Decoding the Gurus - Mini Decoding: Sabine's Contrarian Outrage- How Dare You Criticise Eric!

Episode Date: July 25, 2025

In this mini-decoding, Matt and Chris examine Sabine Hossenfelder's recent fervent defence of Eric Weinstein and her sharp rebuke of his critics, including Sean Carroll. Sabine suggests that Eric poses a genuine threat to the physics establishment and that he is terrifying them by exposing their weak points. Moreover, according to Sabine, Geometric Unity, Eric's homegrown Theory of Everything, is on par with String Theory, if not better, since it wastes less money! This episode takes a critical look at those claims and Sabine's own heated rhetoric and performative outrage, examining how her defence of Eric aligns with a broader online anti-science contrarian ecosystem.So join us as we ponder whether Sabine is a brave, truth-telling rebel challenging a stagnant scientific orthodoxy and defending an honest man who is under attack for simply daring to question the powers that be... or whether she is just another contrarian YouTuber pandering to anti-science sentiment, defending fellow influencers, and playing the game of algorithm-driven clickbait outrage.Links- Sabine Hossenfelder: Physicists are afraid of Eric Weinstein -- and they should be- Sabine Hossenfelder: Do we need a Theory of Everything?- Decoding the Gurus: Sabine Hossenfelder: Science is a Liar ... Sometimes- Professor Dave Explains: Sabine Hossenfelder Joins the Eric Weinstein Damage Control Parade- Sabine cheers on Bryan Johnson on Twitter- Tim Nguyen discusses Sabine's response on Twitter- Dr. Brian Keating: What Is A Theory of Everything? Featuring Sabine Hossenfelder, Lee Smolin, & Eric Weinstein

Hello and welcome to Decoding the Gurus, the podcast where an anthropologist and a psychologist listen to the greatest minds that the online gurus here has to offer. And we try to work out what the F they're talking about. With you today, you have the anthropologist of sorts, of sorts, me, Chris Kavner, the psychologist. Yeah, he is a psychologist. Matthew Brown over there. He's in Australia. I'm in Japan. It's an international podcast. That's the way that we occupy there. For those of you who are well versed in 40k Warhammer lore. I thought we were going to the Warhammer audience, Matt. Yeah. That one's going out to all the geeks out there, all the sad sacks who live in their mother's basements. Don't talk about Liam Bright like that. I don't really like that because I know enough about Woodacare to know that the emperor, I think, is basically a decrepit husk.

Oh yeah, but he's the most powerful psychic in the universe. Oh, the most powerful psychic. That does sound like me now. That does sound like me. Yeah. So there's that. Whereas the Chaos Gods are just like monsters that live in and feed on human negative emotions. So that's actually unfortunately accurate. It is accurate.

Well thanks for joining us from the Void, Chris. What have you dredged up from those bottomless depths chorus today? Oh yeah yeah so this is a mini decoding episode. It just slots in you know there's sometimes we have super long decoding sometimes we have we never have short decodings but we sometimes have ones that are shorter and this one should be in that wheelhouse because we're back to look at a video that was just around 12 minutes and it was released from Sabine Hossenfelder. Yeah, I think we pronounced Sabine wrong.

I remember being told that. But do you know the correct pronunciation? Sabine? Sabine Hosenfelder. Sapine. Sapine. Yeah, well, whichever. We're sorry.

We apologize. That's neither here nor there. She is a disgruntled physicist of sorts, somebody that has a lot of issues with mainstream physics. And she released a video that the thumbnail says stunning hypocrisy. And the title is Physicists are afraid of Eric Weinstein and they should be. So quite dramatic framing there. And this is Sabine's take on the interaction that Eric had with Sean Carroll

on Piers Morgan. Yeah, yeah. You just reminded me with her title there that Sabine does title some of her videos very provocatively. I don't know. Maybe she's keen to get more clicks, but aren't we all?

No. Oh. I mean, we're not all doing the thing that Sabine is doing. She's very much captured in the YouTube algorithm. And we have previous episodes. Should people want to go back covering Sabine, which like document some of these tendencies and also there is the YouTube channel Professor Dave, who has

actually, if you go and look at his earlier videos, you know, the earliest video, he was actually relatively charitable to Sabine, but no longer. He's been he's been radicalized. Yeah, that's not the case. So he points out and we agree with him that she is like pandering to the anti science audience on YouTube. She does make videos which are kind of just science commentary.

She releases at a rate of a video a day, right? So there's quite a lot. There's a mix, but her videos that do best tend to be the ones that are commenting on the failure of mainstream physics or this kind of thing. Now, why don't we get started with that? So we've got a couple of clips from this and so here's the first clip talking about Sabine's general framing. I watched this recent episode of Eric and Sean Carroll on Piers Morgan and read the comments from all those who piled on afterwards and boy was this ugly. I can't believe the fucking hypocrisy of these people. So that's why I finally want to talk about Eric. I've known Eric for almost 20 years. He's a good guy. If you take away one thing from

this video, let it be that Sabina said Eric's a good and fairly normal person. In contrast to a lot of others who think it's okay to shit on people they know nothing about. I've seen an enormous amount of hate thrown at Eric that he doesn't deserve. Yeah, so the important message that she wants to communicate there is that Eric's a great guy and also that he's extremely normal, which is just like that's I think the little dog protest too much because Eric is not normal. And I don't know.

