People very close to me know that I have an “anti-fan” status to Jordan Peterson – who recently came out with a new book of self help cum Bible study We Who Wrestle With God, which unsurprisingly does not seem to sit well with actual Bible scholars – in that I follow all sorts of content related to Peterson in my free time all so I can relish just how much he represents the worst of today’s so-called “public intellectuals”.
But there is actually another, much worse specimen who for some inexplicable reason continues to have an audience online, predominantly within the science hobbyist section of the American political right (the “I could have done Physics” types who apparently forget that they can just do Physics, if they really wanted to). I’m talking about Eric Weinstein, one half of the preternaturally maligned Weinstein brothers. Weinstein is more commonly known as the guy who coined the term the “Intellectual Dark Web” to describe thinkers such as himself and Jordan Peterson who are rallying against the intellectual establishment and the politico-university system by bravely denying the existence of trans people.
But in Weinstein’s mind, he is more than a savvy coiner of terms (and admittedly he’s quite good at it: besides the IDW, he also coined the DISC or Distributed Idea Suppression Complex – more on this later – and the GIN, or the Gated Institutional Narrative): he is a disruptor, cut from the same cloth as Albert Einstein, who with his original ideas overturned contemporary physics at the time from outside. In 2013, Weinstein gave an Oxford lecture at the invitation of famed mathematician Marcus du Sautoy, in which he outlined his theory of everything, which he called Geometric Unity or GU.
That lecture generated a not insignificant buzz from both the lay public and a tangible minority of the physics community. Its public release in 2020 via Weinstein’s own podcast, The Portal, would stir discussions – and criticism – anew surrounding the theory. The criticism, from what I can gather, stems in large part to Weinstein’s approach towards disseminating his ideas. Professional physicists seem to impugn the (then) lack of a technical paper, making the Oxford lecture the only source material from which any kind of discussion could be had about the merits of his theory. It didn’t help that at the time of the lecture, an accompanying fluff piece from the Guardian declared that – gasp – everything has changed!
The long and short of the matter is that Weinstein has long cast aspersions at the academic community for suppressing what he believes is a Nobel-worthy, world-changing idea. Guesting for the Joe Rogan Experience, he declares that his theory would allow humanity to “go beyond Einstein”, and finally become a multi-planetary species by unshackling itself from the limitations posed by general relativity.
But for some reason, the guy just won’t do the work. Lacking training in contemporary physics, it would be futile for me to approach the ideas themselves from any solid, critical standpoint. What I will say is that for someone who seems to desperately want to be taken as an academic, Weinstein seems to shudder at the thought of writing a complete paper and submitting it to a journal, to the arXiv, or god-forbid his own website. His 2021 v1 draft, published on April Fools accompanied by his appearance on Rogan’s podcast, begins with the disclaimer:
The Author is not a physicist and is no longer an active academician, but is an Entertainer and host of The Portal podcast. This work of entertainment is a draft of work in progress which is the property of the author and thus may not be built upon, renamed, or profited from without express permission of the author.
Explaining why he refuses to go by the traditional peer-review route, Weinstein complains of the credentialism and nepotism that mires academic practice. For instance, one needs an academic e-mail address and the recommendation of another, more established author to upload to the arXiv. This by itself might be a valid criticism of today’s university system had it not come from the same guy that got invited to do a Simonyi lecture at Oxford by the institute head he happened to be acquainted with. Reacting to criticisms posted by another working physicist versed in gauge theory (on which his GU theory is founded) named Timothy Nguyen, and a pseudonymous coauthor, he found offense on the fact that the latter would hide their identity. “Who is [he]?” Weinstein asks. “I’m not aware of [him]. Who is he? I don’t know.”
It has been years now since Weinstein first put up his Oxford lecture and v1 draft for public consumption, and rather than engaging with the academic community, writing papers, showing results from a strategically organized research program, Weinstein appears to have chosen to do Youtube and podcasts instead. He frequently guests for the likes of Rogan and Lex Fridman, where for hours he would extoll the merits of his idea and how academic institutions – the DISC – keep suppressing it because of reasons. Meanwhile, the rest of the physics community, having only a single lecture and a bare bones paper to work with, continue to move on with their own work, ignoring the crazy man shouting in the lobby.
