The following is a conversation with Zev Weinstein, a young man with a brilliant, bold, and hopeful

mind that I had the great fortune of talking to on a recent afternoon.

He happens to be Eric Weinstein's son, but I invited Zev not because of that, but because

I got a chance to listen to him speak on a few occasions and was captivated by how deeply

he thought about this world at such a young age.

And I thought that it might be fun to explore this world of ours together with him for a

time through this conversation.

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As a side note, let me say that Zev acknowledges the fear associated with participating public

discourse and is brave enough to join in at a young age to push forward, to change his

mind publicly, to learn, to articulate difficult, nuanced ideas, and grow from the conversations

that follow.

In this, I hope he leads the next generation of minds that is joining and steering the

collective intelligence of this big ant colony we think of as our human civilization.

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I'll connect with me on Twitter, Alex Friedman.

And now, here's my conversation with Zev Weinstein.

You've said that philosophy becomes more dangerous in difficult times.

What do you mean by that?

Interestingly, I think I mean two things by that.

And I think, firstly, I should clarify, when I say philosophy, I sort of mean in a very

traditional sense, just thinking, ideation, and that could be reconsidering our notions

of self in a very traditional sense, which we consider philosophy or that could be technological

innovation.

I think it's important to recognize all of these as philosophies that we can not question

whether it's important to promote thought.

I think the other thing I should clarify is when I say difficult times, I mean times

when nothing is growing and so the risk for real conflict is much greater because people

are incentivized to fight over the things which already exist.

I think when times are not difficult, the people with the greatest power are usually

the people who are very creative, generating a lot, and that really requires ideation or

philosophy of some sort.

I think when times become stagnant, the important successful people become the people who are

very good at protecting their own pieces of the pie and taking others.

I think that those people have to be very opposed to any sort of thinking that could

restructure society or conventions about who should succeed.

So firstly, I mean by that that it becomes much more dangerous for a person to think

deeply and question during a time when the important people are those concerned with

making sure no one rocks the boat.

One example of this would be Socrates and his execution because everyone was happy enough

to sit through his questions before there was war and poverty and distress and afterwards

it just became too dangerous.

The other thing I mean by that is that the consequences of thinking deeply carry much

greater potential for real catastrophe when everyone is desperate.

So for example, the Communist Manifesto was probably much more dangerous during early

1900s Russia than it was during the 1848 revolutions because I think people were in much worse

shape and desperate people are very willing to dive into anything new that might bring

the future without fully calculating whatever the consequences or risks might be.

So it is both more dangerous for a person to have creative ideas and those ideas are

more dangerous when times are tough.

And by dangerous you mean it challenges the people with power who want to maintain that

power in times of stagnation when there's not much growth, innovation, creativity, all

that kind of stuff.

Right.

And I know that if nothing new is created, people have promises that they've made about

what will be paid to whom, what debt structure is.

The only possibility if stagnation lasts for long enough is really some kind of great conflict,

great war because people have to take from others to make good on their own promises.

So we know that by denying any sort of grand ideation, we are accepting that there will

be some kind of great catastrophe.

And so we have to understand that philosophy is the most important when we've seen too

much stagnation for too long.

It is also very dangerous and it's dangerous for the people who are doing it and it's dangerous

for the people who believe it but it's kind of our only way out ever.

And again, by philosophy you mean the bigger, it's not academic philosophy or this kind

of games played in the space of just moral philosophy and all those metaphysics, all

that kind of stuff.

You mean just thinking deeply about this world, thinking from first principles.

I think your Twitter line involves something about trying to piece everything together

from first principles.

So that's fundamentally what being philosophical about this world is and that's where the people

who are thinking deeply about this world are the ones who are feeding, who are the catalyst

of this growth in society and so on.

Yeah.

I mean, I also think that the real implication of moral philosophy can be something that most

would consider like a real political implication.

So I think all philosophy really ties together because there has to be some sort of grand

structure to all thought and how it relates.

Do you think this growth and innovation and improvement can last forever?

We've seen some incredible, you know, the thing that humans have been able to accomplish

over the past several hundred years is just, I mean, awe inspiring and every moment in

that history, it almost seemed like no more could be done, like we've solved all the problems

that are to be solved.

I mean, there's just, historically, there's all these kind of ridiculous like Bill Gates

style quotes or like, it's obvious that we've, this new cool thing is not going to take off

and yet it does.

And so there's a feeling of the same kind of pattern that we see in Moore's law.

There's constant growth in different technologies in the modern day era and any kind of automation

over the past hundred years.

Do you think it's possible that we'll keep growing this way if we give power to the philosophers

of our society?

I think the only way that we can keep growing this way is if we give power to real thinkers

and there's no guarantee that that will work, but we sort of don't have any other choice.

And I think you're entirely right that this period of both understanding the universe

at a rate which has never been seen before and invention and creativity, that these past

hundred years have been sort of uncharacteristic for the level of growth that we've seen in

all of history, we've never seen anything like this.

And I think a lot of our promises rest on this sort of thing continuing.

I think that's very dangerous, but the one thing that can get us out of this is philosophy

and being ready to radically restructure all of our notions about what should be, what

is.

I think that's very important.

So you think deeply about this world.

You are clearly this embodiment of a think of a philosopher.

Your dad is also one such guy, Eric Weinstein.

Do you have big disagreements with him on this topic in particular?

I think now people should know he also happens to be in the room, but the mics can't pick

him up so he can heckle it doesn't even matter.

But do you have disagreements with him on this point?

Let me try to summarize his argument that we were actually based a lot of our American

society on the belief that things will keep growing.

And yet it seems that however you break it apart, maybe from an economics perspective,

that they're not growing currently.

And so that's where a lot of our troubles are at.

Do you have the same sense that there's a stagnation period that we're living through

over the past couple of decades?

I think modern stagnation is completely undeniable, particularly scientifically.

And I think there have been a few fields where tremendous progress has been made very recently.

I think my dad might feel that there is sort of an inevitability to the ending of this

period, and I'm not so certain that the fall of this great time is completely inevitable

because I don't know what thoughts were capable of producing, what we're able to reconsider.

I think we really have to be open to the possibility that all of our standard frameworks

where he will talk about embedded growth obligations.

If we continue within the same framework, then we're very susceptible to the dangers

of whatever these embedded growth obligations are.

I think if we break the frameworks, we have no reason to believe that the problems we're

experiencing with our current frameworks will follow us.

And I think that's the importance of radical thought.

We don't know what the solution is, but if there is a solution, it will be born from

some very fundamental thinking.

And so I have great hope.

So you have optimism about the power of a single radical idea or a single radical thinker

to break our frameworks and break us out of this spiral down due to whatever the economic

forces that are creating this current stagnation.

Yeah.

I'm very, very hopeful.

The optimism of youth.

Well, I share your optimism.

So let me come back to something you've also talked about.

You have very little stuff out there currently, but the things you have out there, your thoughts,

you could just tell how deeply you think about this world.

