Decoding the Gurus - Special Episode: Interview with Tim Nguyen on Geometric Unity

Episode Date: June 11, 2021

Despite promising to leave Weinstein world for an overdue holiday, Matt and Chris have been lured back by a world shattering theory with a cosmic vision of ultimate unity! We are speaking, of course, about Eric Weinstein's revolutionary theory of everything: 'Geometric Unity'. To help uncover the mysteries embedded deep within this scientific Rosetta stone, Matt and Chris are joined by a special guest Tim Nguyen. Tim is a mathematician and the co-author of a recent paper that tried to mathematically construct and critically assess the theory of Geometric Unity as laid out in Eric's content.Eric has not exactly welcomed the critical feedback and has accused Tim and his co-author, Theo, of having nefarious motives and being very bad guys. So we thought it was worth talking to Tim about their real motivations for the paper, their criticisms of Geometric Unity, and whether they are official DISC agents.Join us as we leap one more time into Weinstein world!Notes provided by TimResponse to Geometric Unity paper by Timothy Nguyen and Theo Polya and corresponding blog post. The paper provides 25 clickable timestamps to Weinstein video segments to let the reader confirm directly the veracity the criticisms. Clubhouse recording with Eric evading questions about Geometric Unity and implying his critics are bad actors.Technical notes on Weinstein’s limited responses: 1) Weinstein confesses on Joe Rogan Episode #1628 that “one of the criticisms is valid but is something that I would have brought up anyways” (see time near 73:30). Correspondingly, in Section 8.2 of Weinstein’s Geometric Unity, he admits that “unfortunately, the author is no longer conversant … and has been unable to locate the notes from decades ago that originally picked out the [Shiab] operator”. The inability to construct the Shiab operator remains a fundamental objection to Geometric Unity. 2) Weinstein says here, the authors misunderstand GU as being chiral. But the objection is that the theory has a chiral anomaly, which is not contingent on the theory being chiral. 3) Weinstein suggests here (and on Joe Rogan) that there is incorrect inference that he is using supersymmetry in 14 dimensions. The interview referenced in the response paper suggests otherwise, where he explicitly mentions supersymmetry.The “sign flip” discussion Nguyen used to deduce that Weinstein does not understand the Seiberg-Witten equations concerns the issue of obtaining a crucial bound on the spinor field (as discussed in the Wikipedia article) needed to obtain compactness. Having the wrong sign makes the entire theory ill-behaved.

Hello and welcome to Decoding the Gurus. It's the podcast where an anthropologist and a psychologist listen to the greatest minds the world has to offer, and we try our very best to understand what they're talking about. I'm Professor Matt Brown, and with me is Dr. Chris Kavanagh. G'day, Chris. How are you doing today? Watcha, watcha. Top of the morning to you, Matt. So, this is another special interview episode, I believe. And would you like to introduce our guest? I will. And I'll just mention that it's on a topic we rarely discuss. These people called the Weinsteins. I'm not sure. People probably aren't familiar with them, but they're big figures online. But we don't have one of them here.

However, we have the next best thing, Tim Nguyen. So Tim is currently an engineer at Google, but previously a mathematics PhD from MIT. And relevant for us, he is the co-author with Theo Poglia, who we'll discuss later, on a response to geometric unity. And this was a paper constructed from Eric's publicly available material where he described his theory of everything prior to his recent release of the paper. I mean, we can get into how the paper came about and the response to it and so on. But hello, Tim, and thanks for joining. Yeah, great to be here. I guess a little bit about me. So I got my PhD in mathematics at MIT in 2011, and it was engaged theory. So basically the same subject that Eric studied at Harvard, and significantly with the same sorts of lineage, because lineage sort of matters a lot in academia. So same's the same style, the same sort of conceptual framework.

Did two academic postdocs, one at the Simon Center for Geometry and Physics, the second one at Michigan State. And then I left academia also unhappy. So actually a lot in common with Eric so far. Changed careers to go into machine learning. I joined a startup and then I joined Google as a machine learning researcher in 2019. And that's where I am right now. Great.

And that's a much better introduction than I did. Thank you. Thank you, Tim. It's funny because while we're talking about academia, technically my title is an engineer, but I like to call myself a researcher, which is actually correct because at Google, the distinction between engineering and research is actually quite blurred. You can be an engineer and be essentially a research scientist or vice versa. But anyways, I can serve as a researcher. Tim, this is a bit of an aside, but you mentioned leaving academia, not particularly happy with it. And it made me think, I believe I've heard that

it can be very, very challenging in disciplines like physics to just it just it just seems to be one of those kinds of fields where it's incredibly difficult for everybody, really, and incredibly competitive. What are your thoughts about that? I mean, that's certainly true. I think certainly theoretical physics is very much like that. I mean, I don't know what the ratios are, but it's probably something on the order of 60 to 1 or 100 to 1 in terms of faculty openings to PhDs. I imagine it's even probably worse than the humanities or not better, certainly. I think math is a little bit better just because in mathematics, every university needs calculus teachers, things like that. So maybe there's a factor of two better, but increasingly it's, it's gotten quite bad where I think in physics, it's not uncommon to do three, maybe even four postdocs before getting on tenure track. I think in math, maybe one, maybe it's one postdoc fewer. So I did two.

So maybe now the standard is to get two postdocs, but yeah, it's, it's, it's very, the bottleneck's pretty severe. It is, yeah. Like I know that from my first postdoc was actually at a mobile robotics laboratory in Japan. And most of us working there did not come through like a robotics pipeline. I came weirdly from psychology and neurophysiology, but many of my colleagues came from a kind of physics track that like you moved sideways i suppose into into a related field yeah matt just to lower the tone when you said that we didn't come from a robotics pipeline i was imagining a futurama production line of robotic humans being piped along so i thought i'd just share that with you that that's the image

that pops to mind. Just to make the metaphor even better, do you know what our mobile robots did? They inspected sewer pipelines. There we go. How about that? Yeah. Okay.

Anyway, enough about me. Yeah. That's just peeling back the layers of the onion one episode at a time. So, Tim, the paper that you made, I think there's an interesting wrinkle about it. We'll get to Eric's response and all that kind of thing in due course. But so if I understand right and correct any of this that I've got wrong, your paper was produced prior to Eric's release on April Fool's Day of his geometric unity. It finally released in multi-decade preparation paper.

But prior to that, he had repeatedly stated that all of the material you needed to understand his theory was available from the presentation he gave at Oxford and various online discussions that he'd given off the talk. So you and your co-author actually did a Herculean task of going through those materials and trying to extract the technical details such that they'd been specified before the paper. So first question, is that accurate about the genesis of the paper? And why were you motivated to do so if that if that is how it came about? Sure. Yeah. I mean, so the the video

in question of the 2013 lecture was released on April Fool's Day, or maybe April 2, technically, I think there was maybe a YouTube mismatch that Eric had in the upload date, but it was April 1st or 2nd on 2020. The video came out, and then finally the paper was released a year later this year, April 1st, 2021. We released our paper last week of February. So certainly it came out before the paper, Eric's paper, that is. And we had started working on it basically towards the end of 2020, start of 2021. I am Theopolia. We were motivated to write this paper actually for several reasons.