Did you notice the weird editing there? Well, she's like, she just suddenly. Yeah, I was going to ask you then. I wasn't even sure it was her. Phil, maybe she was quoting people. But yeah, I mean,

this is something I've noticed with Sabine that she sort of blows button cold. There'll be often like a title to a YouTube video, which is very provocative, with a scientist lying to do whatever. And then like half the episode will be leaning into, I guess, a very strong anti institutional human conspiratorial taste, and then she'll flip or vice versa. And she's kind of set it both ways. Yeah, but here, she's, you know, she she has a she has a grumpy personality, which is which I quite like as far as it goes. But it does seem to lean towards

the performative sometimes right? Like the real anger, like the real venom or not venomous too strong, but the real anger, like the real venom or not venom, she's strong, but the real power in her language tends to come when she's talking in a certain direction. Yeah. Well, I think it is venom. But I felt that that was like I can't believe the fucking hypocrisy of these people. And then it suddenly goes down in the next sentence. So I imagine she went on for a bit and then cut it out. Whatever. The main thing is she's known Eric for 20 years. He's a good guy. And she wants to emphasize the takeaway message from this is that I said

Eric is a good and fairly normal person. Right. That's what she wants to take away message from this to be as per usual, Matt, this thing of I met someone, they're nice to me, that's uber-alls in the gurus fear. That's usually the heuristic that people operate by, right? I got on well with them. Sean Carroll is not arguing or criticizing Eric for anything about that, like that he's a big meanie. You know, he's not saying he's a bad person, that he's a fat, smelly pants. I can't think of anyone more polite and reserved than Sean Carroll.

Sean Carroll made a strong case against Eric. Eric makes an incredibly strong case, as does Sabine, against basically everyone, all of the scientists, except for influencers, people on YouTube. But I guess it's the scientists who are wrong, right? We should be ashamed of themselves. you know, an explainer of sorts, a very brief explainer outlining, you know, the kind of like the general claims being made by Eric's theory of everything and explains it, you know, to the best of her ability. She does some self-deprecating comments about her as a stupid girl, as she understands it and whatever. And it's fine as far as it goes, right? Like this is Eric's model. And

then this is how that section ends. So Eric postulates that these two tensors somehow related. Basically he doubles the gravitational part of Einstein's theory and takes the one version to be the generator of this group that gives you something like SO10. Devils in the details. By this I mean that in all fairness Eric's idea is a bit sketchy. But honestly I don't doubt that with some effort you can somehow make the maths work out. So this is roughly what Eric's working on, I believe. It's all fairly unremarkable really. The mathematics is pretty close to what physicists are using

already, and it's totally in line with all the other nonsense that physicists in the foundations now work on. But for reasons I don't quite understand, a lot of people find this all very interesting, which is how Eric ended up on Piers Morgan with Sean Carroll. And this happened. Yeah, so I don't like that framing, right? Because Eric's theory is not just like a normal theoretical physics model. It's lacking the core components that would make it useful. And you can make criticisms of other theories and models that lack empirical validation and whatnot, but it's just not the case that it's exactly comparable.

I get that Sabine wants to argue this, right? And she has a very critical view of that. And that is also not why Eric is on Piers Morgan, right? Eric is on Piers Morgan because he is an online dadfly slash pundit who often reels against science and stuff, right? He's an anti-science contrarian that worked for Teal. So it's not like Wolfram or someone being invited on to be at Sean Carroll. It is somebody who was the big figure in the IDW. So Sabine's framing that, I don't know why people find this interesting, but that's not why Eric gets invited on Rogan or- No, and her framing is also one as to people have a problem with Eric. He's just got a physics

theory. He's just a guy with a physics theory. Aren't you allowed to have a physics theory? And of course, no, that's not why Eric gets into hot water. He has theories about UFOs. He makes grand claims about faster than light space travel when his ideas are too dangerous, too powerful to be revealed to the rest of the world. We've covered him in detail. I'm not going to enumerate that. But there's a lot more to him than just this sketchy theory. But the other thing, Chris, is that did you notice like what she's saying there is can be read in two ways. And I know that Eric responded badly to her defense online. And I kind of see why because she's kind of what's the word she's

making him a little bit like she's saying oh you know he's got a theory and I'm sure with you know it's just kind of nonsense but the so all the physics theories at the moment the maps is you know it's bit sketchy but I'm sure with some work and it could be turned into something. I mean, that's kind of a, that's kind of weak praise, especially to someone like Eric, who, you know, makes such strong claims about his theory. Well, yes, you're gonna hear a bit more because he does basically endorse Sean Carroll's critiques. And even though the takeaway message from this, as you'll hear, is like a strong defense of Eric. Eric online, he posted his Lagrangian and when Sabine responded saying, not sure how to say this,

but this is not what physicists suspect when they say Lagrangian. And Eric responded saying he's bewildered and providing a long accretion. creation so for Eric that just shows the fragile ego right and that's an illustration of what people are criticizing but Eric like you know we've covered Eric in depth and Sabin says you know people don't really know Eric we know Eric we know his conspiracy first we've spent our time in the Eric content line that That's right. No one can accuse us. Yeah, not paying enough attention to what he's saying. But yeah, so that critique falls. But it's an illustration of his fragile ego

that even though this is a defense of him, that it's not enough. He still has to complain that he's not being given enough credit. So accidentally, she illustrated the issue. But anyway, let's hear her go on. So she's, she's going to talk about Sean Carroll directly now and the criticisms he raises. I think one has to give credits to Sean that he agreed to do this because the vast majority of physicists would have chickened out.