And one of the things you mentioned is as you learn about this world, as you read, as

you sort of go through different experiences that you're open to changing your mind.

How often do you find yourself changing your mind?

Do you think that from 10 years into the future, we'll look back at this conversation

we're having now and disagree completely with everything you just said?

It's entirely possible.

And that's one of the things that scares me so much about appearing publicly.

I think that the internet can be very intolerant of inconsistency.

And I am entirely prepared to be very inconsistent because I know that whatever beliefs I have

when subjected to scrutiny may change because that's really the only way to form your truest,

most fundamental conceptions about the world around you.

And it would take an infinite amount of time to subject every single one of your beliefs

to scrutiny, and so that's a process that must follow me throughout my entire life.

And I know that means that my opinions and perspectives are always to be changing.

I'm prepared to accept that about myself, whether other people are prepared to accept

that my public opinions may change very greatly over time is something I don't know.

I don't know how tolerant the world will be, but I'm very prepared to change anything I

believe in if I think deeply enough about it or a good enough argument is made so that

I might reconsider.

Well, that certainly is currently an intolerance, and that's one of the problems of our age.

There's an intolerance towards change, and I'll also ask you about labels you talked

about.

We like to bend each other into different categories, blue or red or whatever the different

categorization is.

But it seems like the task before you as a young person defining our future is to make

a tolerance of change the norm during this podcast, for example, and then changing your

mind one or two years later and doing so publicly without a big dramatic thing or maybe changing

it on a daily basis and just being open about it and being transparent about your thought

process.

Maybe that is the beacon of hope for the philosophical way, the path of the philosopher.

So that's your task in the sense is to change your mind openly and bravely.

You're right.

And maybe I will just have to endure some sort of criticism for doing that, but I think

that's very important.

And I think this ties back to this previous phase of our conversation where we were discussing

if thinkers would win over systems that are devoted to preventing radical thought or if

who will win the systems or the thinkers.

I think it's crucial that my generation take up a hand in this fight.

And I think it's important that I'm a part of that because I know that I have some opportunity

to, I think it is my obligation as a member of a generation whose only real hope is to

think outside of a system because whatever systems exist are collapsing.

I think it is really my obligation to try to play some role, whatever role I can in

being an instrument in that change.

Are you, as a young mind, do you have a sense of fear about just like how afraid were you

to do this podcast conversation?

Do you have a sense of fear of thinking publicly?

Yeah, I don't even think that that fear is irrational.

It's very difficult to exist publicly in any form now because it's very easy for anyone

to take cheap shots at something which is difficult and as I said, the people who are

trying to have the difficult ideas and conversations are perhaps putting others in actual danger

because everyone is so desperate that they might be willing to try anything.

So there's a certain amount of responsibility which one has to take going before the public

and there is a certain amount of ridicule which will be completely unwarranted that

anyone must endure for it.

And I think that means that one has to be afraid because they could both ruin the world

and be ruined by the world in an unwarranted and undeserved fashion.

I would like to believe in myself enough to try to accept this as a task because I think

people need to try or there's no getting out of this and we will end in some kind of crazy,

brilliant war.

I'll have to put, you've said also that in these times we can't have labels because

it holds us back.

We've already talked about it a little bit but this idea of labels is really interesting.

Why do you think labels hold us back?

Well, I think many underestimate the extent to which language and communication really

impacts and shapes the ideas and thoughts which are being communicated.

And I think if we're willing to accept imperfect labels to categorize particular people or

thoughts in some sense we are corrupting an abstraction in order to represent it and communicate

about it.

And I think as we've discussed those abstractions are particularly important when everything

is on fire.

We should not be sacrificing grand thought for the ability to express it.

I think everyone should work much harder, including myself, to really be thinking abstractly

in abstract terms instead of using concrete terms to discuss abstraction while ruining

it slightly.

Yeah.

It's kind of a skill actually.

So one really difficult example in the recent time that maybe you can comment on if you

have been thinking about is just politics.

And there's a lot of labels in politics that it takes a lot of skill to be able to communicate

difficult ideas without labels being attached to you.

That's something that I've been sort of thinking about a lot in trying to express, for example,

how much I love various aspects of the foundational ideas of this country, like freedom, and just

saying I love America as a simple statement.

I love the ideas that we're finding to America will often in the current time where people

will try to desperately try to attach a label to me, for example, for saying I love America

that I'm a Republican, a Donald Trump supporter, and it takes elegance and grace and skill

to like to like avoid those labels so that people can actually listen to the contents

of your words versus the summarization that results from just the labels that they can

pin on you.

Are you cognizant of the skill required there of being able to communicate without being

branded a Republican or Democrat in this particular set of conversations?

I'm sure there's other dangerous labels that could be attached.

I don't think there's any way of avoiding that right now.

It might not be anyone's best effort to really try.

I think the thing I can say, which will most speak to that, which I truly believe, is that

participating in modern conventional politics is not being inherently political in a generative

sense.

It's this repeated trope where politics now is not about creating new political ideologies.

It's about defending ideologies which already exist so that everyone can keep what they

have, and that's where all of the name calling and the labeling really comes in.

It's an attempt to constrict whatever may be generated to standard conversations and

discussions so that arguments can be straw manned and defeated and people can keep what

they have because everyone's very, very scared.

I want to be very political, but not in a standard political sense where I'm defending

a particular party or place on a spectrum.

I would like to play some role in inventing new spectrums, and I think that's most important

politically because above most else, politics is about real power, and conventional politicians

have real power, and that power will find terrible outlets if new spectrums for that

power to live are not invented.

So you're not afraid of politics?

Political discourse at the deepest, richest level of what political discourse is supposed

to mean?

Actually, I'm very afraid of it, but once again, we have no...

That's not paralyzing for you.

You feel like it's a responsibility you're ready to take it on.

This is a good sign.

This is your special human.

Let's talk maybe fun, maybe profound.

We talked about philosophers, philosophy.

Who's your favorite philosopher?

Somebody in your current time been either influential or you just enjoy his or her ideas

or writing or anything like that?

Weirdly, I'll give an answer which doesn't have much to do with whom I might imagine

myself to be.

I like Thomas Aquinas at the moment.

I think he's very inspirational to me given what we're going through, and that's not because

his particular ideas of religion or God or unmoved movers are particularly inspirational

to me.

I don't even think they were necessarily right, but he was introducing aspects of the scientific

method during one of the darkest periods in human history when we had lost all hope and

reason and ability to think logically.

I think he was really something of a light in the dark, and I think we need to look to

people like that at the moment.

The other reason why I think I need to learn from him is that even though he was doing

something which really needed to be done and introducing scientific thought and reason

to a time that lacked it, he was not saying anything that would have been offensive to

whatever powers were in play during his time.

