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Speaker 1: Why do revolutionary ideas so often come from outsiders? Do

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Speaker 1: good scientists sometimes crowd out great scientists? Do we still

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Speaker 1: have room for scientific cowboys? And what is the relationship

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Speaker 1: between national security and modern science? Are scientists participants in

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Speaker 1: a larger game that they barely see? What if the

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Speaker 1: most important ideas are the ones you're not allowed to

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Speaker 1: hear about. From universities to public health to Watson and

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Speaker 1: crick and nuclear bombs and AI. Today we're going to

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Speaker 1: cover it all with physicists and mathematician and iconoclast Eric Weinstein.

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Speaker 1: So get ready for a great brain stretch. Welcome to

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Speaker 1: Inner Cosmos with me David Eagleman. I'm a neuroscientist and

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Speaker 1: an author at Stanford, and in these episodes we sail

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Speaker 1: deeply into our three pound universe to understand how we

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Speaker 1: see the world, and as we'll discuss today, we don't

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Speaker 1: always see what we believe we're seeing. We usually think

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Speaker 1: of science as a calm enterprise that's cumulative. You have

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Speaker 1: thousands of people testing hypotheses, you have vast amounts of

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Speaker 1: data getting gathered and knowledge slowly accretes. But underneath that

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Speaker 1: veneer sometimes things can be a little more turbulent, because

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Speaker 1: what happens sometimes is that scientific discoveries can quickly reshape

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Speaker 1: economies and alter what nations can do to each other,

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Speaker 1: and redraw political boundaries and redirect the future long before

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Speaker 1: most of us even notice. In other words, ideas that

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Speaker 1: begin on a chalkboard can end up steering history. But

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Speaker 1: we very rarely pause to ask whether the way science

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Speaker 1: is organize today is matched to the power it now holds.

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Speaker 1: Who decides which questions get asked or which lines of

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Speaker 1: inquiry get funded. How much of scientific progress depends on conformity,

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Speaker 1: and how much of it depends on rule breakers who

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Speaker 1: are willing to look crazy before they are proven right.

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Speaker 1: These questions sit at the intersection of labs and nations,

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Speaker 1: and they matter more than ever in a world where

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Speaker 1: any single discovery could reverberate globally. My guest today is

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Speaker 1: someone who spent years thinking about science from that high altitude.

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Speaker 1: Eric Weinstein is a mathematician, a physicist, and a public

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Speaker 1: intellectual who is unusually thoughtful about the architecture of knowledge,

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Speaker 1: like how ideas are filtered by the system and how

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Speaker 1: originality survives or fails inside universities. Eric hosts a podcast

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Speaker 1: called the portal, and he has a reputation for asking

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Speaker 1: questions that make people uncomfortable and for refusing to treat

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Speaker 1: existing structures as inevitable just because they are familiar. Today,

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Speaker 1: Eric and I are going to talk about how discovery

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Speaker 1: really happens, who it serves, and what might be required

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Speaker 1: if we want science to live up to its highest

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Speaker 1: ideals in the decades ahead. Here's my conversation with Eric Weinstein. So, Eric,

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Speaker 1: Jim Watson recently passed away, and I know that you

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Speaker 1: were close with him and you really admired him. Tell

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Speaker 1: me about that.

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Speaker 2: Well.

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Speaker 3: I spent time with Jim, and for the time that

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Speaker 3: we were together was very intense. But Jim is in

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Speaker 3: many ways my spirit animal. And one of the things

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Speaker 3: that's really important is to recognize who Jim was as

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Speaker 3: a scientist, who he was as a writer, and to

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Speaker 3: relegate everything else that he was to a tertiary status

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Speaker 3: that shouldn't distract us from the miracle that was Jim.

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Speaker 1: Give me example of that.

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Speaker 3: What's happened is that people who are not close to

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Speaker 3: science have set up a mimetic complex, which Jim Watson

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Speaker 3: auto completes somehow to a bunch of things that are

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Speaker 3: much less relevant.

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Speaker 1: So you know, can you unpack that? Sure?

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Speaker 3: Imagine that you knew Archimedes personally, and Archimedes had some

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Speaker 3: sort of like personal hygiene problem.

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Speaker 2: They didn't brush, you know.

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Speaker 3: Okay, so you imagine that everybody in Archimedes time. Oh

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Speaker 3: the breath on Archimedes was so terrible, you know, but

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Speaker 3: that's Archimedes. We important to recognize that that was Jim Watson.

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Speaker 3: Jim Watson was a blinding figure of science, world science,

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Speaker 3: American science in particular, and he auto completes to some

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Speaker 3: stuff that is far less relevant and salient. And so

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Speaker 3: it's important to me that we discussed Jim Watson and

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Speaker 3: not be captured by when we happen to be having

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Speaker 3: the conversation, because this is a ten thousand year. As

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Speaker 3: long as there are humans and as long as there

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Speaker 3: will be life as we know it, Jim Watson will

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Speaker 3: be one of the most important people who ever lived.

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Speaker 1: And when you say auto completes, you mean in people's

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Speaker 1: heads they think Jim Watson and then they think X

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Speaker 1: Y Z.

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Speaker 3: Well, yes, but again we're falling into the trap. So

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Speaker 3: let's briefly go into the trap and then only to

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Speaker 3: like it's a picture plant. Let's go into the picture plant,

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Speaker 3: help ourselves to a couple of deep gulps, and then

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Speaker 3: get the hell out. Okay, great, Okay, So Jim Watson

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Speaker 3: auto completes right now to Rosalind Franklin. Ah And if

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Speaker 3: you ask me, if you care about Rosalind Franklin, you

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Speaker 3: should be carrying about Irwin Chargaff.

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Speaker 2: Nobody talks about chargaph interruption.

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Speaker 1: So Krick and Watson discovered the structure of DNA, published

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Speaker 1: that in April of nineteen fifty three, and they ended

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Speaker 1: up winning the Nobel Prize with Maurice Wilkins for that work.

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Speaker 1: People then came out and said, look, Rosalind Franklin had

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Speaker 1: taken the first photographs of the structure and didn't recognize

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Speaker 1: what it was, the double helix structure, but should have

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Speaker 1: gotten credit. That's what we're referring to here. Just so

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Speaker 1: not really okay.

