Going to obliterate a lot of jobs what effect is that going to have on society am I am I right you just lost your capitalist model you have a fabric that is overlying the entire world that directs people whether to get up in the morning and what to do
Once they once they do rise and it tells them how to do things without having addicted so this it’s not just the Invisible Hand it’s the invisible mesh and this invisible mesh if it breaks means people are not going to know what to do in the morning
All hell’s about to break loose and my question is are you trying to figure out which way the wave is going to break and get your surfboard in the water we should be sitting around talking about what is the new economics instead what we’re talking about is
How do we keep communism at Bay while capitalism is struggling Hello and welcome to trigonometry I’m Francis Foster I’m Constantine kitten and this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with Fascinating People a brilliant guest today is a physicist he’s one of the smartest people in the world and a friend of the show Eric Weinstein welcome to
Trigonometry hey it’s great to be here thanks guys uh it’s really good to have you on the show Eric it’s been a long time coming so exciting to have you here but listen you know for a lot of people who watch our show you will be one of
The IDW guys who was part of this sort of weird emerging thing a few years ago and they won’t actually know who you are exactly they’ll know you for the things you say what what has been your journey through life that leads you to be sitting here because you’ve done a lot
Of interesting things right so I sometimes I try to avoid being known to the audience I would say that I by profession I started off trying to do physics but realizing that physics was in a terrible situation so I ended up doing the mathematics that allowed me to
Shadow the physics that I wanted to be doing um in a certain sense uh a lot of who I am is a person who has believed deeply that the master narratives that govern our time have been getting weirder and wackier so I started I would say late
80s early 90s really exploring the idea that our institutions are much farther gone and much stranger and weirder than anyone expects and because that has such a high social cost or at least had such a high social cost when you explored it at that time it was kind of an open
World and I would say the people who had been particularly active in Progressive politics were about the only people who believed that a lot of these structures were really far decayed that the narratives were wildly off of what was actually happening and I’ve tried tracking that I would say through economics labor
Markets financial instruments political skullduggery science the ways in which the military complex interacts with all of these things from art to physics to news and beyond that I mean my my personal life is something that I really probably care about even more than any of this and all of these actions
Are really because I have children on this planet and I’m deeply concerned that they have a happy optimistic and positive future and I have to I feel personally responsible for clearing away a lot of stuff that we’re not supposed to talk about because as we are increasingly seen we grew up
Thinking we were in a free Society but that is actually governed by these incredibly strong narratives that are clearly untrue and they’re very difficult to source as to why is it that so many people pretend to believe things that no one can believe in in in an individual instance I hear you and
Particularly on the feeling of responsibility now that I’ve become a father as well like that I get it I get it but before we get into the narratives and the institutions and all of that what was wrong with physics what’s wrong with physics what was wrong with physics
Wrong with physics now I mean the fact is this is the 50th anniversary of a couple of developments one of which was February 1st 1973 called the Kobayashi mascara augmentation of the kabibo angle which introduced three families of matter into the standard model but that picture of the matter in
This room who and what we actually are as waves propagating through the space-time that Einstein gave us that model has been stagnant for 50 years and as I was just saying on Joe Rogan if you think about songs from that period of time like Crocodile Rock or Thai yellow
Ribbon around the old oak tree imagine that playing on a continuous loop for 50 years without any real progress and the underlying understanding of the world that’s a catastrophe because it means that you replace all of the people who knew what science was with a group of
People who will tell you well in science this is the way things go yet they have no understanding of science having never contributed so why is it go to that stage why has this happened Derek it’s an interesting question why does it happen furthermore across multiple Fields why is it that for example
Evolutionary theory in terms of the sexual and natural selection theories why did that stagnate when it tried to go into sociobiology and ran into political problems why is it that neoclassical economics hardened into Dogma uh in all of these situations we have the fact that there was something that
Was going on late 60s early 70s that ossified and except in the fields of computation Communications things largely stagnated and it’s hard to think about because so much so much of our lives are digital that the fact thank God that we had Moore’s Law and these explosions in computation we
Almost don’t notice that that feeling that the world is taking place at breath neck Pace Breakneck Pace at a breathtaking speed rather it’s hard to confuse those two that feeling derives almost entirely from our digital lives and the Innovations in software and computation and artificial intelligence
All of those things but oddly that neon sign that poster the fact that we’re filming in a studio all of those things were possible in 1973 it might have been more expensive but the only really novel thing here is is that you’re able to push this out without a Broadcast News
Station wow so I mean that says a lot about not only science but it says a lot about Society because if Society is not innovating it’s effectively dying isn’t it well again it’s not that we’re not innovating at all but if you think about you know the jet packs for example that
Were featured in a James Bond film in the 1970s we always wondered when were we going to get personal jet packs we’re still dealing with the idea that they’re quite hard to stabilize um if you go to the airport in Los Angeles where I’m from there’s a completely space-age futuristic building
That dominates the architecture it’s still the most futuristic thing in the city I mean we somehow took on a very different perspective at the future I just was dealing with somebody involved in the relaunch of the DeLorean Motor Company and 40 years later the DeLorean is still absolutely
Something that excites us because it is new and I just find this fascinating that we don’t realize that we incrementally gave up on the idea that our lives could be filled with an exciting parade of major Innovations and I was just on stage in Miami at Bitcoin talking about the three
White papers that changed the world and one of them was Bitcoin the the the blockchain white paper and from 2008 one of them was something called that tension is all you need from 2017 which changed the large language model landscape and one of them was the 2018 proposal from the Eco Health Alliance
That we should start experimenting with fear and cleavage sites and Spike protein and coronavirus wow he left that one for the for the end there Eric you know one of the interesting things that you mentioned there is something that I think is part of this whole thing that confronts all
Of us who are trying to think about these things which is our vision of our future and of ourselves is fundamentally changed and I remember as a boy growing up reading science fiction about the great the great challenges that Humanity would face as it expanded into the
Universe and how when you create a spin-off of your civilization different planet or as you introduce robotics as introduce this new challenges come along and it was almost taken for granted in that era having just watched you know first of all my guys alone a man into
Space and your guys put one on the moon and all of that that this would continue that these vast breakthroughs in human achievement would continue and now we sort of squabble about tax rates and and stuff like that maddening isn’t it yeah because there was nowhere to go you see
What did we really do did we put a man on the moon or did we put a man on an ICBM and said it was moon mission at some level that was also a giant head fake right because we knew that there was almost nowhere to go I mean
Basically there’s the moon and there’s Mars and then you’re out of range of anything interesting with chemical rockets and I can even ask you know if you’ve ever been to Joshua Tree in Southern California you have an idea what it might be like to be on Mars
It’s beautiful but it gets old pretty quickly um I think in part that that’s not the issue the issue is what happens when you take a moonless night and you go out when there isn’t a cloud in the sky and you lay on your back maybe during a meteor shower and you
Gaze up at the heavens and you think why is it that Uruguay is on my bucket list when I can see the heavens you know I mean I’m seeing galaxies I’m seeing uh unbelievable objects and I know that some of those are stars and some of them are galaxies
That’s where we’re supposed to be dreaming and the only way to get out of here and to go find that and find out what the universe is is physics so while many things stagnated the unforgivable thing that’s diagnated the singular unforgivable thing is our understanding
Of the most basic notion of who we are when we lost the taste and we’re in the process of not only stagnating physics but killing the impetus to solve these problems there’s a new kind of ethos that says that to ask for an ultimate theory is immodest it’s destructive it is fundamentally imperious
That really begins to scare me that we start thinking about these things in terms of very personal negative characteristics of arrogance of hubris and you understand where it comes from right because we did unlock this power and in particular in 1952 and forget about the the actual atomic bombs
Dropped on on humans tragic as they may be but potential tragedy of hydrogen weapons uh we with that we came to understand we’re really good at this we’re really incredible and we have to watch ourselves and I think that that’s the right ethos is that we need to worry about ourselves
