A video was posted on YouTube yesterday where Chris Williamson interviewed Eric Weinstein. It is 3-1/2 hours long. The video is segmented and the segments are named, making it easy to skip or scan. YouTube also has a nifty feature where you can turn on the transcript and following along or search. (In my opinion, the search feature does not work the majority of the time.) The excerpts below were grabbed from the transcript and edited for readability.
I watched the first 45 minutes straight through, then skipping around.
I highly recommend you watch the beginning for as long as it keeps your interest, and then skip along or stop watching.
The first segments match my understanding of what is really going on and matches what others like Chris Paul and Mike Benz describe. Eric has a way of stating his thoughts in easy to understand ways.
You can watch the interview here:
I am not going to go out of my way to make this article look super professional, but seeing as I have already done most of the work, I am going to share my notes.
This is directly from the video description itself:
Sep 2, 2024 Full Length Modern Wisdom Episodes
Eric Weinstein is a mathematician, economist, former Managing Director of Thiel Capital and a podcaster.
It feels like the world is reaching a fever-pitch. From deep fakes to cheap fakes, AI girlfriends to senile presidents, we've never had more access to information, and yet it's never been harder to work out what is true. So, what do we do?
Expect to learn Eric’s thoughts on the 2024 presidential election, whether we are being gaslit on a global scale by the media, the future of string theory and what's next for theoretical physics, why we have canned humour and what that means as a society, Eric’s thoughts on Joe Rogan, what my biggest weaknesses as a human are and much more…
-
00:00 Will Trump be Allowed to Become President?
12:02 MSNBC’s Editing of Joe Rogan to Support Kamala
16:48 The Media’s Gaslighting of Modern Politics
31:07 Is Google Influencing the Election?
43:03 How Physics Became Boring & Safe
52:40 Is String Theory Just a Shiny Distraction?
1:03:44 Why String Theory Still Gets Funded
1:07:41 Science’s Big Problems
1:13:45 The Danger of Criticism Capture
1:26:19 Eric’s Antidote for Cancelling People
1:36:15 Why Having Public Opinions is so Exhausting
1:53:21 What Chris Gets Criticised for Most
2:06:10 The Dynamics of Interviewing & Conversation
2:16:18 Trying to Become a High Agency Person
2:25:53 Eric’s Advice for People Who Don’t Fit in
2:33:38 Overcoming Impossible Situations
2:38:17 4D Complex Shapes, Geometry & Dimensions
2:49:09 The Internet is Destroying the Sacred
3:02:44 Reacting to “What Can Be, Unburdened By What Has Been”
3:19:06 Eric’s Thoughts on JD Vance
Below are excerpts/quotes I found especially interesting. In some cases, I have shared my thoughts afterward.
Will Trump be allowed to become president?
At 5:58 (five minutes and 58 seconds into the video)
"You have this very strange thing going on where democracy is the greatest threat to democracy. Now how can that be? [There]'s two different concepts of democracy. One concept of democracy is the will of the people. You hold plebiscites [the direct vote of all the members of an electorate] and even if you do it with an electoral college or political parties the idea is that the people are by and of and for the people.
"The other idea of democracy is that [it] is about institutions that sprang from democracy once upon a time and that those institutions have to be kept strong.
"Those are two completely different concepts that are overloaded to the same word. Under that circumstance we have a paradox, which is: how do we keep the electorate, the type A democracy, from overturning the type B democracy? That's the unsolved problem that they will not bring in front of the people.”
Mike Benz speaks of this extensively. Furthermore, whenever [they] talk about “a threat to our Democracy,” they are speaking of Type B Democracy, which Burning Bright of Badlands Media refers to as the System of Systems.
9:27:
"We have no idea what the United States government, in the executive branch, actually is, but it can't be Joe Biden."
Here, Eric is stating the obvious (that many people pretend they don’t know). There is no way Joe Biden is actually carrying out or capable of carrying out the duties of POTUS. It is refreshing to hear a Democrat state this with no uncertainty in his voice.
