“What is The Portal?”
The Portal - Episode Two (Eric Weinstein)
Somehow the world around us seems to have been completely mis-explained, perhaps for decades, without anyone much noticing
B/c of dizzying change in small sectors, we’ve misinterpreted what’s happening as change across multiple sectors
We’ve been somewhat inured from sheer amount of violent potential that’s been kept under wraps since WWII
Two important features of our world:
Generally peaceful world in which potential for violence/destruction has gotten ever greater
Small # of sectors advancing at breakneck pace, leaving behind majority of sectors (where not much is happening)
A status-quo “bubble” exists
This bubble has existed since early 1970s - we’ve all grown up with our lives defined/determined by this set of common misconceptions about the world
This bubble is rarely discussed on official channels
The Portal is an attempt to end this status-quo “bubble”
To look beyond intellectual laziness & stasis that’s promoted by institutional media & our “legacy sense-making structures”
Start listening in on different conversations
Different players, different names are rotated into spotlight; familiar talking heads are rotated out
What do the “bubble-bursters” believe?
Worried about complacency
Excited about breaking through a portal into a different space:
Radical life extension
Bridge relativity + quantum standard model
Limitless energy (fusion; storage breakthroughs)
Print things —> world of abundance
(Or, abundance could be a curse in disguise…no one knows)
Problem no one’s discussing:
We have a world largely built for rapid growth in which broad growth is no longer found easily (via incremental gains)
Metaphor for present-day society:
Imagine a high school grad - still hanging around the school 3 yrs later…they know fewer ppl each year; it’s getting creepier and creepier
That’s where we are w/tech revolutions (!)
Tech breakthroughs used to be cool (Long-distance calls, iPhones)
We used to be so optimistic
We thought we’d be curing diseases
We thought we’d have nuclear fusion
We’ve learned that it’s no longer mature to hope for major breakthroughs
To imagine we’ll make the future dramatically better than the present
These have been dreams for so long that we’ve consigned them to the world of children
My goal = get smartest, most dynamic, most agentic (!) people in society talking to each other
Ignoring people most focused on dampening our enthusiasms
Pushback: “Shouldn’t we be relying on best systems we have, like peer-reviewed science?”
Counterpoint: No, peer-reviewed science is a recent invention, even an intrusion into the scientific process
Ex: Watson and Crick’s DNA discovery wasn’t peer-reviewed
Is scientific method center of our science?
It’s like proof-checking; but, lots of past scientific work has been incredibly imaginative, even irresponsible, until it comes into final form + gets reconciled with experiment
Instead, we’ve developed in which we’re told sine qua non of science = agreement between theory and experiment
This is wholly untrue —> Paul Dirac: “It’s much more important that a physical theory have mathematical beauty; we learn to trust a theory even when it doesn’t agree with experiment if it has an intellectual coherence to it
Jim Watson - to make great advances we must be irresponsible
We’ve unleashed incredibly destructive power (hydrogen bomb; potentially unlocking the cell), so why are we so timid about what we do next?
All the destructive power we need is at our fingertips
Currently we don’t have an ability to escape our fate
What we need is to find the Portal; to find a way out
To find new economic vistas that allow far all people to participate (ex: Bangladesh, India), without causing an ecological disaster
If you elevate people in China/India/Bangladesh to US’s current level —> ecological disaster
We’re not going to leave these people behind; we need them to be full participants in beautiful future we create
That future must be ecologically sound
We must achieve this through dramatic new levels of innovation
So what are we going to do?
Most irresponsible thing to do = stop dreaming
To have dreams so small that we’re not embarrassed to share them in public
We need to start dreaming much bigger + more aggressively
We must start dreaming in public (harmoniously or competitively)
Start unlocking the potential of human imagination
Stop immediately grounding every new idea in a race to see if we can invalidate it
Give ideas enough room to grow
“Nursery” to protect new ideas where they might learn to survive, before testing to see if they can survive as results
The Portal will declare war on stasis, war on groupthink, war on everything that has enervated our society
We now have the ability to compete with the networks that previously grew up to distribute whatever was portrayed as sense-making
You can tell there’s something wrong w/both CNN & Fox
If you read NYT carefully, you can tell that the narrative arcs have been thought out to cover many days, long before the facts are known
Somehow we’re living in somebody else’s reality; we need to return to our own future
We might make some serious mistakes
There may be very serious consequences of experimenting; people may die
BUT if we don’t attempt to grow beyond our problems, the future won’t be appealing/powerful enough to evade the fates that some view as nearly inescapable
If we can’t create a larger pie, we’ll have to engage in lots of zero-sum games
We’ll have to engage in social engendering projects that have little hope of succeeding
We can barely hold a conversation; could we actually hold a constitutional convention if our new technology required that we rethink foundational principles?