But to stop ourselves we’ve now crawled into the valley of death and the trick is to get out to the other side and to get to the cosmos and to start to feel that we’re being invited to the World’s Greatest Adventure what people might say
And I I mean I I have some sympathy with this argument you made it yourself only a few minutes ago which is the pace of change is such that we are rapidly developing technologies that are breaking the world around us uh if you look at the impact social media has had
On the way that human beings communicate uh I mean nuclear weapons is another example of course but you you could you could give others where the technological progress we make is so disruptive yeah to our world that I don’t blame people who think why don’t
We just slow down a bit and tell me something when your wife’s water broke what was your what was your sense of like oh shoot we got to stabilize the situation uh how do we make sure that our child can stay in here forever no it’s an invitation our water just broke
Yeah what could happen next could be absolutely deadly but to not understand that it is now time to call the hospital to get that bag together to run like hell to care about those less fortunate than ourselves because they may be incapacitated I don’t think we’re understanding what
This moment is for example the idea that I believe it’s four amino acids and 12 nucleotides that shut down planet Earth whether or not that came from a Pangolin or a laboratory does not matter it’s a tiny change that led to a virality this is the leverage level that we’re
Now talking about where a tiny change in the world with a large enough lover Archimedes was simply right this is the opportunity and you know in the Jewish tradition I have at least something I can say which is don’t wait for the bread to rise this is your moment you’re being invited out
But Eric look and I’m not a scientist and my background isn’t in science but I see AI and the rise of AI and to me and I’m of a slightly you know pessimistic mindset okay but icai and I find it terrifying I find it terrifying the effect it’s going to
Have on on people’s jobs the fact that it’s going to obliterate a lot of jobs what effect is that going to have on society am I am I right you just lost your capitalist model you have a model with two inputs called K and L that’s taught in every University that subscribes to
Neoclassical economics what’s AI is it l is it labor is it capital what the heck is it this is the first time that humans are not being chased into higher and higher levels of work we’re being chased out of repetitive work whether it’s high level repetitive work the way that a
Neurosurgeon might perform or low-level repetitive work so your model of Economics just broke now when your water breaks when your wife’s water breaks it doesn’t mean that the baby is born instantly when the contractions are coming you know 15 minutes apart it’s not yet time to be
Born this is the moment why are we not holding a conference on after capitalism and communism what is the next economic system do you imagine that Adam Smith and Karl Marx would just be sitting on their hands no they’d be smart enough to say okay we now need a new model it is
Bizarre that we are sitting here in nerves saying gosh this is going to break capitalism well no kidding this is going to break Capital it’s entirely clear that it’s going to break capitalism and you have this fabric it’s really fascinating you have a fabric that is overlying the entire world that directs
People whether to get up in the morning and what to do once they once they do rise and it tells them how to do things without having a dictator so this it’s not just the Invisible Hand it’s the invisible mesh and this invisible mesh if it breaks
Means people are not going to know what to do in the morning and now you can see that this is going to break it now you have a brief period of time with what my wife uh has called it she’s an economist with the institute for New Economic thinking
She says this is the Golden Age of AI complementarity where a human being making prompts can ask the large language model or neural net whatever whatever you like questions and the two of them in dialogue can create something it’s sort of like when humans and computers started playing chess together
This is going to quickly give way to where the AI says I can take it from here how quickly do you think it’s going to be Eric probably pretty quick but keep in mind that there’s some things that could happen because what these machines are doing is reading a human Corpus
Uh when it comes to language models let’s say it could be that they asymptote based on how clever we’ve been for example they don’t do a very good job in areas where there are fewer than 200 people writing about a very high level scientific subject so I asked
These computer models a lot about determinant line bundles not something in general conversation and they’re terrible at it because they don’t know what to read or how much they don’t have enough so it’s possible that I that that could asymptote but the thing you really have to keep in
Mind is that a clever person at one of these AI outfits might figure out how to teach can computers to do things that no one has done so we know that they have emergent behaviors that you may not teach them Bengali but they realize they have to
Learn Bengali in order to tell you about tagore so learn Bengali they do that’s an emergent Behavior what happens when they start to uh well you know I hesitate to give you an example because I think this could be weaponized so maybe I’m not going to say
What I think you could actually teach one of these machines to do all hell’s about to break loose and my question is are are you trying to figure out which way the wave is going to break and get your surfboard in the water are you are you trying to figure out how to
Anticipate this no in general we sit around worrying about it in the most inert way possible and I just don’t understand the Learned helplessness this is your wife’s water is broken and you’re thinking this is terrible he’s like you have to be thinking get to the hospital agreed temperamentally I’m with
You but I think what Francis is getting at is look I introduced you as one of the smartest people in the world I stand by that introduction there are also some other smart people who are some of whom are saying we’ve got to shut the [ __ ]
Down right now we need a moratorium we can’t allow this how’s that working I I don’t agree that I don’t know I’m not saying whether it’s a good idea about it yeah what I’m saying is how is it working when China exactly in Russia and Iran are reading these papers that’s
Why it’s not going to work and I I agree with you but Michael I think our question that we’re trying to get at is why is are people like Elon Musk so concerned about AI because he’s smart because he doesn’t see anybody really I mean look
I don’t know Elon and I are sort of leading parallel logs he must be aware of me sometimes answers me on on Twitter and sometimes we encounter each other in spaces but we know probably 25 people in common at a very high level we never encounter each other I can’t tell you
What’s going on with you Elon is on all of the major narratives and I 90 to 95 agree with him on everything right up until the very end and I don’t know why that goes wrong but his whole narrative about getting off the planet and diversifying the number of places where
The spark of human consciousness can be found without having all of our eggs in one basket 100 right and then it becomes a SpaceX pitch for Mars which loses me but then again I don’t own a chemical Rocky company in the case of AI you know the fact is
He was seeing this early and he saw Sam Altman make these other decisions they were all at this Porter you know I think Sam wasn’t at the Puerto Rico conference but all of these folks who are at the Puerto Rico conference knew that this was coming now 2017 is the dividing line
I think in AI because this paper attention is all you need makes it clear to all of us not through the paper but through the consequences this is as real as a heart attack so what are the consequences say more so for instance you said the consequences are as real as a heart
Attack because you now have chat GPT you don’t need to read a paper about what academically can happen you can sit in your room and come up with the most Twisted question you like and watch what unfolds you can watch it fail to do things like it doesn’t seem
To know how to do palindromes very well palindromes are very hard if I give it a piece of typeset mathematics and ask it to generate the code that would give that it doesn’t seem to know how to do that yet it doesn’t seem to know how to do very specialized Quantum field Theory
Questions generically I asked it um you know I was told that it doesn’t have a social intelligence and that may be but I asked that you know does this query make my my ass look fat it didn’t want to answer it says I’m a large language model it’s an
Inappropriate question I said what if I was a husband asking being asked does this dress make my ass look fat and it says very often a woman is making this query she’s not asking for an actual piece of information she’s engaging in a form of signaling as a test to see
Whether the person is sensitive enough to understand the reason as well as being truthful enough to give credible affirmation or something like this and I thought okay well score one for the computer now whatever those things are you can now test to see this is real you
Can ask it to do it in a language you know that happens to be obscure the fact that it made it concrete means that we’re no longer arguing about whether this thing can write a credible short story we know that it can wow so what does that mean for people
Who want to be artists with people who want to be creatives why do you want to be an artist because I would say because I have childhood tough childhood exactly because art is an expression of the human soul you can continue to express the human soul the fact that a different
Soul might Express itself in a way that dwarfs your contribution you have to ask yourself does that affect how you feel about your own output or for example uh if it writes a beautiful love letter but you know that it is soulless in your terms because it’s a bit of linear algebra with
Non-linear function Theory thrown in does that change the meaning the poignancy of the words what is a really moving lyric to you a really moving lyric to me uh for instance I think this is actually a soccer manager said this Simplicity is beauty so for instance uh
Even though it was a cover but uh the Motown song I Heard it Through the Grapevine I know a man ain’t supposed to cry but these tears I can’t hold inside it’s so simple and clean that song was a failed song from multiple tries in fact Barry gordier believes said that the