And honestly, Sean did a pretty good job. Yes, Eric's work is far from complete. Yes, he doesn't have a Lagrangian and he hasn't actually solved any problem and he hasn't explained how anomaly cancellation works and other than some hand wavy there ought to be new particles somewhere. He doesn't have tangible predictions. But then, Eric's only one person who wrote up some notes. If he had wasted some millions of tax money on hiring postdocs and writing papers about it, then he could have easily papered over these shortcomings, just like everyone else

in that area. This is what I mean about Sabine blowing hot and cold. It's quite interesting. She's defending Eric, but only on the grounds that he hasn't wasted as much resources with his nonsense as other theoretical physicists. I mean, she's well known for having, she doesn't like basically the state of theoretical physics. She thinks everything's a waste of time and all of these particle colliders is a big waste of money. I'm never quite clear what she thinks physicists ought to be doing. I'm sure she's explained at some point, but it is a weak defense and it is, you know, she said a lot of it, she conceded most of the points that Sean Carroll

made in criticism of Eric. And yet the conclusion is, fuck you, Sean Carroll, Eric's fantastic. Yeah. So you heard her gearing up there. Like, so, you know, she's saying, yes, he does this. Yes. You know, it's like that. And, and also that point about like, but he hasn't wasted money or time or four stocks, not because Eric doesn't want to. Like Eric constantly talks about how everybody should be focusing on his theory and we'd be traveling faster in life. He's wearing his suit and waiting for the call so he can be put in charge of the department somewhere. So yeah, her point there only stands because people have expressed no interest in like a half formulated theory.

So you know, you heard her kind of acknowledging the criticism and the tone of voice, but as she moved into like attacking mainstream physics, she gets more animated, right? And so it continues. And this is why this pisses me off so much. Sean totally knows that most of his colleagues work on similarly flaky stuff. It's just been covered up by more working hours. The literature's full of papers without proper predictions, without lagrangians, ill-defined operators or problems that will be solved in some future work that never comes. Sean knows that. Everyone in the damn field knows that. But normally no one's saying anything

about it because they're all tied up in the same scam. Unless the person who comes up with the idea is Eric Weinstein, in which case it's suddenly hugely offensive and everyone starts yelling. Well, sure, why don't you talk for a little bit about all the supposed ADS-CFT predictions for condensed matter? This or that, which were supposed to revolutionize superconductivity? Whatever happened to that? And just exactly how is string theory defined anyway? Did they actually ever solve the problem of quantum gravity?

Like, did they ever prove it's finite? What Calabi how many fold are we talking about again? Or how about loop quantum gravity? Do they have a well-defined Hamiltonian? Where is the classical limit? And these are areas in which thousands of people have spent decades and billions of dollars. Why aren't you talking about this rather than crapping on Eric, who's one single person and at least trying to do something new? Yeah, interesting defense there, Chris.

Yeah, so that's a highlight that like Sabine thinks, you thinks, she's kind of in the frame of Peter Thiel and Eric Weinstein about there's been no progress. It's all stalled for 20 or 30 years. Everybody's spinning their wheels, wasting their time. So she's like, Sean Carroll knows this, he agrees that there's all, and yes, there will be in any field, there's going to be low quality papers, there's going to be theoretical claims which outpace the level of evidence and people with pet theories and that is true. She's right that those kinds of things exist and that there are still long-term problems with established theories and things which people are working on. But it's that false equivalence where she's kind of arguing

that, well, it's just the same. Like, it's all as hand-wavy and silly. And that's Sabine's assessment. That's not Sean Carroll's assessment, right? She's acting like he knows that. He's refusing to know. Everybody's in on this scam. And scientists keep telling them,

keep saying to Sabine whenever this kind of debate comes up or they're responding, that's not their understanding of their field. That's not the way they think of string theorists. Sean talked about string theory in the conversation with Eric. So Sabine's presentation of it is everybody understands that there's a scam at the heart of physics and they're all ignoring it because it's how they get money and whatnot. And that's just a very conspiratorial, anti-science, contrarian point of view. So yeah. Exactly. And look, it may well be way above your MIPAE grade to assess the degree to which

various physics theories have been fleshed out. And we all know that they have a, you know, guy green unified theory of everything. Bad physicists, you haven't figured it out yet. Hurry up, get it done. Why don't you? But there has been a lot of progress. There has been a lot of progress, but just to be clear, Matt, she is arguing that like, in all her content and in this and whatever, like the focus on the Unified Theory is a waste of time. That's one of her like points is why should you even bother attempting to do that? And so yeah well there's a lot of physicists doing other things too right but there's a heat of topics. Yeah and also keep in mind that Sabine has extended this critique from Chizik's to the rest of science. Oh all of science, that's right. I forgot about that.

