Joe Rogan and Eric Weinstein on the Victoria's Secret Transgender Model Controversy

There is no pretense of consistency. I mean on that side of the aisle. It's like we're gonna Throw out the following 17 completely contradictory rules, and then we'll tell you which rule is operative in any given moment So you know I was gonna throw out this concept of the Hilbert problems for social justice, so one of them is You cannot understand me because my experience is too different, and you must understand me because my is so important yeah, right or We are all similar enough that any deviation from 5050 shows you the amount of sexism in a workforce and We are all so different that once you include women in previously male occupations You will see a great benefit because of the diversity of opinion well So there are all these self-contradictory couplets right that you have to agree to well. That's the weird thing is who Assume that I just buy all of your stuff. I think we've made a terrible tactical error We fought these bad ideas rather than saying maybe we should just accept all of your bad ideas and then show you What kind of weird world no? Yes, no no no no you can't do that because they don't make sense you can't say oh yeah They make sense and then how do I know when you're serious well But that's what if you just let those through and those things fail, but that's my point is is that By showing the internal this is in mathematics We call this reductio at absurdum that once you take on too many different points You show the conflicts showing that those things can't all be true There's no way in which if I accept all of your ideas I Can run anything so you know take this thing about a trans exclusion from Victoria's Secret Right well you didn't hear about this. Oh god So the idea is that the Victoria's Secret lingerie division head had to step down Where there was a scandal in the background that somebody had said we don't actually want Trans people walking the Victoria's Secret runway Right and so very interesting you have a company that is dedicated to the commercial exploitation of humans as sexual objects for the privilege of the male gaze and Now you're angry that it doesn't include trans into that exploited class So just without without getting into whether this makes like good economic sense or anything There's just the issue of self-contradiction But isn't that a reductionist view of what? Victoria's Secrets is isn't it possible that a woman can feel empowered and sexy if she's wearing lingerie And it's not just to the exploiting of the male gaze that it just they that she appreciates looking attractive wonderful So take that okay, right exactly so the idea is that you're both going to say That that's a positive female empowerment issue right and it's a terrible male exploitation issue at the same time Is it a terrible male exploitation issue like what if a guy likes what if women decide universally? They like guys who wear leopard skin underwear and guys start wearing leopard skin tidy whitey underwear Well, this is sexual selection Yes, but what's the difference between that and women wearing lingerie if with women wear a lingerie And they do it because they like to be you know I just don't know that and they like to be more attractive or to accentuate their attraction so then the sexual self Objectification is an interesting issue. Yeah, you have empowerment. Where's an issue of oppression? It could certainly be well, that's what if a woman's health so take the take that all on Why does it have to be exploitation though? That's the question But what I'm trying to say is you've taken you what some point you've made too many arguments There's this concept called the principle of explosion in mathematics The principle of explosion says if you can get one contradiction through airport security You can blow up the universe as soon as you allow a single contradiction in the unity of knowledge Everything can be proven right so everything becomes meaningless So the game in some sense in mathematics is frequently to say well Let's take all of those beautiful things that you believe so you've just enunciated some I've enunciated some throw them all in Instead of saying what's true and what isn't true You say are these compatible and these ideas are clearly incompatible so for example one of the tricks that I use is to look at advertising for women to women and What phrases get used so if you use the phrase turn heads this summer in quotes and put it into a search engine you'll find all sorts of Revealing outfits that are intended to court the male gaze you say well, maybe that's not really the male gaze then you put in a phrase like make him drool and That will be used to market to women and so this issue about Can we at least get to a point? Where we're talking about the internal contradictions of your position Like I don't even want to get into what my position is the first thing that's scaring me is That you've said so many things so strongly and so dogmatically and this doesn't have to be about gender It could be about race. It could be about class But once once you've said too many things Then I can say look I don't see any way of squaring all of your positions Mmm, it's not it doesn't even have to do with me, right? I think that's where we haven't gone to yet So you think letting them come up with as many preposterous things as possible and then Once it gets to a position where they the the ideas contradict each other expose that well That's that's my point which is once you've told me all of your principles, okay? Then I'm gonna say great. I'm confused Do you feel that I have to understand you or that I can't understand you? Because I don't know which is operative in this situation Tell me the rule how I decide which principle that you've stated governs this situation right and if What one last point about that? I don't want to have to refer to You where you say well you bring me each individual situation and I Will tell you which principle is operative and which principle is inoperative. That doesn't work I want you to list your principles and list your mechanisms for resolving the conflicts within your principles and Then once you've done that we can actually evaluate what you're saying But at the moment it requires you as an oracle to tell me which of your many contradict your seemingly contradictory Positions is operative in every particular case