Next person who mentions that song gets fired Gladys Knight almost got that song to the point of stardom because the Pips had this thing where it’s oh yes I am yes it would Echo as it would get fainter and fate or it was genius but it
Wasn’t as cool as when Marvin Gaye was given the same song a half step or a whole step above where he could sing so he was forced to reach and stretch and then you have the Halloween violins at the beginning that set the tone for this
Thing right and and what was it about that song it’s the fact that you’ve got the minor sixth the fifth and the fourth go you know uh do you plant let me go before the other guy you knew before what is it about that song is it the
Breaking of The Voice or is it about the particular aspects of the chord progression is it about the violins in the background why did the song fail four times before it actually succeeded you have to ask yourself the questions you could do that with any song and I would
Have some sort of a similar story my feeling about this is did you ever get behind that song did you ever wonder why it worked to me I always put it down to the unique beauty of Gay’s voice which I think is just heard it’s stripped yes what do you
Think of that I think it’s phenomenal phenomenal it’s a revelation yeah yeah what’s your point Eric I don’t know whether it’s the chord progression which the thing can clearly do or the fact that I believe that gay is straining and feeling what he’s doing I don’t know
Whether it’s the fact that this seems like a human expression but he didn’t write the song somebody else is there he animated the song so it really has to do with the context okay and my claim is maybe this thing will come up with a better lyric or a
Better chord progression but it’ll matter less to you because it didn’t come from a human heart I’m saying that you’re gonna have to start picking apart the essence of each song or poem or story to figure out whether you continue to feel that it’s art if it was written by linear algebra okay
What if we go outside of the realm of R and into the more practical and tangible things yeah I mean you talk about the end of capitalism and that makes sense and if you look at what you know communism or fascism or whatever they’re all responses to the economic
Circumstances that they that they encountered right so that they’re a way of trying to deal with the fact that you’ve got an industrial revolution and suddenly everyone goes into factories and and now these people are there and you they’re now in cities and all and
All of it comes out of that right so we’re going to have to have a new whatever a new whatever a new whatever but there’s a lot of breaking that happens first oh yeah a lot of breaks sure I mean one of the things that we haven’t explored is my
Need to work yeah right right because before purpose and meaning for a lot of people so much work to do that I never had to worry about my need to work yes but when somebody says look take the rest of your life off yeah you know you can watch TV you can hang
Around in the pool and suddenly uh you know maybe your wife is looking at you thinking you’re kind of useless I I kind of liked it better when uh he was going out and killing mastodons and dragging them back to my cave and now you’ve got a new need which is okay
Should we make some work for you that doesn’t need to be done should we find you some busy work right that’s humiliating so now that you’ve got a dignity shortage you’ve got a purpose and dignity shortage and what I’m saying is assume that you had all of this work removed from your shoulders
But you knew that you were going to die on this planet because your water had broken when do you start getting excited about breaking wildly new ground when do you start thinking about taking fantastic risks huge chances things that are are noble enough to reacquaint ourselves
With the idea of a quest we’re dead man with there’s this aspect when I listen to as time goes by and it says it’s still the same old story of fight for love and Glory I’m not allowed to say Glory I’m only allowed to say Glory if I
Support Ukraine I get to say something right because Slava means glory to Ukraine I can’t say glory to America so we’ve been cut off from our concept of questing and glory and winning and Triumph and all of these things because it’s been associated with the negative externalities of such
Agreed yeah agreed so yes it’s an opportunity but not for everyone why do you say that if I look around at the world a lot of people find themselves in jobs and things that don’t offer them any of that such as you know checking tickets on a train you came
Here on a train today I came here on a train today my guess is that somewhere somebody’s checking tickets on a train listening to your podcast saying I love Eric I listen to all of his stuff he I started buying books on quantum theory a huge percentage of my audience is plumbers
Electricians long-haul truckers people who solve problems every day they’re often not in highly repetitive tasks you get called in to be an electrician or a plumber in a house you’ve never been at and it’s got some set of problems you’ve never encountered before a lot of those people
Are fit to be part of this Army and I just think that actually we’ve got so much human creativity that is stuck in these jobs that we don’t respect yeah but I’ve learned to respect these jobs so much more when I realized oh my God my audience is studying Spinners and
Differential operators in between uh you know Uber assignments or something like this is very interesting hey Francis do you want to learn another language no mate we voted brexit for a reason well if you are open-minded unlike Francis and want to learn another language then Babel is the app for you
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Trigger Babel language learning that works what do we do with those people who for whatever reason are not that way inclined Eric who can’t access these type of Technologies or these type of Industries because that’s going to prove a real problem well first of all why
Don’t we create some art for them that excites them why don’t we use art to reacquaint ourselves with the possible I really feel like the artists have fallen down on the job I feel like today’s art is in general not reflecting our time and as a result it’s becoming
Less and less relevant and then people get more and more adamant that no art has never been more relevant because they know that it’s become less and less relevant what do you mean by that that it doesn’t reflect our time let’s let’s explore that okay so when the Erie Canal
Was dug there were lots of songs about the Erie Canal when the trains came in there were lots of songs about trains tell me that we don’t have a million songs about cars when people were getting cars in the 1950s and they spoke of Independence all right what are your favorite app songs
Can anyone write a song about an app Eric is an app gonna move you in order to write a song about it there are apps that govern your life right now I know but my point is is that a great artist that’s what I mean it’s hard time yeah and changes it
Uh into something that matters I asked Sean Lennon why don’t you write a song that reflects our time and he wrote Boomerang baby that was his attempt you know she’s never dated someone before a thorough search of Google the only time she’s found in church is when attending
Her own funeral you know it was speaking to a Godless time where the apps were fully integrated was that song highly successful I don’t know you know but uh when Drake says you used to call me on your cell phone he’s trying to take the fact that there is
Some way you know are you going to swipe right by me baby I don’t know what that lyric is it’s hard but then again the Erie Canal you know it’s not like it’s the high season oh the Erie he was a rising and the Gin was getting low and I scarcely
Think we’ll get a drink till we get to Buffalo you had to make that into something and so my feeling is all right it’s aren’t up to the task of turning uh Waze in Google Maps into something that I care about is also the problem as well
When a lot of musicians have told me this that to in order to write the idea of a song that is a hit song has changed like for instance a classic pop song is around three minutes or two minutes 30 but now everything has to be designed
For tick tock so everything has to be under a minute or 40 seconds and that’s completely transforming The Way We Appreciate music I I heard the same rumor uh I was discussing this uh with Winston Marshall formerly of Mumford and Sons the fact is that you had a snippet
That used this unusual phrygian dominance scale um which was uh mommy don’t know Daddy’s getting hot at The Body Shop doing something Unholy just basically have a Nagila or misirlou right and that lyric couldn’t be supported by the song because the song couldn’t sustain the interest that’s no
Way to live but on the other hand we have a barbell of attention we have the inability to get through a longer tweet and the ability to watch Game of Thrones with the longest character developments anyone’s ever seen far dwarfing a movie and approaching you know what you do in
Spectacular fiction uh we have to recognize that just as attention deficit disorder actually contains the ability to concentrate on something for months you know with laser focus it’s misnamed we think that our attention spans have shrunk to nothing no we’re just really easily bored by things that aren’t
Worthy of our attention at the moment and it is changing our brains but if you give me Game of Thrones I guarantee you people be glued to their tubes and the podcast in Revelation would certainly speak to that long form I mean what is it like when somebody says
Oh man I’m only through my uh second hearing of your four-hour uh Fest on Rogan you’re thinking you’re in your second hearing you’re only through it means you’re going to do three this is where we are and nobody nobody understands this because the easy thing to say is we got stupid and our
Attention spans are shrinking to zero but it’s it’s Eric I’m so refreshed by what you’re talking about because one of the things you’ve put your finger on is we’ve lost I I don’t want to put words in your mouth so maybe help me out but we’ve lost I mean is it self-belief is
It aspiration what is it what is it that we what’s your best story don’t tell me okay okay but you’re now 93 years old and it’s getting close to to the end and you’re thinking about your life in terms of your best stories you’re watching your children your grandchildren around
