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What concept would improve everybody's cognitive toolkit? Kayfabe (2011)

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Re: What concept would improve everybody's cognitive toolkit? Kayfabe (2011)

#101

Post by crispyambulance »

knzhou wrote: post #82
sigil wrote: post #80

Eric Weinstein is a delight to listen to: a polymath, a contrarian, a great interviewer, really gifted verbally. I'm a Portal subscriber and I've listened to his Rogan interviews all the way through. That said... I have the sinking feeling that you're right about the breadth-first thing, and it's about to become a bigger issue. Back in the 80s Weinstein was working on an alternative Grand Unified Theory. When his wor…

PhD student in theoretical physics here. I will confirm: Weinstein is a charlatan, and all of us know it. As far as I can tell, the only people who believe in him are non-physicists who consume exclusively pop science. In other words, he's acting as the literal definition of a dishonest public intellectual. It's just sad, and it really shows the yawning chasm between verbal fluency and real expertise.

> It's just sad, and it really shows the yawning chasm between verbal fluency and real expertise.

I agree, if by "verbal fluency" you mean stringing together heavyweight jargon and concepts like Eddy Van Halen doing a guitar riff.

Even in a colloquium filled with subject matter experts that kind of pace is off-putting and raises red-flags instantly-- but this guy does it when communicating with the general public, fully knowing that people are going to be lost in a matter of seconds.

... so yeah, that and NO FREAKING PAPERS. It's a bit disconcerting for a theory that purports to unify relativity with quantum mechanics.

Re: What concept would improve everybody's cognitive toolkit? Kayfabe (2011)

#102

Post by KMag »

eindiran wrote: post #67
xvector wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parts of your comment aren't making much sense to me. Could you define the following terms? "breadth-first associative intelligence" "open cognitive loops"

Not OP but this is my reading: * "Breadth" as opposed to depth; in the sense of someone who knows a lot of relatively surface-level things across many areas, and can synthesize them. "Associative" in the way you're quickly associating concepts. In the same sense as "free association". * The loops are analogous to the notes mentioned in the OP that are resolved all at once. Imagine a chain of associated concepts revea…

They're saying that the order in which he visits topics and their details requires the listener to keep many topics in their head simultaneously for the duration of the discussion.

"breadth-first" is an order of graph traversal. In this case, it refers to covering all of the topics before drilling down into more detail in each topic, and later drilling down even further into topics.

The chief alternative order to discuss topics would be depth-first: to cover a major topic, and drill down as deep as you're going to go into the details, before moving onto the next major topic.

The open cognitive loops are the incompletely-covered topics that must be kept in the listener's head because they haven't been completely covered ("closed") yet, and will be re-visited in greater detail later.

Re: What concept would improve everybody's cognitive toolkit? Kayfabe (2011)

#103

Post by sigil »

ianai wrote: post #95
sigil wrote: post #80

Eric Weinstein is a delight to listen to: a polymath, a contrarian, a great interviewer, really gifted verbally. I'm a Portal subscriber and I've listened to his Rogan interviews all the way through. That said... I have the sinking feeling that you're right about the breadth-first thing, and it's about to become a bigger issue. Back in the 80s Weinstein was working on an alternative Grand Unified Theory. When his wor…

To me the entire portion of that interview with Joe Rogan was just someone talking about absolutely everything but the elephant in the room. Then he eventually talked himself out of all other topics and detailed why he was really there - to discuss his GUT. Yes, it’s weird for someone outside of a field to try and introduce a whole new concept to it. But it’s been done. Einstein was a parent clerk, I think one of the…

Eric might be onto something. I want to believe. It’s not only possible that academia has rejected valuable but threatening ideas, it’s likely.

However, the only way forward from this point is for Eric to publish his ideas in definite form — in the language of mathematics — for the rest of us to evaluate for ourselves. Paper or GTFO.

Re: What concept would improve everybody's cognitive toolkit? Kayfabe (2011)

#104

Post by knzhou »

crispyambulance wrote: post #101
knzhou wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PhD student in theoretical physics here. I will confirm: Weinstein is a charlatan, and all of us know it. As far as I can tell, the only people who believe in him are non-physicists who consume exclusively pop science. In other words, he's acting as the literal definition of a dishonest public intellectual. It's just sad, and it really shows the yawning chasm between verbal fluency and real expertise.

> It's just sad, and it really shows the yawning chasm between verbal fluency and real expertise. I agree, if by "verbal fluency" you mean stringing together heavyweight jargon and concepts like Eddy Van Halen doing a guitar riff. Even in a colloquium filled with subject matter experts that kind of pace is off-putting and raises red-flags instantly-- but this guy does it when communicating with the general public, fu…

Exactly, he was obviously intentionally trying to overwhelm people with jargon. That drives me crazy. Other physicists don't do this, because it serves no purpose aside from making the speaker look smart, and we have other priorities.

