efforts in arriving at a theory of everything that unifies the fundamental laws of physics.

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EPISODE LINKS:
Eric's Twitter: https://twitter.com/EricRWeinstein
Eric's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/ericweinsteinphd
The Portal podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-portal/id1469999563
Graph, Wall, Tome wiki: https://theportal.wiki/wiki/Graph,_Wall,_Tome

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Full episodes playlist:
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OUTLINE:
0:00 - Introduction
2:08 - World War II and the Coronavirus Pandemic
14:03 - New leaders
31:18 - Hope for our time
34:23 - WHO
44:19 - Geometric unity
1:38:55 - We need to get off this planet
1:40:47 - Elon Musk
1:46:58 - Take Back MIT
2:15:31 - The time at Harvard
2:37:01 - The Portal
2:42:58 - Legacy

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The following is a conversation with Eric Weinstein, the second time we've spoken on this podcast.

He's a mathematician with a bold and piercing intelligence, unafraid to explore the biggest questions in the universe and shine a light on the darkest corners of our society.

He's the host of the Portal podcast, a part of which he recently released his 2013 Oxford lecture on his theory of geometric unity.

That is at the center of his lifelong efforts to arrive at a theory of everything that unifies the fundamental laws of physics.

This conversation was recorded recently in the time of the coronavirus pandemic.

For everyone feeling the medical, psychological, and financial burden of this crisis, I'm sending love your way.

Stay strong, we're in this together, we'll beat this thing.

This is the Artificial Intelligence Podcast.

If you enjoy it, subscribe on YouTube, review it with 5 stars on Apple Podcasts, support it on Patreon, or simply connect with me on Twitter at Lex Friedman, spelled F-R-I-D-M-A-N.

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

Do you see a connection between World War II and the crisis we're living through right now?

The need for collective action, reminding ourselves of the fact that all of these abstractions, like everyone should just do exactly what he or she wants to do for himself and leave everyone else alone, none of these abstractions work in a global crisis.

And this is just a reminder that we didn't somehow put all that behind us.

When I hear stories about my grandfather who was in the army, and so the Soviet Union where most people die when you're in the army, there's a brotherhood that happens, there's a love that happens.

Do you think that's something we're gonna see here?

I mean, what the Soviet Union went through.

I mean, the enormity of the war on the Russian doorstep.

we can't talk about Stalingrad and COVID in the same breath yet.

And the sort of, you know, the sense of like the great patriotic war and the way in which I was very moved by the Soviet custom of newlyweds going and visiting war memorials on their wedding day.

You have to say thank you to the people who made it possible.

We, you know, I've called this on the Rogan program.

The 75 years with very little by historical standards in terms of really profound disruption.

When you call it the great nap, meaning lack of deep global tragedy, well lack of realized global tragedy.

the development, for example, of the hydrogen bomb, you know, was something that happened during the great nap.

And that doesn't mean that people who lived during that time didn't feel fear, didn't know anxiety, but it was to say that most of the violent potential of the human species was not realized.

And this is the thing that I've sort of taken issue with, with the description of Steven Pinker's optimism is that if you look at the realized kinetic variables, things have been getting much better for a long time, which is the great nap.

But it's not as if our fragility has not grown, our dependence on electronic systems, our vulnerability to disruption.

And so all sorts of things have gotten much better.

Other things have gotten much worse and the destructive potential has skyrocketed.

Is tragedy the only way we wake up from the big nap?

Well, no, you could also have jubilation about positive things, but it's harder to get people's attention.

Can you give an example of a big global positive thing that could happen?

I think that when, for example, just historically speaking, HIV went from being a death sentence to something that people could live with for a very long period of time, it would be great if that had happened on a Wednesday, right?

Like all at once, like you knew that things had changed.

And so the bleed in somewhat kills the, the sort of the Wednesday effect where it all happens on a particular day at a particular moment.

I think if you look at the stock market here, there's a very clear moment where you can see that the market absorbs the idea of the coronavirus.

I think that with respect to positives, the moon landing was the best example of a positive that happened at a particular time or recapitulating the Soviet American link up in terms of Skylab and Soyuz, right?

Like that was a huge moment when you actually had these 2 nations connecting in orbit.

And so, yeah, there are great moments where something beautiful and wonderful and amazing happens.

That's why as much as I can't imagine proposing to somebody at a sporting event when you have like 30,000 people waiting and you know like she says yes.

So I think that we shouldn't discount that.

So How bad do you think it's going to get in terms of the global suffering that we're going to experience with this crisis?

They're almost like 2 separate storylines.

In 1 storyline, we aren't taking things nearly seriously enough.

We see people using food packaging lids as masks who are doctors or nurses.

We hear horrible stories about people dying needlessly due to triage.

On the other hand, there's this other story which says there are tons of ventilators some place, we've got lots of masks, but they haven't been released.

We've got hospital ships where none of the beds are being used.

And it's very confusing to me that somehow these 2 stories give me the feeling that they both must be true simultaneously and they can't both be true in any kind of standard way.