You and then you have a couple of stories that are just the Glorious stories of your youth think about whether your best story is worthy of your 93 years as it stands and my feeling is that mine is not yet done what is it that’s worthy of your human
Life why aren’t we putting these stories together right yeah right I couldn’t agree with you more I’ve been thinking about this a lot a lot on a personal level as you know as we grow and we get opportunities that we didn’t have before and whatever
Um but it’s it’s kind of it’s weird we don’t talk about this stuff well we do talk we do yeah we do we’re trying so people are starting people always want to know why should I listen to you on a podcast I don’t know you don’t have to but we do
Talk about this stuff and that’s why people tune in because there’s something ancestral that says I’m not leading an archival life worthy of being remembered when when somebody says well when I write my Memoirs are they going to be worth reading they might be worth writing
But what if they’re worth writing it not worth reading then you fail think about what feynman’s stories did for people for two books of basically self-aggrandizing stories that let people know oh my God it is possible to have such an utree life a life outside of the lines there’s so
Much of this world that you can’t get to if you never clear your throat and you know you know one of one of my favorite quotes from from me people don’t have to like it but I love it and it was hard to say the first time is
Most of us die never having heard our own voices and that’s an epidemic yeah do you think as well it’s it speaks to the age that we grew up in so I’ll give the example of my grandfather my grandfather was born late 1920s my English grandfather in a
Poor Working Class part of the north of England he left school at 14 even though he was very bright because there was no other option he had to work when he left school he went into what was essentially the Great Depression in the north of England so he used to
Turn up with hundreds of people at the dockyard in Liverpool the foreman would come out and there’d be hundreds of men in front of him he’d go you you the rest of you [ __ ] off right and then when he got a job and he started to make his own
Way and he was a joiner he was a carpenter Master Joiner then he was working uh for the the for the mosquito Factory building the mosquito the wooden plain second world war he then joined in order to fight he joined and he fought right away from the top of Italy all the way
Down to the bottom and then went to North Africa and fought in the Battle of El Alamein on the Montgomery fought fighting against rommel’s Army he then returned had a family raised his family and when we talk about hardship now and I’m not saying that people don’t have it
Tough of course they do and I’m not saying they don’t have difficulties right but I look at my grandfather it’s that’s a different human almost do you see what I mean what he went through yeah because he was catalyzed and in part he may have said you know I we went
Through life and death situations but we didn’t have your hardship of lack of meaning I I think I did fix asphyxiate if I had to lead your life I mean you have to actually talk to some of these people because some of them say you know I’m not scared of of Bloodshed
Or a life and death battle but I’m terrified of being canceled online you’re thinking wait a minute you actually served voluntarily in Iraq and you’re more afraid what would have so what kills the spirit and what kills the Flesh and what puts us at risk is extremely variable but also just think
About this he had the ability to inspire people I look at post World War II Italian rock and roll and it moves me because these people turn their back on Mussolini you know like when Renato Carson is saying to the father Americano he’s talking about the passion for things American which are
Sophisticated can you imagine anything as accomplished as Italy turning to America and saying hey you’re our style icons I mean it’s it’s fantastic and uh you know have you ever heard um Adriana talentano’s um prison closing Catholic yeah the song that is pure English nonsense there’s no actual English in it um
And it’s just it’s it’s just aping the English language form showing that people go crazy for it those things came out of American gi’s fighting through Italy and an admiration and a connection you know and my feeling about this if you don’t have the ability to inspire
Other people like that wow I’m not sure that you’re more fortunate than your relatives so you said your favorite quote from you is about most people die without finding their voice or saying without ever hearing their voice without ever hearing their voice how do you find your
Voice or he how do you get to the point where you hear your voice I can tell you how I do it but I don’t know that that’s it well that’s my point right because I’ve had to find it for myself as well right and maybe that’s
What that’s what you have to do maybe it’s the Journey of it I can’t sing and it have sort of sung on your show right and people you’re going to see in your comments Eric thinks she’s so cool right and then you have to survive that because otherwise you won’t sing you
Know one of the one of the things I love is that as an extremely mediocre non-guitarist who puts guitar stuff on on on Instagram some of the world’s greatest guitarists are like cheering me on in the comment section and it’s like the b-plus guitarists were saying dude you can’t
Keep time you suck you know one more Blues thing it’s funny that people at the top are always rooting for you and people a couple levels under are always trying to take the piss out of you my feeling about it is is that you actually
Have to do it and you open you know I I’ve complained about homosexuals monopolizing the closet the closet is something where you open the door and you don’t necessarily say I’m gay you might open the door and say I think the left has gone crazy or you might
Open the door and say uh I think conspiracy theories are actually quite common and not very rare and then you find out what happens after that and you take the damage yeah so the first thing is the courage to do whatever is you believe or you want to do or you want to
Try well don’t do it stupidly I mean you have lots of things that you believe are true that are just going to hurt people aren’t going to liberate aren’t gonna so for God’s sakes keep most of the stuff that you shouldn’t say to yourself some stuff in you than just
You can’t live with it’s just eating away at you and then you know be very careful make sure that you have a plan for employment because that’s how they get most of us is that we’re wage slaves and think about am I comfortable dying always having been careful not to say
Anything that would rock the boat because if you’re comfortable with that if that’s okay because this is the only time you you get to do this that that’s your choice but you know as I was just talking to somebody who had been canceled and canceled is really misunderstood the
People you meet after cancellation blow your mind totally yeah completely you know it’s like I never wrote on a private plane until I’ve been you know you know we were talking about song lyrics and one of them the one that always sticks out for me is that song I
Can never remember the name of the song but it’s from the musical La Casio fall which goes life ain’t worth a damn until I can say I am what I am if that’s what is in you then yeah but I will point out that a lot of people are
Being induced to be what what they’re not and then being asked to sing that song and so one of the things that we’re very cautious about is that there are all sorts of Fringe freak movements that are trying to push people into extreme behavior and then
You know announce who they are to the world and make sure that it is who you are and not that you’ve joined something that really wants to to have you do that and what all these movements Eric well for example the go go broke issue is uh
You have somebody who has decency and goodness in them and then they’re seized upon by a cult you know of undergoing a group mental disease and then it’s like Proclaim Proclaim your hatred for uh you know the market or something like this or you know glue your hand to a painting
Yeah that’s not that inspiring if you want to protest something I tell everybody uh don’t throw soup on Van Gogh what you want to do is try projection mapping put in a huge amount of work take a building with a complicated facade map it on a computer design a
Brilliant animation roll up on a moonless night and project your animation that puts a forward your political perspective on that facade of a building for a minute take a video of it and leave you won’t have hurt anything that anyone else has built you’ll have owned and monopolized
Something you could do it with CIA headquarters you know you could do it with uh you know with the Lincoln Memorial uh but show that you’re clever you’ve put in a ton of work you’re extremely creative and that you care without calling attention to yourself like an ass
But that’s hard Eric isn’t this the whole point I mean a lot of all of this stuff no I’m serious I know this is the point I made something hard of course but this is the point I made in my Oxford speech is like the reason that
These people do glue themselves to roads and throw soup on paintings and so on it’s because it’s easy it’s because you you can be a brain dead [ __ ] and do it the mom and the moment and our mutual friend Melissa Chen I think this is one
Of her quotes she said you cannot remain woke while building things whether that’s muscle whether that’s a career whether that’s a business whether you can’t because it requires you to confront the reality and the complexity of the world why is there only one Melissa chat we don’t know right it’s
Like really mysterious that there are so few people who so many of these ideas come from yeah and so my point is we just said I just said for the nth time go learn projection mapping and nobody basically does it occasionally somebody will take a piece of text and project it onto a
Building and I’m just thinking in your day job maybe you’re doing this for Adidas or Nike you know go be a real pirate and do it for your environmental cause for your issue about uh you know hanging homosexuals in Iran you know do something Noble that’s hard and inspire people
It will still not happen people are self-attenuating this is Marty sulligan’s theory of learned helplessness we have to figure out how can you start small and create and to your point um or maybe I’m talking to Melissa through you once you build things you don’t necessarily lose your idealism
No you lose your wokeness as a surface level yes climate is still an issue for what reasons that I do not understand we lie about climate in the direction that climate is actually going so we people have the illusion that climate is not a problem at all