He was writing about the importance of faith in God and how we could prove it, and so it's

important to remember, I suppose, that having ideas that shape the world and which bring

the world closer to what we can prove it's supposed to be and how it's supposed to work

does not always take some sort of grand contradiction of whatever is in play, and the most courageous

thing to do may not always be the most helpful thing to do.

I think it's very easy for anyone with ideas about how everything is broken to become very

cynical and say, oh, the system, man, they're all wrong.

I think it takes another kind of discipline to be a person with real ideas and to make

the world better without stepping on anyone's toes or contradicting anyone.

I have real respect for that.

So being able to be when it's within your principles to operate within the current system

of thought?

Yeah.

And not offend anyone, not say anything outlandish, but introduce the method by which progress

must be achieved.

I think that takes a kind of maturity, which is found very rarely now, and I really look

to him for inspiration, despite whatever disagreements I may have with the minute details of his

philosophy.

Yeah.

It takes a lot of skill, a lot of character, and yeah, deep thinking to be able to operate

within the system when needed and having the fortitude and just the boldness to step

outside and to burn the system down when needed, but rarely opportune moments that would actually

have impact.

I mean, it's ultimately about impact within the society that you live in, not just making

a statement that has no impact.

Yeah.

And we were talking about how dangerous it is to do real philosophy at dangerous, broken

times.

He was going through the most broken time in history, and he questioned the methods which

made a broken system able to survive.

And he was so skilled and so graceful that he became a saint in that tradition.

And there's something for me to really learn from there.

Do you draw any inspiration, have any interest in the sort of more modern philosophers, maybe

the existentialists, and Nietzsche is one of the early ones?

Do you have thoughts on the guy in general or any of the other existentialists?

Well, with regard to Nietzsche, I think, I think Nietzsche might have said that he's

the worst.

You know, he was certainly filled with passionate intensity.

Was that a compliment?

He was the worst or a criticism?

Well, Nietzsche had this big line, the best lack all conviction, the worst are filled

with passionate intensity.

So I think Nietzsche was destroyed by the horrors of everything that went on around

him.

I think he never really recovered from it.

I think that's because if you think about Nietzsche's philosophy, he was very opposed

to any sort of acceptance of what one had, one should always envy those who have more

and use that envy to fuel their growth and, you know, accept whatever the human condition

and desires are and use those desires to want more and more and make use of your greed.

I think it's very difficult to be truly happy if the thing which you pride yourself most

on is never being satisfied and I think Nietzsche was never satisfied and that was the danger

of his philosophy.

I think also with his amoralism, you know, there is no good or evil.

I sort of disagree with that on a pretty fundamental basis.

I think that our notion of morality is by no means subjective, it's really the proxy

for the fitness of a society.

I think whatever we consider ethical, like don't steal, don't murder, don't do this.

Societies have a very difficult time running.

It's very hard to run a civilization when everyone is stealing from everyone else and

people are murdering each other and committing these things which we would consider atrocities.

So I think we also, we know this because I think very similar notions of morality have

evolved convergently from different traditions.

I think good is a proxy for a civilization's fitness and the good news is that that means

that evil in being anathema to that good must therefore be the opposite of stable in whatever

way that it's evil and that means that good will always be more stable than evil and the

only way evil can really win is like if everyone dies.

So wait, can you say that again, good is a proxy for society's what?

Good is a proxy for the stability and fitness of a civilization and evil.

That's a good definition.

Thank you.

So you're throwing some bombs today.

Okay.

This is exciting.

Sorry.

Sorry to interrupt your flow there, but it's just a good damn good one.

Thank you.

So in that sense, that's a kind of optimistic view that if by definition good is a proxy

for stability, then it's going to be stable unless the entire world just blows itself

up.

So good wins in the end by definition.

Or no, well, good wins unless it all goes to complete destruction.

That's a beautifully put.

Thank you.

On the topic of sort of good and evil being human illusions, you've said that more broadly

than that about truth that it is easier in some ways to be unified under truth because

it is universal and it is to be unified under belief, which at times can be completely subjective.

So what is the nature of truth to you?

Can we understand the world objectively or is most of what we can understand about the

world is just subjective opinions that we kind of all agree on in these little collectives

and over time it kind of evolves completely detached from objective reality?

I think this is the greatest argument for objectivity is that something that is objectively

true cannot be true to me and untrue to you.

You can feel that it's untrue, but that would be unproductive and create unnecessary tension

and conflict.

I think this is one reason for the importance of science as a tool for stability.

If science is the search for truth and truth can never really be, I shouldn't say that,

truth should never be an engine of conflict because no two people should disagree on something

which is objectively true, then in some sense search for truth is searching for a common

ground where we can all exist and live without contradicting or attacking each other.

Do you have a hope that there is a lot of common ground to be discovered?

Sure.

I mean, if we continue scientifically, we are discovering truth and in that discovering

common ground on which we can all agree, that's one reason why I think caring about science.

If you have a culture which cares very deeply about science, that's a culture which is not

necessarily bound to injure unwarranted internal conflict.

I think that's one reason that I'm so passionate about science is it's search for universal

ground.

Let me just throw out an example of a modern day philosophical thinker.

We'll keep your dad Eric Weinstein out of the picture for a sec, but he does happen

to be an example of one, but Jordan Peterson is an example of another, somebody who thinks

deeply about this world.

His ideas are, by a certain percent of the population, speaking of truth, are labeled

as dangerous.

Why do you think his ideas or just ideas of these kinds of deep thinkers in general are

labeled as dangerous in our modern world?

Is it similar to what you've been discussing that in difficult times, philosophers become

dangerous?

Or is there something specific about these particular thinkers in our time?

Well, I think Jordan Peterson is very antiestablishment in a lot of his beliefs.

He's an unconventional thinker, and I think we need, regardless of whatever Jordan's particular

views and beliefs are, and if they bring about more danger than truth, or if they don't,

it's very important to have fundamental thinkers who exist outside of a conventional framework.

Do I think that he's dangerous?

I think by existing outside of a system which is known, he is dangerous, and I think we

have to, in some sense, we have to welcome danger in that capacity because it will be

our only way out of this.

So regardless of whether his beliefs are right or wrong, I'm pretty adamant about the fact

that we need to support thought which may rescue us.

And that thought can appear radical or dangerous at times, but ultimately, if you allow for

it, this is kind of the difficult discussion of free speech and so on, is ultimately difficult

ideas will pave the way for progress.

Yeah, and I'd like to slow you down there because I think one of the issues we were

discussing previously was the fact that language often destroys our ability to think.

When we're talking about whether his ideas are radical, I don't know if we mean radical

in the traditional sense of having to do with the root of a problem or in the more modern

sense of being very extreme.

And I think that's completely by design, I think, fundamental thought which semantically

would once be considered radical thought became very dangerous, and now it's become synonymous

with extreme or dangerous thought, which means that anyone who considers themselves a radical

thinker is semantically also a dangerous or extreme thinker.

These are not helpful labels in a sense that the moment you say radical or extremist thinker,

then you're just, well, how do I put it, you're not helping the public discourse, the change

of ideas.

