
September 18, 2020
Brett Weinstein on Freedom Pact with Lewis Edward
Check out the The Freedom Pact Podcast Page
Key Takeaways
- “What unites us exceeds what divides us by leaps and bounds” – Bret Weinstein
- The greatest historic successes of human beings depend on cooperation against a common enemy
- Utopians believe that they know the blueprint to get to their imagined Utopia
- It is impossible to design a “perfect” system upfront
- You won’t know its flaws until the system is in place
- “The way to make a functional system is through prototyping” Bret Weinstein
- “Many of the greatest tragedies in human history are the result of Utopians attempting to inflict their viewpoint on a population and then discovering in which way it comes apart” Bret Weinstein
- It is impossible to design a “perfect” system upfront
- Most people don’t have ill intents; they simply start from very different sets of assumptions
- “The most precious thing we have is a human life that is liberated” – Bret Weinstein
- Human life is very easily squandered if someone has to focus exclusively on getting by
- If one is liberated and can focus on things that matter, he ends up delivering value to humanity
- A society that rejects science is like a driver that puts on a blindfold, it will crash eventually
- A meaningful live for Bret is a life in which one gives more than he takes
Books Mentioned
- The Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense by Gaad Saad was mentioned in regards to “pathogenic ideas”
- Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared M. Diamond had a big influence on Bret
Intro
- Bret Weinstein is an evolutionary theorist, the founder of Unity 2020, and the host of the DarkHorse Podcast
- Check out Bret’s website
- Hosts: Lewis Edward (@FreedomPactPod)
- In this chat, Bret discusses the current political situation, the ideas behind Unity 2020, and more interesting ideas about society
The Current State of Media and Avoiding Bias
- Every news channel has a pronounced bias
- To make sense of the world, it is necessary to correct for that bias by tuning into channels that are not targeted at us
- The popularity of the Intellectual Dark Web signals that people are starved for authenticity
- We’re mostly used to being targeted from marketers that are trying to sell us something
- When we see someone authentic, we get a strong desire to listen to them
- It works the same way in classrooms. Students respond much better to candid professors who admit the limits of their knowledge
Social Justice and Unfairness
- Humans (and other primates) are built to register unfairness
- We seem to care more about wealth distribution than the absolute level of well-being
- Even though total levels of wealth have risen dramatically and we are all better off than our ancestors, people still attack Western civilization
- Unfairness is a real problem, and if not addressed it could destabilize civilization
- The issue is that it is not being addressed correctly right now, causing many people to tune out and stop caring about it
- We seem to care more about wealth distribution than the absolute level of well-being
On the Upcoming Elections
- Bret sees both candidates as disastrous and that’s why he started the Unity 2020 movement
- Assuming that Unity 2020 doesn’t take off, Bret expects Trump to win by a large margin
- Biden hasn’t laid out any vision and has only portrayed himself as “not Trump”, not a strong position
The Current Political Duopoly
- Our system is structured to condense different faction into large incoherent alliances (Democrats and Republicans)
- You can’t be part of the conversation unless you join one of the alliances
- As everyone joins, they get stronger and make any third party “dead on arrival”
- This structure allows the two main parties to be highly unpopular without being vulnerable
- You can’t be part of the conversation unless you join one of the alliances
- Third parties have a further disadvantage: The Greater Evil Paradox
- They tend to “steal” votes from the major party that’s closest to their values (e.g. Green Party takes votes from Democrats)
- So voting for them has the effect of favoring the party that one dislikes the most
- The current duopoly guards high office from anybody who would seriously address corruption
What is Unity 2020?
- “What unites us exceeds what divides us by leaps and bounds” – Bret Weinstein
- Unity 2020 is a movement aiming to solve the problems of the current political system
- It proposes to draft two candidates (one from each party)
- Elected candidates will govern as a team, by consensus
- Each candidate stays at the top for four years and then exchange until one of the candidates has governed twice
- Three characteristics of potential candidates
- Courageous, Capable, and Patriotic
- After running a voting process the most popular ticket was to have Tulsi Gabbard and Dan Crenshaw
- The greatest historic successes of human beings depend on cooperation against a common enemy
- A nation can succeed until it has an opposing force, after which it will create factions competing inside
- The question is, can we inspire unity and cooperation among the factions?
- Bret sees Unity 2020 to continue expanding the movement beyond 2020
What is the Most Pathogenic Idea?