Because if it were a problem we wouldn’t be lying about it but we’re lying about it in the direction we’re trying to make it as simplified tell us more about that Eric it seems to me very clear that scientific consensus is being manipulated by official bodies to get certain narratives to do things
As some of us spot the fact that the scientific consensus is being manipulated we get the idea oh whoever’s the manipulator is lying because it’s not true as opposed to lying because we have to actually make things simplified in order to get political change or we
Don’t know why we’re being lied to there are plenty of reasons people lie both in your interests and against your interests so the epidemic of lying has created a general sense that um whatever is being lied about is untrue you know covid really wasn’t a problem as if many people didn’t die
You know one of the reasons that I thought the vaccines was really interesting was that I felt very clear that kovid’s Origins were being lied about because to say that you can’t ask whether something came from a lab because it’s racism was the only thing I knew was total BS
I don’t know whether it came from a wet Market I think it didn’t I think it probably came from a lab but I what I didn’t know about was whether the vaccine was being we were being lied to because we knew it was a bio weapon and this vaccine was intended to mitigate
The long-term 10-year effects of a bioweapon like AIDS doesn’t show up initially as a huge problem when you get infected with HIV it’s a long time before it really you know the coposarcoma starts so I think we’re just really confused because we’ve been lied to so many times we’re punched drunk and
As a result we just don’t know what we’re advocating for I don’t know how big a problem climate is I know it’s a problem I don’t know how big I don’t know what we actually know I’ve been confused so my the variance in my opinion about how big of a problem
This is and whether it commands The Lion’s Share of my attention or not uh I don’t know because I’ve just lost faith and trust in the ipcc then that’s a very real problem when we don’t have faith in our institutions that means we’re we’re at a point of Crisis can I
Just push back on this ever so slightly of course you can absolutely when we say we don’t have faith in our institutions what the heck are we talking about like I got on a plane to come here if you think about the de Havilland comment it crashed all the time
Planes don’t crash anymore they used to those are institutions that are keeping the same people who lose your luggage and who delay and over book you make sure that your plane doesn’t crash and so you’re having a weird Association I can’t trust the Airlines and I totally
Trust the airline you trust the airline to screw up your flight to overcharge you to overbook you to do all this stuff and you trust them absolutely with your family and your life to take off on a death trap filled with jet fuel from one situation not knowing the weather somewhere else
And land we do trust our institutions and we don’t and we do and we don’t and it’s making us crazy well that’s the worst thing right if we just didn’t trust them that would be a lot easier it’s the it’s this ambiguity it’s Schrodinger’s [ __ ] yes
And and this is what’s making us mad the cheap thing to say is I can’t trust the institutions that’s right the weirdest thing to say is I don’t understand why they’re so good and so bad simultaneously that’s right why aren’t they so good and so bad simultaneously um I think because
There’s a centralized reason why they they started screwing up which is this theory of embedded growth obligations what’s that telling we have no idea what that is from 1945 where World War II seals in an order from a really decisive Victory up until 1968 through 73. it’s not WTF happened
In 71 as the Bitcoin it’s sort of 68.73. that period of broad distributed technologically LED Dependable high levels of growth deranged us we thought that was our future and we built a society in a world that required that level of growth and sometimes you have an organism that has multiple life cycles
A guy named Mark tashney wrote a book called the genetic switch about the fact that uh T4 bacteriophage Lambda phage Lambda has two different lives that can lead and I think in part the West has two different lives it can lead it can lead a high
Growth life uh life cycle or it can lead a low growth life cycle when we say we don’t recognize ourselves and are we the same people who won World War II or something like that we don’t recognize that that is one of our potential life cycles nobody had ever seen the low
Growth Western life cycle and it’s terrifying it’s it’s us eating each other I must grow my slice of the pie just the way my great grandfathers grew their slice of the pie and the only way I can do that if the pie isn’t growing fast enough is to eye your slice
So I’m looking at your slice and suddenly we each appear to each other not as a source of inspiration but as a source of protein and nourishment and that’s but that’s that’s response isn’t it Eric well it’s a realistic response in other words if I’m doing something that’s growth based
And if I suffused all of these institutions with certain growth obligations the portion of that institution like its pension fund that had to grow at a level that it cannot grow at become psychopathic right is that why we print endless money that we don’t have and borrow from our grandchildren yes
In essence what happened was north of Bretton Woods collapsing and the removal of the gold standard it was the loss of technological change in fuel that came easily in the 20th century so there are all sorts of disasters in the 20th century but there are all sorts of Marvels
And when those started to dry up which essentially came from something I’ve called umvelt hacking that you could see more and more with scientific instrumentation so you could look into the cell at some point you have to guess it with the three-dimensional structure of DNA was at some point you could
Basically look at right so we started to get into a place where we couldn’t sustain the science the science couldn’t detain sustain the technology the technology couldn’t sustain the markets and everything had been built with an obligation so the whole point of this theory of egos or embedded growth obligations is
How do we have a theory why all institutions would sort of get into trouble at once and it’s the common thing is growth that can’t be met right so that’s that’s why everything went funny now that’s not to say that we’re not analytic if we didn’t want to
Lie to keep this game going um we could fix a lot of things so things that do get fixed are things like uh airplane checklists to make sure that we don’t take off with something broken the checklist is also operative in a hospital so you don’t amputate the wrong
Leg so the the explosion in iatrogenics which is that harms done by harm done by physicians to their own patients and the epidemic of crashes that ended both in part result from a common uh understanding and management that a checklist is a life-saving thing we could do that with Integrity to
The growth based Parts the pension I could say to you actually you know these commitments we made to to your pension can’t be met um here’s what’s realistic and here’s what’s safe what do you guys how do you guys feel about two percent or you know
Or 1.5 growth you say well can I retire not really very well you might paid my whole life into helping other people yeah you’re part you’re you’re the loser in the pyramid scheme how do you feel well you don’t feel good that’s the part I have to start lying about right I’ve
Been thinking about this a lot man because um that’s really every every time I I haven’t been able to work out up until this conversation why every time there’s a crisis no one says we we have a limited amount of money no one ever says that uh it’s
Like in this country the com the NHS is always underfunded every you know if if the electricity prices or gas prices go up the government has to support people right and I know who could disagree with that well and tell me something how many of these people know the word senior age
No do you no no senior age is the tax on the holders of money that they experience when you print more of it right so in essence when the money supply goes up and you say you know we really need um to do something about uh monetary policy in order to alleviate the
Pressure you’re really saying we need to tax the holders of money by printing more of it so you’re raising money through senior age then you have like all of these other things a really bizarrely explained like a stock market crash stocks fell today in a precipitous decline over the last three hour trading
Hours that’s not what happened at all the right way of saying it is the dollar surged against equities or the pounds surged against the footsie you know and what is it you’ve got this amazing and beautiful numerator which is an index fund let’s say 500 stocks for the s p but what’s your
Denominator oh it’s the dollar it’s one instrument and that one instrument is further disguised by being called the numerator it’s the measuring step so now you’re playing games with a rubberized measuring stick and when the measuring stick moves that’s what caused all the equities to apparently fall it’s
It’s not the price of equities it’s an exchange rate with another instrument and the other instrument surged so what we do is we keep you in a Perpetual state of stupidity so and the reason that they do that is because if they’re honest that will precipitate a loss of
Confidence and if there’s a loss of confidence then the whole thing collapses like the cut house of cards that it is well correct and you don’t want a complete loss of confidence you want theater you want [ __ ] you want belief but you want a higher level adult
Level you want an adult level of fiction these fictions are dangerous unsustainable you know there’s a French philosopher Jamie charteris told me this and it changed my life he said a nation is defined to be a group of people who have agreed to forget something in common
And you have to understand the purpose of of nonsense of theater of BS of aspiration the U.S had some of the best of this stuff all men being created equal when you held slaves it wasn’t true it was honored only initially in the breach but it was open-ended and it gave the
Opportunity when you had the opportunity to get rid of your slavery to promote something to all men truly being equal and then we get the things like this oh what is it the idiot 1619 project where we replace one brilliant set of fictions with a completely ridiculous set of