One, we had both independently talked to Eric on the Discord. So this was back when Eric was pretty active. I don't know how often he showed up, but let's say like on the order of once or twice a week. And actually just let's just back up even further. I learned about Eric from a fellow coworker at Google. He knew that I didn't have a good time leaving academia. And so he said, Hey, you should check out this episode between Eric and Brett. And I actually, at the time, not being very critical and just accepting whatever I hear, I actually really enjoyed the episode. And I also recall being very surprised when Eric mentioned the separate Whitney equations, because why would I have expected that to come up in a random,

you know, podcast episode, right? And so I instantly felt a kind of, I don't know, bond, if you will, from listening to this podcast. And it was great. I started listening to more. And I also really enjoyed his episodes where he interviewed physicists, Roger Penrose, Garrett Lisi. Because actually, from what I could tell, Eric does a good job talking about math and physics in those podcasts. I didn't hear any mistakes. It was a very enlightening, well-informed discussion. I mean, it wasn't like research material, but it's like, I'm learning stuff. It's not just dull. It's not like too dumbed down.

It's sort of like this very refreshing thing to hear like graduate level mathematics discussed in a podcast because it sort of allowed me a bridge of my former self out in you know the real world anyways so i like it whatever and then i don't know maybe a few months passed by and the same colleague said hey eric is actually showing up on these discord server voice chats maybe you should catch him said oh okay so then at some point i installed the discord app and then i catch him at some point actually even before that I sent him a direct message on Twitter asking him, hey, I'm really a fan of your show. Can you tell me more about the Cybert Whitten equations? Because you said that you had arrived before and I wrote my PhD thesis on them and you have to know more. And I gave him all the benefit of the doubt. I had no reason to think he was lying or whatever, just like I would anyone make. Why would I think you're lying? lying or whatever, just like I would anyone make just why would I think you're lying. And I even said, regardless of the outcome, I'm still a fan of your podcast. Now, of course, this is all true at the time of me writing that it was all very sincere. Anyways, I didn't hear back. Not

surprisingly, this is just a random DM on Twitter. Then not having heard back, I joined the discord server. At some point, I catch him on the Discord in September. And so that was when I first spoke to Eric. It was basically two occasions. It was the first time and the second time. And just to summarize that, I introduced myself. He said he met my advisor, in fact. He knew who he was, said he was brilliant. Tom Rothka, by the way. And anyway, so the summary of that was I walked away realizing actually there's very little chance that Eric discovered the Seiberg-Whitney equations. The stuff that Dan Gilbert went in depth about, the portal dynamics is basically all completely true. And I'm the mathematician that he referenced there about the sign flip.

I'm actually very impressed that Dan actually remembered the precise detail of that question. precise detail of that question. So anyway, so I walked away leaving very discouraged and frustrated, because Eric was pulling his usual sort of obfuscating tactics, not answering questions directly. Almost everyone else in that room was not a qualified math or physics person. And so, so Eric was just sort of spewing these analogies, basically in bad faith, because he has a theory of everything that he hasn't written up. why is he wasting his time explaining gauge theory to people who don't even understand calculus right and it was just a very weird dynamic that's just not something you would be doing if you're like a serious scientist um so i just walked away from that discouraged and just like okay i'm gonna move on with my life whatever but because of that interaction dan was there are other people but they said hey since

you're like a math physicist guy you should like meet these other people that's how i got interested dan and and theocolia my co-author for the paper so that's how i got in this in this circle of people and actually the reason we wrote the paper was that a few months later so dan went on your your show right and then i realized wait a minute there's actually a platform for sharing these whatever stories or just calling people out, whatever you want to call it. And since Dan was able to do it in his way, it occurred to me that, wait a minute, since I studied the cyber equation, that I actually could take it one level further. It might make sense for me to start thinking about that. And then Theo was also interested as well. And then we started

discussing all the various avenues. We actually thought that, so writing a paper was not the first thing on our mind. We were just trying to think, okay, whatever, should we make a YouTube video? Should we just email Brian Keating and say, hey, this guy that you're interviewing, he doesn't know what he's talking about. We thought maybe Brian Keating was just, since he's an astrophysicist, he doesn't know mathematical gauge theory. Maybe he's just being legitimately conned. So Brian Keating is the professor who's been hosting Eric with Geometric Unity for many episodes and entertaining it. So anyways, we ran from like all the kinds of list of things that we might try to do and just writing a paper, it ended up being the most sensical thing because if we email someone as two nobodies then

like why would they take us seriously we just thought the paper just writing a solid paper would be the thing we could do and this was towards the end of 2020 then at the start of the year we just hunkered down said all right let's do it let's watch the video together as needed then spent once or twice a week going through it together then towards then after going through it a few times and thinking about it, I was the first to identify that there was a problem with the Shiav operator. And then things just started piling up from there. So we have four total objections. The Shiav operator was the undoing and still remains the biggest undoing of geometric unity. And so we wrote the paper

and we released it in February. And there's actually an interesting issue with the release that we can get to. I've spoken for a bit, but yeah, there's more details about some of the obstacles with the release we can talk about. But that's the backstory behind the inception of the response in Geometric Unity. That's great, Tim. And there's a bunch of details I want to pull a bit on there before we move on. But some things that struck me is first as you mentioned there's the connection

that you actually are one of the figures that dan outlined in the previous interview when we were talking about the discord dynamics with eric so it's interesting that you are one of the characters that were central referenced in that and then also the fact that in er Eric's world, there's an array of forces arranged against him, which are hell-bent on taking him down. And I think he's subtly hinted, at least the way I read his threads, that our podcast exists purely to destroy him. And the unfortunate thing is, you mentioned the interview with Dan helped inspire your paper. It's in some sense supporting that theory. So we legitimately may be Eric's desk. Like this random podcast is the ground institution slamming him down.

But the other thing that struck me, and I think this is really important to emphasize, But the other thing that struck me, and I think this is really important to emphasize, because like you, I would even say, while I was skeptical of Eric, maybe a bit earlier, I regarded Eric as the most intellectually capable member of the intellectual dark web and the strangest character that seemed to have interests that extended beyond the typical culture war topics and to be a potential intellectual powerhouse in really you mean even above jordan peterson and sam harris yes because i basically had spent very little time with eric's content until the portal came out but when i saw some interview with eric jordan and i think brett and it was on Dave Rubin. And Eric's kind of discallop of economics term and physics terms. And when you first encounter it, it's quite persuasive. And he seems to, like you intimated, he can talk the talk to an extent where it's not just garbled nonsense. It is real reference to actual economic theory and physics theories and

so on. So initially I had a relatively positive opinion, except for the teal connection, right? That immediately raised red flags. But then as I spent any amount of time with Eric's content, I think the mask quickly peels away. But the point I wanted to emphasize, and I think it's important, is that you started out sympathetic to his position and actually in favor of what he was trying to do. The whole idea of the portal is supposed to be that you'll introduce these voices who have been sidelined from the mainstream, from academia, and introduce people to an alternative source for interesting ideas. And I think it's worth noting that now, since your paper has come out and how things progressed on the Discord, that you're now seen as somebody who is fundamentally unsympathetic to Eric's agenda.

