Pretty sure Peterson or someone would say that you chose to waste those 10 minutes and need to take responsibility for your own actions.

I'd say that tweeting a graphic about members of the IDW that includes himself is him using the term. He also literally has a link to the original op-ed on his website:

https://samharris.org/meet-the-reneg...tual-dark-web/

Retweeting someone else using the term is pretty weak. He is certainly aware that others use the term, and doesn't tell them not to. But it isn't his thing and certainly ins't anything he brings up in his podcasts. I'll give myself the W on this one.

And Trolly continues his unbroken streak of being completely wrong.

Anyways, this is the dumbest derail ever. If anyone actually wants to discuss any ideas brought up by Weinstein et al. that would be cool. If not, lets take the trolling elsewhere.

Doesn't sound like he knows physics very well at least.

I'm hardly an expert, but as an interested layman I tend to follow developments, and there has hardly been a lack of breakthrough developments over the last 30 years. LIGO, Higgs-Boson and Tau neutrino are pretty damn epic discoveries, giant leaps towards understanding the universe at the fundamental level.

Sure, it fits into general relativity and the standard model, but it is patently bizarre to argue that this puts physics in a "holding pattern". If the models survive the observations, that is not a holding pattern - that's just (as of yet) a sign of solid models.

And if you want alternate conjecture, weird research and intriguing speculation, there is hardly a better place to go than physics.

It sounds like you have developed a strong opinion about someone with almost no knowledge about what he actually says. If I read someone else's 1 line synopsis of a psychologist and decided based on this they don't know very much about psychology, do you think that would be fair?

FWIW Weinstein argues physics should be doing a lot more than confirming models. It should be bringing us major technological innovations that change how we live our lives and understand the universe, like it did for most of the 20th century. And he thinks the physics community, as currently constituted, is stifling innovation. And he lays out his arguments in several hours of dialogue that I am obviously not doing service with my 1 line synopsis's.

Ya things that truly shake up the entire paradigm just don't really happen all that often. We had relativity and quantum theory over a hundred years ago. Still, tremendous advances are being made. Anyone who tells you that new breakthroughs aren't happening because the gatekeepers are suppressing new ideas is just a crank who can't get his crackpot ideas published.



We can't read Bari's IDW editorial for you. We can point you toward it and summarize what it says, but you have to take the hero's journey of reading and comprehending it.

Yup... And neutrino masses. And dark matter. And dark energy. if you want to talk only about theory there is the KKTL showing that it's possible to get a long lived stable vacuum like our universe out of string theory or Strominger/Vafa calculating black hole entropy in a purely quantum mechanical way and showing string theory successfully matches Hawking/Beckstein's semi-classical calculation. Of course the whole 2nd string theory revolution is within the last 30 years so not sure why that's excluded.

And then why restrict ourselves to high energy physics? You also have Shor's algorithm and all the theoretical work on quantum algorithms. Nano photonics and whatever the hell else they are actually using to make Qbits. The creation of Bose Einstein condensates, exoplanets, understanding what gamma ray bursts are etc etc etc. If only every field could have such a 30 year "holding period".

Yeah, whats funny is mathematicians usually criticize theoretical physics for being TOO trend based and always looking for the hot new idea rather than developing further the ideas we know work like boring old quantum field theory in 3 dimensions.

Eric Weinstein gives his opinions on the current state of physics, and if you disagree based on whatever knowledge you haves that is fine. He is certainly aware of everything you guys are saying, assuredly at a much deeper level than tame, and possible at a deeper level than ecriture too. For reasons he articulates he just doesn’t think it represents the progress that he feels could and should have been made if the politics surrounding the field were different.

Why should anybody care what Weinstein thinks about the current state of physics? He hasn't been active in 20+ years and never got beyond the rank of grad student while in the field. Literally no reason to think he has a deep understanding of what is going on in physics and plenty of reason to think that he doesn't, given your summary of his claims. It's not that hard to find what people like Steven Weinberg, David Gross, Ed Witten , Steve Chu, Lisa Randall,Scott Aaronson or Jonathan Heckman think as a cross generational slice of people more active and far more knowledgeable of the field. Why not read what they have to say and ignore Weinstein all together?

Fair enough, I should have written "you make it sound like he doesn't know much about physics".