But yes, it's all of science. It's all of physics, so it's all of science. That's right. Yeah, she does. Well, look, if the whole thing's a scam, then I guess, you know, that's sense from her point of view, right? Yes, Eric Weinstein's got nothing, but neither does anyone else. But that's, as you said, her framing, her understanding, not one that vast majority of scientists and physicists have. Yeah. And this is also like when people like Professor Dave and others point out

that she appeals to an anti-science contrarian audience. It's because of stuff like this, where she basically presents it that scientists are all involved in the conspiracy to do nothing for, you know, their entire careers because they just want to get grant money and do things like that. And the other thing wrong with their framing is that her framing is that this nice man, Eric Weinstein, who's very politely and you know on his own wicket, been putting together his own little theory and very politely, humbly submitted it for people's consideration. And then Sean

Carroll and everyone else is thrown into a rage. And she was making it that they're yelling, you know, Sean Carroll wasn't yelling. He was not yelling in that interview. His tone was completely relaxed in contrast to the tone of Eric Weinstein and Sabine herself right there. AC Yeah. And Eric, you know, made personal attacks and so on. And this wasn't lost to the majority of people who watched that video. Like, if you look at the comments under it, Sabine's takeaway that poor Eric was, you know, unfairly treated by Sean Carroll. That is not

the take in the majority even in the peers. Poor Eric has been smeared Chris. But in fact you'll recall, people will recall from an interview, quite the opposite. Sean did not smear Eric. Eric smeared Sean. Eric came prepared with a list of quite personal digs on Sean's career? Sean, first of all, how dare you? Second of all, if you're going to go with the standards of the... How dare I read your paper? No, Sean, how dare you cast shade and aspersions of the kind that I wouldn't seek to cast on you, but I will now. Okay. I'm not seeking your favor, nor do I need to seek your approval.

As you know, you failed to gain tenure at the University of Chicago. You're not highly regarded in the field. And again, I'm only returning the shade in which you just yourself cast. I wouldn't have done this otherwise. You then spent time as a non-tenured faculty at Caltech, and you only gained tenure in a non-standard professorship. You're not a leading person in the field. My belief structure about this is that you imagine that I'm coming to you saying, oh,

Sean Carroll, tell me which graph I should do so that I can please you. As you know, because you've read the paper, what you said about Lagrangians is false. What you said about predictions is false. My concern is what you did is that you seized upon something where people have built on my ideas since 1994. The equations that Natty Seiberg and Ed Witten introduced that took over the world were called the insufficiently nonlinear equations

when I was at Harvard in 1987 and introduced them. Absolutely absurd stuff, but none of that bridge should be subpoenaed. Yeah, and Schoen kept it to the paper. Look, I mean, I didn't say anything about Eric as a person, his history or anything like that. I said things about the paper. Everything he says about me is like 90% true, as many things he says. The paper is not giving us any reason to think that this approach is promising.

There is no quantum mechanics in the paper. There's no attempt at showing that this solves any of the known problems of quantum gravity. Again, it's not just about Eric, it's about anyone. If you want to make an impact on the physics research community, you have to give them a reason to think that what you do is promising. But in any case, so let's hear more of Sabine's framing. They say that they want people to think outside the box. But if someone actually does it, they're like, nah, not this way. You don't talk like us. You don't walk like us We don't like the people you play with

Therefore will not look at your ideas This is the sorry state of theoretical physics now and then you get all these people Piling on to each hate parade the group think is so thick. Like they all think it's fine to hate on Eric because they expect their colleagues to cheer on them for doing so. And those who think that maybe Eric's idea isn't so bad, keep their mouth shut. The group think, Matt. The group think is a big problem. Also the, also the guilt by association. I've condemned Derek cause he's hanging around the wrong people. Um, they're actually probably secretly quite interested in these exciting ideas in Eric's paper, although she could have underlined that at the beginning. I mean, I don't think it's, it's like that me from mad men, like that.

I don't think about you at all. I mean, like, I don't think about you at all mean. I mean, like, I don't think the vast majority of physicists, like, like a couple who have some interest in public discourse, EU type stuff, have looked into his theory, but the vast majority of them have not yet there to blame for that as well, too, I think, like this sort of damned if they do, damned if they don't. If they point out that there's nothing here, which is what Sabine said, then they're evil because they're just hating on him. A poor guy is just doing his best.

And if they ignore it, it's because they're too close-minded and they're afraid of new ideas. So, I don't know. I see Sabine shoehorning this silly little episode into her general anti-science worldview. Well, I've pointed out that Tim Noon and Pheo Polia, right, the pseudonym for Tim's co-author, they wrote a technical rebuttal to Eric's geometric unity theory, such as it existed at the time. Sabine hosted that on her blog at the time. She promoted it and she pointed out that Eric wasn't engaging with this technical treatment of his paper.

She was critical of Eric for that. But suddenly now it's the physics community who are to blame. And worth noting that after this episode came out, Tim Nguyen on Twitter made some posts as being like kind of pointing out the rather hypocritical nature of her strong switching stance. She went on the block him and she removed the article from her blog. So I think that's worth noting. I mean, she can put on a blog or whatever she wants, but she shouldn't be acting like, I mean, I'll just play another clip to highlight that.

So this is a little bit later. She's talking about people that have treated Eric's very reasonably and whatnot. And listen to this. Then there's Brian Keating who deserves credit for not chickening out and for standing with Eric even though that made people crap on Brian too. Then there's Kurt Jaimungo who courageously published a very long video about Eric's theory and also interviewed Eric which led to this following exchange. I haven't seen such novel ideas from a single person ever. And I don't know if anyone else will tell you this, but what you've done is remarkable, man.