11:37:
"I would say this is probably the most insane election we've ever seen by a comfortable margin. I would say that there's no one in second place. I can't think of another election that is even close to this bizarre, including the attempted assassination on Donald Trump"
Again, this is not “just another D vs R election,” despite how many people claim it to be.
MSNBC’s Editing of Joe Rogan to [appear as if he was in] Support [of] Kamala
13:53
“Whatever it is, it is not really trying to fool you. It's trying to instruct you.
“You're allowed to see the truth. They can make it difficult to find the truth, but it's hard to shut up Joe Rogan.
“They've settled for something else, which is…think about MSNBC and CNN, the New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Reuters, AP, Etc. as a set of instructions for how to keep your job.
“You're allowed to disagree. We'll set the boundaries of the disagreement. We'll set the topics of the disagreement. You may not even watch any of these things, but we'll make sure that it filters through to the people that you are watching so that they're outraged and you're given a choice: you can choose to understand whatever you want, and you can choose to say whatever you want, but if you say what you understand to be true, you can know what the consequences are.”
The above is validating to a number of us. We are not going crazy. They are just trying to make us think and feel as if we are!
I failed to adhere to the rules and have lost plenty of friends because I chose to share my views publicly.
Their lies are getting more and more blatant and more and more easy to prove. They just don’t care any longer.
Why Having Public Opinions is so Exhausting
I found this excerpt (at 1:43:54) especially interesting:
"...the people within a clear ideological position feel very comfortable speaking and the people who have a nuanced position have learned their lesson to shut up."
It is much easier to say you are totally for or totally against something than it is to actually describe where you currently draw the line.
Here is another place where I failed to learn the lesson…in this case…shutting up.
The Internet is Destroying the Sacred
3:01:01
"Kamala was not elected through a normal primary system that we've had since 1968 when everything fell apart in Chicago for the Democrats. Donald Trump the assassination story is a very very bizarre one. I don't think Donald Trump is acceptable to the international order. I'm not saying that they will take him out with a bullet, but they will certainly take him out with memes, tweets, data analytics, skull duggery…"
In my opinion, the above is important because this is a Democrat calling out what is happening. In this country, many voters refuse to listen to anyone on the other side, so I always love when someone in one camp shares some truth to people in their own camp.
I can’t remember where in the interview this came up, but At one point, Eric mentioned a tweet he put out (on Aug 10th). I am not asking anyone to answer his poll, but I did find this an interesting poll to take. The poll is now over, so I'll just retype it here because I don't want you to see the results right from the start. This is his tweet:
"Q: Is your position on abortion (whatever it is) exactly the same, for the day after conception, as it is for the day before full term birth?
Which better describes your answer:
A. Yes. Of course.
B. No. Of course not.
27,579 people voted
You can find the tweet here, which will show you the results of the poll: https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1822457459845517823
Eric states that his family was far left. He is clearly an intelligent man and is not brain washed by his own party. In the beginning, he describes things without taking a side, for example when he compared the two meanings of Democracy.
At the same time, he is opinionated about certain people or things, as we all are.
I can admire his intellect without really sharing his position, but the biggest reason to share this interview is because here is a person, clearly on the left, sharing some truths we are not really seeing coming from the left.
These days, especially since RFK Jr joined Donald Trump’s campaign, it is very interesting to compare and contrast those truth tellers who came from the left and those who came from the right. I watch certain shows on Badlands Media regularly (e.g. Devolution Power Hour). This team of individuals is comprised of people who used to be decidedly left and decidedly right. They all now know that the left-right paradigm (D vs R) is contrived. Many now refer to both of those parties as the Uniparty.
And since RFK Jr joined Trump, we now have the Uniparty vs the Unity Party.
Eric stated, at one point, that Trump is not a fascist and Kamala is not a communist, but that Trump leans that way (and in his opinion is dangerous) and that Kamala does share and promote Marxists ideas, which of course she does because both of her parents were Marxists.
Eric does recognize that Trump is very intelligent and that his tweets, for example, were methodically scripted. He then goes on to say how the Left falls for it every time.
We are in uncharted waters. Life is far more complex and complicated then we all think. Contention is at an all time high and this is not sustainable. Something is going to give, but what and when?