Today we have Bret Weinstein on the podcast. Bret has spent two decades advancing the field of evolutionary biology, earning his Ph.D. at the University of Michigan before teaching at the Evergreen State College for fourteen years. He has developed a new Darwinian framework based on design tradeoffs and made important discoveries regarding the evolution of cancer, senescence, and the adaptive significance of moral self-sacrifice. He is currently working to uncover the evolutionary meaning of large-scale patterns in human history and seeking a game theoretically stable path forward for humanity. With his wife Heather Heying, he is co-writing A Hunter Gatherer’s Guide to the Twenty-First Century and is the host of Bret Weinstein’s Dark Horse Podcast.
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Audio-only
Video
Time Stamps
[00:00:00] Introducing Bret Weinstein
[00:00:43] The meaning of “evolutionary theoretical biology”
[00:01:37] Critiques of evolutionary psychology
[00:03:08] Critiques of epigenetics
[00:03:59] The unfortunate competition between theory and empiricism in academia
[00:05:19] Protests against Bret at Evergreen State College
[00:07:35] The role of fear in collective protests
[00:08:47] Sources of racial tensions in the US: deindividuation on the left & a lack of interracial compassion on the right
[00:12:37] Defining the deindividuation problem
[00:15:08] Unity2020and the fight to return policymaking to the average American
[00:17:15] The meaning of “wokeness”: then and now
[00:21:51] Encouraging Black Lives Matter (BLM) supporters to join Unity2020
[00:27:33] Considering Andrew Yang as a center-left candidate for Unity2020
[00:28:45] Considering Admiral William McRaven as a center-right candidate for Unity 2020
[00:29:53] Influencing Trump supporters to join Unity2020
[00:32:07] Analogies between religion and political polarization
[00:35:04] “Dichotomy-transcendence”
[00:43:25] Scott’s Twitter run in with the Intellectual Dark Web
[00:45:13] Defining principles of the Intellectual Dark Web
[00:50:26] Possible criticisms of the Intellectual Dark Web
[00:55:05] Bret’s experience growing up with a learning disability
[01:00:57] Assessing IQ as a measure of intelligence
[01:02:07] The danger of studying the correlations between genetics and intelligence
[01:07:00] How we are a long way from understanding how the mind works
[01:12:10] Answering Twitter questions for Bret
This was amazing! Thank you both, so much, for seeing things this way and discussing them so. An excellent podcast episode. I wish everyone could hear it. I think I agree with the IDW as well : ). This sort of higher-level viewing and discussion of societal issues, where we acknowledge that varying political views are mostly about how those issues should be dealt with, is refreshing – and, I think, essential to the survival of our free/democratic civilisations. It reminds me of the concepts expressed here: https://waitbutwhy.com/2019/12/political-disney-world.html . As a conservative thinker, I disagree with the ‘far-left’ stance, but I love most of what Bret Weinstein said here. Again, an example of that higher-level thinking about issues and political views – a place where we can meet and truly discuss and come to solutions, with the benefit of our different insights based on those different perspectives. I yearn for a world, or just a nation, where that becomes the norm, publicly and politically. These concepts are applicable to everywhere, including Australia, my country, and not just the USA. We don’t have as deep a political and social divide, but some very similar current discourse problems. Unity2020 is an interesting and hopeful concept.
It all sounded good until Weinstein started talking about correlations between phenotypes and IQ. That incoherent rambling made me suspicious because his brother, Eric, tends to talk in confusing physics terms when challenged. Perhaps one of the “gifts” they learned through dyslexia was to obfuscate. I know that the IDW isn’t a monolith, but at least some of them seem to be turning into what they claim they are against. I don’t know how much Bret is in agreement with brother Eric, but anybody who manages money for Peter Thiel (Eric, not Bret) is clearly pro-Trump, and therefore, pro-corruption. (Thiel may not give any more money to Trump, not because he’s seen the light of Trump’s corruption, but because he thinks me might lose.) I wish Scott would have asked more questions like the points raised in this article: https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/07/03/consensus-politics-on-the-fringe-the-intellectual-dishonesty-of-the-intellectual-dark-web/