And in many respects, you're now a villain in his cast of characters that are aligned against him. And it's just interesting how far that is from the reality. It seems like there was a lot of good faith and even scope now, I think, that if Eric engaged with the criticism in a meaningful way that you and Theo have produced, I get the impression that you guys would welcome proper interaction, even though your criticisms

are quite deep about his theory. So is that accurate? Or is it not at the stage where you essentially regard Eric as irredeemable charlatan? Like, where are you at this? Yeah, I mean, that's, that's a great great question because among the many things we can dive into the broader context of your question is how do we view our quote-unquote enemies you know by enemies i mean in an intellectual sense not in any militaristic sense or anything like that but all the criticisms we're going to talk about in terms of eric or you know brian keating you know none of Eric or Brian Keating, none of this is personal, right? I mean, all of this is purely at the level of ideas. And as much as we might get snarky or whatever, that's part of the banter, part of theatrics.

But at the end of the day, we're interested in the ideas. And in my case, if Eric wanted to have a civil conversation and shake hands and talk about math and science proper, I would be more than happy. math and science proper, I would be more than happy. And even more, I would be happy if Theo and I were wrong. Because if we are wrong, and Eric is right, then there's much more to gain from a new theory of physics than my bruised ego. So I would be happy to be wrong. Unfortunately, I just don't see. I'd say I think it's more likely than that our criticism is correct, then Eric has something he's hiding that's going to change the world of physics can i ask one thing as well so there's the context here i which i think the there's two things that are worth mentioning so your expertise is in mathematics right i don't know the cyber written equations but i know it's connected to physics but theo his expertise is in

physics is that right that's right so so I have a PhD in math I do have a background in physics and as much as I studied quantum filter I've written papers on it but you know in terms of like ratios though my stronger advantage is in mathematics and Theo's PhD is in is in physics and I also want to highlight at this point because this is all well known I think to all of the people in this discussion, but for people listening, maybe not, that Theo Poglia is a pseudonym. Your co-author is pseudonymous. And this has been a point that Eric has grasped onto to infer that there is something malevolent, potentially a cabal of people who have PhDs intent on taking him down. So the response that he has

issued to your paper has been the way I would characterize it is as character assassination. He includes you whenever he's talking about a kind of unspecified group of malevolent forces, talking about a kind of unspecified group of malevolent forces. But those malevolent forces he intimates are misogynistic, making threats towards his family and in general, a kind of 4chan group online. Sorry, before before you go, Eric, I was actually wondering specifically when we'll hear like a debate with you and CEO and Timothy about sorry who's Theo Timothy and Theo they put out their retort to sorry who's Theo yeah Theo Pollya in Timothy I'm not aware of Theo Polly where do you know who Timothy Wynn is let's talk about the

opal you who's the opal yeah he's the co-op yeah who is he I don't know that that wasn't the question though that is the question you know the question was no that is the question you're can't just bully me. I've never heard in the history of physics anybody expecting to be taken seriously as an anonymous critic. two or more, including various misogynistic comments against my colleagues, disrespecting Sabina Hossenfelder, who, while she may be a critic, is also a friend of mine. I'm fucking sick of these two people, assuming it is two people. Maybe it's... But we don't know what theopolia is. Maybe it's, but we don't know what theopolia is. And so I want to give you space to respond to any of that.

But in particular, the issue, I'm wondering if you think there is any concern with having the co-author remain anonymous. And then the second point about, are you a misogynist? But I just, I want to highlight that that is how eric has characterized you you two and your response to that or how you felt being publicly identified as that because eric has quite a big platform yeah i mean i was appalled you know i i was appalled more for eric than for me just because i felt it was so over the top. And I think I have enough of

a profile that I'm probably immune to that, especially because he implicated that I was misogynistic towards Sabine specifically, who is like the worst choice of target because she's the one hosting the blog post of our paper released. And I interviewed her at Google. So I don't, the blog post of our paper released and I interviewed her at Google. So I don't, I find that the most strange choice of person to target. She is a physicist just to mention for in case anybody who doesn't know. She's a well-known physicist, has a popular blog and certainly her blog posting legitimized our critique even more and brought it greater visibility. The funny thing is some of my friends

were a little like, hey, maybe you might want to take some legal action or something. But actually, I don't think he actually legally slanderizes us. He just sort of says, oh, these guys are associated with people that are this. And so if we were to be really litigious, it wouldn't hold up in a court of law, I think. But not that I would necessarily pursue that anyways. But I just sort of, I think to the extent that it was intentional a clever sleight of hand where you can dodge the bullet by just substituting the two of us for another group and just keep going down that rabbit hole without ever going back to the original topic yeah definitely and that you noticed that as well but well this is a pattern not just with eric but with related gurus that they are quite good at hedging their language. So as to imply quite extreme things without actually saying it explicitly.

And it feels like the audience gets the message loud and clear, but they're not actually held to something. Right. You know, as far as I can tell, Eric has, has never mentioned my name. He's only harping on Theo because he's the anonymous one. But, you know, for example, in the video, someone asked, what about Timothy? And Eric said, I want to talk about Theo. The funny thing is he's talked to both of us. You know, it's Theo's assertion that Eric knows who Theo is just based on some contextual clues and things like that. Theo has a different username on Discord,

and he interacted with Eric with that username. And the evidence is that Eric is aware of that connection, but is kind of pending otherwise. He certainly knows who I am, but he sort of refuses to acknowledge me. And I suppose we can speculate as to why, but he has not mentioned me by name at all in this whole thing, which is kind of strange because he keeps talking about pseudonymity,

but that only applies to half of the co-authors. What about the other co-authors? His version of why that's legitimate is that if he highlights the people that are making the critiques, that this is your goal, you want him to mention him on his podcast or so on, like you're doing your critique for the... No, no, you're not. I'm going to mute you if you're doing your critique for the in in no no you're not it I mean you don't keep it up all right you're now I think you're not doing what I'm saying standards and we don't allow anonymous people to pull

bullshit like this we don't allow people in general to go around making a name for themselves by being obnoxious, misogynistic, manipulative. It's fucking enough. And this isn't very high quality critique. So my feeling about this is we can talk about this some other way, but the key feature of this little drama is to try to get me to mention their server. And the whole way we got started was the people on an informal server that was set up for me that we should not tolerate bad behavior in our colleagues. And so when we kicked out a bunch of these people, you got something like, you know, the archive meets 4chan.

