Eric Weinstein on the Culture War "Stay Out of My Lab" | Joe Rogan

The reason that I'm fighting through culture war issues, which are not very interesting to me, is that we are destroying the thing that has the ability to make sense of the world. Right? It's really the design and logic? Yeah. I mean, like, the ability to say no. You know, you come with an experiment that failed, you know, and you say, I think it succeeded. And I say, no, it didn't. It failed. And you say, well, I actually am Cambodian, and I think you're discriminating against me because I'm Cambodian. Like, look, your experiment failed. It has nothing to do with you being Cambodian. I see what you're saying. And you keep that stuff out of my lab. I mean, if you want- Culture war stuff. Yes. Really, what I'm animated by is, get your fucking social engineering out of my laboratory. You've got 10 minutes and I'm calling security. That's my issue. It's not telling people how to behave, or that I have all the answers, or that we need to be objective in our lives, and that we just want to have sensible discussions. It's- you're coming after core reality and our ability to make sense of the world. And so I'm happy to entertain all sorts of things. You take one foot- step one foot in my lab, and I'm calling security. And if I can't do that, if I can't maintain a scientific journal or a university in which the bullshit departments do not invade the departments that are actually doing the super important work, we're lost. And there is a distinction. I mean- This distinction needs to be made. There is a distinction between hard science and gender studies. If you could pull up, Jamie, let's do the anomalous magnetic moment of the electron. Oh, you can do that? Yeah. You went all Sean Connery on me. You went all raise the eyebrow? Yeah, one eyebrow. Isn't that like a genetic thing? Like you can curl your tongue? Yeah, I could do that. Yeah. Some people can't do that apparently. Can you turn it over? Mm-hmm. What do you mean? Turn upside down? Twist it? Oh, no, I can't do that. All right. You got one thing, I got another. Okay. Uh-uh. This is very mature, Joe. Uh-uh. What is going on here? I'm looking for a number with like 10 or 11 significant digits. Um, we are able to do calculations in quantum electrodynamics, let's say, quantum field theory, in which we can figure out the precision of some thing. We can predict it to like 10 or 11 decimal places of accuracy. And when I look at the achievement that was necessary to have theory agree with experiment to that level, and then I listen to some of the discussions about, well, just take these hoaxes about, you know, somebody submitted parts of Mein Kampf to, you know, as with Jews rewritten as men to a fellowship. Peter Bevosian, yeah. Right. Those two subjects are taking place in the same institution. Mm-hmm. One is incredibly rigorous and demanding and completely unforgiving. And the other thing is just like... Trivallis and nonsense. Well, maybe there's a core of it that makes sense, but it's not going to get anywhere close to the achievements of the hard sciences. But the core of it, whether or not it makes sense, the real problem is the motivation for doing it in the first place. Well, the real motivation may be activism, but activism and scholarship aren't...I mean, there's so many things that I want to be true that just aren't. I want beautiful...I mean, like, you know, nature, you spend time in nature, you want to think, you know, like, nature's a community and the forest is a bunch of different organisms all working together. No, it's red of tooth and claw. Everything that you think about the universe that is purely beautiful and aspirational is contradicted by some system in nature. And that's why evolutionary theory was the first thing on the chopping block. It's just like, well, this contradicts everything we want to claim about organisms. Well, tough luck. I feel like there's a way to define this clearly that makes people understand it better. Okay. And I don't know if I'm the guy to do it, but I feel like someone...this is an incredibly complex issue, right, where you're dealing with emotions and feelings and people who feel like there's injustice in the world and inequality and they focus on those things to the point where they're almost participating in social engineering by ignoring reality and focusing on what they want to be true in sort of this way of reimagining the world. And they're also demanding compliance. This is a big part of this whole thing that's going on here. Right. Then on the other hand, you've got this stuff. Yeah. And it's hard sciences that demand just rigorous intellectual debate. They demand careful study of the facts. They demand deep understanding of complex mathematics in order to achieve these results and to be able to verify them. And they're unforgiving. Unforgiving. Yeah. They're two totally different things. Who? And what you're saying is when one of them, that is this sort of frivolous, airy kind of utopian version of what they like the future to be and that interferes. Right. Where they want a certain amount of diverse people on the staff. I am not even saying that it's frivolous. I'm not even saying it's not scholarship. I'm saying that whatever it is, I don't care. Maybe it's some beautiful social thing. But then they'll hit you with, you don't care because you're a white male and you have white male privilege. And what I realize is that as important as inclusion is, exclusion is equally important. And the instant you say that, I don't owe you the time of day. What does that mean by exclusion? It's equally important. Well, we keep talking about diversity and inclusion, diversity and inclusion, diversity and inclusion. And there's an implicit threat in that, which is what makes it really juicy and interesting, which is like, well, let's look at us. We've got three white guys in here. There's Jamie, you and me. You