I don't even know how to be with that, to be honest. Look, thank you. And again, you know, I saw people jump on card and criticizing him just for talking to Eric. But you know Kurt is right, it's remarkable. Eric's ideas as remarkable as the ideas of thousands of other people, each of whom have spent years and years of their life on it and whom you've never heard anything about. So the group think point praising Brian Keating, cheering on Kurt Jemongle. And this is a video in defense of Eric Weinstein.

That seems to be playing a particular crowd. And normally given, you know, her rather critical grumpy attitude, this kind of fawning praise directed at someone, it wouldn't normally be highlighted as like a positive feature, right? I've never seen her elsewhere, Prius people for saying you're such a great insightful person. So this feels very much like playing to a particular in-group that you want to cultivate connections with perhaps. And it's particularly surreal given that, so Benning Rasselfelder knows what proper scientific rigors and collegial criticism looks like

and how theories, proposals, ideas get handled, and they get handled roughly because that is the cultural robust inquiry. Contrast that with Kurt Joe Mungle's response there, which she basically endorses. So this is a group that just, yeah, that pats each other on the back, supports each other. And these are all influences. These are YouTube influences. And Kurt Joe Mungle, remember, this is the guy who, who was the end of the guy that is Chris Langan. He made a long video talking about how remarkable Chris Langan, the 200 IQ guy that

believes that like his mathematical stuff proves God exists, the afterlife exists, the UFOs are controlling the US government, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So I guess Sabine should find that also extremely appealing and praiseworthy, right? Because he did a deep dive on that. But I just again noticed Sabine's double phrasing there, which is, and he's right, Eric's theory is remarkable. It's as remarkable as all the other theories, which he says are absolute nonsense. So you can read and again, this is a pattern I've noticed a bit. So then you can read what she says two ways. I think I just suspect that's deliberate.

That's all. Well, I just noticed, Matt, when I looked, I was looking for Sabine's reply to Eric on Twitter. And I saw that just two days ago, Brian Johnson was writing this big thing about his blueprint, the company where he sells his supplements. And he was talking about he's being criticized for grifting, but it's not about that. He wants to give up the company, but he's instead he's decided to create like a new he wants to give up the company, but instead he's decided to create a new company where he combines supplements and planning don't die activities and whatever. So he wrote this big, long, indulgent thing about how he's been attacked, how he's been accused of being a grifter,

and it's not fair, and he was going to step back from selling Blueprint because he doesn't need to sell it anyway. But no, he's decided this. Anyway It's like a rebranding thing. But this is the Brian Johnson, the pseudoscientific don't die guy. Sabine responded to that saying, I'm sorry to hear about the haters. I think you're doing the right thing. Don't let it get to you. So Sabine is constantly online, cheering on these contrarian figures in the influencer Andrew Huberman, Eric Weinstein, Kurt Jemungel space. And there's a lot of pseudoscience there. There's a lot of pseudoscience in Brian Johnson. Just for example, Brian Johnson said that he regretted getting the vaccines because he didn't know about the dangers that they posed. So, yeah, she is condemning people for like groupthink and playing to particular in groups and stuff, but she never addresses her own in group online and the incentives there.

You know, we've talked about it before. She complains about all the incentives in science and she doesn't discuss the incentives on YouTube, which reward her for taking these kinds of stances. And at this point, it's totally clear to me that these incentives are absolutely at play. When we first covered Sabine, I really wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt because even though there were some troubling signs there, she absolutely can and has done very decent, very good, entertaining explainers on scientific topics.

But unfortunately, the algorithm rewards this other stuff that Kurt Jemangol and Brian Keating and Eric Weinstein does much, much more than that kind of boring stuff. And I see a lot of other science popularizers, science educational channels out there, including physics ones that are very, very good, very, very worthy, in my opinion. Some of them are over my head because they're hard to understand. Some of them are, like at all different levels, they're doing great work, but they don't lean into this conspiratorial, anti-institutional, contrarian, influencer thing. They're nowhere near as successful. And we've seen this pattern with the anti-vax nurse,

Dr. Person, what was his name again, Chris? John Campbell. John Campbell, thank you. He was making very laudable, but yet boring, YouTube explainers about nursing and basic biological, physiological stuff. Then COVID came along, he noticed that the incentives are there and they can create a massive change

in people's behavior because when the clicks and the revenue stream is rolling in there, and this is their job, you know, like this is their main source of income, I'm sympathetic even to that, but The negative effects are also really obvious Well, yeah, though I do think there's also something about the vulnerability of people that go down that rabbit hole because like for example, John Campbell

He was producing useful information to start the pandemic, but he also had various comments which suggested that he was quite sympathetic to creationism. Right? So there often are these signs when you go back and look that the people have these issues and they aren't things that just suddenly emerge from nowhere. There are bad habits in the way that people are responding to things. And then in particular, if you happen to be somebody that responds well or likes attention too much, I think it's a particular vulnerability. Now there's a part, Matt, where Sabine references Professor Deve, but doesn't mention him by Neham. And I think it's worth listening to. Like with this recent episode about Parameter Institute. In his Morgan appearance, Eric

said vaguely he's been visiting some physics institute and giving a talk. Someone leaked later that this was Pyramid Institute and spread a rumor that they didn't want to be associated with him and that they made a deal that Eric would donate money in return. This is all bullshit and if they stopped and thought for a second, they'd have known it's bullshit. This just isn't how seminar invitations work. Also, let me tell you that when I give talks, I frequently do not mention publicly where I'm going for reasons. I also knew that Eric's been giving a bunch of physics lectures in the past years about which you find nothing online, presumably also for reasons. The story from

