Eric Weinstein
- Managing director of Thiel capital
- Calls himself an economist, even though he has no economics credentials. Called himself that so that he could be called out by people and given a chance to put forth his work to give it attention.
- Peter Thiel fell in love with a theory of everything that he was developing. Asked him to speak at a conference he was holding. Then asked him to leave NY and work for him.
- Peter Thiel is okay with breaking from tradition when the world is wrong, and only one or two people are right. That was how he connected to Eric.
- Find the people capable of seeing something new (first principles), who are able to escape consensus reality, and then see what to do with them.
- Swimming for an unknown island is not a smart evolutionary strategy, it’s a compulsive behavior. You can’t help it.
- If you keep trying to see the world through the eyes of other people, and you’re just not seeing it, then take off their glasses. You might as well try you.
- You can short cut all kinds of things by jailbreaking the rules.
- Once you start looking at the world differently, you start coming to some very shocking politic conclusions.
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- Came up with a free market model for open borders that doesn’t harm the American worker.
- Music intervals in the West, while developed by humans intuitively, contain a mathematical perfection.
- Navigating from first principles –
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- Overton window, the range of acceptable political perspectives. Contrarian thinkers are shackled because of it – they are not permitted to think aloud.
- Top down of social acceptance forces us to follow illogical rules, but the bottom up forced us into excommunication.
- Social justice, while coming from a good place, is metastasizing into a thought police. An Internet version of McCarthyism.
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- TF – we need to label the modern McCarthyists as bigoteer. Give them a label as a consequence for accusing others with labels.
- Kung fu Panda – it’s the only film that addresses the core question of ‘why can’t a self teacher (autodidact) leave pupils?’ Einstein didn’t leave an Einstein. Churchill didn’t leave a Churchill. Is there a way for a Newton to leave a Newton?
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- How does Po become an awesome innovator article.
- When there is a completely new threat, the over trained experts are rendered incomplete because they can’t attack the creative challenge at hand.
- Reality is the second best strategy for innovation. Create a system that harvests and grows that insane thinking, in parallel to the conventional education model.
- When you’re told that something is impossible – is that the end of the conversation? or does your mind turn to getting around that obstacle?
- His people are the people who are described as disruptive, having bad attitudes, etc. These are High Agency people.
- Book – emperor of scent for science friends. Heruclesoan fire.
- If you don’t have the compulsion to innovate and create, if it’s not a disease you can’t cure, then don’t come.
- If we don’t innovate, we die as a country, a culture.
- Book – zero to one.
- The average person has never had a powerful personal idea. If you don’t know or believe something that the world thinks is nonsense, you’re not innovating.
- TF – if you had to 10x your output – how would you do it?
- Luggage and wheel example.
- Are you really allowed to question the schools or the teacher?
- If he started a class, he would first teach kids to pass the Ash Conformity test.
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- He would want the kids that are labeled learning disabled, even though they’re actually super learners.
- Encourage kids to skip college, get an advanced degree.
- Seek “the rebel end of corporate” if you can’t quite leave the conventional world.
- Paul Dirac – successful person. Used aesthetics instead of experiment as guide. Imagined how the universe would like beautifully, and seeing it proved right. The leaders in the field are the misfits in the field throwing spit balls, not the straight edge bunch.
- Documentary – rate it x.
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- Sometimes, it’s better just to let people talk and bury themselves.
- To trigger creative thinking, use prohibited words. Disconnect from normal reality by using these violent words.
- Consensus is a huge problem. It’s how we bully people into thinking this there’s nothing to see. Move along.
- It’s better to be in an expanding world but not quite the right field, than a contracting world where people’s worst behavior comes out.
- Seek out unconventional ways to turn your biggest weaknesses into a strength.
- Psychedelics for creativity or to gain access to deeper thinking.