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Speaker 3: Roslind Franklin had taken done the X ray crystallography on

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Speaker 3: nucleic acid and had this famous Maltese cross, which Watson

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Speaker 3: and Krick took to mean that the structure of the

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Speaker 3: nucleic acid was likely to be helical, not double helic.

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Speaker 2: Just helical.

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Speaker 3: They were under suspicion by their colleagues of not knowing anything,

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Speaker 3: of being so enamored of Linus Paulling's great achievement in

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Speaker 3: that discovery the alpha helix, which ended up as a

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Speaker 3: secondary structure of protein that they were trying to copy

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Speaker 3: palling and to shove nucleic acid into a form that

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Speaker 3: there was no reason to think that it had to

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Speaker 3: be that. And so the part of the the part

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Speaker 3: of the problem of this story is that Rosslyn Frank

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Speaker 3: was absolutely correct. There was no reason that DNA had

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Speaker 3: to be helical. That's good science, it's very good science.

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Speaker 3: And it's an absolute cautionary tale. Why you can't let

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Speaker 3: good scientists run science.

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Speaker 1: Ah, because you're making a distinction between good scientists and

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Speaker 1: great scientists. Okay, I see.

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Speaker 3: Jim Jim Watson, in my opinion, was not a good scientist.

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Speaker 1: He was a great scientist.

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Speaker 2: He was a great scientist.

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Speaker 3: And there it's not that you take good science and

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Speaker 3: turn it up to eleven to get great science. It's

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Speaker 3: a different process.

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Speaker 1: Okay. And you think of this as cowboys is that?

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Speaker 1: Which is that correct? You call cowboys science? YIPI ka, Okay,

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Speaker 1: So let's unpack that. So, yeah, what does cowboy science

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Speaker 1: look like? And actually let's continue this story in that context.

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Speaker 3: Well, you see, Jim and Francis were searching a much

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Speaker 3: smaller landscape because they were convinced that it was going

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Speaker 3: to be helical. Okay, so they didn't have to think

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Speaker 3: about all the possible like if you ever spend time

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Speaker 3: with the protein data bank, my god, does nature get

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Speaker 3: up to some fun architecture really, I mean just unbelievably

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Speaker 3: beautiful things. And they didn't think it was going to

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Speaker 3: be any of those things. So Jim and Francis were

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Speaker 3: in part not reasonable people, and they made a point

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Speaker 3: of telling everybody that if you weren't working on nucleic acid,

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Speaker 3: you were an idea that they didn't have time to

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Speaker 3: go to seminars that were mere distractions. This is the

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Speaker 3: difference between good science and great science.

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Speaker 1: Exactly what we're.

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Speaker 3: Doing is we're driving great science out of academics and

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Speaker 3: out of research so that we have this proliferation of

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Speaker 3: good science. Don't do this, people who are not a

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Speaker 3: walking hr nightmare. Yeah, which is a catastrophic decision.

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Speaker 2: So just before we get to that, just for the audience,

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Speaker 2: I want to mention.

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Speaker 1: So Eric knew Jim Watson, I as a postdoc worked

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Speaker 1: with Franciskriek. Neither of us knew the other one, but

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Speaker 1: we both got to spend time with these two giants

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Speaker 1: of my god a biology. Yeah. Okay, So so you're

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Speaker 1: categorizing that as great scientists as opposed to good scientists.

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Speaker 1: So what's the problem that you see in academia in

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Speaker 1: terms of support of good science and not great science.

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Speaker 3: Well, you need both, You absolutely need both. And one

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Speaker 3: of the tasks for people in the great science model

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Speaker 3: is not to crap all over their good science colleagues.

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Speaker 3: And in fact, Jim was extremely kind in my experience

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Speaker 3: to Roslin. Franklin and I discussed her at great length,

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Speaker 3: and he didn't pritify the story and by which you

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Speaker 3: mean making a pretty Yeah, well he was an ass.

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Speaker 3: He met your daughter and wife right, and he behaved

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Speaker 3: abysmally towards them. But then he behaved in a very

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Speaker 3: kind fashion as well, like what my daughter asked him

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Speaker 3: a question, as I recall in a crowded room, I

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Speaker 3: don't know, age twelve or thirteen, about the origin of

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Speaker 3: the organelles or how did mitochondria end up in the

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Speaker 3: eukaryotic cell. Was it an infection? And he looked at

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Speaker 3: her and he said, you know this Nobel Laureate eighty eight,

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Speaker 3: world famous. Oh, I don't have any interest in that,

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Speaker 3: you know. It reminds me of Miles Davis talking to

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Speaker 3: a three year old kid who was seeking his autograph,

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Speaker 3: and I think that his famous line was something like,

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Speaker 3: he looks up expecting to see an adult shows her.

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Speaker 3: I sees this tiny kid tugging at his pant leg.

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Speaker 3: He looks at it, says, fuck off, kid, Oh god, okay,

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Speaker 3: all right. But then Jim came back, you know, at

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Speaker 3: some point, and he said, which one is your wife?

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Speaker 3: And I said, the economist who mopped the floor with

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Speaker 3: you intellectually at dinner last night.

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Speaker 2: He said, oh, she's very good.

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Speaker 3: Because he was completely dismissive of her being female and

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Speaker 3: all these things. He said, you want to know why

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Speaker 3: your children are so intelligent? I said, excuse me. He said, well,

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Speaker 3: your daughter is obviously very intelligent, as is your son,

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Speaker 3: because he knew both of them. So even though he

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Speaker 3: was cruel, he thought very highly. And I said why

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Speaker 3: do you think He said, well, you can't just do

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Speaker 3: it with one set of genes. You should thank your wife.

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Speaker 3: Oh it's lovely. Well, but he was a misogynist, but

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Speaker 3: women loved him. But he was very kind and active

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Speaker 3: in promoting female careers. Like you don't understand the complexity

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Speaker 3: of this particular guy. Was he a horse's ass?

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Speaker 1: He was?

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Speaker 3: And I'm not saying that's great. I got a chance

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Speaker 3: to tell him to shut up multiple times and he

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Speaker 3: took it.

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Speaker 1: But you had to back it up.