speak to yourself. I'm 1.6% African. I'd like you to recognize that. I knew he was going to play that card. But you sir can pass as white, right? Yes. Okay. Now, in order to have the objection, like there's some little bit of guilt, which is like, well, why aren't there any people from Cambodia in here? Is that that we are, we're really anti-Cambodian. If you carry that guilt, you're always worried that you have to be able to prove that you're inclusive. It doesn't matter. Right. Right. Okay. It is also important to exclude certain voices from the conversation. So the voice that plays the card, which says, well, you're only saying that because X, I don't have to listen to that voice. And I think this is really important. That is not a voice that needs to be answered. It's not a voice that needs to be taken seriously or paid attention to unless there's some serious allegation that there has been some kind of discrimination or inclusion. The burden of proof is on you for saying why that's interesting in a particular conversation. The burden is on you to explain why that's interesting. Right. Well, for them, they're trying to engineer a more fair and balanced society. If I was going to take their perspective, they would say that the reason why there aren't more women in science or trans people in science or, you know, filling the void. But I'm also trying to engineer a world where there are more women in science. How are you doing that? By trying to figure out what is it that's selecting against women. For example, that we need to get women more money, as I said on this program, earlier in their lives so they can hire help to help raise their children so they can spend more time on their careers and balance. Yeah, but a lot of women don't find that attractive. They don't want to do that. Maybe. But I'm trying to think, but my point is that there are lots of reasons that men and women are different, right? Yeah. So, for example, I saw a beautiful video of a guy who jumps down an enormous flight of stairs on a skateboard and he just nails the landing and it's just a thing of art. And then it shows you 150 attempts where this guy just abused his body and, you know, failed and failed, maybe broke a tooth, you know, blood everywhere. And you're thinking, oh, you showed me the success and you didn't show me that this guy was willing to put his brain, his life on the line in order to nail that trick. And he's actually one of the world's falling champions, right? Mm-hmm. Okay. Well, when you start saying, well, why are you putting this video of this person who's doing this thing, you know, on the internet because that person belongs to a privileged class? I'm saying, well, I don't know, that guy abused himself and put himself at risk and, you know, devoted his life in a singular way that no sensible, I mean, I would be appalled if my son did that. I'd be furious with him. You know, there are things that are happening that result in imbalances that aren't about some kind of unfairness. And I think it's very important to say that unfairness is real and structural problems are real and nonstructural problems and things that really aren't unfair are also real. I think we both agree that it's important for people to have the opportunity to pursue what they enjoy pursuing. I think there's also an issue where we want people to be more represented. We want more of that kind of person that's interested in something when they might not necessarily naturally gravitate towards it. And it might not be that there's some impediments and that there's some boundaries and some sort of a boys club that keeps them out and it might be more that they're just not that interested in that. Well, there are all sorts of... Which is biologically that's been proven in studies. But I'm trying to make it a different point, right? To me, what I'm trying to say is I made a mistake years ago, I think, of engaging in answering this point, which is, you know, let's take piano competitions. Why are piano competitions historically disproportionately, you know, let's say entered in one by Russians or chess or who knows what? Well, Russians are beasts in the way that they destroy children on their way to the concert stage. They will do things that most American families will not do to produce a concert pianist. Okay. That's not an unfairness for the rest of us. I mean, I play the piano. I can't get on stage with these guys because they're just amazing. It's not an unfairness that I'm not represented on that stage. You know, if I told you that my intention is to become the world's greatest jujitsu expert at age 53, being overweight, not having any history in combat sports, you know, and I know that it's not going to happen. With the right amount of drugs. Come on, Joe. And engineering. We can do miraculous things. That's true. We can make him better than he was. Yeah. We need daily stem cells. We're going to have to do some real, we're going to take a chance on cancer and all sorts of other diseases. But we can achieve some things. Okay. But the previous conversation that we're, we're trying to develop, you need to develop, you need to develop, it needs to be a part of your, well, here's the thing that I always say about striking sports. Striking sports are probably one of the more interesting ones in that when you start out at an early age, your body develops learning how to strike. And it's a gigantic advantage over someone who learns once they're past purity. When you get someone who's learning how to strike and they're in their twenties, it takes a real outlier to become super successful. It's very, very rare. But I remember being in a fistfight and throwing a punch and not connecting and hurting my arm. Yeah. It happens all the time. Oh, I didn't understand if you, it's not free, you know, it's like a very, it's a very, now all you've got is your left arm and you've got a really pissed off person across from you. Yeah.