Eric Weinstein: Renewing our Belief in the Future of Humanity | Back to the People Podcast • Podcast Notes (2024)

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Key Takeaways

• Currently, America isn’t contributing enough positively to mask its cryptic and muscular post-World War Two actions
• To get to an indefinite human future, America needs to regain its status as a net positive moral authority
• How do we get back to the optimism? It has to do with being excited about things that have never happened before
• Why are we not talking about post-capitalist, post-communist economics?
• “I don’t think that Hayek and Marx and Adam Smith have the solutions for a world with AI.” – Eric Weinstein
• You never hear about a consensus on Einstein’s theories, Newton’s laws, or DNA, because those things don’t require agreement
• “Consensus is what you get when you’re trying to accomplish something political, but don’t have enough evidence to say, ‘This is rock solid.'” – Eric Weinstein
• We need to start getting very nervous when we start hearing about a scientific consensus—that’s the death of science
• Peer review was a defensive measure to keep the American taxpayer from using their elected representatives to question all of these procedures that were being paid for by the government
• How to restructure science and scientific information so it’s more accessible? Allow people to discuss their individual experiences experiences in the context of available research papers— this doesn’t happen today
• “Lawyers, guns, and money is what we have to get our remaining scientists ASAP.” – Eric Weinstein
• “The worst part of being a dissident is feeling very alone and ostracized and your reality stripped from you in every single way.” – Nicole Shanahan
• Institutional betrayal by Jennifer Freyd: This concept describes the trauma experienced when an institution—such as a hospital, university, or daycare, which was entrusted with our care—betrays us. It’s akin to a parent telling you that you’re a bad child

Intro

• Eric Weinstein (@EricRWeinstein) is a mathematician, economist, science policy expert, and a frequent public speaker on a variety of subjects within the sciences
• In this episode, Eric Weinstein and Nicole Shanahan discuss the future of humanity and science. They explore how America can regain its positive impact and address big challenges in the economy and science. They also talk about the problems of trust in institutions and the need for science to adopt
• Host: Nicole Shanahan (@NicoleShanahan)

Society Is Highly Demoralized

• “For humanity to survive 200 years from now, there needs to be a backpropagation of a belief in the indefinite future of humans.” – Eric Weinstein
• This is a terrible moment for making profound decisions but it’s a moment requiring profound decision-making
• Society took a “big nap” and is now waking up to the consequences of the expiry date of the post-World War Two order
• For the first time since World War Two, a block of powers is showing more restraint than the U.S
• China recently made a big statement about the necessity of acknowledging Palestine as a sovereign state for Middle East peace
• Typically, China hasn’t made such grand statements about global peace prerequisites
• The United States could realistically assess its current position and accept that the post-World War Two identity has worn out
• Nicole feels that many Americans sense the retirement of political dynasties from both the Democratic and Republican parties
• The post-World War Two order gave America some moral authority, but it was complicated
• The U.S. engaged in controversial actions like Operation Condor in Chile and Operation Ajax in Iran
• These actions were tolerated because America was seen as a net positive force
• Ultimately, it was about spreading freedom, free trade, and prosperity, and rebuilding Europe
• Currently, America isn’t contributing enough positively to mask its cryptic and muscular post-World War Two actions
• To get to an indefinite human future, America needs to regain its status as a net positive moral authority
• How do we get back to the optimism? It has to do with being excited about things that have never happened before

We Need a New Economics

• Eric mentions saving capitalism from potential destruction by AI
• One approach could be granting the population property rights that technology innovators must purchase
• This could move labor tasks into the capital pile, adapting to new economic realities
• Why are we not talking about post-capitalist, post-communist economics?
• “I don’t think that Hayek and Marx and Adam Smith have the solutions for a world with AI.” – Eric Weinstein
• Why is it that we’re not forming institutes and conferences that say capitalism is not going to survive AI?
• People are terrified about talking about life beyond capitalism, because that then sounds like Marxist
• We have this idea that if we give up capitalism, communism will fill the vacuum. Nobody knows anything other than the two
• “At what point did we lose the ability to break out new space and say, I want to fill this with something that hasn’t existed without being back referenced to failed ideas.” – Eric Weinstein
• 2 possible future scenarios by Nicole: (1) Humans become nearly unrecognizable with a transhumanist relationship between machines and organic nature, or (2) humans remain organic and connected to nature, solving energy challenges, achieving metabolic health, and developing a new paradigm for medicine
• Eric mentions an interesting third way—the Bitcoin community
• Bitcoin’s ethos is about creating money that cannot be tampered with by humans, aiming for a system where a good world emerges naturally
• This idea aligns with Adam Smith’s invisible hand concept and suggests avoiding political interference in Bitcoin
• This viewpoint is repugnant to those who believe in human-guided wisdom
• Rudolf Steiner talks about balancing forces (Lucifer and Ahriman) and finding sanity and humanity in the middle ground

Decentralizing Science

• “Science and academia have been corrupted, and decentralizing science is going to be necessary for us to get to this better humanity.” – Nicole Shanahan
• You never hear about a consensus on Einstein’s theories, Newton’s laws, or DNA, because those things don’t require agreement
• “Consensus is what you get when you’re trying to accomplish something political, but don’t have enough evidence to say, ‘This is rock solid.'” – Eric Weinstein
• We need to start getting very nervous when we start hearing about a scientific consensus—that’s the death of science
• We shouldn’t have scientists who can’t admit they’re wrong. It’s too expensive to even if they’re smart and often right
• For example, in the context of Covid, many experts are refusing to admit they were wrong
• If we continue in this environment, we’re going to end up losing a lot of the core values of Western civilization

How We Might Evolve Beyond the System of Peer Review?