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Speaker 3: You know, you can't just mumble something about racism or

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Speaker 3: sexism because DNA and its implications are absolutely profound and

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Speaker 3: most of us haven't wrestled with. And I also believe

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Speaker 3: that Jim came from a place of kindness and goodness

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Speaker 3: that isn't recognized.

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Speaker 1: Is there anything that we can learn from the story

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Speaker 1: of Roslin Franklin and Jim Watson that allows us to

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Speaker 1: do better science?

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Speaker 2: I think so.

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Speaker 3: I mean, I think that recognizing that there are these

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Speaker 3: different styles of science and that we need all of

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Speaker 3: these styles of science would be very helpful, and that

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Speaker 3: in general, I don't think a Jim Watson would want

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Speaker 3: to drive a Rosalind Franklin out of science at all.

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Speaker 3: But the problem is is that there is absolutely no

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Speaker 3: place for this cowboy science within the standard framework. So

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Speaker 3: if you look, for example, at the interactions with Chargaff,

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Speaker 3: Chargaff is absolutely merciless to Watson and Crek. He calls

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Speaker 3: them two pitchmen in search of a helix.

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Speaker 1: Okay, wait, hold on, So first tells who Chargraph is

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Speaker 1: and tells what a pitch man is. I don't know

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Speaker 1: that term.

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Speaker 3: So Irwin Chargaff is a Columbia professor. I believe that

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Speaker 3: he came probably from Vienna. I think he spoke five languages,

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Speaker 3: maybe English was his fifth. He wrote one of the

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Speaker 3: most amazing books in the history of biology, called Heracletian Fire,

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Speaker 3: which nobody's read, and in it he tells the story

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Speaker 3: of figuring out that the equimolar relations, where he figured

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Speaker 3: out that the amount of the nucleotides was exactly paired

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Speaker 3: when you chopped up whatever the nucleic acid was.

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Speaker 2: So we had this.

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Speaker 1: Meaning you have the same amount of a's and t's

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Speaker 1: and the same amount.

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Speaker 2: Of seeds as that's right and so.

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Speaker 3: But there was no explanation for it. So it was

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Speaker 3: what we would call a fine tuning mystery. Now, isn't

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Speaker 3: it interesting? What is it fine tuning mystery?

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Speaker 1: Well, that's usually we.

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Speaker 3: Encounter it in physics, like is the universe finally tuned

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Speaker 3: for life? If the proton were a little bit less

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Speaker 3: heavy or a little bit more heavy, it wouldn't work.

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Speaker 3: And how is the curvature exactly? Everything is just so right?

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Speaker 3: And usually what there is is there's an explanation in

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Speaker 3: this case, like the hydrogen bonds which enforced the pairing.

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Speaker 3: It wasn't an accident. And of course people always somebody

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Speaker 3: will always say, maybe it's a coincidence.

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Speaker 2: You can't conclude that right.

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Speaker 3: So what Watson and Crick did is they took that

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Speaker 3: information of CHARGEV and CHARGAV, I believe came up with

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Speaker 3: a mobius band theory of nucleic acid. He said, if

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Speaker 3: he'd only been able to work with a Rosalind Franklin,

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Speaker 3: he would have gotten it. And Jim, to his credit, said,

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Speaker 3: if Rosalind Franklin had simply spent one day decamping from

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Speaker 3: her atomacy, that we didn't have enough information to say

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Speaker 3: it was a helix. He said she would have gotten

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Speaker 3: it in an afternoon, an amazing claim that Rosalind Franklin

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Speaker 3: would have gotten the double helix in an afternoon but

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Speaker 3: for her insistence on being a good scientist. I see,

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Speaker 3: And so you have to understand that what Jim was

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Speaker 3: willing to acknowledge about Rosalind Franklin was in many ways

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Speaker 3: incredibly complimentary. But Chargaff writes very clearly that these pitchmen,

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Speaker 3: he means, you know, think about Silicon Valley where you

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Speaker 3: now it pitched me bro Okay. He saw them as

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Speaker 3: a couple of ne'er dwells. They didn't know any biochemistry,

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Speaker 3: That's what he says. He says, they don't know anybody.

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Speaker 3: You know, after they get the double helix, he writes,

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Speaker 3: you can tell how late in the day it is

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Speaker 3: in biology that such pigmies would throw such long shadows.

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Speaker 3: You have to understand that this you and I, I

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Speaker 3: mean you knew Francis, I didn't I. And to be blunt,

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Speaker 3: I think Francis was the more intellectually deep of the two.

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Speaker 3: And I told you before that even though I thought

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Speaker 3: France and this was smarter, I thought Jim was far

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Speaker 3: more important. And they represented two halves of great science.

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Speaker 3: And Jim was that brash. I think he was taken

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Speaker 3: into the University of Chicago at age fifteen, So shout

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Speaker 3: out to the University of Chicago. Let's get back to

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Speaker 3: taking twelve year olds, thirteen year olds, and fourteen year

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Speaker 3: olds into our universities. In the University of Chicago in

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Speaker 3: particular is probably our top university, with every other one

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Speaker 3: falling off of some cliff. For God's sakes, we don't

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Speaker 3: know why that brashness that Jim had and that eccentricity

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Speaker 3: that Francis had were essential in Chargef's chargeff Oh, I

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Speaker 3: wish I could read it just he writes so beautifully,

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Speaker 3: But he talks about the fact he said, the idea

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Speaker 3: that the odds that two geniuses would fall into his orbit,

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Speaker 3: knowing nothing of biochemistry and solve this problem was so

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Speaker 3: vanishingly small that it didn't even warrant consideration.

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Speaker 2: Wow. Wow, this is why peer review doesn't work. Right.

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Speaker 3: So, in large measure, the history of DNA and the

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Speaker 3: history of the genetic code again discovered by someone outside

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Speaker 3: the fabled RNA TI club, so that all the top

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Speaker 3: people were assembled to crack the genetic code, and the

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Speaker 3: guy who was outside of it, named Marshall Nierenberg was

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Speaker 3: the one who cracks it ten years later in sixty three.

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Speaker 3: This is the greatest story of recent years that you

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Speaker 3: and I are within the living memory of Watson and Crick.