Fictions that are not sustainable right what is a 69 1619 project the idea being you’ve agreed to forget something in common you didn’t include us you oppressed us completely you’re telling this offensive story this is the part I’m sympathetic with with the 1619. you can’t leave out Black America
From its own part of the founding of the country you have to create a better newer fiction fine but the idea that you’re gonna like just try to destroy the founding fathers of the country the national governing narrative and you’re going to try to make people hate the day
They were born for singing the national anthem I don’t know who came up with the idea that this woman Nicole Hunter Jones was fit to refound the country it’s Madness and craziness the issue is we need to be decent and better and she’s right about all sorts of things
But she’s wrong about leading and so by Leading what do you mean by that by Leading how do we come up with an inclusive fiction that we can all subscribe to where our common purpose is to build that fiction into reality what was wrong with MLK’s fiction
Pretty great that’s what I think yeah but well you know it’s the same thing MLK was drawing from Gandhi for example most people think Gandhi was a pacifist Gandhi hated pacifism with passion you cannot imagine he had a hierarchy oh yeah Gandhi was really pro-violence and anti-pacificism and he’s very clear
On this if you read it his point was non-violence is the highest level of Courage possible and almost nobody has that ability because what is it it’s a pre-commitment to martyrdom to screw your opponent these opponent who does not understand that they can kill you and you will not raise
Your hand to defend yourself is walking into a trap Gandhi was about martyrdom and you want to look at the courage of somebody like John Lewis you know Crossing that bridge down south I mean my understanding is Malcolm X was not courageous enough to March alongside Dick Gregory in MLK because those guys
Were so effing hardcore they were willing to die for their cause and they were willing to be martyred for their cause Gandhi’s second level below non-violence was violence and he said if you don’t have the stones to for non-violence please pick up a gun please engage in violence because the
Thing I detest is pacifism so we don’t have a story that goes along with that would you say about MLK so MLK has this vision but MLK’s Vision was based on Gandhi and he was selling it as if it was much less hardcore than it actually was in civil rights
Was purchased with infinite heroism and you know that’s why Dick Gregory is my personal I almost can’t talk about you know this comedian um he committed that if he and his wife were taken into a police station in the south and she was nine months pregnant with
One of his kids and the sheriff was kicking her pregnant belly he wouldn’t do anything and they said our our cause is more important than our marriage in our own lives so what was wrong with it it required too much we didn’t get how amazing these people were
And particularly when we live in an era where we’re encouraged ever more to think about ourselves in an era which is ever more atomized so people will be less likely to Martyr themselves for a cause if they think they’re the most important thing there is if there’s somatic cells
We’re leading somatic lives these people weren’t leading somatic lives what does that mean Eric somatic lives so your cells in your body are divided into Soma and germ your ear is not going to reproduce itself even though it has all this genetic information but your gonads have different properties right your
Reproductive stuff is what gets cancer early in life where there’s all the other stuff gets cancer late in life so the issue is are you into somatic pleasure or are you into having babies and perpetuating this this thing and tying our pleasure to our fitness and by Fitness as my
Brother points at it’s about a lot it’s about lineage and it’s very hard when people no longer believe in religion they don’t believe in multi-generational strategies to tell them yeah your summer matters but you’re overdoing it yeah it that is a very difficult thing to tell people particularly when our
Society is focused on Pleasure well but when you’ve given up on the future implicitly right you’ve given up on the future and my feeling is if you’re not excited about the future that quote about Society functions when old men plant trees under her shade they will never sit
That broke and if I can call out one person who who really pisses me off it’s Rachel Maddow Rachel manow was invited as a guest to give an award for women in science at Rockefeller University and the moment that I completely broke with the sort of woke vision of the left
Was she shows up at Rockefeller University sort of almost a secret facility because it has no undergraduate so we don’t even realize that it’s there but a Powerhouse of biomedical research and there are multiple Nobel laureates who have called this home and they’re pictures and and very accomplished
People are up on the wall and it happens that most of those people are probably white of Hugh and male and she looks up and she says what is up with the dude wall and the pictures come down and I have this feeling of who is this woman who is this woman
In our house what did she do what did she accomplish does she understand s for RNA does she know what a vaccine is does she have any knowledge of sex and bacteria I mean who is this person she’s a presenter and I wish to be good hosts
But there is a moment when you let somebody into your home who is completely empty of the generosity of spirit that lives under your roof and you have to say uh it seems to be getting late um perhaps I should call you a cab right but isn’t it the fault of the
Owner of the house that they don’t do that to her I believe she became the owner of the house you know there are stories in India where my wife is from where somebody comes and visits a home and says that painting is magnificent and what is
That what does the family do give it away they said really it’s been cluttering up our wall for forever please take it you’d be doing us a favor so the American walks out with bags full of stuff saying those are such nice people and the family when the door closes oh my
Taking and taking and taking because it’s a cultural misunderstanding yes right and my feeling is is that the people who let Rachel Maddow into Rockefeller University we’re acting in beautiful good faith were they or were they afraid this is what I increasingly Wonder because that’s a metaphor for institutions more broadly right
Were they though or were they just afraid because increasingly that’s my I hear the ugliness of my own speech constantly I hear my phrase who are you and what are you doing in my lab right but that’s exactly the right question isn’t it yes but when they came from my brother
At Evergreen yeah and I was calling up um you know newspapers will you write this story nobody until Barry Weiss wrote the story would write that story the only person I could even get to understand this thing before somebody you had in this chair who you know a great deal of
Damage was done Mr Sam Harris Sam Harris courageously waded into something he did not understand what was going on in Evergreen nobody understood this woke mind virus and figured out Barry and Sam were two of the very first people to even get what this risk was
And by the way we’ve got to take people who stumble in these interviews and who make mistakes and have blind spots and who do things that we don’t like but basically show courage and integrity we’ve got to stop blaming them for the tiny bit they can’t see I
Agree I completely agree the first thing we did when that whole thing went crazy was contact time to make sure he was okay it was never Our intention to end up the way that what happened I’m glad you said that actually and there’ll be a bunch of idiots in the comments uh
Getting upset with you but I couldn’t agree with you more I always consider reducing your follower account when you have the app oh that’s what we always do yeah uh we always do and I I want to get it on the record that while I think what
Sam said was wrong which it was which it was uh I did not enjoy even a moment of the backlash that happened and you know you guys have been trying to get me to come on this podcast for a while and it was after that happened that I decided I
Really wanted to do it so anyway so Sam Harris but also as well you know there’ll be times when I’m walking through London they’ll be like oh it’s a trigonometric or it’s Francis and now oh you got Sam Harris didn’t you and every time someone says that to me I cringe because this
Show is not about getting people it’s about exploring ideas and I brought it up because you guys needed the opportunity to say it yeah yeah well thank you so let’s come back to the growth thing because I feel like we’re we’ve for at least for me we’ve got our finger near
The button yeah this is the big story right so in some ways the crazy loons are right in the infinite growth finite resources it’s not going to happen yes and no I mean the growth can’t be so much of our growth is basically been in correlation with how much fossil fuel
You can burn exactly that has to break in a different form of growth has to occur which is how many ideas per unit of non-sustainable energy you know you can create so the growth has to be in some sense idea based yeah but again you can also potentially try
To architect the system that doesn’t have the same crazy needs for growth that has a plan for when growth is naturally present when growth is absent we should be sitting around talking about what is the new economics instead what we’re talking about is how do we keep communism at Bay while
Capitalism is struggling and my feeling is Tweedle them and Tweedle D you may have a preference between the two of them but everything is telling you innovate in a new economic market-based system if you care about Freedom human potential and we have people who are just stuck
On capitalism is the part of the problem as well Eric and look I’m in favor of democracy this is not an argument Pro autocracy I want to make that absolutely clear before I say but don’t we need a dictator but you know when you have like yes
But uh when you have um you know the Democratic model four or five years it that encourages short-termism doesn’t it in that all people are worried about is winning that next election what I’m trying to say to you is you’re being invited to a much bigger conversation that no one has attended
Which is what is the positive Port of democracy into a 22nd century framework correct so what is it what’s the new economic model Eric what are you talking about I’ve tried to talk about it tell us look at my thing about the new gimmick economy right and where I’m