- In The Parasitic Mind, Gaad Saad calls “Postmodernism”, the most pathogenic idea
- According to Bret, “Utopia” is the most pathogenic idea afflicting us
- The human mind is attracted to the notion of a perfect world
- Many people try to design a perfect world, without understanding the characteristics of a complex and dynamic system
- In a complex system, if you maximize any value, you will cause all the others to crash
- Utopians tend to believe that they know what’s the blueprint to get to their imagined Utopia
- It is actually impossible to design a “perfect” system upfront
- You won’t know its flaws until the system is in place
- “The way to make a functional system is through prototyping” Bret Weinstein
- “Many of the greatest tragedies in human history are the result of Utopians attempting to inflict their viewpoint on a population and then discovering in which way it comes apart” Bret Weinstein
- It is actually impossible to design a “perfect” system upfront
Issues with Academia
- The way we fund Universities puts a bias in favor of experiments against theory, “which is preposterous”
- Theorists don’t need lots of funds and don’t win big grants, so Universities tend to discard them
- Without the partnership between experiments and theory, we shortcircuit the scientific process
- Ideas that should have quickly been dismissed may come to dominate scientific fields
- The culture of Academia is timid and compliant in the face of power
- It tolerated low-quality ideas such as postmodernism, critical race theory, and queer theory
- “It is hard to imagine the system being corrected without a turnover of who is in the faculty” Bret Weinstein
Is Going to University the Right Choice for Young People?
- Bret thinks there’s no good answer to this question
- “Even if a University education is close to useless at this point, one may need the credentials to be taken seriously” Bret Weinstein
- The price of a college education doesn’t reflect the value of what you learn
- Due to the free resources available now, you can still get a great education outside of the traditional system
About the Recent Riots
- We have to be careful about the ability of ideological movements to detect and capture the public’s sympathy in a given moment
- The anarchist movement used the death of George Floyd as an opportunity to associate itself with BlackLivesMatter and come in the mainstream
- Bret sees the possibility of a Civil War emerging as fairly likely
- When people see their antagonists as subhuman, they tend to go after each other
- That’s what we are starting to see in many situations
- When people see their antagonists as subhuman, they tend to go after each other
- A game/activity that Bret suggests
- Tune in to people with opposed worldviews to ours
- Try to see the world through their eyes and bridge the gap
- It’s really rewarding to cross that bridge
- Most people don’t have ill intents, they simply start from very different sets of assumptions
- As you practice this, beware of bad actors and sociopaths
Don’t Game Honorable Systems
- Bret’s principle to decide when to play by the rules is: Don’t Game Honorable Systems
- If a system is well-intended, it’s not your right to destroy it, so play by the rules
- If the system is not honorable (dealing with a greedy corporation), you can see the rules as flexible and it might be ok to break them
Guns, Germs and Steel
- Guns, Germs, and Steel, written by Jared M. Diamond, had a big influence on Bret
- The book reveals the real forces that shaped winners and losers in history
- We tend to think that what makes civilizations powerful or weak depends on differences among people
- The truth is that some historical accidents empowered some societies and disempowered others
- Bret’s takeaways from the book:
- The prospect of a fairer world is reasonable
- The idea that those who are more deserving tend to acquire more, is not the dominant force between populations
- The book reveals the real forces that shaped winners and losers in history
If Bret Could Broadcast a Message to Humanity
- “The most precious thing we have is a human life that is liberated” – Bret Weinstein
- Human life is very easily squandered if someone has to focus exclusively on getting by
- If one is liberated and can focus on things that matter, he ends up delivering value to humanity
- It follows that we have an obligation to maximize the number of people with that liberated experience
- This means keeping the population below carrying capacity so that we can experience abundance
Additional Notes
- A society that rejects science is like a driver that puts on a blindfold, it will crash eventually
- It would be an invitation to a dark age, where progress comes to a halt and injustice reigns
- We must at all cost prevent this shift in our mindset
- Cancel Culture’s ideas are foolish, but its strategy is brilliant
- It’s very difficult to reject their deal
- You can either join them and support them or you can resist and be stigmatized publicly (which most people won’t do)
- It’s very difficult to reject their deal
- Bret’s biggest mentors
- His Ph.D. Advisor Dick Alexander
- His undergrad advisor Bob Trivers, one of the greatest evolutionary biologist of the twentieth century
- A meaningful live for Bret is a life in which one gives more than he takes