All this comes to a head during Weinstein’s joint appearance on Piers Morgan’s show alongside Sean Carroll, an actual working physicist, to talk (mostly) about Caroll’s criticism of Weinstein’s work. Carroll is a theoretical physicist and well-known science communicator, publishing lay-friendly books as well as his own podcast covering topics as diverse as quantum mechanics, cosmology, and the philosophy of science. Throughout the show, one can see the amusement in Piers Morgan (also untrained in Physics, as far as I can tell) watching the two butt heads for content on his show.
The entire encounter was grotesque. One the one hand, Carroll did a splendid job of coolly laying down his criticisms to the paper in a straightforward, and altogether lay-friendly manner without too many oversimplifications. At one point, Carroll refers to yet another of the disclaimers that pepper the draft and explains that the academic community has largely not taken Weinstein’s work seriously because its own author seems not to do so either:
…this document is an attempt to begin recovering a rather more complete theory which is at this point only partially remembered and stiched [sic] together from old computer files, notebooks, recordings and the like dating back as far as 1983-4 when the author began the present line of investigation.
I noticed that whenever he’s backed into a difficult corner like this, Weinstein seems to default to taking offense at imagined insults made by his opponent. He did this as well during a critical moment in another podcast, where a friendlier working physicist questioned him about aforementioned criticisms made by Nguyen and Polya. Instead, Weinstein denounces the duo as being part of a dangerous minority of his discord server who had, apparently, sent him death threats. I don’t doubt the death threats: we’ve all been online for long enough, although I think he may be unfairly grouping Nguyen and his co-author with these trolls. But even as the podcast host tried to veer the discussion towards the actual technicalities of the critique, Weinstein wouldn’t budge.
This time reacting to Carroll’s points about his paper’s lack of actual data, its cop-out and unserious construction, Weinstein takes offense that he – Sean Carroll – thinks Weinstein should bow down to him and follow his instructions. Obviously, the man doesn’t see a lot of editor feedback from journals. After Carroll was finished picking apart these weaknesses in the paper, Weinstein reacts,
Weinstein: How dare you.
Caroll: How dare I read your paper?
Eric Weinstein, a claimed anti-establishment, anti-credential, and anti-elitist responds by nothing that Carroll failed to gain tenure at the University of Chicago and the he is “not highly regarded in the field”. Weinstein then continues to list down what is very clearly a prepared history of Caroll’s career struggles, in a juvenile attempt to contradict Carroll’s criticisms by implying that Carroll simply doesn’t have the credentials, or the galaxy brains to even begin to understand his work. He then tells Carroll that he thinks he should “spend more time on [his] Physics department and less time on Youtube.”
Which is really rich coming from the guy who seems absolutely dumbfounded that the universities are refusing to shower him with his well-deserved laurels for a changing the world with a theory he refuses to elaborate or develop – and that he refuses others to criticize and develop as well – opting instead to fill the internet with hours upon hours of content featuring himself failing terribly at explaining complex physical concepts, using techno-babble to untrained podcast hosts.
The man desperately wants to be a respected physicist but refuses to do any of the work that makes one. Which is such a conundrum because he seems to have the background for it anyway. Weinstein is actually a PhD (in Mathematics), and as demonstrated in his ability to secure the Simonyi lecture has connections to bona fides in academia. He finishes his rebuttal to Carroll by way of an imagined scenario:
“Let me imagine that that paper which was a draft rushed to get it to an April 1st date remains in a world where Sam Altman and Elon Musk continued to compete for better and better AIs. What would you say if at some point those AIs then got to that paper and said ‘Holy Cow, that is exactly the thing we’ve been missing. This thing solves all sorts of problems…”
I nearly lost it hearing Weinstein say this with a straight face. It’s the kind of line that would have done well in a satirical film written by Mike Judge. I will now be co-opting this whenever my job application gets declined by a hiring manager: well what would you say if a future AI says that, Holy Cow, that guy is who you should have hired?
Dominic Dayta 
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