Pyramid Institute is to my understanding that the person who invited him feared for their career. This tells you how sick this entire community is that people are afraid to do as much as express interest in a new theory. Yeah, so you got the ramp up of rhetoric there. I doubt Sabine that the person who invited Eric is like in danger of losing their career over the invitation. And I will say Matt that someone on our patron who has connections with the Perimeter Institute, I haven't independently validated it, but it sounds reasonable, they mentioned that Eric was invited to the Perimeter Institute, but he wasn't invited to give a

talk. He was attending a conference that was part of a 25th year anniversary celebration of the Institute. He did have a four to five hour informal talk with masters and some PhD students into the evening of the event. So he was there, was invited. So the one bit that I think Sabina's right to call out here is Professor Dave implied that like, the perimeter institute,

they were trying to attract funding from Eric, and that's why they invited him to give this talk in secret. They wanted him to... And that didn't ring true to me. I didn't see good evidence for that. And Sabine here is using that to say, that's not how it works. She has a legitimate critique there. But that was not the only criticism about the way that Eric presents things.

But this is a, so we said at the time, if you make these kinds of accusations, this is the stuff that people will jump onto or Kurt Jemongle being paid to make the video about Eric, which is something Professor Dave said as well. Like I would expect that Kurt or Eric will raise that at some point in the future to undermine the other criticisms. Yeah, I think the lesson here is to don't get ahead of your skis. It's best not to speculate about things like that when you

don't know that it's true. Like you said, it's pretty implausible on the face of it that they were invited in because they were hoping to give a gateway to some sort of funding. Eric is worth that kind of money and it just seems unlikely. Right. And unless you know that's true, then don't claim it. Has he ever done that? No, he's never done that as far as I know. So, and you know, when you get something wrong or get ahead of your skis like that, then of course you may make 10 different criticisms. But if you make ones that is wrong,

demonstrably wrong, then the best way to defend yourself is to ignore the other nine and jump on that one and make as much out of it as you can. Little bit like Sabine was starting to do there at the end. Herself getting a bit over, head of a ski saying that they kept it a secret because they'd lose their jobs if people had found out.

Like everyone who attended would know, so it's not like a big secret, right? I know. They probably just didn't want it to be a big deal for the center, right? They didn't want to be involved in the culture war. And just to mention, for example, there is a person associated with the perimeter

Institute research faculty, Lee Smolin, who has appeared on various videos referring on Brian Kiddin's channel. So I, you know, I don't know, but it's perfectly plausible that that's the person that invited them. I actually, I read a book by Lee Small and once I think yeah, I did It's a very speculative kind of physics, right? So yeah, I can quite well believe so this is contrary to The other thing to you right but like of course like like so being people risk their careers Like yeah, it's it's a massively broad church

There are so many people doing good work, doing bad work, doing speculative work, doing conservative work. There are people that are into crazy alternative theories. There are people who aren't. I think Lee Smollin is one of the ones that's more on the spectrum of quirky, out there stuff. And, you know, that's fine. And again, there's nothing wrong with Eric Weinstein, independently having a bit of an out there theory.

The reason why he comes like is not because of that. It's it's because of the extraordinary claims and how much he rests upon what is of has to be, says herself, a pretty weak, half finished piece of work. That is the only thing as far as we can tell, he's really ever produced over the last 30 years or so. So it's the grandiose claims that he makes about himself and about institutions and the state of science generally. That is what attracts the attention. Yes. Yeah. And, you know, lest we forget, Eric has consistently claimed that various people, you know, he strongly attacks people that are still alive in physics,

presents them as evil gatekeepers, and regularly claims that he invented very influential theories before other people, like the Yang-Mills equation and so on, right? And Sabine just ignores all that. She just treats it like he's just someone developing ideas. Why are you all picking on him? And it's like, if Eric wasn't constantly attacking physicists, constantly attacking scientists and alleging conspiracies, physicists wouldn't be

talking about Eric in general. They're not. That's right. They're talking about him very little. A couple of them, Tim Nguyen and Sean Carroll, because they have some interest in the public discourse, have given him the credit of actually taking a look at how they go. But the vast majority are not attacking Eric. Quite the contrary. Eric is spending his entire career attacking all of them, both collectively and individually. So it's the opposite of subcene framing. Also, the individual that she hosted, that we interviewed, Tim Nooyan, you do recall that Eric presented online, made some accusations that suggested that he was misogynistic,

like potentially attacking his family. He also named him itty Bitty Balls Timmy online. So like, just as you say, it is absolutely the opposite in terms of who is the one bringing the heat and like making it about, you know, personal vendettas. We know that's the Weinstein brothers' modus operandum, but whatever. So now, Matt, I do have two final clips here, just to round things off. And I think these are important. So one is from an episode on Brian Kedeen's channel where Sabine was with Eric and Lee Smolin. And it was about theories of everything and whatnot.