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Speaker 3: And by the way, that book, the Double Helix, you know,

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Speaker 3: great literature begins with things like it was the best

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Speaker 3: of times, it was the worst of times, or in

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Speaker 3: the beginning, or some memorable call me Ishmael.

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Speaker 2: Watson began and ended that book.

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Speaker 1: Saying he's never seen Francis Crick in a humble mood,

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Speaker 1: modest mood, modest mood.

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Speaker 3: Right, yeah, perhaps he is with others, but it's not

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Speaker 3: so with me or whatever it is.

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Speaker 2: Oh my god, can that guy write? I mean that

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Speaker 2: was literature, man, Yeah, agreed.

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Speaker 3: So anyway, I just I love Jim unapologetically, and I'm

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Speaker 3: well aware of the total of the total nature of

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Speaker 3: the man, and I'm not going to sweep any of

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Speaker 3: that into the rug. And by the way, I don't

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Speaker 3: think we stripped him of his official titles at cold

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Speaker 3: Spring Harbor until two thousand and seven, and I don't

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Speaker 3: think we stripped him of his honorary titles until twenty

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Speaker 3: nineteen or something like that. And that, my friends, was

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Speaker 3: the American system that we could be proud of, that

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Speaker 3: a complete horses ass like Jim Watson would be kept

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Speaker 3: within the system of our institutions and celebrated and not

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Speaker 3: be seen as a walking hr problem waiting to happen.

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Speaker 1: I mean he was seen as that walking again was

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Speaker 1: by walking hr problem waiting to happen.

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Speaker 2: He was that twelve times a day. Yeah, exactly.

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Speaker 3: But my point is we didn't throw him out until

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Speaker 3: very late in the game when we were determined to

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Speaker 3: lose our mojo.

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Speaker 2: Ah.

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Speaker 1: Interesting, okay, And so coming back to this idea of

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Speaker 1: cowboy science, it's the Krick and Watson's it's the Nuremberg.

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Speaker 1: It's the ways of coming in from the outside and

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Speaker 1: proposing something breaking the rules.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, it's based on the middle finger. It's based on

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Speaker 3: being true to science and telling the National Security Complex,

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Speaker 3: the National Interest Complex, your department, your funder to sit

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Speaker 3: down and shut up.

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Speaker 1: And by the way, you know, I've talked about purity

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Speaker 1: view before, but one thing we know is that when

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Speaker 1: Krick and Watson came up with this structure and they said, hey,

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Speaker 1: we think it's a double helix, or the as and

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Speaker 1: t's and c's and g's are wanting to each other.

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Speaker 1: They sent the typed manuscript over to Nature. Crick's wife

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Speaker 1: drew the double helix picture, which is gorgeous picture by

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Speaker 1: gorgeous picture because he was terror trying and she was

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Speaker 1: really adeal no deal exactly. She was a good artist. Anyway,

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Speaker 1: they sent it over to Nature, which Kriik told me

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Speaker 1: at the time was a man and two boys, and

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Speaker 1: the yailed the mandscript over yeah, the editor, and it

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Speaker 1: got published. There was no peer review at the time.

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Speaker 3: There was no peer review until nineteen sixty five to

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Speaker 3: seventy five. This is a fabricated story, largely due to Merton,

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Speaker 3: that was backfitted and retconned into outside reviewing and outside

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Speaker 3: refereeing which occurred being turned into peer review. But basically

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Speaker 3: it's a fabricated story of the history of science.

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Speaker 1: Sorry you're saying. The fabricated story is that peer review

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Speaker 1: wasn't drew to at some point, and then it was

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Speaker 1: claimed that it was older than that.

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Speaker 3: The story is that peer review begins with the founding

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Speaker 3: of the Royal Society and has been with science ever since.

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Speaker 2: Ah.

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Speaker 1: Usually that's not true.

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Speaker 3: No, it's untrue. And the willingness of the Academy to

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Speaker 3: lie about that, bold faced lie about this it might

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Speaker 3: be ignorance.

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Speaker 2: No, it's not.

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Speaker 1: Well, it depends who you mean by the Academy. Had

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Speaker 1: you asked me before you told me about peer review,

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Speaker 1: I would have. But if I showed you, yeah, the

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Speaker 1: history of peer review. Right, the Academy wants to say

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Speaker 1: that outside refereeing is peer review, and it isn't. The

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Speaker 1: double helix is a great example of something. I believe

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Speaker 1: that in Horace Judson's Eight Day of Creation it could

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Speaker 1: be sourced elsewhere. The claim was that Watson Creek couldn't

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Speaker 1: be peer reviewed because there was too much information in

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Speaker 1: the one page paper. You know, as you know, they

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Speaker 1: had a fight as to whether to write something very

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Speaker 1: complete or something very incomplete. And you will notice that

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Speaker 1: there's a phrase it has not escaped our notice that

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Speaker 1: you know this? Yes, yes, so more or less that

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Speaker 1: was a twenty page paper.

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Speaker 2: It has not escaped. I noticed that.

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Speaker 1: Right by the way for the audience, it's they were saying,

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Speaker 1: it is giving this double heelos ructure, it has not

380
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Speaker 1: escaped our notice that. You know, you could unzip this

381
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Speaker 1: and duplicate it this way where each strand of the

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Speaker 1: DNA then gets the complementary nucleotides on it, and you

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Speaker 1: can do this amazing thing that way. Right, They just

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Speaker 1: mentioned it when well, have you been to the Eagle Pub?

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Speaker 2: I have not. You have to go.

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Speaker 1: Oh, I'd love you again for the audience. This is

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Speaker 1: where Crick and Watson burst into the Eagle Pub? Was

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Speaker 1: it the Eagle and Child or the whatever?

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Speaker 2: I think?