And 4chan is not going, 4chan doesn't have a future in science. May I jump real quick, please? Actually, I'm kind of irritated. Like, I'm here on stage and people, yeah. But, like, I don't want to be subjected to this. For me, that's his legitimation as to why I think avoids mentioning people by name. So, last point about this specific thing.

So, why did Theo choose to be an ally? I mean, there's lots of reasons i can imagine is there a particular reason that you know he just didn't want the personal attention for this or yeah basically he doesn't want the attention you know where he is in his his career and things like that he's still uh so he's not an academic he left after you got his phd you know if you're on the job market if you're looking to grow in your career and maybe there's the small chance that someone googles you and sees that you're part of this nonsense and that yeah yeah the chance that that might negatively impact you he just doesn't want to take risk so that's the reason yeah that's entirely understandable

that's the reason yeah me i feel you know much more secure in where i am and yeah yeah now that's a genuine issue actually i just wanted to make one more point because we might forget it and I thought it was very interesting and ironic so if you actually listen to that video with Eric and Brian Keating he mentions that someone asked about a paper being released oh if a paper wasn't put out it was rejected from the archive so actually I only mentioned it once in a clubhouse room that it was rejected from the archive and I guess Eric has the ears of the spies to have learned that and unfortunately tried to mislead and weaponize it against us great so sorry no no no so there is a paper that was put out rebutting geometric unity right no there wasn't a paper that was put out rebutting geometric unity. There was an attempt to publish something on the archive, which was rejected, that attempted to get in front of the draft that I put out.

So here's an interesting thing about the release of the paper. So we released it on Tuesday on my WordPress through Twitter, but it was supposed to be released through the archive, which we sent to the archive over the weekend. And it was actually rejected. And we were very disappointed. Maybe just to explain to everyone, the archive is this preprint server where people can upload papers that are not yet peer reviewed. There's still a light moderation system in that either you're at a university or you need some kind of sponsorship if you're not. And in my case, I've already have published papers on the archive. So that wasn't an issue. So we uploaded the paper, and the rejection came back saying that the content wasn't suitable, like a very short, one-line kind of thing. The explanation was that this was not publishable content,

something like that, very vague and short. We thought that was ridiculous because it's a preprint service. So the point is that these papers aren't yet published. And if you look at the scope of things that are on the archive, there's lecture notes, there's memoirs, there's all kinds of things which wouldn't be in a journal. So just straight up, that was not an honest answer. And of course, we read between the lines. The problem was that we're responding to content that is of, you know, very minimal scientific value, certainly in terms of its format, right? You're responding to this video of this guy. So we were very disappointed and we relayed this to Sabine Hassenfeller. She also wrote to the archive in our behalf.

We also wrote back with this very long explanation of, oh, but look at all this stuff that's going on on YouTube, Brian Keating, bringing on all these physicists to discuss it. This really about informing the public, blah, blah, blah. And they still responded with the one line.

This time I wrote like this really long rebuttal. And their response, again, was, if you get it published in a journal, we might consider it for the archive. So we were just, wow, really disappointed. And that's why we released it on Twitter. But the reason I also wrote this, not only because it's an interesting story, but really shame on the archive. I really do want to publicly shame the people who did this. I mean, they're not referees. The moderators do say that they're not referees. They didn't referee the paper, of course, because they did it in such a short amount of time. They couldn't have read our paper and Eric's YouTube. But in terms of

like, it was really ironic about the stories that Eric keeps complaining about the suppression, the disc, blah, blah, blah. But the response to his work is it's with itself a form of suppression not because there was some earth shattering stuff to be suppressed but because the thing that it was critiquing was not even worth critiquing in the eyes of the the moderators right um but this becomes this kind of weird vicious circle where if you can't debunk something because it's not worth debunking if it has enough of a large following then how do you debunk something because it's not worth debunking. If it has enough of a large following, then how do you debunk it in the first place? So I'm really upset about the whole situation. I'm glad that basically the situation has corrected itself, but there would be more of a stamp of

legitimacy if it were on the archive. It's a very strange thing because there are standards for publishing the preprint servers, but they're relatively minimum. That's right. And in my experience, I don't want to get conspiratorial because that would contradict the whole point. But if Eric's characterization was correct, this should be what the disk agents love, right? That there's a teak down of his theory which is going to upset things and it can be easily legitimized or you know get a little bit more of legitimacy anyway by being hosted on this pre-print server and and it it doesn't right so it kind of contradicts that narrative and then you also have the issue that eric has reeled against the need to publish like and he's even specifically said you know pre preprint servers are also

too much of a bar to entry because you have to have an association with a university or get somebody to vouch for you. So the fact that he would then switch to say, oh, that paper, which wasn't even accepted on a preprint server. Exactly. It just shows you how much bad faith he is when he cherry picks how to use you know using the same argument but in contradictory way you shouldn't have to publish on the archive or the archive is a sign of approval yeah that's that's interesting so uh yeah thanks for flagging that up yeah i'm gonna put that in before we forget that so that that was really one sort of a the first dramatic moment of our process of getting our response paper out there. I might change gears a little bit. I thought it might

be useful to just ask a few sort of general questions about unified theories of physics, how many of them are floating around out there, what are the big stumbling blocks and where Eric's idea fits into all of that. And another related question is a more specific one is just to ask whether or not his paper that came out after yours, whether any extra information in that, did that clear anything up or did it change your view at all? Yeah, sure. So let's see. So yeah, so my background is much more in mathematics and less in physics, but, you know, I'll explain what I know. So in terms of theories of physics, right, so I guess most people know that there's two large pillars of physics. There's quantum mechanics. The physics is very small.

And then there's general relativity, sort of the physics of the very big gravity and what Einstein has, one of the great contributions from Einstein. And sort of the Holy Grail, one of the Holy grails of modern physics is to try to unify the two. There's sort of two senses of unification. So there's that sense of unification, which is, you know, a holy grail of physics. But there's also another sense of unification, which is also, you know, important, but not quite the same. So there's something called the standard model of particle physics. So there's four forces in nature. There's gravity, there's electromagnetism, there's the weak force, and there's the strong force. And famously, the standard model encompasses three out of the four. It doesn't encompass gravity. There still remains to be a unified theory of physics because our basic theory of particle physics doesn't include gravity.

And so how this ties into unification is that one another way you can think of unification is how to unify the other three forces you know ideally with gravity but you could also talk about just the weak the strong and the electromagnetic and and that has to do with gauge theory essentially so the sense in which how does this relate to geometric unity so for geometric unity to be a theory of everything so to speak it could try to do so in uh at least in the sense that the word is used it could do so in in either of those two ways to unify say the the weak the strong and the electromagnetic or and if it were more, it could also unify it with gravity. But certainly one thing that it should do is it also needs to incorporate quantum mechanics.

