Joe Rogan | The Current State of the Intellectual Dark Web w:Eric Weinstein

And so, you know, for example, and this is something that I think would be kind of interesting to talk about, everybody is losing their mind at the moment in the space that you and I sort of co-inhabit of ideas and trying to figure out how do we remain sane and plugged in and open-hearted and open to new things, but also rigorous and fair. Like, all of these weird pressures. The ideas behind the intellectual dark web that you coined. This concept of having a bunch of people that have different ideologies but yet share this common theme of wanting to have real honest communication and honest conversations and try to figure out, instead of looking at things from an ideological perspective, look at things from an honest, objective point and try to see the way the other people view things. Open-hearted, not trying to destroy each other. Yes. And effectively trying to become the adults in the room as we watch the kids run riot. Right. And not always achieving that. Now, because I refuse to actually say what it was or who was in it because there was a lot of pressure to codify it, I knew that if I codified it, it would die. I want a membership card. You have one. But if I don't get one. You have one. There's a clubhouse. We just don't tell the members where it is because they don't. Every time there's an article about the IDW that doesn't mention me, I'm like, yes, I'm sneaking away. You can. I'm slipping away. But like Pacino in 3, they're always going to drag you back. There's been some discussion about certain members and certain people that are losing their fucking marbles. Yeah. I think it's pressure. You know, and I think one of the things that we're all recognizing from whether it's the internet and or just celebrity in general, which I think is part of the culprit is especially if you're reading comments and articles that are written about you, which I do not recommend. If you are doing that. I'm doing that. Don't do that. If you're doing that, you are subject to a massive amount of pressure. Yeah. It's a lot of pressure. And sometimes people, they apply that sometimes that pressure can help you. Like if it's a good friend or someone who you trust and it's done with intellectual honesty and they just really, they think that there's maybe a flaw in your thinking or maybe this could help you or maybe this is an issue. And then you realize that and you self correct. That's great. But there's a lot of people that are bending to the will of the masses and they also are responding to the pressure of the masses. I don't even think it's the masses. No, it's not. One of the reasons I read my comments is because I want to know what Russia is thinking. No, I'm not kidding. Listen to me, Joe. Here we go. Let's go down the rabbit hole together. Well, for sure. And we went, we talked about this recently. Let me just say this before you get going. Yeah. We knew that something was going on years ago. I used to have a message board and on my message board on my website, it became problematic for legal reasons. People were putting a bunch of illegal shit up there and I was kind of responsible for it. A few issues came up where I was like, oh, Jesus, I'm going to get in real trouble. We had an influx and by an influx, I mean thousands and thousands of Russian emails signing up from my message board. I mean thousands with really similar email addresses and they would post and pretend they're from fucking Cleveland or post and be mad that we don't have enough Nazis on or whatever the fuck it would be. You know, right? It would just be the same thing that the IRA was doing, the Internet Research Agency was doing with Facebook and Google and Twitter. We were seeing this like four or five years ago that this stuff was kind of happening where they were recognizing that there is these large portals of discussion. And so they were trying to manipulate that discussion and turn certain discussions toxic and certain and, you know, and come up with preposterous conspiracy theories and attack people for nonsensical reasons. Well, this is the thing I keep seeing the same message modified a hundred different ways from a bunch of accounts that have suspicious similarity. Not one of these accounts usually is followed by anyone I care about. And then they have a few high value accounts with blurry photographs of a person that like I think somebody's like putting real money into that account to create a fake person who just doggedly follows you and is constantly trying to talk to you in your ear. That account. But how do you know that that's what that is? And how do you know it's not just some person that's schizophrenia that really is really interested in Eric Weinstein? Well, a couple times I've tried to like talk to the person and suddenly the thing vanishes. It's like, you're so disgusting. I would never talk to you. It's like, goodbye. Click. Well, maybe they just panicked. Could be just a person. Well, that's the thing. You never know. On the other hand, you remember when we took that photograph at that dinner? Yes. There