But through no fault of our own, the concept of radical is having to do with a root is

an obvious concept for which there must be language, and a lot of the attack on thought

has to do with attacking language which communicates conceptually.

So this is an example of how our world is becoming increasingly Orwellian, it's just

language is being used to destroy our ability to think.

I think I can't remember exactly what the numbers are, but I read some statistic about

how greatly the average English vocabulary has decreased since 1960.

It was some incredible number, it really baffled me, it's like, how are people less able to

think in a time when the world is supposed to be growing at an ever before seen rate?

We can't keep on, we can't sustain this growth if we destroy everyone's ability to think

because the growth requires thinking and we're ruining the tools for it.

I watched your podcast with Noam Chomsky and I think one interesting thing which he discussed

was how language is more used to develop thoughts within our own head than it is used to communicate

those thoughts with others.

If the language doesn't change, even if its usage changes, then when language is destroyed

in communication, it also stymies our ability to think reasonably and I'm very, very worried.

But the language in communication requires a medium and there's a lot of different mediums,

so there's social media, there's Twitter, there's writing books, there's blog posts,

there's podcasts, there's YouTube videos, all of things you have dipped a toe in in

your exploration of different mediums of communication.

Which do you see yourself, this might be just a poetic way of asking are you going to do

a podcast, but a broader picture, what do you think as an intellectual in this world

for you personally will be the path for communicating your ideas to the world?

What are the mediums you are currently drawn to out of the ones I mentioned, maybe something

I didn't?

To answer your question concretely before abstractly, I'm scared but I need to do a podcast.

It's important, it is my obligation as a member of my generation, I really hope that more

people my age start to do this because we will be the people in charge of new ideas

which either sink or swim.

How upset will your dad be when your podcast quickly becomes more popular than his?

I think he would be negatively upset.

I'll say he'd be proud, he's a good dad.

I really think so, sorry to interrupt, but then zooming out, do you think podcasts are

you excited by the possibility of other mediums outside of podcasting to communicate ideas?

I would be if people still read books or did things like that.

I'm somewhat guilty of this, a lot of the books I read are very technical and then

my to absorb really deep modern conversations, I listen to podcasts and I don't really read

many books on the matters that we're discussing, for example.

It's fascinating because you're making me think of something that I align with you very

much of how I consume deep thinkers currently.

What happens is somebody who thinks deeply about the world will write a book, Jordan

Peterson example, and instead of reading their book, I'll just listen to podcast conversations

of them talking about the book, which I find, this is really sad, but I find that to be

a more compelling way to think about their ideas because they're often challenged in

certain ways in those conversations and they're forced to, after having boiled them down and

really thought to them enough to write a book, so it's almost like they needed to go through

the process of writing a book just so they can think through, convert the language in

their minds into something more concrete and then the actual exchange of ideas, the actual

communication of ideas with the public happens not with the book, but after the book with

that person going on a book tour and communicating the ideas.

Well, there are two meanings I make of why not too many people spend much of their time

reading anymore.

One interpretation is that we've lost our attention spans to our phones, people can't

concentrate on a page if it takes them a minute to read, we're too busy watching TikToks or

whatever people do.

The other interpretation would be that language and verbal communication has, as well as some

amount of communication which is done through facial expression, tone of voice, etc.

These are means of communication that have evolved along with humanity over thousands

and thousands of years.

We know that we are built to communicate in this way.

We have had writing for much less time.

It is a system that we invented, not a system which evolved and is innately part of humanity

or the human mind.

We are designed to consume conversation by our own evolution.

We are designed to consume writing by some process of symbols that's evolved over a

couple of thousand years.

It makes sense to me why many are much more compelled to listen to podcasts, for example,

than they are to read books.

It could be that this is simply a technological progression which has displaced reading conventionally

instead of some sort of maladaptation of our minds which has corrupted our attention spans.

Likely there's some combination which determines why people spend much less time reading, but

I don't think it's necessarily because we're all broken.

It may simply have to do with the fact that we are designed to listen through our ears

and speak through our mouths and we are not innately designed to communicate over a page.

Yeah, there's an exciting coupling to me between a few second TikTok videos that are

fun and addicting and then a three, four hour podcast which are both really popular in our

current time.

People are both hungry for the visual stimulation of internet humor and memes.

I'm a huge fan of and also slow moving deep conversations.

That might, there's a lot of, I mean it's part of your generation to define what that

looks like moving forward.

A lot of people, like Joe Rogan is one of the people that kind of started accidentally

stumbled into the discovery that this is like a thing and now people are kind of scrambling

to figure out why is this a thing?

Why is there so much hunger for long form conversations and how do we optimize that

medium for further, further expression of deep ideas and all that kind of stuff.

YouTube is a really interesting medium for that as well, like video sharing of videos.

Most of YouTube is used with the spirit of the TikTok spirit, if I can put it in that

way, which is like, how do I have quick moving things that even if you're expressing difficult

ideas they should be quick and exciting and visual and switching, but there's a lot of

exploration there to see what can we do something deeper and nobody knows.

You're part of the, you have a YouTube channel releasing one video every few years, so your

momentum is currently quite slow, but perhaps it'll accelerate, but you're one of the people

that gets to define that medium.

Do you enjoy that, the visual, the YouTube medium of communication as well?

I know that when the topic of conversation or the means by which a conversation is communicated

or an idea is communicated, if that is sufficiently interesting to me, I will read a book on it,

I would listen to a podcast on it, I would watch a video on it.

I think if I'm very curious about something, I will consume it however possible.

I think when I have to consume things which really don't interest me very much, I am indeed

much more ready to consume them through some sort of video or discussion than I am through,

like a long tedious book.

So for the breadth of acquiring knowledge, video is good.

For the depth, the medium doesn't matter.

I think it'd be fun to ask you about some big philosophical questions to see if you

have an opinion on them.

Do you think there's a free will or is free will just an illusion?

Well, I think classical mechanics would tell us that if we were to know every piece of

information about a system and understand the rules which govern that system, we would

be completely able to predict the future with complete accuracy.

So if something could know everything about our lives, it could freeze time and understand

the position of every neuron in my mind about to fire.

No decision could be unpredictable.

In some sense, there is that sort of fate.

I think that doesn't make the decisions we make illegitimate even if some grand supercomputer

could understand what decisions we would make beforehand with complete certainty.

I think we're making legitimate systems within a system that has no freedom.

We're making legitimate systems within a system that has no freedom.

Can you explain what you mean by that?

Yeah.

So if we were to have just a simple pendulum and I told you how long the rope was, we froze

it at a particular point and I told you how high above the ground the weight was and the

motion of a pendulum is something which is easy for everyone to imagine.

If we had all of that information, you could ask me, what will the pendulum do six and

a half minutes from now?

We would have a precise answer.

That's an example of a very simple system with a very simple Lagrangian.