And so that's the sense in which if Eric is going to call geometric unity a theory of everything, it should do that. It certainly falls short of that, and we can go into the details. it certainly falls short of that and we can we can go into the details what Eric sketches out or claims at least in his his work that you know he has these equations and from those equations you're supposed to get the Einstein equations which is gravity the Dirac equation which is going to give you electromagnetism and and the Yang-ills equation, which gives you the strong and weak force. I mean, those aren't mutually disjoint, but that, you know, just to give a kind of a superficial description. So from his equations, you're supposed to pop out these famous equations that are involved in these different forces.

The thing is that he doesn't succeed or he just has many gaps. It's actually quite amazing how tenuous the connection is between his work and what he claims. I mean, a much more scientifically honest title or whatever would just talk about, you know, some of the geometric structures that he proposes en route to that big program. You know, scientists, of course, should be very modest or appropriate when titling their papers, right? And so most scientific papers present an idea partially fleshed out even towards a bigger program. So, you know, so unifying physics is a very big program that's been going on for decades, right? And so the fact that geometric unity has a hint of trying to get there, to say that that warrants calling it a theory of everything is

is a huge huge stretch that no serious mathematician or physicist would take seriously so you know in some sense already off the bat you can already smell something's funny because there's such a a large disconnect between what's actually done and what's actually promised or named yeah and we can go into the details of that but that's sort of how this how this ties up i think that's really useful context i mean my knowledge of this stuff is obviously at the level of reading popular books about physics and so on but even from that i get the impression which you can correct for me if needed that this is the grand dream of theoretical physics. And the context here, of course,

is there's been lots of things proposed, hasn't there? String theory and all kinds of modifications, which don't quite work. And the impression I get is that there are thousands of brilliant people coming up with ideas and making various attempts to do something similar in theoretical physics, but obviously none of them has worked yet. So partially sketched out ideas where you make a couple of interesting connections, but there are lots of gaps and it doesn't really do

much. They're kind of a dime a dozen. Would I be wrong in making that assumption? I'm not on top of the number of proposals to theories of everything. Actually, it's interesting. For example, one of the people that Eric interviews is Garrett Lisi, and he's famous also for having proposed a theory of everything. I forget the exact date, but sometime in the 2000s, I think 2006, that was a graduate student at MIT at the time. The title of his paper that he put on the archive was an exceptionally simple theory of everything. And that's a pun on the fact that there are things in

mathematics called Lie groups, and they can be classified in terms of these so-called simple types. And E8 is one of these most exotic ones. And he wanted to embed all these different forces, all these different symmetry groups inside E8. And E8 is one of these exceptionally, exceptionally groups. So that's, it's sort of a pun, exceptionally simple theory of everything. Actually quite a, there was a non-trivial number of people that took it seriously, or at least saw that there was content to it. I don't know if it lived up to its title, but for example, a mathematician named David Vogan, a professor at MIT, I believe took it seriously or invited him to give a talk

or hosted a workshop, something like that. But my impression is there was content there, whether it actually leads you through everything is an independent thing. But, you know, many times in science and mathematics, you know, you might not solve the problem you set out to do, but there's still some germs of some ideas, right? And my impression is there was some construction there. Now, it was sort of, I mean, it had of, it had flaws, but it was at least, and it was certainly put forward in a proper paper, right? So there are many attempts like this. But it's, by comparison, though, geometric unity,

it almost doesn't, it doesn't even meet the bar of a properly written paper. It almost doesn't, it doesn't even meet the bar of like a properly written paper. So there's, yeah, it's very low on the totem pole in terms of serious proposals. Yeah, so there seems to be a big disconnect between the kind of grandstanding that I've seen from Eric on this point. This seems to play an important role in his image and his public presentation, which is that of a brilliant genius physicist, among other things, that is unrecognized by a system that is dominated by a crushing orthodoxy that cannot encompass new ideas such as his. So I guess, you know, perhaps it'd be helpful for you to just spell out what you see are those main issues with geometric unity. I think you've already talked about a couple of them. You've mentioned it kind of falls at the first hurdle in terms of not even clearly explaining what the proposal is, but I think there are a few more specific criticisms as well. but I think there are a few more specific criticisms as well. So in our paper, we highlight four. Yeah.

And I've already mentioned one of them, this, I think maybe this, this SHIOP operator. So, so I guess I can give maybe a high level overview of those objections. So they come in various types. So just maybe at a high level, things can be flawed for either mathematical reasons or physics reasons by physics reasons. I mean if your theory makes a prediction and the theory and experiments are otherwise, then that's the theory might have been right. But but, you know, it just didn't get confirmed by experiments. It's not like a logical contradiction. Right. But a mathematical mistake is much more serious. Right. Because that means you can't even logically construct what you're trying to do. is much more serious, right? Because that means you can't even logically

construct what you're trying to do. So in the course of writing Geometric Unity, finding the Shia operator not being definable was sort of the nail in the coffin, so to speak. And then we found the subsequent other ones just to flesh out more things. But at the highest level, there is the Shia operator,

which you could read the paper to go into the details, but Eric tries to construct it and can't. Actually, what happened was, watching the video, he gets to the point where he talks about it. And then I just had to do some inferential stuff about what he said and realized, OK, if I actually take him by his word, what he says here, this just can't be right. And actually, this was vindicated because in his paper release, he says very clearly, and this is also in my tweet in the response to his paper on April 1st, he says he no longer knows how to construct the Shia operator. He openly admits that he no longer knows how to do it, which is a very strange thing to do when you're so aggressive promoting your theory of everything to admit that you no longer know how to do it. So in some sense, he agrees with us. to admit that you no longer know how to do it. So in some sense, he agrees with us. And if you look at the Joe Rogan show, the only response he makes to our paper was, he says there were three points,

there were actually four, but he says there were three. He says two of them are inferential. They're not what I'm doing. And then one, he says, there's one objection, but I would have said it anyways. So it was just a very strange reply. But in some sense, he's actually not being dishonest, because we said you can't construct the Shia vibrator. He admits it in his paper and he re-admits it on the Joe Rogan show. So I don't know. I'm kind of meandering here, but I don't even know why there's anything to be discussing

at this point because he's already admitted he doesn't know what he's doing. I like listening to alternate theories, but I don't like when theories are rebutted and then there's no counter-argument. And I'm not, I don't care if they're awful people, because if they are, they are. I'm sorry that this is happening to you and that they're being awful. I'm really sorry for that. But looking strictly at the actual mathematics of it, I just want more. Like you talk about the Shiav operator, but you just say if it can be so defined in the paper. And I just want more like, like you talk about the shiab operator, but you, you just say, if it can be so defined in the paper. And I, like, I just, there's nothing, there's nothing for me to really sink my teeth into

when I'm trying to parse this paper. I think probably like some of the listeners, like the, and you, you don't need to get into it, Tim, because I imagine that it requires like some degree of technical competence, but it sounds to me like the shiab operator is a core component of the theoretical model he wants to build. And that if you can't construct that or mathematically justify what you've done there, the rest of it doesn't matter because it's a fundamental pillar for to build everything else on that's right top off that's right so it's uh maybe maybe from eric's perspective this is me just widely speculating but he he might see something like uh darwin had evolutionary theory before we understood genetics right really he came

up with a the theory and then later there were people that were able to flesh out the the specifics and rebuild from his high level uh concepts although of course in the case that's the somewhat the cartoonish version of dorman because the reality is he spent like decades getting tons of material together to prove his his his theory so he he didn't just have a bright idea and do no work to prove it. A lot of time with muscles and whatnot. But yeah, so I heard Eric actually on the Portal episode

where he was, I think this was when he released the video for Geometric Unity that you took a look at, that he basically intimated, he wants to start a new paradigm in physics that like there's newtonian physics there's einsteinian physics and now there will be weinsteinian physics and and it was very clear that he was upset that he may potentially not get the like the acknowledgement with having his name attached to this new era of physics, because he wasn't credited with the Seiberg-Witten equations.