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Speaker 1: Oh, maybe they burst into the pub and in early

391
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Speaker 1: nineteen fifty three and said we have discovered the secret

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Speaker 1: of life.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I'd love to go see that. Goosebumps.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, okay. So, by the way, one other thing

395
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Speaker 1: I just want to make it clear is that peer

396
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Speaker 1: review is you write up a science paper and you

397
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Speaker 1: submitted to a journal, and then the journal sends it

398
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Speaker 1: to several of your colleagues in the field, something like

399
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Speaker 1: the jury system that we have in court, something like that,

400
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Speaker 1: where your colleagues who are expert in the field also

401
00:22:57,200 --> 00:23:00,600
Speaker 1: review your thing. The thing that scientists find sting about

402
00:23:00,640 --> 00:23:03,919
Speaker 1: this is oftentimes peers are incentivized to stand in the

403
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Speaker 1: way of something getting published. And also, I would get

404
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Speaker 1: you tell me if I'm right, but I would guess

405
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Speaker 1: that you would think oftentimes your peers are good scientists,

406
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Speaker 1: not great scientists, and so they might block something for

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Speaker 1: six months or a year or longer because they want

408
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Speaker 1: to see more of this or that. But the important yeah,

409
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Speaker 1: I would assume you'd say, and I'd agree with you

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Speaker 1: that the important part sometimes is just to get something

411
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Speaker 1: out there. If Krick and Watson had been wrong about

412
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Speaker 1: the structure, fine, it's in the public eye.

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Speaker 3: And their review just happens when the world of your

414
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Speaker 3: colleagues see something. This is peer injunction.

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00:23:45,000 --> 00:23:47,639
Speaker 2: Yeah. And it's competitor injunction. Yeah.

416
00:23:47,680 --> 00:23:51,400
Speaker 3: And it's one sided where you, generally speaking, can't see them,

417
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Speaker 3: but they can see you. What if somebody doesn't like you?

418
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Speaker 3: What if Jim Watson is pissed off everybody?

419
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Speaker 2: Yeah?

420
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Speaker 3: So my feeling is, who the hell are these peers?

421
00:24:01,960 --> 00:24:03,440
Speaker 3: Get them the hell out of my way. Let's go

422
00:24:03,520 --> 00:24:04,720
Speaker 3: back to the system that works.

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Speaker 1: So, by the way, what do you think of the

424
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Speaker 1: pre print system now where people submit things STI, let's

425
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Speaker 1: say archive or other prens.

426
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Speaker 3: I think it's fascinating because I don't know, let's just

427
00:24:17,680 --> 00:24:19,800
Speaker 3: talk about how funny the system is. First of all,

428
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Speaker 3: it comes out of where where's the archive come out of?

429
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Speaker 2: I don't know. I believe it's Los Alamos National fascinating.

430
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Speaker 3: Now there's a whole question going back to the founding

431
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Speaker 3: of Los Alamos about security review, and I think that

432
00:24:32,280 --> 00:24:37,200
Speaker 3: was it Bright who ran the voluntary board that said, look,

433
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Speaker 3: papers on neutrons and chain reactions are so dangerous that

434
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Speaker 3: everything will be submitted and we will figure out what's

435
00:24:46,600 --> 00:24:49,080
Speaker 3: safe and what isn't. So in part, you have to

436
00:24:49,080 --> 00:24:51,879
Speaker 3: ask the question about whether or not this layer is

437
00:24:51,960 --> 00:24:56,080
Speaker 3: there as part of security review, because what if somebody

438
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Speaker 3: wants to publish weaponized anthrax, or what if they want

439
00:24:58,600 --> 00:25:02,359
Speaker 3: to publish something that's relevant nuclear weapons, or but.

440
00:25:02,640 --> 00:25:05,120
Speaker 1: The advent of the internet allows that anyway.

441
00:25:05,160 --> 00:25:07,920
Speaker 3: Now, yes, yes, but as you'll notice, many of your

442
00:25:08,119 --> 00:25:12,960
Speaker 3: colleagues won't take something seriously unless it's gone through channel. Okay, yeah,

443
00:25:13,000 --> 00:25:15,919
Speaker 3: that's right. And then the question is who is entitled

444
00:25:15,960 --> 00:25:19,400
Speaker 3: to post there? Do you need a dot edu address?

445
00:25:20,480 --> 00:25:23,640
Speaker 3: There's a moderator group that turns down papers that people

446
00:25:23,680 --> 00:25:27,639
Speaker 3: don't recognize, So there is a review aspect. Yeah, and

447
00:25:28,359 --> 00:25:32,080
Speaker 3: let me keep going. Our taxpayer dollars pay for research,

448
00:25:32,160 --> 00:25:37,160
Speaker 3: which is then put under a paywall by let's say Elzevir.

449
00:25:38,560 --> 00:25:42,200
Speaker 3: Then you're forced to quote research and if you don't

450
00:25:42,200 --> 00:25:44,920
Speaker 3: have a subscription, you can't get behind the paywalls. You

451
00:25:45,000 --> 00:25:46,800
Speaker 3: have to pay forty dollars per paper to see if

452
00:25:46,800 --> 00:25:51,439
Speaker 3: it's relevant. This is nonsense. This is an old style

453
00:25:52,720 --> 00:26:00,000
Speaker 3: control mechanism. And even the archive is refereed at some level.

454
00:26:00,119 --> 00:26:04,119
Speaker 3: It has an endorsement system, and it appears probably to

455
00:26:04,240 --> 00:26:09,040
Speaker 3: catch certain things and to relegate them to If you

456
00:26:09,080 --> 00:26:11,960
Speaker 3: know that, there's this horrible thing called visra. I don't

457
00:26:12,000 --> 00:26:16,200
Speaker 3: know this fixer's archives spelled backwards, and that's where crazy

458
00:26:16,240 --> 00:26:17,280
Speaker 3: people are sent.

459
00:26:17,680 --> 00:26:19,440
Speaker 1: What do you mean they're sent as in, if someone

460
00:26:19,520 --> 00:26:21,080
Speaker 1: has an idea that's.

461
00:26:21,040 --> 00:26:25,360
Speaker 3: Oh, my friend Garrett Liasy, for example, submitted something. He's

462
00:26:25,400 --> 00:26:28,679
Speaker 3: a PhD in physics from U SEE San Diego, and

463
00:26:28,720 --> 00:26:30,359
Speaker 3: he's told this is not right for the archive.

464
00:26:31,040 --> 00:26:34,040
Speaker 1: Wow, just for the audience. Archive is supposed to publish

465
00:26:34,080 --> 00:26:37,439
Speaker 1: anything that's reasonable. I don't know in theory they're supposed to.

466
00:26:37,800 --> 00:26:40,440
Speaker 1: That's the idea. That's the idea is that it's an

467
00:26:40,480 --> 00:26:41,440
Speaker 1: open preprint server.