There isn't exactly a lack of technological innovation with a basis in physics, but it depends on the field of innovation and the scope of the project. Some technology requires engineers, cooperation with other disciplines and big funding to make reality.

It also takes time to go from discovery to application. Einstein proposed general relativity in 1915. Friedwardt Winterberg proposed the theoretical basis for a satellite based positioning system accounting for those principles in 1955 (or rather he proposed a test of Einstein's theories, but of course this was before we actually had satellites), after several experimental programs the US tested the principle in 1972, in 1973 the development program for positioning satellites was launched and in 2000 we saw the full capability of the program made available for civilian application.

Of course, not all innovations are that complicated. But it is a good story to illustrate that the road from physics to innovation can be require maturity of principle, engineering, infrastructure and budgets that go well beyond that of small groups of physicists.

Certainly there is a good debate to be had about applied science vs basic science, but it is not straightforward. Lamenting a lack of applied science is a short-sighted argument when some of our greatest technological innovations in the 21st century came from matured principles of basic science. Also, I'm not so sure it is fair to say there is a lack of applied science either. It might not take place mainly in physics departments, but that is hardly newsworthy since that has never really been the primary arena for applied science to begin with.

Honestly, I have no clue. Sure I have a degree in physics although I'm a math guy now. Like tame I follow physics developments from a casual perspective out of interest only. There definitely has been a lot of very big developments in physics over the last 30 years, but the claim "if only culture was different, we would have way more" is a sort of counterfactual that is really hard to meaningfully talk about. PhDs in STEM fields are a dime a dozen, and many of them have hot takes. So I'm definitely not putting a huge amount of stock into this particular criticism from weinstein. Definitely the whole "omg i have a new theory but refuse to write even a preprint" cuts against him here.

What strikes me as stranger is why kelhus cares so much. Like the inner workings of power dynamics within the peer review process of top physics journals and at CERN etc is just something I (who is an order of magnitude closer than kelhus) feels I can meaningfully talk about. So if you are just repeating the hot takes of weinstein, i dunno, it feels like you are having a faith-based conversation just with yourself if you want to trumpet that opinion around.

Well, the point of this thread is to post Weinstein hot takes. I never claimed it was going to be a great thread. Just something that interested me and possibly starting points for interesting coversations.

But when I see responses such as "well, clearly Weinstein doesn't know very much about physics," which is clearly ridiculous and absurd, I think it is fair for me to push back.

I think it is safe to say that someone that can do an interesting 2 hour podcast with Roger Penrose (even at age 88) talking about physics probably passes the bar of knowing something about physics.

This is likely true though. Obviously knows a lot more than you, but his expertise deserves substantial discounting. PhD grads certainly know more than normal people, but just because you have a PhD in physics, doesn't mean you are really up to date with "physics". Especially if that has been decades since you were focused on studying it, if you aren't in academia, if you aren't publishing papers, if you aren't going to conferences, if you aren't reading all the latest papers etc. And as mentioned before, the fact that he thought he had this grand physics theory but didn't even publish a preprint points more towards kook than expert.

What it appears he has is a sustained, casual interest in physics. That's enough to be able to hold his own when interviewing an actual expert on physics aiming to have a conversation that a general audience might enjoy. But that is a far cry from actual theoretical physicists working every day.

Honestly, even "physics" here is way too big. I'm legitimately not an expert in most fields of math. If someone said there was a big problem with rejecting new ideas within analysis say, as an algebraic topologist I'd have no expert basis to comment. It's just extremely hard to be competent at wide swathes of these fields.

Well, maybe your bar for "knowing something about physics" is a lot higher than mine. I would certainly put someone that at one point studied it very seriously at a high level and now has a sustained, casual interest in it in that category.

I am pretty sure I never claimed he had any great expertise in physics. Just it was an interest of his and he did some interesting podcasts talking about it with some hot takes. But some of the responses to this really are absurd IMO, and to me it seems are more indicative of emotion based tribalism than any nuanced, thoughtful opinion.

I haven't listened to the podcast you guys have been discussing, but I decided to look it up and noticed he did one recently with Riley Reid: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcas...=1000464283583. Physics isn't my bag so I'll listen to this one and report back.

Stop listening to joe rogan podcasts.

I might be wrong, but I think the "bar of knowing something about physics." was something you added in your edit which i didn't read at the time of the post. I think he knows "something about physics". But I believe that something is described more or less how I characterized and beyond "interesting hot take!" there really isn't much more that you, nor even I, can contribute to the thesis.