We could completely predict the future.

The pendulum has no ability to do anything that would surprise us.

Weirdly, that's true of whatever this four dimensional, crazy world we live in looks

like if we were to understand where every piece of this system was at any given time

and we understand the laws of motion, how everything worked, if we could compute all

of that information somehow, which we will never be able to do, every decision you will

ever make could be predicted by that computer.

That doesn't mean that your decisions are illegitimate.

You are really making those decisions but with a completely predictable outcome.

I'm just a little bit high at the moment on the poetry of a system within a system that

has no freedom.

The human experience is the system we've created within the system that has no freedom, but

that system that we've created has a feeling of freedom that to us ants feels as much more

real than the physics as we understand it of the underlying like base system.

It's almost like not important what the physics of the base system is that for what we've

created, the nature of the human experience is there is a free will or there is something

that feels close enough to a free will that it may not be worth spending too much time

on the fact that it's something of an illusion.

We will never build a computer that knows everything about every piece of the universe

at a given time and so for all intensive purposes, our decisions are up to us.

We just happen to know that their outcomes could be predicted with enough information.

Speaking of supercomputers, they can predict every single thing about what's going to

ever happen.

What do you think about the philosophical thought experiment of us living in a simulation?

Do you often find yourself pondering of us living in a simulation of this question?

Do you think it's at all a useful thought experiment?

I think it's very easy to become fascinated with all of these possibilities and they're

completely legitimate possibilities.

Is there some validity to like solipsism while it can never be falsified or disproven?

So I mean, sure you could be a figment of my imagination.

It doesn't mean that I will act according to this possibility, I'm not going to call

you mean names and just to test the system to see how robust it is to distortions.

Yeah.

So, I mean, all of these existential thought experiments are completely possible.

We could be brains and jars.

It doesn't mean that our experience will feel any less valid.

And so it doesn't make a difference to me if you are some number of ones and zeros or

you're a figment of my imagination, which lives in a stored away brain.

It will never really change my experience knowing that that's a possibility.

And so I try to avoid making decisions based on such contemplations.

If we take this previous issue of free will, I could decide that because I have no choice

in my life, if I lie around in bed all day and eat chips, I was destined to do that thing.

If I make that decision, then I was destined to do that thing.

It would be a really poor decision for me to make.

I have school and a dozen commitments.

There's somebody listening to this right now, probably hundreds of people sitting down

eating chips and feeling terrible about themselves, so how dare you, sir.

If they're listening to this, they're clearly curious about possibilities of thought.

It's not the bed in the chips that makes the man.

It's not the bed of the chips that makes the man.

Yet another quotable from Zev Weistat.

But you don't think of it as a useful thought experiment from an engineering perspective

of virtual reality of thinking how we can create further and further immersive worlds.

Would it be possible to create worlds that are so immersive that we would rather live

in that world versus the real world?

That's another possible trajectory of the world that you're growing up in is we're

more and more immersing ourselves into the digital world.

For now, it's screens and looking at the screens and socializing the screens, but it's possible

to potentially create a world that's also visually for all of our human senses as immersive

as the physical world.

To me, it's an engineering question of how difficult is it to create a world that's

as immersive and more fun than the world we currently live in.

It's a terrifying concept, and I hate to say it.

We might live half your lives in a virtual reality headset 30 years from now than we are

currently living.

This future, the digital future worries you.

It worries me.

On the other hand, it may be a better alternative to fighting for whatever people are clinging

on to in our non virtual world or at least the world that we don't yet know is virtual.

Embrace the future.

We've been talking a lot about thinkers.

In the broad definition of philosophy, you included innovators of all form.

Do you find it useful to draw a distinction between thinkers and doers?

I think that the most important gift we've ever been given is our ability to observe

the universe and think deductively about whatever principles transcend humanity.

As we discussed, that's the closest thing we will ever have to a universal experience

is understanding things which must be true everywhere.

In order for that, so I think if we're deciding that life is meaningful and the human experience

is meaningful, you could make a very convincing argument that its greatest meaning will be

understanding whatever transcends it.

I think that's only sustainable if people are happy and well fed and things of market

value are invented.

I think we really need both to live meaningful and successful and possible lives.

In terms of who my greatest heroes are, I can't decide between figures like Einstein

and Newton and Feynman and on the other hand figures like Kerry Mullis, for example.

I think people like Einstein make our lives meaningful and people like Kerry Mullis who

is probably responsible for saving hundreds of millions of lives make our lives possible

and good.

In terms of where I would like to find myself with these two different notions of achievement,

I don't know what I would more like to achieve.

I have an inclination that it will be something scientific because I would like to bring meaning

to humanity instead of sustenance.

I think both are very important.

We can't sustain our lives if we don't keep growing technologically.

I think people like you are making that possible with computing because that's one of the few

things that's really moving forward in a clear sense.

I think about this a great deal.

I think both are very important.

One example that's modern day inspiring figure on the latter part and the engineering part

on the sustenance is Elon Musk.

Does that somebody you draw inspiration from?

What are your thoughts in general about the kind of unique spec of human that's creating

so much inspiring innovation in this world so boldly?

I know that we will not survive without people like that.

Elon is a ridiculous and sensational example of one of these figures.

I don't know if he's the best example or the worst example, but he is of his own kind.

He is radically individualistic and those are the people who will allow us to continue

as humans.

I'm very happy that we have people like that in this world.

You said this thing about if we are to say that life has meaning or life is meaningful,

then you could argue that it is a worthy pursuit to transcend life.

Do you see that another just I'm going to have to go back and sleep on that one.

Do you draw some, speaking of Elon, some inspiration of us transcending Earth, of us moving outside

of this particular planet that we've called home for a long time and colonizing other

planets and perhaps one day expanding outside the solar system and expanding, colonizing

our galaxy and beyond?

Honestly, I know very little about space exploration.

I think it makes complete sense to me why we are starting to think very seriously about

it.

It's an amazing and baffling and innovative solution to a lot of problems we see as a

world population.

I can't really offer very much of interest on the topic.

I think when I'm talking about transcending humanity and transcending Earth, I'm talking

usually about deriving truth.

That's one of the things that makes theoretical math and physics so interesting.

I really, really love biology, for example, but biology is a combination of whatever principles

ensure evolution and whatever weird coincidences happened billions of years ago.

It's more interesting to understand the fundamental mechanisms of evolution, for example, than

it is the messy results of its processes.

I can't say which is more interesting.

I can say which I think is more deep.

I think theory and abstraction, which can be achieved completely deductively, is deeper

because it has nothing to do with circumstance and everything to do with logic and thought.

If we were ever to interact with aliens, for example, we would not have our biology in

common.

If these were some really intelligent life form, we would have math and physics in common

because the laws of physics will be the same everywhere in the universe.

Our particular anatomy and biology pertains only to life on this planet, and the principles

may apply more ubiquitously.

Do you ever think about aliens, like what they might look like?