But also, I think he's talked about the Yang-Mills equations and intimated some knowledge of them as well. But how about that? How about the idea that, let's say, if he grants you the SHIEB operator, that yes, he's forgotten this, this crucial component. Is there enough, like, is that such a flaw that all physicists will be like, then you can, or are there people like Brian, people who may say, well, yes, that's a, that, but the rest of it is still interesting. That's a great question because you make a very valid point. And of course,

Eric tries to use it to his advantage that he keeps saying that all theories come out malformed. Dirac said that you shouldn't rely on experiment necessarily because the experiment might be falsified, things like that, but not to go into that kind of reasoning, which can be very poorly applied in this case. So I want to say several things. We did have four objections. So if you don't like that one, you could also go and pick the other ones, which are also really bad. The thing is, and this is, of course, a judgment call in terms of requiring the expertise of the aesthetics to know when something is worthy or not. But if something is wrong and worth pursuing, there's usually good reasons, right? Because there's sort of some germs of good ideas. There is an indication that it solves new problems that

weren't solvable before in the old framework. Things start to align, right? But if you just sort of assert something and it's wrong for a simple reason, then its wrongness doesn't indicate, there's nothing that wrongness gives you any insight upon. And I feel the Shia operator is exactly of that sort. And, you know, I was actually looking at Eric's GU paper a little bit more closely again today. And it's sort of sad how many qualifications he keeps making about his isolation and and things like that it's like if someone were actually it's so strange because he takes himself so seriously outside his paper and then he takes himself less seriously in his paper by making these qualifications because if he genuinely believed he had ideas that are worth pursuing even

if they were flawed or whatever then he should present it and he could and should present it in such a way that it's like, oh, I'm passing to you the baton and someone else could take. But he, for example, he has that disclaimer that says he's a entertainer, not a physicist, and that it's copyrighted and that it can't be built upon. I mean, that already is such the most bizarre thing I've ever seen. So it just kind of shows you even at a superficial level that there isn't really much. He does have a lot of these mathematical ingredients that one hasn't seen before. But to the extent that there's anything salvageable there, it's certainly not clearly presented. And certainly there's just enough flaws that

any hope of it being close to what it promised is just completely obliterated by now. Well, the thing I would want to mention to that is like, to some extent, the people responding to the paper, and especially the people that are, you know, positively disposed to Eric, they're kind of acting as if the community is obliged to take seriously any suggestion, right? Like that people should take time to look at this. And, you know, your response from the preprint server might suggest otherwise, but I mean, there is no obligation, right? Like if you can't, as you said, if your theory doesn't produce new results, if it has fundamental

flaws in there, yes, people are not going to devote time and effort, generally speaking, to working it out. And the insertion of disclaimers that this is work of entertainment and that kind of thing, yeah, it's a weird hybrid that it does end up... It's kind of thing. Yeah. Like it's a weird hybrid that it, it does end up, it's kind of hard to discuss because do you regard this as like a self-promoting publicity stunt? Do you regard it as like an earnest effort to outline a theoretical theory? And like to give

Eric some credit, like the credit I think he deserves for this, he wrote it down, right? That people were asking him to do that. It seems like for decades, at least since, you know, 2013 or wherever, when he gave the talk at Oxford, people said, yeah, I know it might be interesting, write it down. Like, let's see the theory. And it's took him however long to actually write it down. He now has it down in the form that it is. And, you know, I would say the response to it has been fairly muted, except yourself. And I made this point on the Clubhouse the other day, but I think that the people who have engaged the most directly

with the components of Eric's theory on a technical level are you and Theo. You wrote a paper and you did, in a sense, what Eric asked for. Engage with the theory, highlight what technical issues are. And then, you know, he can dismiss people like us as low quality, like bobblehead Internet commentator. as low quality, like bobblehead internet commentator. You know, we are psychologists and anthropologists and we claim no mathematical expertise, but you and Theo, regardless if he agrees with the criticisms or not,

you engaged what seems to me like earnestly and that the response was to just completely dismiss you and kind of chastise the community for not taking it more seriously. So I find that really disheartening. And I think his community must notice that to some extent, because I don't know if you saw, but on the Reddit, where it kind of justified the lack of episodes to the portal, to your paper and various critics criticizing him. Did he say that? He implied that he's not producing new episodes of the portal because there's a cadre of PhD students and academics

who are hell-bent on criticizing them. So you're certainly within that category and the reddit but the reddit to their credit i was quite impressed we're basically saying this like you know he's he's going on other podcasts and like why wouldn't he just respond to them so i think there's an extent you know members of adults do see through it but um i i realize this is one of those it's more of a comment than a question things that academics academics do but uh yeah i it's the response is disappointing brian keating i figured that you've mentioned a kind of relatively popular physics uh promoter

online and also it should be said somebody who produces videos for prager university or has done so there's there's certainly issues there but um he he joined with eric in essentially well let's set them aside because they you know their critique is in bad faith and i just thought that's a shame know, if they can't deal with the objections that you have in your paper, even if they don't like you as a people, as you know, on a personal level, we don't want to talk to Tim and Theo, fine.

But they could just rebut, he could just rebut the argument. So first, I didn't actually know who they were until after I tried to read your paper. And I tried to parse through and understand what you were talking about with the Shia operator stuff. And then I found out who they were. And then I found out that there was no discussion between... And there's been no private or public, I haven't heard of any way of coming back and arguing against their critique. And I'm not

saying that it's them in particular. I don't care about these- Who's Theopolis? No, you're not understanding me yet. I'm not putting up with misogyny. I'm talking about the math, Eric. I'm not putting up with threats against my family. You shouldn't. I'm not putting up

with any of the stupid shit that that server engages in. Capisce? Great. Am I clear? I agree. You should not be subjected to any character assassination. You should not be subjected to threats. That's bullshit. I think we can all agree with that. I'm talking strictly about the mathematics. No, I'm talking strictly, and I said something to you. Rape jokes aren't funny. Are we clear?

