Name: Eric Weinstein "We May Be Faking a UFO Situation..." - Skepticism Over Current State of UFO's
Uploaded: 2023-02-22T18:14:04.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Eric Weinstein "We May Be Faking a UFO Situation..." - Skepticism Over Current State of UFO's' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-02-22. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Eric Weinstein "We May Be Faking a UFO Situation..." - Skepticism Over Current State of UFO's' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-02-22. Transcript available.

I get occasionally called by somebody from inside, and what I think they're
doing, first of all, one, we may be faking a UFO situation for reasons that I
don't understand.
If we are faking a UFO situation, do you think that there is technology that's
available to people in the United States that is beyond our current
understanding of what's possible?
90% no.
Because it's very hard to imagine physicists continuing to work on nothing for
their entire careers.
The number of people who are going to be retiring shortly, having never
actually done physics as a physicist.
We're talking about wasted lives.
People are going to be very weird when they realize that they blew their entire
career.
And I believe I can say what many of these problems are.
And if you want to humiliate me at a leading university, just ask me to talk.
You can put it on video.
You don't realize how many things the standard model has subtly wrong when we
explain it to people.
It's not that the Lagrangian is wrong.
It's not that the Lagrangian is wrong, not that the rules are wrong, but we say
wrong stuff.
We say, like, there are three generations of matter that are only distinguished
by mass.
In other words, there's three copies of this stuff here.
This is like the wood version, and then there's the plastic version, and then
there's the metal version.
There aren't three.
There are two generations plus an extra imposter generation, which looks like a
generation.
I mean, I can get into these things.
And that should be a provocation that somebody says, let's call this guy up,
have him out, and figure out what he's talking about.
It doesn't matter.
I don't think we're doing physics.
What do you think they're doing?
I think we are playing paintball rather than going to war, and we're giving
prizes for generals who command the best paintball army.
And then we're referencing everyone else who's actually trying to figure out
how to fight to, well, have you submitted to the paintball competition?
It's like, no, I don't want to do paintball.
I understand that it keeps your skills up.
I understand that some of them are transferable.
But I mean, like, you've been in street fights?
Not since I was a teenager.
Yeah, well, I understand.
Like, I haven't been for a long time.
It's different than what you guys do in Brazilian jiu-jitsu.
There's lots of stuff you're not allowed to do.
Yeah.
Right.
You get in a street fight, it's a completely different thing.
Sure.
What we're doing is not physics in the same sense.
So what they're doing is they're exercising.
We're doing safe stuff.
Yeah, exactly.
They're exercising.
And the exercises are keeping people limber.
They're keeping people in a fighting mentality.
It's not that Brazilian jiu-jitsu has nothing to do with fighting.
We've seen people use it in the street for sure, right?
But small joint manipulation is part of street fighting.
Eye gouging is part of street fighting.
Pulling a knife is part of street fighting.
These things are not part of any reputable gym that you might go to.
So I want to do the thing that isn't paintball.
And I didn't want to do it up until recently because the danger of unleashing a
neutron in the world is so high.
Now I realize I'm done with that.
You guys are willing to play footsies with Putin?
You're not going to survive.
You're not the responsible adults I thought you were.
Like if I unleash a neutron and it leads to some sort of proliferation of
deadly technology, it's on you.
It's not on me.
You're already taking risks that you shouldn't be taking.
So if you think 90% sure that this is not coming from here, you believe this
because you don't think that the proper science in order to achieve these kind
of results is being done by the people that you believe are capable of doing it?
That is correct.
I know that, for example, when I talk to Nima or when I talk to Juan Maldicena
or when I've talked to Natty Seiberg, these people are absolutely brilliant and
they don't know the answer unless they're the greatest actors I've ever seen.
So the most brilliant physicists are looking at these supposed videos.
What is the best and most compelling?
No, no, no.
Sorry, that's UFO stuff.
What are you talking about then?
They're not talking about things that can extend Einstein.
Right.
Therefore, to get back to your technology question, might have engineering
applications because it's the engineering applications that are terrifying.
Right.
The discovery of the neutron was one thing.
The Teller-Ulam design was its weaponization.
So suddenly, you know, you can do the Tsar bomb or Castle Bravo, these
unbelievable explosions, which like the difference between there were Civil War
veterans
who saw action in the Civil War, who lived to see Ivy Mike in the Pacific.
So the Civil War was almost a thermonuclear war in terms of human scale.