Trying to talk about the fact that you’re going to have to deregulate a tiny number of people who are absolutely powerhouses on generative far-right tail behavior and you’re gonna have to unshackle them and then you’re going to have to somehow force a spreading of wealth in this deregulated system
You’re going to have to recognize that the output of different human beings based on the kurtosis of how people are distributed has to be embraced so what does that look like in real world terms Eric you probably shouldn’t be telling Elon Musk that he’s not invited to the electric
Vehicle Summit at the White House Long you know get over yourselves um Elon and you know I’ve been super critical of you know on a lot of different things is a Next Level human being at some level he’s also a [ __ ] artist he’s a master showman he’s a troll he fakes things
He’s a genius he’s a scoundrel I mean he’s not there’s a lot going on with Elon and what I’m trying to say is you’re going to have to start dealing with super complicated generative people I worked for Peter Thiel for 10 years almost Peter’s a genius he’s an out and out
Genius and he’s a better communist than most communist he’s got the ability to run communism in his mind he can run capitalism and libertarianism and anything else you’re gonna have to start stop demonizing these people in these completely simplistic terms you’re gonna have to invite a lot of freaks and
Weirdos according to normies to dance and play and build and think and you’re gonna have to stop making their lives a living hell it’s one of the things I’ve been thinking about a lot we confuse wealthy people with successful people and we taught them all with one brush
And we say if you’ve got money you’re evil well here’s the really interesting news a lot of these people tolerate people with radically different politics Peter Thiel and I have radically different politics we can also finish each other’s sentences at times you know the world of remarkable people needs to be more Unshackled
And more people need to be invited in case they are also remarkable and they come from circumstances where it wasn’t identified you know my belief is and I’ll save this maybe towards the end but you need to go after your learning disabled people because a lot of those people are the
Innovators that you desperately need right now you’re making their lives a living hell you’re making School a daily exercise and having your head shoved in the toilet and a lot of those people are super Learners that you’re pretending you’re learning disabled um we need a new economic model that is
Based on the tiny number of people who can perform in these completely crazy circumstances we need to make their lives great and we need also to come up with a culture of service you know which is really weird but you don’t get to keep your wealth if all you’re doing is enjoying luxury
And posting pictures on Instagram about you know I drove my Aston Mark Martin to get to my Bentley to get to my Gulf Stream that’s your lifestyle you you failed you know the key thing is is that serve others you have to serve you have
You just Bob Dylan got it right you have to serve somebody and a culture of service of obligation I was just at a kind of a secret meeting of incredible people in London billionaires at the table in general I said you know at some point somebody called on me you know and
Was a peer and said Eric has something to say I didn’t really have something to say but one of the things I said is I just listened to you all talking behind closed doors about the need to help those less fortunate nobody would believe that that’s what you’re actually talking about behind
Closed doors right and you have to open your houses invite people to dinner to dine with you I just had this thing with Billy Bragg where I ran into a festival took the piss out of me in a book and on social media and I said why don’t we share the stage
And sing a song together and he said what are you doing on my stage I’m not going to share this you know but when I meet him over coffee you know we’re able to bridge things come together and the issue is we need to do some things where people you never
Imagine would break bread or share a stage do so because this is an emergency situation so open your homes invite people in show people what it is that’s your actual tradition it’s very hard for an anti-semite to survive a Shabbat dinner and I I completely agree with you on
All that you were saying particularly when it comes to education somebody who was a teacher for many years I saw what we did to the neurologically atypical I’m neurologic atypical myself and it’s you’re kidding me but how else do we unshackle potential how else do we unleash this ball of creativity thank you
Stop with uh how do I put this look at the troll section on Reddit it’s this giant group of people telling other people you know that thing you believe in I saw through it a long time ago it’s like nobody can believe anything we’re in this sort of I don’t
Know it’s like a an orgy of not believing of nihilism if you don’t believe in anything you lost like look it’s all Bs for sure it made me sound and Furious signifying nothing but if that’s the answer you came up with you just lost life
Um I think what we have to do is we have to put forward a positive Vision where we’re starting to talk about yeah you can see when you when you come up with a song lyric I’m in your song I’m feeling I’m thinking it show people what’s possible show people
How to take anything cup of coffee you know the the story of Robusta versus arabica beans or you know we we could take the light in this room and the fact that I keep talking about there’s a Secret Circle at every point in space and time otherwise we wouldn’t
Be able to see each other we don’t tell anybody about so they keep talking to us about Schrodinger’s cat but they don’t even understand the beauty of Maxwell’s equation the world is just overflowing with beauty and majesty and Transcendence and we’re caught talking about who thinks how much of themselves
And who’s self-promoting and who’s who’s a [ __ ] for clicks and all of this stuff it’s all socially based and I think what we need to do in part is to do cool stuff some at some point the first person is going to pull off this projection mapping thing as a protest and it’s
Going to inspire the world and I won’t have to explain it again I’ll just point people to the video so whoever you are out there gonna address the camera if you’re upset about the way in which we’re burning oil or if you’re upset about inequality consider projection mapping and
Inspiring everybody put a lot of work into it do a killer animation join a team of people who do this for corporate learn the trade and then go radical go Rogue and be a pirate and don’t hurt people in the process it’s so simple to
Do new things I don’t know why we’re not I I think it’s because it’s it’s all fair it’s all fair that holds us back itself it’s that because this is something that I’ve I’ve learned through my own experiences of doing this show through you know falling and losing French
Friends etc etc we are terrified of being alienated from the tribe we are terrified of standing out because as you know thousands of years ago that meant certain death but we’ve been programmed that way so I think what happens a lot Eric is that a lot of the time people
Are scared to be authentic people are scared to say what they truly think and feel people are scared to live the life that they truly want because it would mean in part that they risk alienation from the tribe it’s a really interesting point let’s assume that those fears are reasonable valid and evolutionarily
Based let’s try a different fear they’re slightly less than 5 000 weeks in a life think about that fear right one more just went by right come up with with a jar with like 5 000 sweets in it or something and just take one out every week and watch the
Odds that you’re ever going to accomplish anything or do anything or Inspire somebody you know go down and further and further why don’t you put it off another two weeks or three weeks so why don’t we start this in September that’s right you know that’s right
That’s the way that’s the way and that’s how I think about it uh that’s how I think about it Francis is right that a lot of people fear that and I also think we talked about it earlier you know doing hard things is hard and people prefer to do
Easy things but you’re right um I think when and this is you know we haven’t talked about God and maybe we don’t have time or maybe we’ll do it in on on the local section but you I take a lot of inspiration from the fact that life is finite a lot of inspiration
How old are you 40. I take a lot of inspiration from that uh because this is it right here and you either make the most of it you don’t every day that’s it and to me Eric part of the reason why we had why we went
Insane over covert and I use that word accurately because we did go insane we lost we lost something still insane okay and and I take your point but the reason for me is because we have lost we no longer accept the fact that we are going to die we don’t
Talk about it it’s a taboo in particularly in Western Nations and you see that with our celebrities with their weird smooth plastic lizard faces right because nobody wants to admit their aging nobody wants to admit they’re getting older nobody wants to admit that there is an end to this
So that being the case why would you endure a moment of discomfort in this life is this this is literally all you have isn’t it Samurai I want to understand this sorry say more I wanna so so why would you if this is all we have if if
This life is all you’ve got why would you make it unpleasant why would you make it difficult why would you make it because there’s something eating at your soul because because there’s a worm inside your body whittling you out from the inside and causing you to die a little
Bit more every day you think you’re gonna die at age 90 no no that’s the final death I told my grandfather I said there’s a last time you do everything and you don’t realize when that is you know I crossed the great Himalayan range when I was 20 or something on foot
I thought I would be doing it regularly that may be the only time I ever crossed the great Himalayan range on foot my ankle Now isn’t as good as it used to be think about the last time you went backpacking and actually slept out under
The stars for all I know that part of you was already dead now figure out how much death you can actually handle in a living body and figure out maybe you want to reclaim some of that right maybe you want to reclaim that through having children maybe you want to reclaim that through