And there was this exchange, right? People clip this online to show like the hypocrisy in her recent position. Well, first, maybe let me make a comment about what Eric just said. He complains that there hasn't been any substantive discussion about geometric unity. I think that's because no one has any idea what you're talking about in the first place. I think you're severely underestimating the communication problem. You have to work much, much harder on that. And yeah, I watched your lecture. And I think that among the half a million people

who watched your video, I'm probably one of those who have a pretty good starting point in understanding what you're even talking about. And even I only have a very vague idea what you're even up to. So that's being, basically, I think, expressing what is very similar to the tenuun and the

physicists have looked at it saying look doesn't do much here it's all very vague don't really understand what we're trying to do here. Yes, yes and you know a lot of a harsher tone there. She sounds much more aggressive than Joan Carroll actually in that exchange but the tone has somewhat changed. Now, the thing that Sabine ends up suggesting, right, to finish this video is the following. In any case, I think what's really happening here is that a lot of people who work in the foundations of physics are very afraid that Eric is exposing how rotten their entire field is. This is why they're trying hard to discredit him. But the truth is that Eric's idea isn't any better or worse

than all the other crap they're working on. The only difference is that he hasn't wasted as much of your tax money on it. That's it for today. No, there's no sponsor on this video, because I don't want to be accused of monetizing a friendship, but please check out my Patreon. Thanks for watching. So, Chris, the they. The they. They are a framework once you've been taken down, whose ideas are too threatening. He's going to expose the whole corrupt ideas are too threatening, he's going to expose the whole corrupt structure of academia. I mean, who's this they? Is it Sean Carroll? I mean, from the title of the video. But who are the physicists that are trying to take down Eric Weitzman? Is it Sean Carroll

and Tim Nguyen? Because I'm not aware of. It's probably them or anybody that's weirded asparagy. But like you say, this is just her slutting in Eric into her grand narrative. She's just using him as a kind of totemic figure to say physics is doing nothing useful and Eric is calling it out and that's why they're attacking him. And we're banging this dead horse like it's lying there, but like, no, that's not they're attacking him. And, you know, we're banging this dead horse like it's lying there. But like, no, that's not why physicists are critical. No, Eric Weinstein is not that he's revealing their grift.

It's that, like she said, there's just nothing there. Right. Like and she wants to draw an equivalence between Eric's theory and all the other stuff in physics. But that's really just like hand waving kind of very subjective, shall we say, assessment of the quality. Because even I understand Eric has just put lots of question mark, question mark, question mark into his paper, such that all the physicists who've commented on that, like the guy that was on Professor Dave Christian Ferco that was talking about it, were astonished at how little there was there.

So is Christian Ferco also part of this secret command? Because he seemed to me just to be like a postdoc that has an interest. And in the case of Tim Nguyen, he did his doctorate on a similar area. So he's a geek and it's a topic he knows something about. He's better qualified to comment on it than even a lot of physicists. So it could be that rather than these, you know, just like three people, rather than, you know, acting point for a grand institutional thing to take Eric down. Maybe they just had the same reaction to Eric's little paper that Sabine herself had. Because that's what it sounds like to me.

That's the more innocent explanation. But of course that's not exciting and does not fit into Sabine's positioning. No. Now the last the last thing, the last clip I'm going to play. Now, it's tempting to highlight the clip of Sabine being argumentative and harsh to Eric and say, look how much has changed. And I do think there is absolutely something to the fact that Sabine over time has become more hyperbolic and more click-baity and more appealing to people like Brian Johnson and Kurt Jemongo and all those kind of thing. I don't think she would have done that before.

So I'm not saying she's in the exact same position she was. But I will say I went back because I knew Sabine had done other videos about Eric and stuff previously. I found a video from five years ago where she talked about Eric and Garrett, Lisi and some other people with theories of everything. Right. And she did express rather similar sentiments. And I think it's worth playing it just to make that point.

Right. So listen to this. This is a video from five years ago. Having said that, what do you think? I think Lisey's and Weinstein's and Wolfram's attempts at the theory of everything? Well, scientific history teaches us that their method of guessing some pretty piece of math and hoping it's useful for something is extremely unpromising. It is not impossible it works, but it is almost certainly a waste of time.

And I have looked closely enough at Lisey's and Weinstein's and Wolfram's and many other people's theories of everything to be able to tell you that they have not convincingly solved any actual problem in the existing fundamental theories. And I'm not interested enough to look any closer because I don't also want to waste my time. But I don't interested enough to look any closer because I don't also want to waste my time. But I don't like commenting on individual people's theories of everything. I don't like it because it strikes me as deeply unfair. These are mostly researchers working alone or in small groups. They are very dedicated to their pursuit and they work incredibly

hard on it. They're mostly not paid by tax money, so it's really their private thing, and who am I to judge them? Also, many of you evidently find it entertaining to have geniuses with their theories of everything around. That's all fine with me. I get a problem if theories that, despite having turned out to be useless, grow to large, tax-paid research programs that employ thousands of people, as it has happened with string theory and supersymmetry and grand unification. That creates a problem because it eats up resources and can entirely stall progress, which is what has happened in the foundations of physics.