It's not, it's less than 100 years different, people have forgotten how
terrifying, important, wonderful, jaw-dropping and awesome physics is because
it hasn't done anything that completely screws your mind.
Like Hiroshima or Nagasaki.
Or Castle Bravo.
With Castle Bravo.
That was the test in the Pacific where we thought it was going to be like
controlled and like, or what is it, starfish?
Where we did an atmospheric explosion over Hawaii and then the Russians like,
hold my beer.
Nova Zemmium.
Yeah.
You know, we, remember, I'm the guy five years ago who was saying we need above
ground nuclear tests because all you people have lost your fear.
Like, yes, Eric is crazy, but he's correct.
What's this one?
That's Castle Bravo.
Oh, shit.
Oh, my God.
Right.
So they detonated in that facility and they expected it to be far smaller than
it was?
You know, they detonated in the Pacific.
Right.
But it's right next to that facility that was in the video.
Yeah.
Was that the facility that was initially filmed?
Like, what is this facility?
That's it.
Was it Inuok?
I forget.
Atoll.
So, like, we just.
It's crazy how long ago that was and how close it was to the Civil War if you
really put it in that context.
Well, that's, this is what I'm trying to say is what I'm trying to tell you.
Look at that.
That's so insane.
Have you done this in Oculus?
No, I have not.
I highly recommend it.
They're not going to let us do a nuke above ground so that we can save
ourselves by fear.
Oh, look at that.
This is religious stuff, Joe.
Yeah, it is religious stuff.
Like, we are, we have announced, if somebody is listening to these tests that
we did.
And my belief is very shortly before you get the ability to traverse the cosmos,
if that is possible, if that is possible, you let off and nuke.
Right?
Yeah.
It's like, you know, you've had kids.
There's some stuff that happens right before they figure out how to break out
of the crib.
You know, that's part of UFO folklore, too.
Fat man and little boy.
That's a big part of UFO, that once they drop those, that's when all the UFOs
started appearing.
So the question is, you know, the analogy I give, so I talked to Avi about the
following thing.
I am a fan of something I call the doubly scientific method.
The usual scientific method makes a hidden assumption that it never voices,
which is, if we're going to study orcas, we assume that we are smarter than orcas.
Or if we're going to study cephalopods, right?
Like an octopus.
We think we're smarter.
And what do we do?
We disguise ourselves.
We create artificial environments.
We do all sorts of crazy things based on the fact that we're smarter than what
we study.
From everything from rocks to orcas.
The doubly scientific method says, okay, assume that you're studying a rat in a
maze, but you yourself are the rat in somebody else's maze.
Now you have to look up the intelligence scale, not just down.
And in the doubly scientific method, you have to assume that whatever is
studying you is hiding from you the way you are hiding from your subjects.
So if you see somebody in a duck blind, for example, and he's studying ducks,
you understand that somebody may be hiding from you.
And they might be able to use multiple dimensions of time.
They might be able to cloak themselves and disguise themselves.
For example, if you take microscopic UFOs, this cup has a radius of r and a
circumference of 2 pi r.
The disc that it spans is pi r squared in area.
But if you look at this cup, it's much larger than pi r squared because we
pushed it out.
You could have a sphere where if you could cheaply engineer space time, not
through the Einstein field equations, but through the successor theory that
recovers Einstein.
You could have an entire stadium inside of a tennis ball, just the way this cup
doesn't blow your mind until you realize that its area is much greater than pi
r squared.
You could, why look for a giant floating thing in the sky?
If you could bend space and time and you could play with the rulers the way I'm
saying, I would put this in a tiny little profile.
Whoa.
So we're only looking at it in terms of our understanding of the distance
between objects, planets, gravity.
We're looking at that, all that stuff where if it didn't exist, if somehow or
another we lived in some contained environment and we had no concept of space
whatsoever and then we gained access to it, we would be unbelievably
overwhelmed.
If you lived in some sort of underground facility your entire life and then one
day you got a chance to go outside and see the Keck Observatory in Hawaii in a
clear night with no moon, you would be overwhelmed.
You wouldn't be able to believe that the world was as big as it really was or
that the universe was as big as it was.
Yeah, it's an impedance mismatch.
If you watch meteor showers the way my family does, it's religious.
It's transformational.
It's transcendent.
The problem, as you know, from the default mode network, right, is that mostly
what your brain is doing is not communicating information but screening.