And I don't know whether it's just that I'm dumb, but I can't get 1 or the other story to quiet down.

So I think weirdly, this is much more serious than we had understood it.

And it's not nearly as serious as some people are making it out to be at the same time and that we're not being given the tools to actually understand, oh, here's how to interpret the data or here, the issue with the personal protective equipment is actually a jurisdictional battle or a question of who pays for it rather than a question of whether it's present or absent.

I don't understand the details of it, but something is wildly off in our ability to understand where we are.

do you think about the quiet suffering of millions of people that have lost their job?

I mean, what I'm, my ear's not to the suffering of those people who have lost their job or the 50% possibly of small businesses that are gonna go bankrupt, do you think about that quiet suffering?

This could go from recession to depression and depression could go to armed conflict and then to war.

So it's not a very, abstract causal chain that gets us to the point where we can begin with quiet suffering and anxiety and all of these sorts of things and people losing their jobs and people dying from stress and all sorts of things.

But, look, anything powerful enough to put us all indoors in a, I mean, think about this as an incredible experiment.

Imagine that you proposed, hey, I want to do a bunch of research.

Let's figure out what changes in our emissions profiles for our carbon footprints when we're all indoors, or what happens to traffic patterns, or what happens to the vulnerability of retail sales as Amazon gets stronger, you know, et cetera, et cetera.

I believe that in many of those situations we're running an incredible experiment.

Yes, there are some bright spots, 1 of which is that when you're ordered to stay indoors, people are gonna feel entitled.

And the usual thing that people are going to hit when they hear that they've lost your job, there's this kind of tough love attitude that you see, particularly in the United States.

I think there's gonna be a lot less appetite for that because we've been asked to sacrifice, to risk, to act collectively.

Maybe the idea that we actually are nations and that your fellow countrymen may start to mean something to more people.

It certainly means something to people in the military, but I wonder how many people who aren't in the military start to think about this as like, oh yeah, we are kind of running separate experiments and we are not China.

So you think this is kind of a period that might be studied for years to come?

From my perspective, we are a part of the experiment, but I don't feel like we have access to the full data, the full data of the experiment.

I'm romanticizing it and I keep connecting it to World War II, So I keep connecting to historical events and making sense of them through that way or reading the plague by Camus.

Like almost kind of telling narratives and stories, but I'm not hearing the suffering that people are going through.

Because I think that's quiet, that everybody's numb currently.

They're not realizing what it means to have lost your job and to have lost your business.

There's kind of a, I don't, I'm afraid how that fear will materialize itself once the numbness wears out.

And especially if this lasts for many months, then if it's connected to the incompetence of the CDC and the WHO and our government and perhaps the election process, my biggest fear is that the elections get delayed or something like that.

So the basic mechanisms of our democracy get slowed or damaged in some way that then mixes with the fear that people have that turns to panic, that turns to anger, that anger.

Can I just play with that for a little bit?

What if in fact, all of that structure that you grew up thinking about, and again, you grew up in 2 places, right?

So, when you were inside the U S We tend to look at all of these things as museum pieces.

Like how often do we amend the constitution anymore?

And in some sense, if you think about the Jewish tradition of Simchat Torah, you've got this beautiful scroll that has been lovingly hand drawn in calligraphy.

And it's very important that you not treat it as a relic to be revered.

And so we, 1 day a year we dance with the Torah and we hold this incredibly vulnerable document up and we treat it as if, you know, it was Ginger Rogers being led by Fred Astaire.

Well, That is how you become part of your country.

In fact, maybe the election will be delayed.

Maybe any 1 of a number of things will indicate that you're actually living through history.

This isn't a museum piece that you were handed by your great-great-grandparents.

But you're kind of suggesting that there might be like a community thing that pops up, as opposed to an angry revolution, it might have a positive effect

of- Well, for example, are you telling me that if the right person stood up and called for us to sacrifice PPE for our nurses and our MDs who are on the front lines, that people wouldn't reach down deep in their own supply that they've been like stocking and carefully storing.

Like right now an actual leader would use this time to bring out the heroic character, and I'm gonna just go wildly patriotic because I freaking love this country.

We've got this dormant population in the US that loves leadership and country and pride in our freedom and not being told what to do and we still have this thing that binds us together and all of the merchants of division just be gone.

I think there is a deep hunger for that leadership.

Because we don't have the right surgeon general.

We have guys saying, come on guys, don't buy masks.

Save them for our healthcare professionals.

You have to say, you know what, these masks actually do work and they more work to protect other people from you, but they would work for you.

They'll keep you somewhat safer if you wear them.

You've got somebody who's taking huge amounts of viral load all the time because the patients are shedding.

Do you want to protect that person who's volunteered to be on the front line, who's up sleepless nights?

You just change the message, you stop lying to people.

Absolutely, but that's a little bit specific, so you have to be just honest about the facts of the situation, yes, but I think you were referring to something bigger than just that, it's inspiring, like rewriting the constitution, sort of rethinking how we work as a nation.

Yeah, I think you should probably amend the constitution once or twice in a lifetime, so that you don't get this distance from the foundational documents.

