Take Back MIT | Eric Weinstein and Lex Fridman

Full episode with Eric Weinstein (Apr 2020): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIAZJNe7YtE Clips channel (Lex Clips): https://www.youtube.com/lexclips Main channel (Lex Fridman): https://www.youtube.com/lexfridman (more links below)

this idea of of disk I distributed idea suppression complex yeah is that what’s bringing the e laws of the world down you know so funny it’s like he’s asking Joe Rogan like is that a joint you know it’s like well what will happen if I smoke it what will happen to the stock price what will happen if I scratch myself in public what will happen if I say what I think about Thailand or kovat or who knows what and everybody’s like don’t say that say this go do this go do that well it’s crazy-making it’s absolutely crazy making and if you think about what we put through people through we need to get people who can use fu money the fu money they need to insulate themselves from all of the people who know better because the my nightmare is is that why did we only get one ilan what if we were supposed to have thousands and thousands of yuan and the weird thing is like this is all that remains you’re looking at like obi-wan and Yoda and it’s like this is the only this is all that’s left after X order 66 has been executed and that’s the thing that’s really upsetting to me is we used we used to have Ilan’s five deep and then we could talk about Elon in the context of his cohort but this is like if you were to see a giraffe in the Arctic with no trees around you’d think why the long neck what a strange sight you know how do we get more lawns how do we change things so I think the useful so we know MIT yeah and Harvard so can maybe returning to our previous conversation my sense is that the laws of the world are supposed to come from MIT in Harvard right and how do you change let’s think of one that MIT sort of killed have any names in mind Aaron Schwartz leaps to my mind yeah okay are we MIT supposed to shield the Aaron Schwartz’s from I don’t know journal publishers or are we supposed to help the journal publishers so that we can throw 35-year sentences in his face or whatever it is that we did that depressed him okay so here’s my point yeah I want MIT to go back to being the home of Aaron Schwartz and if you want to send Aaron Schwartz to a state where he’s looking at 35 years in prison or something like that you are my sworn enemy you are not MIT yeah you are the traitorous irresponsible middlebrow pencil-pushing green eyeshade fool that needs to not be in the seat at the presidency of MIT period the end get the out of there and let one of our people sit in that chair and think that you’ve articulated is that the people in those chairs are not the way they are because they’re evil or somehow morally compromised is that it’s just that that’s the distributed nature is that there’s some kind of aspect of the system there’s people who width em selves to the system they adapt every instinct and the fact is is that they’re not going to be on Joe Rogan smoking a blunt let me ask a silly question do you think institutions generally just tend to become that no we get some of the institution’s we get Caltech here’s what we’re supposed to have we’re supposed to have Caltech we’re supposed to have a reed we’re supposed to have Deep Springs we’re supposed to have MIT we’re supposed to have a part of Harvard and when the sharp elbow crowd comes after the Scheldt sharp mind crowd we’re supposed to break those sharp elbows and say don’t come around here again so what are the weapons that the sharp minds are supposed to use in our modern day so to reclaim MIT what is the what’s the future are you kidding me first of all assume that this is being seen at MIT hey everybody is OK hey everybody try to remember who you are you’re the guys who put the police car on top of the great dump you you guys came up with the great breasts of knowledge you created a Tetris game in the green building now what is your problem they killed one of your own you should make their life a living hell you should be the ones who keep the mayor memory of Aaron Schwartz alive and all of those hackers and all of those mutants you know it’s like it’s either our place or it isn’t and if we have to throw 12 more pianos off of the roof right if Harold Edgerton is taking those photographs you know with slow mo back in the 40s if Noam Chomsky’s on your faculty what the hell is wrong with you kids you are the most creative and insightful people and you can’t figure out how to defend Aaron Schwartz that’s on you guys so some of that is giving more power to the young like you said you know it’s a training towel drop taking power from the feeble and the middle brow yeah but how do you what is the mechanism to me I don’t know you you have some 9-volt batteries no I copper wire I attend to you have a capacitor I tend to believe you have to create an alternative and make the alternative so much better that it makes MIT absolutely unless they change and that’s what forces change so as opposed to somehow okay so use projection mapping what’s projection mapping where you take some complicated edifice and you map all of its planes and then you actually project some unbelievable graphics re skinning a building let’s say at night say okay so you want to do some graffiti art with you basically want to hack the system know what I say look listen to me Lee yeah we’re smarter than they are and they you know what they say they say things like I think we need some geeks get me to phd’s right you treat phd’s like that that’s a bad move because hd’s are capable and we act like our job is to peel grapes for our betters yeah that that’s a strange thing and I you speak about it very eloquently is how we treat basically the greatest minds in the world which is like at at their prime which is PhD students like that we pay them nothing we I’m done with it yeah right we gotta take what’s ours so it’s oh yeah take back MIT become uncover nerble become uncover Noble and by the way when you become uncover nerble don’t do it by throwing food don’t do it by pouring salt on the lawn like a jerk do it through brilliance because what you Caltech and MIT can do and maybe Rensselaer Polytechnic or Worcester politic I don’t know Lehigh goddamnit what’s wrong with you technical people you act like you’re a servant class it’s unclear to me how you reclaim it except with brilliance like you said but to me that the way you were claiming was brilliance the Goron system Aaron Schwartz came from the Elon Musk class what you guys gonna do about it right there super capable people need to flex need to be individual they need to stop giving away all their power to you know is like Geist or a community or this or that you’re not you’re not indoor cats you’re outdoor cats go be outdoor cat do you think we’re gonna see this this kind of asking me you know before like what about the world war two generation what I’m trying to say is that there’s a technical revolt coming here’s you want to talk about that I’m trying to lead it yeah I’m trying to see no you’re not trying I’m trying to get a blueprint here alright Lex yeah how angry are you about our country pretending that you and I can’t actually do technical subjects so that they need an army of kids coming in from four countries in Asia it’s not about the four countries in Asia it’s not about those kids it’s about lying about us that we’re don’t care enough about science and technology that we’re incapable of it as if we don’t have Chinese and Russians and Koreans and Croatians like we’ve got everybody here the only reason you’re looking outside is is that you want to hire cheap people from the family business because you don’t want to pass the family business on and you know what you didn’t really build the family business it’s not yours to decide you the boomers and you the Silent Generation you did your bit but you also followed a