Right, your eyes, your fovea is precious because that's the thing that can
resolve at very high levels.
Yeah.
But like I can barely see Jamie out of the corner of my eye because my
peripheral vision can't be at the same level as my fovea.
I'd be overwhelmed.
Right.
So we're talking about tapping in to a picture of the world that we are not,
our brain is not prepared for the idea that time is multidimensional.
That was the whole point of giving Lex another watch.
We don't have a way to think about, I'll meet you at 5.15 and 12.30, according
to two different scales of time.
Or for example, time and space, if I'm correct, the 14-dimensional manifold
that has all the quantum going on on it is split probably seven and seven
dimensions because we have six extra time dimensions and four extra space.
Add six to one and three to four and you get seven.
So space and time are interchangeable.
There's a duality between them.
All of this stuff is like, you know, okay, it's how you hit on chicks in a bar.
Hey, let me tell you something about space and time you never thought about.
Oh my God, does that work?
What?
Worked for me.
That's why I'm not in better shape.
So do you think, now when you were talking about these people that keep manana-ing
you and not giving you access to whatever they're talking about, do you think
they're talking about some sort of an engineering solution to this type of
technology?
I haven't met anyone in striking distance in three years.
So how could they have something that you don't, that's going to change your
way of looking?
Is it possible that you've missed something?
I can just be wrong, first of all.
Like, this is my, this is my life's work, right?
What's the way they phrased it to you?
Which part?
The part about it changing the way you see the world.
Oh, Eric, you know, like, I'll complain about data.
Like, that's not the data we have.
What we've been showing the public is downsampled, meaning it's, it's fuzzier.
It's low resolution.
Like, how clear is it?
As clear as you want.
How clear are you that there's something to see?
You can see it with your own eyes.
There's no question.
Dude, if I was you, I'd just shut the fuck up and let them show me.
I'd be like, let's go.
I'm not under any NDA.
I know, but I'm saying, I...
But you want to know.
I want to know.
Yeah, but I want to know in a different...
Look, my life's work is a theory.
It's one theory.
My entire life is really about one theory, okay?
Like, I do this entertainment thing and I talk to people and all this stuff.
Bullshit.
Really what I am is an academic who realized that you can't do academics inside
of the university system.
And watch it disintegrate into madness as we speak.
I figured this out a long time ago.
I want to know whether this is right or wrong so much better, so much more than
I want to know whether UFOs exist.
UFOs, to me, are an indication of whether I'm right or wrong.
You see, it's data.
It's an input to me.
So if you're right, that means...
If we have a future, it means we can leave not the planet, but the solar system.
We can explore...
The cosmos are traversable.
If we can leave, anything else can visit.
If you look at the entirety of the universe and you imagine that ultimately
there are societies that destroy themselves because they get atomic weapons
before they figure out how to leave.
Some societies are smarter than that.
And they'll be able to leave and colonize the cosmos.
And for them not to be here would be madness.

Eric Weinstein "We May Be Faking a UFO Situation..." - Skepticism Over Current State of UFO's

I get occasionally called by somebody from inside, and what I think they're
doing, first of all, one, we may be faking a UFO situation for reasons that I
don't understand.
If we are faking a UFO situation, do you think that there is technology that's
available to people in the United States that is beyond our current
understanding of what's possible?
90% no.
Because it's very hard to imagine physicists continuing to work on nothing for
their entire careers.
The number of people who are going to be retiring shortly, having never
actually done physics as a physicist.
We're talking about wasted lives.
People are going to be very weird when they realize that they blew their entire
career.
And I believe I can say what many of these problems are.
And if you want to humiliate me at a leading university, just ask me to talk.
You can put it on video.
You don't realize how many things the standard model has subtly wrong when we
explain it to people.
It's not that the Lagrangian is wrong.
It's not that the Lagrangian is wrong, not that the rules are wrong, but we say
wrong stuff.
We say, like, there are three generations of matter that are only distinguished
by mass.
In other words, there's three copies of this stuff here.
This is like the wood version, and then there's the plastic version, and then
there's the metal version.
There aren't three.
There are two generations plus an extra imposter generation, which looks like a
generation.
I mean, I can get into these things.
And that should be a provocation that somebody says, let's call this guy up,
have him out, and figure out what he's talking about.
It doesn't matter.
I don't think we're doing physics.
What do you think they're doing?