When I deal with thought experiments like these, I try to keep a very abstract mindset.

I notice that whenever I try to instantiate these abstractions, I corrupt whatever thoughts

there are for which they're useful.

It's kind of like the labels discussion.

The moment you try to make it concrete, it's probably going to look like some cute version

of a human.

It's the little green fellas with the eyes and so on, or whatever.

Whatever the movies have instilled, like your cultural upbringing, you're going to project

onto that the assumptions you have.

That's interesting.

You prefer to step away and think and abstract notions of what it means to be intelligent,

what it means to be a living life form and all that kind of stuff.

I almost try to pretend I'm blind and I'm deaf and I'm only in mind with no inductive

reasoning capacity when I'm trying to think about thought experiments like these because

I know that if I incorporate whatever my eyes instruct my brain, I will impede my ability

to think as deeply as possible because once again, the thing which shallows our thought

can be the incorporation of circumstance and coincidence and for particular kinds of thought

that's very important.

I'm not discounting the use of inductive reasoning in many humanities and in many sciences,

but for the deepest of thoughts, once again, I feel it's important to try to transcend

whatever methods of observation characterize human experience.

See, but within that, that's all really beautifully put.

I wonder if there is a common mathematics and a common physics between us and alien

beings, we still have to make concrete the methods of communication.

That's a fascinating question of while remaining in these abstract fundamental ideas, how do

we communicate with them?

I suppose that that question could be applied to different cultures on earth, finding a

common language.

Do you think about that kind of problem of basically communicating abstract fundamental

ideas?

My least favorite aspect of math or physics or any of these really deep sciences is the

symbolic component.

I'm dyslexic, I don't like looking at symbols, they're too often a source of ambiguity,

and I think you're entirely right that if one thing holds us back with communication

with something that behaves or looks nothing like us, I think if one thing holds us back,

it will be symbols and the communication of deep thought, because as I said, I think

communication frequently compromises thought by intention or by just theoretical inadequacy.

On this topic, actually, it'd be fun to see what your thoughts are.

Do you think math is invented or discovered?

You said that math, we might share ideas of mathematics and physics with alien life forms,

so it's uniform in some sense of uniform throughout the universe.

Do you think this thing that we call mathematics is something that's kind of fundamental to

the world we live in, or is it just some kind of pretty axioms and theorems we've come up

with to try to describe the patterns we see in the world?

I think it's completely discovered and completely fundamental to all experience.

I think the only component of mathematics that has been invented is the expression of

it, and I think in some sense there's almost an arrogance required to believe that whatever

aspect we invent having to do with math and physics and theory, there is an arrogance

required to truly believe that that belongs on any sort of stage with the actual beauty

of the matters being discovered.

We need our minds and in some sense our pens to be able to play with these things and communicate

about them, and those hands and those pens are the things which smudge the most beautiful

thing that humanity can ever experience.

Maybe if we interact with some intelligent life form, they will have their own unique

smudges, but the canvas, which is beautiful, must be identical because that is universal

and ubiquitous truth, and that's what makes it deep and meaningful is that it's so much

more important than whatever we're programmed to enjoy as an aspect of human experience.

Yeah, that's really beautifully put, that the human language is these messy smudges

of trying to express something underlying that is beautiful.

Speaking of that, on the physics side, do you think the pursuit of a theory of everything

in physics, as we may call it in our current times, of understanding the basic fabric of

reality from a physics perspective, is an important pursuit?

I think it's essential.

As I've said, I think ideation is our only escape from the constraints of human condition,

and I think that it's important that all great thoughts and ideas are bound together, and

I think the math is beautiful, and it ensures that the things which bind great ideas which

have already been had and great discoveries together, it ensures that those strings will

be beautiful.

I think it's very important to unify all theories that have brought us to where we are.

Do you think humans can do it?

Do you think humans can solve this puzzle, is it possible that we, with our limited cognitive

capacity, will never be able to truly understand this deeply, like deeply understand this underlying

canvas?

I think if not, it will be people like you who invent some sort of, I don't know, we'll

call it computation for now, that we'll be able to not only discover that which transcends

humanity, but to transcend human methods of discovering that which is above it.

So superintelligence systems, AGI and so on, that are better physicists than us.

I wonder if you might be able to comment, so your dad does happen to be somebody who

boldly seeks this kind of deep understanding of physics, the underlying nature of reality

from a physics perspective, from a mathematical physics perspective.

Do you have hope your dad figures it out?

I have great hope, it's not supposed to be my journey, it's supposed to be his journey,

it's supposed to be his to express to the world.

Obviously, I'm so proud that I'm connected to someone who is determined to do such a

thing.

And on the other hand, maybe in some sense, I feel bad for him for having to, if he's

going to be the thing which discovers some sort of grand unified theory and expresses

it, I feel sorry that he will have to smudge whatever canvas this thing is, because he's

human.

Really, I think, I know, I've seen a little bit of what I think great math and great physics

looks like, and it's unbelievably beautiful, and then you have to present it to a world

with market constraints and all of this messy sloppiness, I feel bad in some sense for my

dad because he has to go back and forth between this beautiful world of math and whatever

the messiness is of his human life.

And then the scientific community broadly with egos and tensions and just the dynamics

of what makes us human.

He's also very lucky that he gets to play with these sorts of things.

It's a mixed bag.

I both feel a little sorry for him for having to deal with the beauty as well as the smudging

and the sloppiness of human expression.

And I think it's difficult not to envy such a beautiful insight or life or vision.

Well, that's your own path as well as this kind of struggle of, as you mentioned, exploring

the beauty of different ideas while having to communicate those ideas with the best smudges

you can in a world that wants to put labels, that wants to misinterpret, that wants to

destroy the beauty of those ideas.

And you seem to at this time with your youthful enthusiasm embracing that struggle despite

the fear in the face of fear.

And your dad also carries that same youthful enthusiasm as well.

But that said, your dad, Eric Weinstein, he's a powerful voice, I would say, a powerful

intellect in public discourse.

Is this a burden for you or an inspiration or both as a young mind yourself?

I think, as I said, there's this weird contrast of, I know that he has ideas which I think

are very beautiful, and I know he has to deal with the sort of, there's something you have

to sacrifice in beauty when you bring it to a world which is not always beautiful.

And there's an aspect of that which sort of scares me about this kind of thing.

I also think that, especially since I'm trying to think about how I should appear publicly,

my dad has been very inspirational in that I think he brings a sort of fastidious care

to very difficult conversations that…

What does fastidious mean?

Like, it's just very careful and thoughtful, he brings that sort of attitude to, I think,

really difficult conversations.

And I know that I don't have that skill yet.

I don't think I'm terrible, but…

The care, the nuance, and yet not being afraid to push forward.

Yeah, I would really like to learn from my dad there.

I think also, my dad has been very important to my life just because I've always been

a sort of very idiosyncratic thinker, and I think I don't always know how to interact

with the world for those sorts of reasons, and I think my dad has always been similar.