Re: What concept would improve everybody's cognitive toolkit? Kayfabe (2011)

#105

Post by tomhoward »

gHosts wrote: post #44

I'm astonished that a search of the comments here produces no hits for that master of modern Kayfabe... Trump.

Discussions about contemporary politics tend not to go well on forums like this, but in the author's appearance on Rogan a few days ago, he specifically discusses this concept with reference to Trump:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wf0_nMaQ6tA&feature=youtu.be...

This is the part where he introduces the concept of kayfabe:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wf0_nMaQ6tA&feature=youtu.be...

Re: What concept would improve everybody's cognitive toolkit? Kayfabe (2011)

#106

Post by elamje »

sigil wrote: post #80

Eric Weinstein is a delight to listen to: a polymath, a contrarian, a great interviewer, really gifted verbally. I'm a Portal subscriber and I've listened to his Rogan interviews all the way through. That said... I have the sinking feeling that you're right about the breadth-first thing, and it's about to become a bigger issue. Back in the 80s Weinstein was working on an alternative Grand Unified Theory. When his wor…

Based on the negative comments here, I get the feeling that many people feel like it is fraud to put forth an innovative idea without a paper to back it up.

It makes me think of Nassim Taleb who has really added some valuable mental models that are extremely intuitive to the layman, but now his twitter existence is spent posting boring paper after paper of math to prove his ideas are correct.

I am unqualified to speak to Weinstein’s theory and what it lacks, but I like underscoring the trend I mentioned above when it surfaces in some form. On another note, I highly recommend listening to the Jeffrey Epstein podcast on the Portal. It’s not a typical podcast, but rather something Weinstein felt obligated to release into the ether.

Re: What concept would improve everybody's cognitive toolkit? Kayfabe (2011)

#107

Post by tomhoward »

danieltrembath wrote: post #84
gHosts wrote: post #44

I'm astonished that a search of the comments here produces no hits for that master of modern Kayfabe... Trump.

Or that the article author is Managing Director of Thiel Capital. I'll grant this is getting into Ad hominem territory, but I point it out because an 'it's all just a performance' viewpoint seems kind of worrying when you wield signifiant influence.

Weinstein is very publicly in opposition to Thiel over the suitability of Trump for the presidency, but the fact that they both think about a concept like kayfaybe and its influence on serious public affairs, indicates something interesting about how they think about the forces at play in the world.

Re: What concept would improve everybody's cognitive toolkit? Kayfabe (2011)

#108

Post by pippy »

vearwhershuh wrote: post #6

I suppose it's a worthwhile concept. You can certainly look at professional politics, corporate messaging and the financial crises, basically all elite-preservation systems, through a kayfabe lens. On the other hand, I think everyone would be better off reading Propaganda, by Bernays. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_(book) It's short.

Ironically Eric used these techniques in his interview with Joe Rogan three days ago. Eric blamed the divergence of the income and production relation on the modern academic environment. Which is a bizarre conclusion to draw, instead of the more likely candidates of Neo-liberalisim and market forces of the employment sector. These conclusions wouldn't suit his world view, so he explained them away using jargon.

His view on physics is equally as baffling. He claims he knows the secret that will revolutionise the field, at the same time, people in the field discredit his theory because they're arrogant and academically institutionalized. It's a bold claim to make, and I'll have to eat my hat if he's right, but I'll trust the people who are experts in the field.

In short, Eric Weinstein is a crackpot. A very intelligent crackpot, but he really should stick to mathematics and investment.

Re: What concept would improve everybody's cognitive toolkit? Kayfabe (2011)

#109

Post by Igelau »

knzhou wrote: post #96
Igelau wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can only speak for sure about what he's said about physics. Please do.

The secret that is rarely revealed in pop science discussions is that theories of everything are cheap . To count as a theory of everything, you just need to come up with any mathematical structure big enough to cram the Standard Model plus a graviton in. And adding mathematical structure, especially when you're playing around, is easy, like snapping legos together. In this way, you can crank out ten theories of ever…

You have a couple threads going in here, so maybe you tacked this to the wrong one. You said you could speak for sure about things he'd said about physics, so I'm asking for those specifics.

Re: What concept would improve everybody's cognitive toolkit? Kayfabe (2011)

#110

Post by genzoman »

dodobirdlord wrote: post #91
Igelau wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can only speak for sure about what he's said about physics. Please do.

In case you don't get a response, this seems topical. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cocktail-party-physics/... It seems that there has (a) been no paper, so his theories remain too vague to even properly criticize, but (b) as far as people can tell from the vagueness, his theory predicts the existence of particles that the LHC should have detected but has not.

his theory predicts the existence of particles that the LHC should have detected but has not.

So has another pop science disaster, string theory.

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