Who thinks they're funny? I agree. That server. Great. So they shouldn't be listened to. But there's still a mathematical problem. No, I don't deal with that server. You're not understanding me repeatedly. I don't deal with people from that server. Okay, then just talk to me about your theory. I want to know if there's like... So is there going to be a follow-up? That's the first question. I mean, I'm following it up. It's such a pity on so many levels. I mean, so prior to the response paper, there were only basically a handful of people that could assess Eric's work. I think I probably underestimate how particular my and Eric's knowledge is with gauge theory.

But I'm sure in your fields too, when you do a PhD, you become the expert in your topic. And there's maybe only a dozen or two dozen other people that are really well-versed in it, at least by only spending a reasonable amount of time going through it. Right. And so I happened to be one of those people. Right. And actually, yeah, I didn't mention earlier, but I felt also it was like my moral obligation to write this up because if I don't do it nobody else will and and in that regard i think brian keating is certainly guilty of i think building up the hype around geometric unity by having these puppet physicists go up who of course are distinguished

physicists but they don't have quite the right background to to challenge eric on this and to make it look like there's like a real controversy. And the irony is now when someone with the exact right background to comment on it does so, they're not interested in having a conversation. I mean, I don't have to be a part of the conversation, but the topic should be part of the conversation and they're not interested in the topic either. So that's certainly very disappointing. I guess to a large degree, Eric does believe in himself and does believe that he is onto a theory of everything that will revolutionize physics. But the more cynical part of me believes that this entire thing is largely performative. His identity is strongly grounded in presenting himself as an exiled genius. And geometric unity,

just like with his brother, who has revolutionary ideas about evolution that are also unrecognized by the field, you know, these claims play a big role in bolstering their public persona. So it doesn't surprise me at all, frankly, that any good faith engagement, critical engagement, actually treating these proposals with the respect that they're asking for would be rebutted in such an aggressive fashion. They don't exist for that purpose. They exist for the purpose of buttressing their image. Yeah. And I think maybe this is a good point to talk about Brian Keating because he's a mysterious figure in all of this. I don't know the man, the purpose of buttressing their image. Yeah. And I think maybe this is a good point to talk about Brian Keating because he's a mysterious figure in all of this. I don't know the man

personally, just like I don't know Eric personally, but from what I can see, he's a legitimate and accomplished scientist. He's a distinguished professor of astrophysics. I made sure to read the book, his book, Losing the Nobel Prize. I forget the exact title, but it's about astrophysics, his journey through it and how the things he worked on took him on the path to a Nobel Prize, but then things didn't work out. First of all, the book's well-written. It's good humor and personal touch, but also in a scientific sense in that I think he did a really great job explaining the physics, that fine line between not dumbing down things too much, but also giving you some real substance, talking about the Big Bang, inflation, things like that. So the long story short is I feel that the man who wrote that book,

the Brian Keating who wrote that book, is a proper scientist and shows the nuance of controversy and difficulty in science. That Brian Keating is not the same Brian Keating that is subservient to all of Eric's temper tantrums and things like that. And I think that's a really interesting question that I don't really understand. If I'm going to speculate, there must be some personal connection that they have. Eric claims that his family deserves three Nobel Prizes himself for the Cyborg-Whitney equation. Then there's Brett with the whole Carol Brider affair. And I guess the third one must be his wife. And Keating has a book about losing the Nobel Prize, right? But there's a big difference because Keating goes into very close detail about all the nuances. There's something called

inflation for explaining how the Big Bang happened. And one of the big projects that Keating worked on was to discuss these so-called B-mode polarization, these B-mode polarizations that are supposed to validate inflation. So it would be like one of these discoveries of the century where you can actually see like the fingerprint of the big bank. When the press release came out about this big discovery that they had found these B-modes, he was basically slighted. His contribution was mentioned in a footnote. He was marginalized. So he was upset about that. But then the second reason why there wasn't a Nobel Prize was because basically the results were invalidated later that year with some more precise measurements. So that's what happened with that project. But the point I want to emphasize is that

he writes an entire book going through all the trials and tribulations of what it's like to be a scientist, to have competition, to be slighted by your colleagues, to then have your work discredited in the media and to explain how science can be overhyped. So he goes through it in such detail and with a level of thoughtfulness that, yeah, like it's legitimate writing based on my experience of what the scientific process is like. And it shows the integrity that you would expect of a scientist who goes through the rollercoaster of success.

But if he were to apply those same criteria of his own life to Eric, Eric wouldn't stand a chance to be taken seriously. And I just wonder what's going on there. The so-called Nobel disease exists as well, right? People get Nobel prizes and go on to endorse homeopathy or 5G conspiracies or whatever the case may be. And it's happened so much that it has a name attached to it but the other thing and this is speculation on my part i'm completely flagging that up but brian keating i've only done cursory look into his content but one of the things that jumped out immediately was the collaboration with prager you and in particular he seems to produce the video about arguing that god is a more likely explanation than the multiverse. I believe

Brian is religious. He does admit that in his book. Yeah. And whatever you take of that argument, I have also seen things about Brian having more conservative political views. And I think if you're in the heterodox space or even the leaning conservative space, that voices like Eric's, there is a natural sympathy there. Eric presents himself as a figure who's beyond the partisan divide. But in my experience, both of the Weinstein brothers tend to be receptive to people who are presenting themselves as black sheep, either on a theoretical or political level. And I think there's some degree of overlap there, because I suspect most mainstream academics would not produce a PragerU video. So I just think there's an overlap there potentially along a political angle as well as a scientific one. So I think that might, alongside what you

outlined, Tim, with the disappointment surrounding the Nobel experience that Brian had. Can you tell me what's the deal with Prager University? I'm not fully aware of what. Oh, sorry. So Dennis Prager is a conservative activist, commentator, so on. But he has a website, a kind of YouTube channel that produces these short videos that are usually repackaging some conservative position into a digestible video to share. But the videos have included things arguing for intelligent design, or it's kind of Christian conservatism mixed in. So against global warming and so on. Oh, I see.

Yeah, I mean, of course, there's the more broad issue of scientists that comment on things that they're not qualified to, and yet they're viewed with certain authority. That's like maybe the most mild form. And then there's maybe scientists that, I don't know, espouse some interesting or weird theological views or whatever. I think this one's most interesting because the endorsement of Eric Weinstein is a different category. I think they're on orthogonal axes, right? Like, you can be a fundamentalist astronomer, and that has, I can see no bearing on why you would be seduced by Eric Weinstein. They're just different variables going on. So, because I'm trying to think, like, if I'm trying to be charitable, right, I try to think like, okay, so the Brian

Keating that wrote his book and the Brian Keating that's endorsing Eric Weinstein, those seem like two different people, and I have to ask why. And it's like, I just can't think of a good reason because I'm trying to think to a scientist, your integrity is almost your most important thing. And I don't know any scientist that would sacrifice his or her integrity for, for a few extra YouTube clicks, which is like the most obvious reason why someone would do that. And I just, I just don't, I don't understand the dynamic. I think it has to be what Matt says, the compartmentalization is a thing. And like you mentioned that you can't see how the person who could write that could then be focused on increasing clicks and views on YouTube.

