Live data from Hacker News

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

edge.org

121–130 of 144 posts

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

#122
post #82
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.

Humans pay more attention to tone than to content. More than we care to admit.

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

#123
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can only speak for sure about what he's said about physics. The fundamental problem with talking about highly technical things (like theories of everything) to a popular audience is that it's totally one-sided: he could spout nonsense and none of his listeners would have the slightest chance of noticing, as long as it sounded complicated enough. It's just like how you could talk somebody tech illiterate into instal…

Regardless if he’s wrong, what he’s saying sounds interesting even to a physics PhD I’d imagine. The scientific community doesn’t know why there’s 3 generations of particles, heck I’ve barely heard anyone in my life even mention the fact. It’s a curious thing and his theory was at least infinitely better than 99% of the content on the Internet. I don’t really understand what he said (and a paper won’t help me) but it…

> what he’s saying sounds interesting even to a physics PhD I’d imagine

Why would you imagine that?

> The scientific community doesn’t know why there’s 3 generations of particles, heck I’ve barely heard anyone in my life even mention the fact.

Your random encounters with information are not a good guide here. The generatation issue is often described as one of the main open problems in particle physics.

Here are some links about particle generations:

https://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/august-2015/the-mys...

https://particleadventure.org/three_gen.html https://particleadventure.org/beyond_start.html

https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/generation+of+fundamental+part...

https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang/ask-ethan-why-are-ther...

I could go on.

The reason Weinstein focuses on it is because he's a crank, and cranks are attracted to notorious problems.

> Some of what he’s saying is undoubtedly true.

Such as? I'm reminded of the quote, "What is new is not true; and what is true is not new."

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

#125
post #82
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.

I have mixed feelings about Weinstein, but I am not a physicist. He said on Joe Rogan podcast that he was a not professional physicist, and he sounded quite modest about the correcness of his theories, said that he was looking for constructive feedback. To me, that's a sign of a self-aware person.

On the other hand, he kind of uses his Portal community and podcast - where there are interesting important discussions on many social issues - to promote his theory. This theory sounds smart for non-physicists, they cannot see flaws in it, and he preaches passionately about it - thus he can ignite enthusiasm in his community about the theory and grow the cult of the unrecognised genius, misunderstood and rejected by official science community.

Dr.Weinstein, please, write a book, a paper, elaborate on some response before pushing your theory on masses. This can discredit your other important activities.

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

#126
"The falseness of a judgement is not necessarily an objection to a judgment: it is here that our new language perhaps sounds strangest. The question is to what extent it is life-advancing, life-preserving, species-preserving, perhaps even species-breeding; and our fundamental tendency is to assert that the falsest judgements (to which synthetic judgments a priori belong ) are the most indispensable to us, that without granting as true the fictions of logic, without measuring reality against the purely invented world of the unconditional and self-identical, without a continual falsification of the world by means of numbers, mankind could not live - that to renounce false judgements would be to renounce life, would be to deny life. To recognize untruth as a condition of life: that, to be sure, means to resist customary value-sentiments in a dangerous fashion; and a philosophy which ventures to do so places itself , by that act alone, beyond good and evil." Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

Society is based on shared concepts/stories, the effectiveness of that society is based on the value of these shared concepts, not their truth/untruth.

On a small scale: Washington and the cherry tree Daily conversation (How are you ? Good !) Santa Claus Public persona of hollywood stars, entertainers, politicians, etc. etc

On a large scale: Freedom/Democracy Capitalism/Socialism Religion

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

#127
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This reminds me of the ICO scams in recent times. They would publish a half baked white paper and raise millions in a few days. Instead of being a viable alternative to the venture capital model, ICOs became a tool to separate the unwitting from their money. Maybe that’s what Weinstein and his ilk are really after.

Show me where he’s asked for money for his idea.

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

#128
post #108

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 v…

I've seen the interview, and even watched his podcast for a while where he talked about his physic theory.

I can't myself evaluate his theory with my understandig of physics (basically at one point I knew the math for quantum mechanic, but that was long ago and at no point I did understood it).

But the way Eric sells his theory screams SCAM to me. He portraits himself as lone truthseeker against the established elites, uses every bit of confirmation he can get (talking at length about his speech in Oxford), but doesn't get that much into the falsifable predictions of the theory or how it differs from String theory mathemathically.

And he spends much more time on parables and "what would it mean for economy" and everything surrounding the theory than on the theory itself.

If your theory is good simply try to explain it as best you can, don't try to upsell it with all the marketing bullshit and conspiracy theories.

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

#129
Less cool word for it: conspiracy.

I guess it's a particular kind of conspiracy, so maybe it's useful to have a word for that? But I don't think it describes the political scene well. Politicians from opposite parties aren't rehearsing debates with their opponents and choosing who wins before the debate starts.

There's some level of "cover your ass" and "don't annoy too many people" that makes accountability almost impossible, but kayfabe isn't the right analogy IMHO. It's not intentional cooperative theatrical performances, it's just an effect of incentives being what they are.

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

#130
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> have real conflicts over zero sum games No. Neither side wants the world to crumble tomorrow (I hope). Therefore it is not zero sum Similarly, energy from the sun isn't going to happen or not, so there's plenty of wealth being left on the table so that entropy isn't a good argument for zero sum "zero sum" is a hateful philosophy. It means I'd kill your children because if that's terrible for you it must be opposite…

> "zero sum" is a hateful philosophy. It means I'd kill your children because if that's terrible for you it must be oppositely great for me If you managed to simplify the equation down to "kill their children or die yourself" through some desert-island scenario, then yeah, sure. Normally problems involve more variables than this.

Zero sum means there is only one apple, and either your kid gets it or mine does. Not everything is zero sum.
Post reply on HN