468
00:26:41,520 --> 00:26:43,560
Speaker 2: As as Paul ginsparg about that.

469
00:26:43,680 --> 00:26:47,600
Speaker 3: Paul Ginspark set this up and he used a device

470
00:26:47,960 --> 00:26:51,800
Speaker 3: like I come to Barry Caesar not to praise him,

471
00:26:51,840 --> 00:26:53,960
Speaker 3: and he said, no, this is we're not trying to

472
00:26:54,000 --> 00:26:57,480
Speaker 3: go around peer review. This is a holding tank for

473
00:26:57,560 --> 00:27:00,199
Speaker 3: things that are only those things that are seeking per

474
00:27:00,320 --> 00:27:05,480
Speaker 3: re view. But the biggest question is what do we

475
00:27:05,520 --> 00:27:11,760
Speaker 3: do with the science. It is powerful that goes against

476
00:27:11,800 --> 00:27:14,359
Speaker 3: the narratives which have policy implications.

477
00:27:14,640 --> 00:27:16,560
Speaker 2: The science has policy implications. Yeah.

478
00:27:16,800 --> 00:27:21,200
Speaker 3: For example, Jim and Francis, together with Marshall Nahrenberg, unlocked

479
00:27:21,240 --> 00:27:25,880
Speaker 3: something which allows you, with Crisper cast nine and other tools,

480
00:27:26,480 --> 00:27:31,760
Speaker 3: to write code directly into nucleic acid. Now, most of

481
00:27:31,800 --> 00:27:36,160
Speaker 3: us got locked down for two years because somehow twelve

482
00:27:36,280 --> 00:27:43,880
Speaker 3: nucleotides coded for four codons assembling four amino acids into

483
00:27:43,880 --> 00:27:47,000
Speaker 3: a furin cleavage site that got spliced in this spike

484
00:27:47,080 --> 00:27:54,960
Speaker 3: protein in coronavirus, which made this virus very human transmissible. Now,

485
00:27:55,000 --> 00:28:00,240
Speaker 3: my claim is, what does that tell you about the leverage.

486
00:28:01,080 --> 00:28:04,880
Speaker 2: Of this code? Who is allowed to do?

487
00:28:04,920 --> 00:28:08,720
Speaker 3: What? If you can shut down planet Earth for two

488
00:28:08,800 --> 00:28:14,160
Speaker 3: years with twelve nucleotides, what are we talking about here?

489
00:28:14,840 --> 00:28:16,560
Speaker 3: Why are we doing this out in the open? Why

490
00:28:16,560 --> 00:28:19,119
Speaker 3: are we pretending that there aren't military implications? Why are

491
00:28:19,160 --> 00:28:21,879
Speaker 3: we pretending that there aren't national interest implications and national

492
00:28:21,880 --> 00:28:27,679
Speaker 3: security implications? This is the unforgivable sin of modern university science.

493
00:28:27,760 --> 00:28:30,280
Speaker 3: Pretending that what we're doing is something that's g WI

494
00:28:30,320 --> 00:28:34,240
Speaker 3: is interesting. Everybody should do science. Science is fun. You

495
00:28:34,280 --> 00:28:38,560
Speaker 3: could be a scientist too. Well, Shit, first of all,

496
00:28:38,600 --> 00:28:41,720
Speaker 3: it's incredibly hard. It's incredibly demanding. It's like telling a

497
00:28:41,760 --> 00:28:44,320
Speaker 3: person who's five to ten that they can join the NBA. Yeah,

498
00:28:44,400 --> 00:28:47,120
Speaker 3: maybe there are people who are five to ten in

499
00:28:47,160 --> 00:28:50,200
Speaker 3: the NBA, but your odds are not good. Almost nobody

500
00:28:50,200 --> 00:28:54,080
Speaker 3: belongs at here. It's super dangerous, it's super powerful. It's

501
00:28:54,080 --> 00:28:57,520
Speaker 3: boring as hell, it's exciting as hell. We're just not

502
00:28:57,600 --> 00:29:02,000
Speaker 3: honest about what science is. We've got to break the

503
00:29:02,040 --> 00:29:07,080
Speaker 3: dependence on the university system and the federal granting agencies

504
00:29:07,120 --> 00:29:08,520
Speaker 3: of sciences to continue.

505
00:29:08,840 --> 00:29:11,160
Speaker 1: So this is fascinating because what you're what you draw

506
00:29:11,200 --> 00:29:13,440
Speaker 1: attention to that I really don't know anyone else drawing

507
00:29:13,480 --> 00:29:17,680
Speaker 1: attention to, is this point that science is extraordinarily powerful,

508
00:29:17,720 --> 00:29:21,240
Speaker 1: and therefore it has the attention of, and maybe even

509
00:29:21,280 --> 00:29:25,040
Speaker 1: the control of, in some ways organizations that are much

510
00:29:25,080 --> 00:29:27,960
Speaker 1: bigger than what's happening in the lab or in the university.

511
00:29:28,280 --> 00:29:30,240
Speaker 1: And I think your point, tell me if I'm correct

512
00:29:30,240 --> 00:29:33,040
Speaker 1: about this, is that most scientists don't realize that most

513
00:29:33,080 --> 00:29:36,080
Speaker 1: academicians don't know that they think they're just doing a thing,

514
00:29:36,120 --> 00:29:39,280
Speaker 1: but in fact there's a there's so much leverage going

515
00:29:39,320 --> 00:29:42,680
Speaker 1: on that they're playing in a bigger game without realizing it.

516
00:29:42,760 --> 00:29:45,719
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like you know, let's imagine you were a computer programmer.

517
00:29:46,200 --> 00:29:50,160
Speaker 3: You could program tic tac toe or checkers or something

518
00:29:50,560 --> 00:29:51,480
Speaker 3: and that would be amusing.

519
00:29:52,040 --> 00:29:52,680
Speaker 2: Or you could.

520
00:29:52,440 --> 00:29:56,440
Speaker 3: Program wire shark and that's wireshark. That's exactly the point.

521
00:29:56,440 --> 00:29:57,560
Speaker 3: You don't know what wireshark is.

522
00:29:57,560 --> 00:29:57,840
Speaker 2: Correct.