But a lot of that depends on what's Brian's future goals and what's he doing now? Is he still focusing on being a researcher and working or is he focusing on building a YouTube audience? And I'm not even saying that it has to be an intentional strategy, just that that creates different incentives. And it can lead to these kind of changes that we can see with Nobel laureates as well. So it's an interesting case, but it'll be interesting to see how it continues. But I think given the dynamics that we've sketched out here and your paper, that if Brian makes the error of tying himself too strongly to Eric's case, I suspect that would be a bad move for him in terms of credibility as a mainstream physicist. So, yeah, well, I guess we'll see how it plays out.

I mean, I'm just wondering if there's both this sort of F the system dynamic going on where because Brian got close to thebel but didn't get it or he got spurned also by his colleagues and so he has that bond with eric and now it's like you know what all my colleagues are a bunch of hacks i'm tenured i can do whatever i want so why not just just take liberty with this and i don't care right so maybe maybe there's some of that i don't have a problem with these personality quirks that they were just personality quirks we're all weird in our own way and they're free human beings do whatever they want i think one of the main issues i think a recurring theme of your of this podcast is just what is the effect it's having on the wider view of science and the way it's done and i was also talking to joseph the person who actually

was interrogating eric on that clubhouse and he agreed with me also that this is bad for the perception of science and also sort of a knock on the respectability of Brian Keating. This is what makes it worse that Brian Keating's involved, because that just throws a bunch of confusion. Because if you look at some of the Reddit discussion, it's like, oh, you know, Brian Keating's a professor. So he's more qualified than Tim. He's brought on Max Tegmark and Sabine and Wolfram.

So it's really damaging when people don't know how to evaluate science. So they brought on Max Tegmark and Sabine and Wolfram. And so it's really damaging when people don't know how to evaluate science. So they rely on authority figures. And if they try to string the theatrics in such a way as to mislead people, then that's where it becomes very damaging. Yeah, I think that's a good way to sum up, actually. I mean, as you say, this is a thing we're very concerned with, that when people with PhDs, when people with some degree of scientific or academic standing go down a path which is not entirely dissimilar from Alex Jones, then it has a disproportionate effect on public understanding of science, whether it's physics or vaccines or whatever. And their behaviour also seems to be

geared towards undermining public trust and faith in scientific institutions. And that's why it's important. We don't have great concerns for the physics establishment being destabilised by silly theories, right? That's not going to happen. But what does happen is that the public can become entirely misled as to how genuine scientific research occurs. So, Tim, I think in this little episode, which you've engaged with, and I think done a great service by engaging with Eric's theory the way you have, will hopefully perhaps help a tiny little bit in counteracting those forces. I got to say, Tim, like there's two things that pop to mind. So

first of all, thank you for detailing all the things that you have. I think it's really helpful. But the two things that struck me, one, as I'm sure you've experienced now, when people criticize you and they're critiquing something which isn't accurate, like that they view you as somebody that wants to destroy Eric Weinstein and that your life's goal is built around this. It's not accurate, right? It doesn't land. Me and Matt, we joke around about people describing us as Weinstein hater cast. But the reality is that Eric and Brett are just new versions of this thing that I've been interested in a long time, which is kind of conspiracy theorists and pseudoscience communities. And it'll be around many decades after they're gone, after I'm dead. The next generation will have new figures. So in this sense, they're just players.

We're all just playing roles in bigger systems. Eric might like that. But I think the critique doesn't sting that personally when people characterize you in a way that it just doesn't land. That's not actually what you're about and doing. And in many respects, I think that, like I said earlier, you are focusing on the theory such as it exists and all its flaws and your paper doesn't include critiques of Eric the man, right? We've discussed loads of his personal flaws here on this episode, but your paper does not address that.

It's purely focused on the theory. And in that respect, yeah, like if it was all true, it should stand apart from the individual personal squabbles or individual characteristics of the people. It's about the maths and about the physics, and that's where it falls down. And the extra layer that me and Matt are focused on is the kind of social dynamics and psychological techniques that people are using. But in your case, I think it's just important to keep that in mind that you produced a piece of work, which was focused on the science, focused on the maths, and that's where the critique lies, but that's not where it's engaged on. It's a contribution to debunking science, right? Like there's like reading my paper won't teach you anything new about the universe. It will just tell you why

there were some bad arguments, right? And so yeah, and in some ways, it's comical to see people still take it so seriously. Oh, Eric responded with these things, right? And what about this and that? And they're sort of missing the point that there was a reason why the academic community didn't engage with eric before and even more so now both with the quality of his write-up and certainly with also with rg already having done the job everyone else their time um so basically eric's never going to get any more serious criticism after this i would imagine unless it's some other people who want to do that, but certainly not the academic community. So there might never be any high quality criticism of GU based upon Eric's response thus far. The discussion really is at the level of scientific integrity. I think Eric has basically conceded that he doesn't really have any good response to our criticism.

So it's unlikely that there will actually be any meaningful scientific engagement in terms of, oh, let's actually sit down, look at the equations resolved. I don't see that happening. I'd be happy if that were to happen, but I just don't see that happening. But the last thing I'll say is that even though I sincerely doubt Eric will ever reach that point, I think your paper existing has had that impact. The appearance on Joe Rogan, the last one, was notably more critical than in previous incarnations. His fans on the subreddit didn't endorse his deflections about not releasing podcasts. And I think in general, when you're in the public eye, there'll always be a core,

which will never, never doubt and the kind of true faithful. But I, from observing the arc of Eric, I think it's fair to say that it's bending towards skepticism of his themes in the public sphere. And you played a part in that. And I have no personal ill will towards Eric either, but I think it is good for all the reasons that we've discussed, that grandiose claims that present the academic community and institutions as fundamentally evil, flawed forces that you can't trust, especially during global pandemics and this kind of thing. that you can't trust, especially during global pandemics and this kind of thing. It's worth pushing back on that. So yeah, just thank you for chatting with me and Matt about it. It's been very entertaining and interesting. And yeah, and thanks for the paper as well.

And pass on our thanks to Theo. Yeah, my pleasure. I want to say that almost ironically, it's almost strange that Eric and I should be on opposite tables because we should really be working together, right? We studied the same math and physics. It's actually strange that we're actually not like somehow on the same side.

Tim, the fact that you say that tells me that you are thinking like a normal human being and a physicist and not like a guru. I'm sorry, there was never any chance of that. But I'll thank you as well. I'll just say that similar to Chris, I think there was absolutely no chance of your good faith engagement criticism being responded to in kind. However, it was very helpful for that to have occurred. Although it can often feel like one's playing whack-a-mole with pseudoscientific and conspiratorial theories that are out there, it's an important thing to do, not for the scientific enterprise, but for the public understanding of science. And hopefully a few people, as Chris said, that they'll always be the true believers. But I think more than a few people from little episodes like this can get diverted to better popularizers of science. So thank you again, Tim. Yeah, you're welcome. Thank you. you