Boundaries of search and seizure?
Hate speech included with free speech?
What can we do with sense-making done individualistically, outside of any kind of institutional control?
More people who use new media channels for outreach —> greater likelihood for ecosystem of interesting, transformative ideas
Important to fix the business model - where all podcasts deliver value that people are initially unwilling to pay for
Can we teach advertisers/capitalists to stay the course when someone says something controversial but responsible? To weather a storm of a boycott?
Can we create “risk-vertisers” who pledge loyalty toward people you must want to see/hear?
“We are going to search for risk-vertisers”
How will the Portal be different?
Three ways: “Risk-vertisers”, high-level conversations, ground-breaking topics
“Risk-vertisers”
More people publishing on new media channels —> broader ecosystem of interesting, transformative ideas
Important to fix the business model - where all podcasts deliver value that people are initially unwilling to pay for
Can we teach advertisers/capitalists to stay the course when someone says something controversial but responsible? To weather a storm of a boycott?
Can we create “risk-vertisers” who pledge loyalty toward people you must want to see/hear?
“We are going to search for risk-vertisers”
High-level conversations
We’re going to talk about science and not dumb it down?
Frustrated by top scientists “dumbing-down” their subject matter for public consumption
Habit of underestimating intelligence of audiences
TV used to we called the “Idiot Box”
Nowadays, TV format has totally changed (GoT, Sopranos, Mad Men - way more sophisticated; TV is now the most distinguished media for writers)
We need to do the same thing for public discussion of science
We can find new level of “explication” that allows the public to participate in conversations previously restricted to experts
Ground-breaking topics
New economic models (ex: Cossian (sp?) immigration)
Differential geometry of markets — economic theory that allows humans to change their tastes (Becker and Stigler’s theories make wildly untrue assumptions about human behavior. Way out = differential geometry of markets)
Theory of Geometric Marginalism might lead to an even more profound attempt - “Geometric Unity”
Visits to “exotic locations in the night sky” will come through better understanding “source code of reality”
We’ve talked about a “Theory of Everything” (linking Relativity + Quantum)
Small number of physicists have been entitled to talk/dream openly about a theory of everything (ex: String Theory)
String Theory revolution has largely petered out
We’ve had to buy enormous accelerator in Geneva…hasn’t found much beyond the Higgs particle
Can we continue to attract top minds into theoretical physics, even with it offers less money and excitement? Difficult to compete for talent
Physics community = our greatest agency + intelligence. It has to be reinvigorated:
More money, more job security
Dreaming up the future
Our entire economy owes itself to theoretical physics
Internet (from CERN), semiconductor, molecular biology, atomic energy, mobile communication tech
Will we let this field wither and die on the vine because it hasn’t succeeded in 45 years?
People don’t understand how vulnerable we are when we lose our most dynamic communities
When we don’t have resources (in terms of neurons OR dollars) that are necessary to sustain our hope of progress
Edge.org Essays - Eric’s past essays offer piecemeal version of this argument
“Go Virtual, Young Man” (bitcoin)
KFabe (elections as “fake” like pro wrestling) (!)
Russell Conjugation (emotional language shading)
Anthropic capitalism
Were the last 200 years an anomaly — a bizarre time where markets were without parallel in organizing human activity
“Late stage capitalism” = capitalism could potentially be a danger for society
If our only two options going forward are markets run wild or central command, we’re in a really tough spot
We have to start thinking about new systems
We must create places where new ideas might have a hearing
The Portal = search for way out of intellectual stasis/bubble
It’s time to pop that bubble and find out what’s on the other side
“I hope you’ll join me trying to find the Portal, and we can go through together”