523
00:29:58,560 --> 00:30:01,920
Speaker 3: Wire Shark sits on your network and sniff's packets, which

524
00:30:02,000 --> 00:30:04,400
Speaker 3: means that any message that you're sending around your network

525
00:30:04,480 --> 00:30:08,320
Speaker 3: might be unencrypted and we can just read whatever emails

526
00:30:08,320 --> 00:30:11,360
Speaker 3: and messages you're sending. But because you don't know that

527
00:30:11,400 --> 00:30:14,680
Speaker 3: there's an application that allows you to read it, you

528
00:30:14,760 --> 00:30:17,200
Speaker 3: just sort of imagine, oh, I don't know I send

529
00:30:17,280 --> 00:30:20,520
Speaker 3: on email. You don't know about SMTP. The problem is

530
00:30:20,520 --> 00:30:22,920
Speaker 3: is that mostly what you're dealing with is not your

531
00:30:22,960 --> 00:30:25,200
Speaker 3: computer is not a computer. To you, it's just an

532
00:30:25,240 --> 00:30:28,480
Speaker 3: application serving device. But to somebody who lives on the

533
00:30:28,480 --> 00:30:30,880
Speaker 3: command line, just the way somebody could live on the

534
00:30:30,880 --> 00:30:35,400
Speaker 3: command line of DNA, they see an entirely different world.

535
00:30:35,720 --> 00:30:37,760
Speaker 3: So my claim is is that if you're writing something

536
00:30:37,800 --> 00:30:41,400
Speaker 3: like wireshark, you're very well aware of what you could

537
00:30:41,400 --> 00:30:45,120
Speaker 3: be doing. And if you're studying coronavirus, like the Cohealth

538
00:30:45,120 --> 00:30:49,600
Speaker 3: Alliance was studying coronavirus, or Ralph Barrack in North Carolina

539
00:30:49,680 --> 00:30:54,480
Speaker 3: was studying viruses, those people are very well aware of

540
00:30:54,520 --> 00:30:59,200
Speaker 3: what it takes to humanize and weaponize a virus platform

541
00:30:59,240 --> 00:31:04,400
Speaker 3: and tells who Berrick is a very talented scientist at

542
00:31:04,440 --> 00:31:07,800
Speaker 3: the University of North Carolina. And we signed a bio

543
00:31:07,840 --> 00:31:10,840
Speaker 3: weapons convention, and I think we signed two treaties in

544
00:31:10,880 --> 00:31:15,720
Speaker 3: the nineteen seventies which prohibit us from exploring offensive weapons.

545
00:31:15,760 --> 00:31:17,320
Speaker 3: But a lot of what you hear is what we

546
00:31:17,400 --> 00:31:20,560
Speaker 3: have to explore defensive weapons. In order to explore defensive

547
00:31:21,480 --> 00:31:24,160
Speaker 3: weapons against the weapons, we have to create the weapons

548
00:31:24,760 --> 00:31:27,120
Speaker 3: to begin with, so that we know what we're defending against.

549
00:31:27,360 --> 00:31:34,959
Speaker 3: So we're engaged in high level bullshit in order to

550
00:31:35,080 --> 00:31:40,000
Speaker 3: explain what we're doing messing around in a place like Wuhan, China.

551
00:31:40,360 --> 00:31:42,959
Speaker 1: Oh, you're saying we developed the bullshit to cover our

552
00:31:43,040 --> 00:31:45,040
Speaker 1: tracks at Wuhan, is what you mean?

553
00:31:45,840 --> 00:31:50,240
Speaker 3: We don't want to be caught off guard in a

554
00:31:50,240 --> 00:31:52,600
Speaker 3: prisoner's dilemma where we agree not to do something and

555
00:31:52,640 --> 00:31:56,760
Speaker 3: the other party decides to cheat on their agreement. So

556
00:31:56,920 --> 00:31:59,200
Speaker 3: we are cheating on the agreement that we signed, the

557
00:31:59,240 --> 00:32:02,800
Speaker 3: agreement being don't develop offensive. Yeah, that's the spirit of

558
00:32:02,840 --> 00:32:07,160
Speaker 3: the agreement. A word that is very rarely used in

559
00:32:07,200 --> 00:32:13,080
Speaker 3: this capacity called pettifogging, where you can talk about arbitraging

560
00:32:13,840 --> 00:32:17,960
Speaker 3: the letter against the spirit. We are engaged in arbitraging

561
00:32:18,000 --> 00:32:21,040
Speaker 3: the letter of the Bioweapons Convention against the spirit of

562
00:32:21,080 --> 00:32:25,840
Speaker 3: the Bioweapons Convention. But we are not doing this at

563
00:32:25,880 --> 00:32:29,240
Speaker 3: a credible level. We are telling tall tales that are

564
00:32:29,240 --> 00:32:32,800
Speaker 3: not befitting of adults, let alone scientists. And so what

565
00:32:32,840 --> 00:32:36,400
Speaker 3: we have is we have these sort of storytellers in chief.

566
00:32:36,840 --> 00:32:40,320
Speaker 3: So Francis Collins was a storyteller in chief, Anthony Fauci

567
00:32:40,400 --> 00:32:43,280
Speaker 3: was a storyteller in chief. That allows people like Peter

568
00:32:43,400 --> 00:32:46,840
Speaker 3: Dazac at the Cohalth Alliance in Ralph Barrick in North

569
00:32:46,840 --> 00:32:51,520
Speaker 3: Carolina to do the scientific and administrative work that are

570
00:32:51,640 --> 00:32:55,320
Speaker 3: engaged in our bioweapons program where we take see, if

571
00:32:55,360 --> 00:32:58,440
Speaker 3: you've just had something called NIID the National Institute of

572
00:32:58,440 --> 00:33:00,760
Speaker 3: Infectious Diseases, it would be too clear that it was

573
00:33:00,760 --> 00:33:02,320
Speaker 3: probably something military related.

574
00:33:02,320 --> 00:33:03,320
Speaker 2: So if you throw allergies.

575
00:33:03,320 --> 00:33:05,560
Speaker 3: In the middle of it, you get the National Institute

576
00:33:05,560 --> 00:33:07,160
Speaker 3: of Allergies and Infectious Disease.