This is the statement that was responded to

And it is a pretty bad statement. As was stated in previous replies, the last three decades have seen some incredible physics discoveries. Perhaps the statement isn't a fair synopsis, but you are the one who wrote it. A tip is to follow podcasts that present science and research instead. They might be lighter on the punditry, but you'll quickly learn that there is no lack of brilliant new ideas.

If you are interested in one of the best read on revolutionizing science, I'll always recommend Thomas Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions". Not only is it one of the most cited academic works of all time, but it is also of particular interest to this topic: Thomas Kuhn was a physicist who turned to philosophy and ended up writing the book on the process of scientific progress. It's not a hard read either. And to you the book is probably of particular interest for another reason. It initially met with a very muted reception and a lot of criticism, but over time grew to become one of the most seminal academic works of the 20th century.

Don't let that stop you, afaict only two of us have actually listened to it and the rest of the thread are posting about why they assume it's not worth their time to try it. Though at least a couple of them would be halfway through it if they'd had it on in the background while they were making those posts.

The Reid one was pretty boring imo, I stopped halfway through.

My suggestion would be to listen to science podcasts about science, actual research and actual scientists, instead of disgruntled pundits lamenting the direction of science.

In doing so one would quickly learn that there is neither a lack of new ideas, new technology or fresh thinkers.

It's what I do. It is a nice positive way to spend time listening to curious and brilliant people, and as an added bonus you won't feel the need to write social media posts lamenting the direction of science. Win win.

I listened to a couple of episodes today in the background while I was working. While I don't have anything against Weinstein, I just find his stuff very boring. He seems to lament the suppression of discussion of certain topics and research. But its not clear to me what is actually being suppressed, and if so why it is. Maybe its on me because I wasn't totally focusing on it. But he just seemed to be kind of whiny and I wasn't sure about what. I prefer podcasts where you learn interesting things about the guests. With Riley he seemed really concerned she would say something or bring up a topic that would upset his fans, and they alluded to a pre-agreement not to talk about certain things. It made for a boring listen and was kind of ironic given what his mission is supposed to be. After listening for a few hours, I don't get what the big deal is.

Bump

Finished the "Eric Weinstein's thoughts on Epstein" pod. He seemed to be just doing train of thought and was very rambling and not great production value. That being said, some interesting points, especially since he actually had interacted with Epstein and thought about him before all this went down. If anyone is interested, you can probably start at ~30 minutes, which is where he starts talking about Epstein specifically. Before that, he does a little spiel on conspiracy theories generally.

Anyways, in summary his basic point was that in his opinion based on the information he had, he suspected Epstein was a construct/actor working for a intelligence agency, possibly Israel, and was murdered and/or was facilitated to commit suicide to protect information was the most probable scenario. He said it was certainly possible that the "face value" story was the real one, that he was a self-made playboy hedge fund billionaire pedophile who committed suicide in prison with no outside help, it just wasn't a probable scenario. Keep in mind that Weinstein is a mathematics PhD from Harvard who works in the finance/hedge fund industry, so when he is talking about probabilities it is a little more well thought out than you or I spitballing in the Jeffrey Epstein thread on 2+2.

Anyways, some interesting points. He said he had a hedge fund related business meeting with Epstein in the early 2000s before all the pedophilia stuff had come out. Anyways, he said during that meeting his impression was Epstein was a very charismatic, intelligent person, but he seemed more interested in the "theatre" of being a billionaire playboy having a business meeting than the meeting/topic itself. For example, he said Epstein had an attractive young (adult) woman sitting on his lap the whole time. Weinstein says he has had countless meetings with legitimate billionaire hedge fund guys with 10-11 figure worth, and no one acts like this in real life.

He also said in his opinion the original goal of the Epstein construct was not a pedophile bribery ring. He said he thought it was possible relating to investment in STEM innovation and technology, as this was the focus of a lot of Epstein's energies early on. He said the pedophile stuff came later, and he hypothesized it may have been the actor "Epstein" going off script.

I dont have a PhD in mathematics so take this for what its worth, but it sounds like Weinstein is also an actor, probably working for Israel. I am not sure if hes part of the pedophile ring, I'd put it at 50/50. Maybe someone who knows more about algebra can chime in