was this huge number of jokes about Ben Shapiro and a booster seat that were all slightly different versions of the joke and all of the accounts were like striking with similar. I was thinking like, well, I could imagine a little bit of this, but it's way too many. And this is part of what I believe. I believe that we are in a new world in which a lot of the grassroots stuff is astroturf. And if you start to listen to it, you start to get pushed. And I start to watch certain tactics and I make models of the tactics. You know, like one of the tactics is, gosh, Eric, I once thought that you had a lot of integrity and now I know that X. You know, if you don't address this situation, I'm done following you. Oh, really? Goodbye. Click. But I believe that there are sophisticated players who are engaged in trying to either boost our signal or start to alter the signal. Somebody will be up, somebody will be down. And then there's like really weird dynamics. I think that there's a very strange thing going on, not with Dave Rubin, but with the crowd of people that is just trying to eat Dave Rubin and blind him and confuse him. And there's, you know, there's this guy, Sam Cedar, who... Do you think he's a Russian? I hope he is. Well, I don't know. I don't think he's Russian, but I do think that his, I think he has a grassroots following. I don't think this is inauthentic. That just loves to... Dunk. ...harass. Well, dunk, drag. I hate this language. I like dunking. I like the word dunking. Oh, really? Yeah, it's fun. No, I'm not a fan. No? No. No, because it cheapens all conversations. Oh, you got dunked on. You got dragged. It's just like, oh, this is that thing in third grade that I never figured out. Well, they found out that he won't engage them. And so they think it's cute to just constantly shit on him. And they also think it's cute to take anything that he says and interpret it in the worst possible way possible and not think of it as him just being a guy who's trying to talk about things on the fly and maybe isn't even prepared about the subject at hand. Like, one of the things that comes up on this show, like, you know, we were talking before we were going to go on there, what are we going to talk about? I'm like, come on, let's just talk. And so when you do that, come on, let's just talk thing. Yeah. You never know what the fuck is going to come up and you might have a piss poorly formed idea of what a subject is and you just start rambling. Yeah, that's what I've done in my two previous appearances. Well, no, you have not, but it seems, you know, it's easy to think that you did that. But with Dave, you know, there's enough moments where he's misstepped where they just feel like, okay, we got a wounded antelope. Yeah, yeah, yeah, they're trying to pick him off. And you know, I think there was probably a move to do Shapiro and there was a period where you were seemingly in the crosshairs, but you're hard to kill. And you know, I have no doubt that- I was in the crosshairs? I wasn't even noticing. See, that's the benefit of not paying attention. And this is something that I've been pretty rigorous about over the last like six months or years. Well, you, Sam Harris and Dave Rubin have all given me versions of this advice and I worry about it because I'm not large enough yet that I've been the target of a steady campaign. But what happens is you see people's feedback loops interrupted. And in part, to course correct, you kind of want to know, was I too harsh with that guy? Like when I went on with Jordan Peterson on Dave's show, I was more aggressive because I think I'd seen Jordan and Brett on your show together. And I come from an ethnic family, we interrupt each other, that's normal. And Jordan is an interrupter. And so what I found is that I probably was intuiting that I had to be more forceful. A lot of the comments said, wow, Eric, I haven't really seen you this aggressive. Was there three of you on the conversation? It started off Dave, Jordan and myself, and then Ben Shapiro came in for an hour. And I think Sam Harris might have been scheduled to come in. I don't know. But there's an issue always with more than one person. There's a reason why I do one on ones almost exclusively. Even when I had Bob Lazar with Jeremy Korbel, just having a third person that wants to chime in oftentimes interrupts the flow of conversation. In that case, it was because I wanted to lock in on Bob Lazar. I wanted to get all my feedback. I want to find out, is this guy full of shit? I want to lock in with him. And also, there's another person, even if they have a good thing to say, it's a distraction. It becomes a problem. Well, you never know when one of these is going to work and when it works, it can be magical. And when it doesn't, it's a little bit like jazz guys. If that group is meant to be, then they don't trip over each other's solos and they're trying to come up with something. But even with three great friends, I have this issue. I've seen great stuff with multiple people on your show. And I've seen stuff that doesn't work. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right.