I think we are playing paintball rather than going to war, and we're giving
prizes for generals who command the best paintball army.
And then we're referencing everyone else who's actually trying to figure out
how to fight to, well, have you submitted to the paintball competition?
It's like, no, I don't want to do paintball.
I understand that it keeps your skills up.
I understand that some of them are transferable.
But I mean, like, you've been in street fights?
Not since I was a teenager.
Yeah, well, I understand.
Like, I haven't been for a long time.
It's different than what you guys do in Brazilian jiu-jitsu.
There's lots of stuff you're not allowed to do.
Yeah.
Right.
You get in a street fight, it's a completely different thing.
Sure.
What we're doing is not physics in the same sense.
So what they're doing is they're exercising.
We're doing safe stuff.
Yeah, exactly.
They're exercising.
And the exercises are keeping people limber.
They're keeping people in a fighting mentality.
It's not that Brazilian jiu-jitsu has nothing to do with fighting.
We've seen people use it in the street for sure, right?
But small joint manipulation is part of street fighting.
Eye gouging is part of street fighting.
Pulling a knife is part of street fighting.
These things are not part of any reputable gym that you might go to.
So I want to do the thing that isn't paintball.
And I didn't want to do it up until recently because the danger of unleashing a
neutron in the world is so high.
Now I realize I'm done with that.
You guys are willing to play footsies with Putin?
You're not going to survive.
You're not the responsible adults I thought you were.
Like if I unleash a neutron and it leads to some sort of proliferation of
deadly technology, it's on you.
It's not on me.
You're already taking risks that you shouldn't be taking.
So if you think 90% sure that this is not coming from here, you believe this
because you don't think that the proper science in order to achieve these kind
of results is being done by the people that you believe are capable of doing it?
That is correct.
I know that, for example, when I talk to Nima or when I talk to Juan Maldicena
or when I've talked to Natty Seiberg, these people are absolutely brilliant and
they don't know the answer unless they're the greatest actors I've ever seen.
So the most brilliant physicists are looking at these supposed videos.
What is the best and most compelling?
No, no, no.
Sorry, that's UFO stuff.
What are you talking about then?
They're not talking about things that can extend Einstein.
Right.
Therefore, to get back to your technology question, might have engineering
applications because it's the engineering applications that are terrifying.
Right.
The discovery of the neutron was one thing.
The Teller-Ulam design was its weaponization.
So suddenly, you know, you can do the Tsar bomb or Castle Bravo, these
unbelievable explosions, which like the difference between there were Civil War
veterans
who saw action in the Civil War, who lived to see Ivy Mike in the Pacific.
So the Civil War was almost a thermonuclear war in terms of human scale.
It's not, it's less than 100 years different, people have forgotten how
terrifying, important, wonderful, jaw-dropping and awesome physics is because
it hasn't done anything that completely screws your mind.
Like Hiroshima or Nagasaki.
Or Castle Bravo.
With Castle Bravo.
That was the test in the Pacific where we thought it was going to be like
controlled and like, or what is it, starfish?
Where we did an atmospheric explosion over Hawaii and then the Russians like,
hold my beer.
Nova Zemmium.
Yeah.
You know, we, remember, I'm the guy five years ago who was saying we need above
ground nuclear tests because all you people have lost your fear.
Like, yes, Eric is crazy, but he's correct.
What's this one?
That's Castle Bravo.
Oh, shit.
Oh, my God.
Right.
So they detonated in that facility and they expected it to be far smaller than
it was?
You know, they detonated in the Pacific.
Right.
But it's right next to that facility that was in the video.
Yeah.
Was that the facility that was initially filmed?
Like, what is this facility?
That's it.
Was it Inuok?
I forget.
Atoll.
So, like, we just.
It's crazy how long ago that was and how close it was to the Civil War if you
really put it in that context.
Well, that's, this is what I'm trying to say is what I'm trying to tell you.
Look at that.
That's so insane.
Have you done this in Oculus?
No, I have not.
I highly recommend it.
They're not going to let us do a nuke above ground so that we can save
ourselves by fear.
Oh, look at that.
This is religious stuff, Joe.
Yeah, it is religious stuff.
Like, we are, we have announced, if somebody is listening to these tests that
we did.
And my belief is very shortly before you get the ability to traverse the cosmos,
if that is possible, if that is possible, you let off and nuke.
Right?
Yeah.
It's like, you know, you've had kids.