And if not for my dad, I don't know if I would just believe that I was stupid or something

because I wouldn't know how to…

I don't know if I would know how to interpret my differences from convention.

So he gave you the power to be different and use that as a superpower?

Yeah, I guess you could put it that way.

I don't know who I would believe I am if I didn't have my dad telling me that it

wasn't my own stupidity, which alienated me from certain aspects of standard life.

So I'm very, very thankful for that.

Is there a fond memory you have about an interaction with your dad, either funny, profound, that

kind of sticks with you now?

A lot.

Part of the reason I ask that, of course, is just fascinating to see somebody as brilliant

as you, see the people that you interact with, how they form the mind that you have, but

also to give an insight of another public figure like your dad to see from your perspective

of what kind of little magical moments happen in private life.

I would say I remember, I think I just posted about this on Instagram or something.

Otherwise it didn't happen if you didn't post that, yeah.

One person who's always sort of mattered to whatever weird life and experience I've

had has been this comedian, Tom Lehrer.

Do you know him?

Yes.

I love him very much.

Likewise.

Anyway, I remember, I think I was five or something.

My dad came home with the CD, this Tom Lehrer CD, and he told me to listen to it.

And it was all of this bizarre, satirical writing about prostitution and cutting up

babies and all kinds of ridiculously vile content for a five year old.

I think beyond just my love of Tom Lehrer, I think it was a way for my dad to express

that from a very young age, he was really ready to treat me like an adult and he was

ready to trust me and share his life and his enjoyments with me in a way that was unconventional

because he was willing to discard tradition for the chance at a really unique and meaningful

parental relationship.

Something that his particular brand of weirdness is something you can understand at a young

age and embrace and learn from it.

Tom Lehrer, we should clarify, is not all about what is it, murder and prostitution.

He's one of the witty, most brilliant musical artists.

If you haven't listened to his work, you should.

He's just a rare intellect who's able to sort of in catchy rhyme express some really difficult

ideas through satire, I suppose, that still, even though it's decades ago, still resonates

today, some of the ideas that he expressed.

I will say also that I think I am probably a more cultured person having listened to

Tom Lehrer than I would have been without.

I think a lot of his comedy draws upon a canon that I was really driven to research by saying,

what does this mean, I don't understand that reference.

There are a lot of references there to really inspirational things, which he sort of assumes

going into a lot of his songs.

For many of us, like me, you have to piece those things together, looking at Wikipedia

pages and whatnot.

To tie this back to the original question, I think there's sort of a break it, you bought

it notion of parenting.

I think really, if you're not going to accept a standard, you have to invent your own.

I think in some ways that was my dad's way of telling me that if I was too unstandard

as a child, he wouldn't invent his own way of parenting me because that was worth it

to him.

I think that was very meaningful to me.

I know you're young, this is a weird time to ask this question.

Are you cognizant on the role of love in your relationship with your dad?

Are you at a place mentally as a man yourself to admit that you love the guy?

I love my dad with the connection that I think I've had to very few things in the world.

I think my dad is one of the people that's allowed me to see myself and I don't know

who I would imagine myself to be if not for my dad.

That isn't to say that I agree with him on everything, but I think he's given me courage

to accept myself and to believe that I can teach myself where I'm unable to learn from

convention.

I love my dad very dearly, yes.

Is there ways in which you wish you could be a better son?

Firstly, I'd like to say I'm sure before I figure out exactly what those are.

I think whenever I come to conclusions on what that means, I'm eager to take them.

What do you mean by that?

What do you mean by conclusions?

If I have an idea for how to be a better son, I think I'm inclined to try to be that person.

I think that's true of almost anything.

I think if I have ideas for improvement, it would be wasteful not to act on them.

I suppose one thing I could say is that I think idealism and what could almost be considered

naivete is not necessarily a lacking of maturity, but instead an obligation to those older than

us who have lived and seen too much to fully believe in what is naivete and right without

the assistance of the young to reinspire traditional idealism.

And so perhaps instead of trying to be more mature all the time, I should spend some time

trying to be an idealistic form of hope in the lives of people who maybe have seen too

much to retain all of that original hope.

So that's something that's difficult, but especially appearing in public as someone

as young as I am, I think anything I do which is juvenile by choice will be held against

me.

But maybe that's a sacrifice that I have to make.

I have to retain some sort of youthful hope and optimism.

Yeah.

I mean, I'm going to get teary eyed now, but I have allergies.

But also this pretty powerful way of saying, I certainly share your ideas, it's something

I struggle with of just by instinct, you should read The Idiot by Dostoevsky by instinct.

I love being naive and seeing the world from a hopeful perspective, from an optimistic

perspective.

And it's sad that that is something you pay a price for in this world, like in the academic

world, especially as you're coming up through schooling, but just actually it's a hit on

your reputation throughout your life.

And it's a sad truth, but you have to like for many things, if it's a principle, you

hold, you have to be willing to pay the costs.

And ultimately, I believe that in part a hopeful view will help you realize the best version

of yourself because optimism is a kind of optimism is productive.

Like believing that the world is and can be amazing is allows you to create a more amazing

world somehow.

I mean, I'm not sure if I'm not sure if it's a human nature of a fundamental law of physics,

I don't know, but believing the impossible in the sense being optimistic about the thing.

It's similar like going back to what you've said is like believing that a radical that

a powerful single idea that a single individual can revolutionize some framework that we're

operating in that will change the world for the better.

Believing that allows you to have the chance to create that.

And so I'm with you on the optimism, but you may have to pay a cost of optimism and

naive hopefulness.

I mean, in some sense, optimism limits freedom.

I think if we don't really have much choice in choosing what is perfect, if it exists

as an ideal, then there isn't much room for creativity and that's a danger of optimism

as someone who would like to be creative.

I think it was Warren Zevon said, accepting dreams, you're never really free.

And that's something I think about a lot who's an interesting guy also, I really like him.

On that topic, you do have a bit of an appreciation and connection with music.

I saw you play some guitar a few months ago.

What can you put in like a philosophical sense, your connection to music?

What insights about life, about just the way you see the world do you get from music?

I think the role music has played in my life was originally motivated by sort of wanting

to prove things to myself.

I really have no ear for music.

I have a terrible sense of pitch and I think a lot of music relies on very standard teaching.

If you think about lessons, for example, music lessons, there's sort of a routine to them,

which is so archaic and traditional that there's no room for deviation.

I think all of that suggested to me that I would never have a relationship with music.

I loved listening to music, it was difficult to me, it sort of saddened me.

I wanted to know if there was any way I could build a connection to music given who I am,

my own idiosyncrasies, what challenges I have.

I decided to try to learn music theory before I touched an instrument.

I think that gave me a very unique opportunity instead of spending my time fruitlessly at

the beginning on the syntax of a particular instrument.

This is your posture on the piano, this is how you hold your fingers.