Their eyes you take an ice cream cone boy that ice cream cone looks good to you you only have one of them you can have you could feed it to your kid you’re going to taste that ice cream cone so much more if you give it to your kid
Because his tea is just an ice cream cone right there’s a weird way in which I just think that we’re not we’re not figuring out how Grand this adventure is and to your point about covet I don’t even know how to talk about this I could use some help there’s a meaning
Crisis the people who don’t feel comfortable talking about religion and I’m not a religious person I’m an atheist the meaning of life has gone away you can see an amazing band at a concert it just doesn’t mean what it used to mean we have better guitarists right now than we’ve ever had
And they don’t mean as much as they meant in the 70s when we were having idiotic arguments whether Clapton Paige or Hendricks was the greatest guitarist of all time I don’t know what’s going on with this things are not attaching in the sense of meaning the greatest quote and I’m searching for
It everywhere somebody out there held me there was a woman in a doors documentary who said the words back then we didn’t realize it was just music I can’t tell you how profound that was to me the idea was she later realized it was just music
For a period of time she was able to attach that feeling of meaning of transcendence of permanence of something to something she was experiencing at the Whiskey A Gogo on the Sunset Strip we can’t attach that feeling of meaning almost at all there’s something about the phone that has rewired our brain we
Call it a phone even though mostly we don’t call anybody on it we go back and forth between a screen and a person’s screen and a person it rewires our minds and in the end we can’t feel our own children or we can’t remember our first
Kiss I don’t know what’s going on with that yeah so for me I feel see I still think music is is more than just music I’ve always felt that and I’m not musically gifted in any shape or form if I started singing you would all leave
The room immediately do you want to try no yeah I want people to carry on watching this interview right no no no you’re going to lead over there but I don’t want you to I’m not going to push you this thing yeah but isn’t it weird that we decide that
Dance is for people who can move properly music is for people who can hit a note people say I don’t play an instrument one thing I learned from you know the uh sort of the Gypsy tradition you know you can make noise just by puffing air into your cheeks and
Changing the tension in your cheeks so they always have an instrument they’re never without right and uh it just moves me the fact that we’re so alienated from dancing from music that we sit around worrying about what everybody else is gonna think yeah you’re right keep going so
But to me the one of my favorite playwrights is uh you you part of me it’s called David Mamet sure and David Mammoth wrote a book called true and false which was about acting but it wasn’t really about acting it was more than that it was about art it was about
Life it was about how the life of an artist is but is one of the most profound things that you can have and that you can Embrace and he said something very simple but he said words that come from the heart go to the heart
And and maybe this is me this is me being nostalgic this is me projecting but there’s a lot of time now where I just feel when I listen to modern music it doesn’t seem to have the heart because when someone is honest with you you know they don’t need to use the most
Verbose language it doesn’t need to be poetic it doesn’t need all these trick tricks and tips and whatever else it can be as simple as I know a man ain’t supposed to cry but these tears I can’t hold inside and the mum you listen to it
You go bam I know that I felt that because we’ve all felt that particularly being men right it’s interesting I remember watching Jack White talking about Sun house who could play guitar but there’s a moment where Sun house is on stage on film and he’s singing John the Revelator I
Don’t know if you know the song who’s that right in John the Revelator and he’s clapping on one and three and he’s stomping on two and four right that’s it you know one in three being broken out from two and four and that sort of repetitive pocket that just grabs you
And holds you there is some of that music being made and some of it is weird as hell yeah I really looked at Tim Henson’s polyphia and goat and you look at that and it’s sort of like almost Havana unana some sort of Tex-Mex Caribbean Cuban thing but filtered and sharded and shattered
And broken and healed back together there is some way in which Bonnie Vera’s Creek you know the the it’s like what Cher did with auto-tune to believe where she took something that was Pitch adjustment she turned it into an instrument before T-Pain never got to this that thing
Which is the alienation in our time and the electronics and the heart and the soul and the alienation and the need for closeness you know whatever these things are that speak to us what is it about Green Day’s good riddance that made it blow up like that you know the fact that
You could feel the the sand going through your hourglass you know or you know maybe one of the best of these things anticipating social media and the internet and all of the cancellation was Iris by the Goo Goo Dolls with those lyrics that ended up on so many high school yearbook Pages you
Know I don’t want the world to see me because I don’t think that they’d understand that’s about cancellation before cancellation is a thing right and so these things that speak to us that if we had more of them it would mean more and the thing about
It is I can point you to some of the things that are happening now that matter to me I know that I’m not dead I know that I’m not an old man saying get off my lawn the problem is it’s very hard to say something changed in music Rick biato a
Friend of mine from Atlanta has this channel Everything music and he talks about the decrease in the complexity of music you don’t see the sort of Steely Dan phenomena or Frank Zappa was effectively a classical composer as my son points out to me in a rock and roll idiom doing
The most complicated and complex music about something he points out that the Frank Zappa’s titties and beer is actually an homage to Stravinsky we don’t have these Super Rich interlinkings between pieces of Art you know I often talk about uh you know April is the coolest month is a lyric is
A as a lyric as a as a line from T.S Eliot is evoking the fact that school children used to be taught the Middle English one that the pill with the sure so the beginning Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales this interlinking world of references of meaning to the Discovery the Easter eggs that are hidden
Everywhere is gone it is and part of that is and I’ve seen it myself because when I went to school I was lucky enough to be taught poetry and I remember we had to learn a poem and we had to stand up and
We had to say and as a kid I was like why do I have to get up and say William Blake’s the entire class these words don’t mean anything to me they don’t convey anything it’s just boring it’s just empty recital but it isn’t because Blake is one of our greatest ever poets
And thinkers and artists and by listening to those words by ingesting them by literally making them part of you there’s also the weaponization of taste the idea The Taste is not discussable that we can’t say that certain taste is better than others because I see your
Taste and I want to take you from where you are to where you were meant to be not necessarily to where I am because my taste is different these are things that require High Trust you have to trust that in fact you can’t analyze the complexity of a song you can
Say what its harmonic structure is and it’s not all about get off my my lawn or all old people always think those things I could tell you about things that I think are incredibly complex and Brilliant that I don’t like and what we’re seeing is the simplification the language change where
We’re starting starting to have a name for Bernie bro or Tech bro or a reply guy or pick me girl you know Creator and content are the two things if I could I would banish from the English language because what it is is you know should do you want food
Thank you food is good I enjoyed your food oh what kind of food yeah but High Rocky is a problem now tell me the idea of hierarchy is a problem a hierarchy of I mean you’re talking about content some content is good some content’s bad you can’t it’s
Difficult to have any conversation that involves hierarchy for a lot of people so what should I do yeah I mean that’s my life yeah I know and you should carry on doing it yeah yeah not only that Eric you should carry on doing it on locals with us because
That’s where we’re gonna go Segway very much we’re running out of time sorry about that no no don’t be sorry about that it’s a pleasure before we go there and ask the questions that our audience have submitted and there’s some really good ones by the way um what’s the one thing we’re not
Talking about as a society that we really should be well the most important thing is we’re not talking about and I’ll combine the two things into one thing so that I actually fit your question we need to be getting people who are learning disabled not marked as learning
Disabled marked as super Learners making sure that they have wonderful lives as scientists particularly getting them to focus on longevity and on physics for the purpose of diversifying our human habitats to having more than one atmosphere learning that this is not science fiction until we find the ultimate Theory every Theory
Beyond Einstein may have possibilities to Traverse the cosmos that the current theories indicate is impossible until we transcend the limitations of our current worldview called ineffective Theory we need to be getting more people into the hard Sciences we need more philanthropy we need to get governments on board we
Particularly need to get neurodivergent people outside of the schooling system more of them advancing radically quickly made feel confident that they will have lives with second homes that they can have three children they can get help in the house if what they’re doing is taking their rare gifts and putting them
In the service of humanity and allowing them to participate in the prosperity that they have built for everyone else what a beautiful answer Eric Weinstein thank you for coming on head on over to locals where we continue the conversation what is the right balance between being
Cautious in terms of not getting into a nuclear exchange and not giving into nuclear blackmail yeah it’s a it’s a good question