People like Lacey and Weinstein and Wolfram at least remind us that the big programs are not the only thing you can do with math. So, odd as it sounds, while I don't think their specific research avenue is any more promising than string theory, I'm glad they do it anyway. Indeed, physics can need more people like them who have the courage to go their own way, no matter how difficult. Yeah, so it's been a consistent view of Ho's for a long time. Very much dislikes that his paradigm flex string theory have gotten so much attention. Like, I think I

basically agree with a large amount of that Chris, right? Because like let a thousand flowers bloom theoretical work, like a pencil and a paper and a computer, it's quite cheap. So, so why on earth shouldn't people I've, I've, I've tried to understand. Oh, what's his name? Wolfram, he created Mathematica. I've tried to understand his thing, you know, on a basic kind of level. It seems really out there and crazy way above my pro-grade to understand. I mean,

all power to him. Like no one's got a problem with someone like him looking into this, just like no one's got a problem with Eric Weinstein as well. So yeah, so it is that point that like she is correct that, you know, there's not an issue with people pursuing their own theories of everything or whatever, you know, like, but there also is a very well-known issue that there are a lot of people who believe that they've developed new theories that would revolutionize physics or biology, that they are essentially Einstein's that are going unrecognized right and that's that's the issue is that those people it's not just that they think that it's often that they

attack others they attack scientists for not recognizing their you know revolutionary theories and so on and she just ignores all of that. All of the stuff that Eric has done to attack institutions, to promote people that are attacking institutions or just the personal self-aggrandizing victim narratives that he wallows in. So if the criticism is, should Eric be allowed

to develop his own theory and make big claims for it? Like, you can do whatever you want, right? Nobody's saying, no, he can't do that. The issue is like all the other stuff around it. And she just doesn't address that. But I do think it's notable that the position that she was presented as like having just developed is actually the same sentiment that she was saying Yes, you know many years ago. So like like again, I don't think it's that she hasn't gone more down the rabbit hole towards

anti-science pandering but I I think that just like I said Previously with other people there are these positions that people have that make them somewhat vulnerable to going farther down that line. And I think her view that essentially all of physics is corrupt. It's all moribund. Nothing useful is happening there or has been happening for decades. She fundamentally agrees with Eric. So she's very sympathetic. And now she happens to be a lot more sympathetic to a whole bunch of fairly anti-scientific contrarians that are active on YouTube.

And they also happen to agree with her about the state of physics. And yeah, I think it'll get worse. It'll get worse like this because the positive reinforcement goes that way. But it is still worth I think for people To go and do these kind of false positives because when I saw the the video of her being fairly hypocritical I was then like, okay, you know, that's quite satisfying to play but I knew she talked about eric So it's like well What did she say before and went and checked and then find this clip which I think is less satisfying But it's it's like, well, what did she say before? And went and checked and then find this clip, which I think is less satisfying, but it's worth doing those kinds of checks

rather than just satisfying dunks. So you can do both, you can play both like we do. But isn't there quite a bit of consistency with all of those takes over the years from Sabine about Aero? Because in all of them, she makes it pretty clear that she doesn't think much of Eric's experience. No, she doesn't think about, she doesn't like theories of everything. No, she doesn't like his. That's right. That was kind of said at every point,

but just like you said, at all points in time too, she does have a big problem with mainstream science, especially physics. And so that makes her sympathetic. And I suppose also being a online influencer person, that is her job now. She, she moves in the same waters as Brian Keating, Kurt Schoenberg, or even Chris Langer, Brian Johnson, and Eric Weinstein. So these are her, these are her people. So, yeah. And the last thing I'll say, she says at various times in this and she says

it and other things that she doesn't spend much time looking at people's content. She doesn't watch things. She doesn't, you know, like this is this very common thing where people are like, I haven't looked into Eric, you know, what he said or whatever. But he's been very nice to me. And And yeah, so there's just like this thing that people do online where they're, you know, they take a very defensive stance, but they actually don't know anything about the content or at least they can retreat to that if they're press. So like, if we were to show Sabine in some venue, a whole bunch of stuff that Eric

said, you know, that is promoting conspiracies or strongly attacking people She would probably say well, I I don't know about any of that I haven't like looked into it and it's it's just a very useful thing to be like Oh, all I care about is the person was nice to me. And that's the main thing. I'm basing this on They're nice to me and I don't like mainstream physicists and that's quite convenient Yeah, it's also a committee to shift between those two positions where on one hand someone like Sabine or Eric for that matter, many of them, are incredibly critical of mainstreaming physics, incredibly critical of stuff like string theory, multiverse theory, what you name it, right?

Really strong and Eric goes as far as to be like really accusing individual people of rampant corruption and conspiracies and all of that stuff But the criticize Eric right and you're like he's He's just a guy doing his best. He's he's working on his theory. How dare you? It doesn't matter how politely one criticizes him I didn't you and I can watch our show and Sean Carroll very polite about it very professional So it seems everything can be criticized except these guys

Yeah Well, yeah, so there we go Matt that's that's been a little trip dying Sevinne Leon, let's see where the road ends up and a couple more years, but um, it's been a mini decoding It's been an hour. That's all you get. That's all you get. That's all you get Yeah, anyway, I'm not liking this little kernel of sort of physics contrarians that is developing I don't think they produce good stuff Kurt Jomonger theories of everything is not something anyone who is serious should be holding out as a great forum of scientific inquiry and debate. And on the other hand,

there is heaps of physics content, educational, popular science content out there that is very worthwhile. Whole bunch of just normal everyday people you've probably never heard of, right, who are not self promoting, narcissistic, grievance mongering, people like this. So um, and you know, Sabine, when she does good work is like those people, but she plays in these waters too, sadly. So anyway, go out and find the good content people enjoy it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's all for us today Decoding overnight done through the warp Okay back to the 10th dimension Bye bye We're the emperor. You