• The average scientist knows nothing about the history of peer review
• Peer review was a defensive measure to keep the American taxpayer from using their elected representatives to question all of these procedures that were being paid for by the government
• It wasn’t a question of outside reviewing, which had been used in the sciences before
• “We don’t realize that this peer review thing is basically an attempt to keep the populace out of elite scientific conversations.” – Eric Weinstein
• How to restructure science and scientific information so it’s more accessible? Allow people to discuss their individual experiences experiences in the context of available research papers— this doesn’t happen today
• We have a peer review system that’s pretty limited and then it becomes dogma
• If you were rejected from that peer review process or it’s redacted from one of the publications, it often becomes blacklisted
• People are getting medical information from medical influencers
• Prediction by Rudolf Steiner: “Humanity is going to misunderstand itself because it’s going to have these false idols of science and it’s going to take the humanity out of science.”
• Nicole says we figured out currency with Bitcoin, but science is much harder because it is how we think about and define what is right and wrong for the direction of humans
• “Lawyers, guns, and money is what we have to get our remaining scientists ASAP.” – Eric Weinstein
• They need to be able to defend their lab, and their ability to share ideas
• The government has to be on the side of science rather than telling scientists here’s what you’ll need to find
• Our number one problem is that we made scientists precarious
• “The dissident scientists are the most important because they feel a strong pull to the to taking care of the population that can’t necessarily understand every study.” – Eric Weinstein
• “When you silence the dissidents and financially reward the frauds, you break the organic nature of human evolution.” – Nicole Shanahan
• The emergency that we have is why is there no institution anywhere for all of the people who are highly credentialed, elite-level humans to go and dissent. Why is it that we effectively have a hegemony?

We Don’t Just Have to Make Elon Happy

• Donald Trump says that we have to make sure smart people like Elon are happy
• Eric digresses: “We don’t just have to make Elon happy. We have to make people who are employed by Elon happy.”
• People who are actually at a blackboard solving partial differential equations like the lab scientists, bench scientists, and coders are people who have become invisible because the power players only think in terms of money, tech, and Q3
• We have to make sure that the people who come up with the innovations that Elon will use in his company are happy
• If you think this is outrageous, you don’t respect science: “I think you should be able to put three kids through a home and a second home in private school, all the way through college with a retirement as a scientist and not feel poor.” – Eric Weinstein
• “What we need is we need. And highly muscular science with Feynman’s, with Oppenheimer’s, with all sorts of crazy characters who are free enough to express themselves.” – Eric Weinstein
• We also need to get the military back into science
• Eric doesn’t like the idea that Americans are embarrassed about military funding
• The military and science shouldn’t be so closely linked that science just rubber-stamps everything the military wants. At the same time, science shouldn’t avoid working with the military altogether
• The Feynman’s and the others of that era benefited hugely from the fact that scientists put an end to World War Two
• They are not allowed to get contracts unless there’s an express military purpose

Institutional Betrayal and Trust

• “The worst part of being a dissident is feeling very alone and ostracized and your reality stripped from you in every single way.” – Nicole Shanahan
• Institutional betrayal by Jennifer Freyd: This concept describes the trauma experienced when an institution—such as a hospital, university, or daycare, which was entrusted with our care—betrays us. It’s akin to a parent telling you that you’re a bad child
• It affects people at a psychological and spiritual level that is deep and significant
• “I think, quite honestly, that a lot of us are experiencing some version of this with the Democratic Party.” – Eric Weinstein
• The existential threat of corrupted science became evident during the pandemic
• If the First Amendment had been protected throughout the pandemic, the situation might be different:
  • Probably no lockdowns
  • Children could have gone to school with certain criteria
  • Might have developed a new model for transmission management

Science Has Kind of Lost Its Motivation to Self-Evidence

• Most science now redefines what is and isn’t self-evident
• Once we do that, we start testing all parts of the nation’s foundation
• Nicole believes that is what is causing the sense of deep instability in the fabric of the country
• Eric says there’s a difference between unnatural and immoral or wrong
• A normally functioning XY individual identifying otherwise is considered unnatural by most standards
• Morally, there is a belief in the sacredness of the propagating family
• These beliefs don’t fit comfortably in the modern context
• For example, intersex individuals don’t fit neatly into these categories
• The right’s response, “a man is a man, a woman is a woman,” is simplistic
• The left’s response involves children making permanent reproductive changes, which is extreme
• We need adults to model a balanced approach: Maintaining traditional categories with compassion for exceptions
• “The idea is that we want to keep things more or less boys and girls, and compassion for the tiny number of people who fall into the edge category. And we don’t want to grow that edge category by normalizing it in cases where it had no basis to begin with.” – Eric Weinstein

Back to the People Podcast :America, economics, eric weinstein, peer-review, science
Notes By Dario