I tried instead to learn what made music work.

The wonderful thing about that was I'm pretty sure that any instrument with discrete notes

is mine for the taking within a day or so of having the ability to play with it.

I think approaching music abstractly gave me the ability to instantiate it everywhere.

I think it also taught me something about self teaching.

Recently I've tried getting into classical music because at least traditionally this

is the thing which is thought to require the most rigor and traditional teaching.

I think it's essentially taught me even if I'll never be a great classical performer

that there is nothing one can't really teach themselves in this era, so I've been enjoying

whatever connection I have with music.

The other thing I'll say about it is that it's a very rewarding learning process.

We know, for example, that music accesses are neurochemicals very directly.

If you teach yourself a little bit of theory and are able to instantiate it on an instrument

without wasting your time or spending your time tediously on learning the particulars

of that instrument, you can instantly sit down and access your own dopamine loops.

You don't really need to motivate yourself with music because you're giving your brain

drugs who needs motivation to give themselves drugs and learn something.

I think more people should be playing music.

I think a lot of people don't realize how easy it can be to approach if you take a sort

of unstandard approach.

The unstandard approach in your sense was understanding the theory first and then just

from the foundation of the theory, be able to then just take on any instrument and start

creating something that sounds reasonably good or learning something that sounds reasonably

good and then plugging into the, as you call them, the dopamine loops of your brain, allowing

yourself to enjoy the process.

What about the pain in the ass rigorous process of practice?

There's something about my dopamine loops, for example, that enjoys doing the same thing

over and over and over again and watching myself improve.

I think that's because music is more effective at accessing us when it's played correctly.

I'm positive that you play music much more correctly than I do.

If you are going to sit down and play something that you've learned, that piece will be much

more satisfying to your ears and to your brain than if I were to play that piece just sitting

down with an instrument, but it's sort of a trade off with freedom and rigor because

even if I should be spending more of my time practicing rigorously, I know I don't have

to to make me happy.

Well, Jaco Willink, I think, has the saying that discipline is freedom, so maybe the repetition

of the disciplined repetition is actually one of the mechanisms of achieving freedom.

It's another way to get to freedom, that it doesn't have to be a constraint, but in the

sense unlocks greater sets of opportunity than results in a deeper experience of freedom.

I mean, particularly if you're thinking about discipline and method for improvisation, there

are a million pieces that you could improvise with the same discipline and how to approach

that improvisation.

I think it's true that discipline promotes freedom if you insert a layer of indirection

because I think if you're trying to learn one piece that was written 400 years ago and

you're playing it over and over again, there is nothing personal or creative about that

process even if it's beautiful and satisfying.

There has to be some sort of discipline applied to the creativity of self, so I think that

is the layer of indirection which reconciles both approaches to freedom and discipline

and enjoyment of music.

Discipline applied to the creativity of self.

Damn, Zav, thank you.

Now as an aging man yourself, if you were to give an advice to young folks today of

how to approach life and maybe advice yourself, is there some way you could condense a set

of principles, a set of advices you would give to yourself and to other young folks

of how to live life?

Sure.

I would say that with the collapse of systems that have existed for thousands of years,

whatever is happening with universities might be an example of some system that may or may

not be decaying.

I think with the destruction of important systems, there is a unique opportunity to invest in

oneself and I think that is always the right approach provided that the investment one

makes in his self is obligated towards humanity as a whole.

And I think that is the great struggle of my generation, will we create our own paths

that are capable of saving whatever is collapsing or will we be squashed by the debris?

And I hope to articulate what patterns I see this struggle taking over the years that

my generation becomes particularly active in the world as an important force.

I think already we are important as a demographic to particular markets, but I should hope that

our voices will matter as well starting very soon.

So I would try to think about that, that would be my advice.

Do you, it is a silly question to ask perhaps, but in a bit of a Russian one, it is silly

because you are young, but I don't think it is actually silly because you are young.

Do you ponder your mortality and are you just afraid of death in general?

So tying us back to our previous conversations about abstraction versus experience, which

is determining our notions of our life and our world, death is interesting in that it

is obviously hyper important to a person's life and it is something that for the most

part no human will really experience and be able to reflect upon.

So our notions of death are sort of proof that if we want to make the most of our lives,

we have to think abstractly and relying not at all at times on experiential thought and

understandings because we can't really experience death and reflect upon it hence and use it

to motivate us, it has to remain some sort of abstraction.

And I think if we have trouble comprehending true abstraction, we tend to view ourselves

as nearly immortal and I think that is very dangerous.

So one concrete implication for my belief in abstraction would be that we all need to

be aware of our own deaths and we need to understand concretely the boundaries of our

lifetimes and no amount of experience can really motivate that.

It has to be driven by thought and abstraction in theory.

That's one of the deepest elements of what it means to be human is our ability to form

abstractions about our mortality versus animals.

I think there's just something really fundamental about our interaction with the abstractions

of death and there's a lot of philosophers that say that that's actually core to everything

we create in this world which is us struggling with this impossible to understand idea of

mortality.

I mean, I'm drawn to this idea because both the mystery of it but also just from the human

experience perspective, it seems that you get a lot of meaning from stuff ending.

It's kind of sad to flip side of that to think that stuff won't be as meaningful if it doesn't

end, if it's not finite.

It seems like resources gain value from being finite and that's true for time, that's true

for the deliciousness of ice cream, that's true for love, for everything, for music and

so on.

It seems deeply human to try to, as you said, concretize the abstractions of mortality even

though it can never truly experience it because that's the whole point of it.

Once it ends, you can't experience it.

Again, another ridiculous question.

What do you think is the meaning of it all?

What's the meaning of life?

From your deep thinking about this world, is there a good way to answer any of the why

questions about this existence here on Earth?

As I said, we're here in part by principle and in part by accident and a lot of the things

which bring us joy are programmed to bring us joy to ensure our evolutionary success.

I would not necessarily consider all of the things which bring us joy to be meaningful.

I think they play a very obvious role in a clear pattern and we don't have much choice

in that.

I think that outrules the idea of joy being the meaning of life.

I think it's a nice thing we get to have even if it's not inherently meaningful.

I think the most wonderful thing that we have ever been given has been our ability to,

as I said, observe what transcends us as humans.

I think to live a meaningful life is to see that and hopefully contribute to that.

To try to understand what makes us human and to transcend that and in some small way contribute

to it in the finite time we have here.

Those are some powerful words that you're a truly special human being.

It's really an honor to talk to you.

I'm just a newborn fan of yours and I can't wait to see how you push the world.

Please embrace the fear you feel and be bold and I think you will do some special things

in this world.

I'm confident if the world doesn't destroy you and I hope it doesn't.

Be strong, be brave, you're an inspiration, keep doing your thing and thanks for talking

to me.

Thank you.

Thanks for listening to this conversation with Zev Weinstein and thank you to our sponsors

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And now let me leave you with some words from Aristotle.

Being yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.

Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.