There's some stuff that happens right before they figure out how to break out
of the crib.
You know, that's part of UFO folklore, too.
Fat man and little boy.
That's a big part of UFO, that once they drop those, that's when all the UFOs
started appearing.
So the question is, you know, the analogy I give, so I talked to Avi about the
following thing.
I am a fan of something I call the doubly scientific method.
The usual scientific method makes a hidden assumption that it never voices,
which is, if we're going to study orcas, we assume that we are smarter than orcas.
Or if we're going to study cephalopods, right?
Like an octopus.
We think we're smarter.
And what do we do?
We disguise ourselves.
We create artificial environments.
We do all sorts of crazy things based on the fact that we're smarter than what
we study.
From everything from rocks to orcas.
The doubly scientific method says, okay, assume that you're studying a rat in a
maze, but you yourself are the rat in somebody else's maze.
Now you have to look up the intelligence scale, not just down.
And in the doubly scientific method, you have to assume that whatever is
studying you is hiding from you the way you are hiding from your subjects.
So if you see somebody in a duck blind, for example, and he's studying ducks,
you understand that somebody may be hiding from you.
And they might be able to use multiple dimensions of time.
They might be able to cloak themselves and disguise themselves.
For example, if you take microscopic UFOs, this cup has a radius of r and a
circumference of 2 pi r.
The disc that it spans is pi r squared in area.
But if you look at this cup, it's much larger than pi r squared because we
pushed it out.
You could have a sphere where if you could cheaply engineer space time, not
through the Einstein field equations, but through the successor theory that
recovers Einstein.
You could have an entire stadium inside of a tennis ball, just the way this cup
doesn't blow your mind until you realize that its area is much greater than pi
r squared.
You could, why look for a giant floating thing in the sky?
If you could bend space and time and you could play with the rulers the way I'm
saying, I would put this in a tiny little profile.
Whoa.
So we're only looking at it in terms of our understanding of the distance
between objects, planets, gravity.
We're looking at that, all that stuff where if it didn't exist, if somehow or
another we lived in some contained environment and we had no concept of space
whatsoever and then we gained access to it, we would be unbelievably
overwhelmed.
If you lived in some sort of underground facility your entire life and then one
day you got a chance to go outside and see the Keck Observatory in Hawaii in a
clear night with no moon, you would be overwhelmed.
You wouldn't be able to believe that the world was as big as it really was or
that the universe was as big as it was.
Yeah, it's an impedance mismatch.
If you watch meteor showers the way my family does, it's religious.
It's transformational.
It's transcendent.
The problem, as you know, from the default mode network, right, is that mostly
what your brain is doing is not communicating information but screening.
Right, your eyes, your fovea is precious because that's the thing that can
resolve at very high levels.
Yeah.
But like I can barely see Jamie out of the corner of my eye because my
peripheral vision can't be at the same level as my fovea.
I'd be overwhelmed.
Right.
So we're talking about tapping in to a picture of the world that we are not,
our brain is not prepared for the idea that time is multidimensional.
That was the whole point of giving Lex another watch.
We don't have a way to think about, I'll meet you at 5.15 and 12.30, according
to two different scales of time.
Or for example, time and space, if I'm correct, the 14-dimensional manifold
that has all the quantum going on on it is split probably seven and seven
dimensions because we have six extra time dimensions and four extra space.
Add six to one and three to four and you get seven.
So space and time are interchangeable.
There's a duality between them.
All of this stuff is like, you know, okay, it's how you hit on chicks in a bar.
Hey, let me tell you something about space and time you never thought about.
Oh my God, does that work?
What?
Worked for me.
That's why I'm not in better shape.
So do you think, now when you were talking about these people that keep manana-ing
you and not giving you access to whatever they're talking about, do you think
they're talking about some sort of an engineering solution to this type of
technology?
I haven't met anyone in striking distance in three years.
So how could they have something that you don't, that's going to change your
way of looking?
Is it possible that you've missed something?
I can just be wrong, first of all.
Like, this is my, this is my life's work, right?
What's the way they phrased it to you?
Which part?
The part about it changing the way you see the world.
Oh, Eric, you know, like, I'll complain about data.
Like, that's not the data we have.
What we've been showing the public is downsampled, meaning it's, it's fuzzier.
It's low resolution.
Like, how clear is it?
As clear as you want.
How clear are you that there's something to see?
You can see it with your own eye