And you know, part of the problem is that we've got 2 generations on top that feel very connected to the U S they feel bought in and we've got 3 generations below.

It's a little bit like watching your parents riding the tricycle that they were supposed to pass on to you.

And it's like, you're now too old to ride a tricycle and they're still whooping it up, ringing the bell with the streamers coming off the handlebars.

And you're just thinking, do you guys never get bored?

We had 5 septuagenarians all born in the 40s running for president of the United States when Klobuchar dropped out.

We had Warren, Biden, Sanders, Bloomberg, and Trump from like 1949 to 1941.

All who had been the oldest president at inauguration.

And nobody says, grandma, grandpa, you're embarrassing us.

You're somewhat of an intelligent, eloquent guy.

What role do you, somewhat, what role do you play?

Well, I mean, I would argue that you're in ways becoming that leader.

No, you're a little bit, no, you have taken quite a big risks and we'll talk about it.

But you're also on the outside shooting in, meaning you're dismantling the institution from the outside as opposed to becoming the institution.

Do you remember that thing you brought up when you were on the view?

When you were on Bill Maher's program, what was that thing you were saying?

They may quietly slip us a direct message, but they pretend that this internet thing is some dangerous place where only lunatics play.

Well, who has the bigger platform, the portal or Bill Maher's program or the view?

In terms of viewership or in terms of, what's the metric of size?

Well, first of all, the key thing is, take a newspaper and even imagine that it's completely fake.

And then there's very little in the way of circulation yet.

Imagine that it's an a hundred year old paper and that it's still part of this game, this internal game of media.

The key point is, is that those sources that have that kind of mark of respectability to the institutional structures matter in a way that even if I say something on a very large platform that makes a lot of sense, if it's outside of what I've called the gated institutional narrative or gin, it sort of doesn't matter to the institutions.

So the game is if it happens outside of the club, we can pretend that it never happened.

How can you get the credibility and the authority from outside the gated institutional narrative?

you and I both share institutional credibility coming from our associations.

you know, at some level, the issue isn't whether you have credentials in that sense.

The key question is, can you be trusted to file a flight plan and not deviate from that flight plan when you are in an interview situation?

And that's why you're not going to be allowed in the general conversation which amplifies these sentiments.

So your point would be is that we're, let's say both.

So you've done how many Joe Rogan for I've done for 2, right?

So both of us are somewhat frequent guests.

And people are going to watch this conversation.

A Huge number watched our last 1, by the way, I wanna thank you for that 1.

That was a terrific, terrific conversation.

Lex, you're a brilliant interviewer, so thank you.

You changed my life too, that you gave me a chance.

What I would say is, is that we keep mistaking how big the audience is for whether or not you have the KISS and the KISS is a different thing.

It's a question of, are you part of the interoperable, institution-friendly discussion?

And that's the discussion which we ultimately have to break into.

But That's what I'm trying to get at, is how does Eric Weinstein become the President of the United States?

I shouldn't become the President of the United States.

Not interested, thank you very much for asking.

Okay, get into a leadership position where, I guess I don't know what that means, but where you can inspire millions of people to inspire the sense of community, inspire the kind of actions required to overcome hardship, the kind of hardship that we may be experiencing, to inspire people to work hard and face the difficult, hard facts of the realities we're living through, all those kinds of things that you're talking about.

That leader, can that leader emerge from the current institutions?

Or alternatively, can it also emerge from the outside?

So my belief is that this is the last hurrah for the elderly centrist kleptocrats.

I mean, people who were born at least a year before I was, that's a joke.

No, because I'm born at the cusp of the Gen X boomer divide.

So, centrist they're pretending, you know, there are 2 parties, Democrat and Republican party in the United States.

I think it's easier to think of the mainstream of both of them as part of a, an aggregate party that I sometimes call the looting party, which gets us to kleptocracy, which is ruled by thieves.

And the great temptation has been to treat the U S like a trough and you just have to get yours because it's not like we're doing anything productive.

So everybody's sort of looting the family mansion and somebody stole the silver and somebody's cutting the pictures out of the frames.

You know, roughly speaking, we're watching our elders live it up in a way that doesn't make sense to the rest of us.

Okay, so if it's the last hurrah, this is the time for leaders to step up.

I call out, you know, the head of the CDC should resign.

Do you remember the Russian Revolution of

So you're thinking we're in 1907, not 1917.

But we got this, you know, Spanish flu came in 17, 18.

So I would argue that there's a lot of parallels there.

Like John Prine, the songwriter, just died of COVID.

By the way, you, yes, of course I, every, every time we do this, we discover our, our mutual appreciation of obscure, brilliant, witty songwriter.

He's really, he's really quite good, right?

My understanding is that he passed recently due to complications of corona.

So we haven't had large enough, enough large enough shocking deaths yet.

Picturesque deaths, deaths of a family that couldn't get treatment.

There are stories that will come and break our hearts.

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Eric Weinstein: Geometric Unity and the Call for New Ideas & Institutions | Lex Fridman Podcast #88