577
00:33:07,440 --> 00:33:09,240
Speaker 2: Oh, these people are going to cure me of hay fever.

578
00:33:09,720 --> 00:33:12,640
Speaker 1: And so your view, My view is.

579
00:33:12,560 --> 00:33:18,000
Speaker 3: That we just went through a national security, national interest

580
00:33:18,080 --> 00:33:23,520
Speaker 3: exercise that was catastrophic for science. That there was a

581
00:33:23,600 --> 00:33:29,520
Speaker 3: world science experiment and the world looked to us as

582
00:33:29,600 --> 00:33:31,760
Speaker 3: scientists to say, what the hell is going on?

583
00:33:31,920 --> 00:33:33,040
Speaker 2: We let the world down?

584
00:33:33,200 --> 00:33:35,239
Speaker 1: So let's unpack that. In what ways did we let

585
00:33:35,320 --> 00:33:35,960
Speaker 1: the world down?

586
00:33:37,440 --> 00:33:39,680
Speaker 2: They wanted to know where this virus came from.

587
00:33:39,960 --> 00:33:44,479
Speaker 1: So there's a tension between national security interests and what

588
00:33:44,520 --> 00:33:47,680
Speaker 1: they're able to tell the public and what academic scientists

589
00:33:47,760 --> 00:33:48,200
Speaker 1: even know.

590
00:33:48,920 --> 00:33:50,680
Speaker 3: Well, do you remember when OJ was going to look

591
00:33:50,680 --> 00:33:54,120
Speaker 3: for the real killers? Yeah, so we're going to find

592
00:33:54,200 --> 00:33:56,160
Speaker 3: the origin of this virus if it kills us.

593
00:33:56,440 --> 00:34:00,760
Speaker 1: But do you think the people who knew about national

594
00:34:00,760 --> 00:34:03,200
Speaker 1: security buy weapons were the people doing that or other

595
00:34:03,240 --> 00:34:06,760
Speaker 1: academics who who really didn't know. We have two groups.

596
00:34:06,840 --> 00:34:08,239
Speaker 3: The first thing I want to know is I want

597
00:34:08,280 --> 00:34:11,400
Speaker 3: to put Ralph Barrick and Peter dejac on the stand,

598
00:34:11,400 --> 00:34:13,080
Speaker 3: and I want to ask them a ton of questions,

599
00:34:13,840 --> 00:34:15,440
Speaker 3: and I want to do that to Francis Collins, and

600
00:34:15,440 --> 00:34:16,920
Speaker 3: I want to do that to Anthony Fauci.

601
00:34:17,360 --> 00:34:19,920
Speaker 2: And I want those questions to be asked not by.

602
00:34:20,040 --> 00:34:25,480
Speaker 3: Random senators and congressmen. I want our best, heterodox pro

603
00:34:25,560 --> 00:34:30,480
Speaker 3: science thinkers coming up with exactly the right questions. And

604
00:34:30,520 --> 00:34:32,560
Speaker 3: I don't want it time limited by oh, you know,

605
00:34:32,880 --> 00:34:37,439
Speaker 3: the five minutes allotted are out. No, if this turns

606
00:34:37,480 --> 00:34:39,320
Speaker 3: out to be something that came out of a lab,

607
00:34:40,680 --> 00:34:42,520
Speaker 3: how many people did we just kill? I want to know,

608
00:34:43,120 --> 00:34:47,680
Speaker 3: did we kill zero? Good news? Did we kill millions?

609
00:34:48,200 --> 00:34:50,600
Speaker 2: I want to know. This is so bad?

610
00:34:51,600 --> 00:34:57,880
Speaker 3: And I don't think people understand within the academy that,

611
00:34:58,000 --> 00:35:02,120
Speaker 3: you know, let's imagine that you're doing development and zebra fish.

612
00:35:02,320 --> 00:35:04,839
Speaker 3: You say, well, science is basically working. Of course people

613
00:35:04,880 --> 00:35:08,000
Speaker 3: are going to have issues because it involved the Wuhan

614
00:35:08,080 --> 00:35:10,440
Speaker 3: Institute of Virology, and of course there's stuff going on

615
00:35:10,520 --> 00:35:14,560
Speaker 3: with bioweapons. You'd be naive to think that that's not okay. Well,

616
00:35:14,680 --> 00:35:17,760
Speaker 3: you allowed people to say that public health was science.

617
00:35:17,840 --> 00:35:21,880
Speaker 3: Public health is not science. Public health involves noble laws,

618
00:35:22,000 --> 00:35:27,360
Speaker 3: it involves coercive activities, nudging to use the cast Sunstein concept.

619
00:35:29,640 --> 00:35:33,600
Speaker 3: It's important that science cancel its credit card that it's

620
00:35:33,640 --> 00:35:37,960
Speaker 3: given to public health. No, that's not us. You're on

621
00:35:38,000 --> 00:35:41,279
Speaker 3: your own. You screwed up. We didn't screw up. What's more,

622
00:35:41,320 --> 00:35:43,160
Speaker 3: we know how to get to the bottom of these things.

623
00:35:43,200 --> 00:35:47,439
Speaker 3: We can figure out ohts. And the public looked to us,

624
00:35:49,640 --> 00:35:52,640
Speaker 3: and we sat there with Anthony Fauci and Francis's colins,

625
00:35:52,719 --> 00:35:58,840
Speaker 3: hands around our throat for funding, and we said, yes, boss,

626
00:36:00,440 --> 00:36:03,480
Speaker 3: well we're not supposed to have a boss. This is

627
00:36:03,480 --> 00:36:06,000
Speaker 3: what academic freedom is about. This is what public spirited

628
00:36:06,040 --> 00:36:08,840
Speaker 3: science is about. And yes, you can do some stuff

629
00:36:08,880 --> 00:36:11,280
Speaker 3: in terms of national interest, but when you allow something

630
00:36:11,320 --> 00:36:13,560
Speaker 3: potentially to get out of a lab and infect an

631
00:36:13,719 --> 00:36:17,800
Speaker 3: entire planet and kill millions, and then you force people

632
00:36:17,840 --> 00:36:20,440
Speaker 3: more or less through coercion, to inject themselves with something

633
00:36:20,440 --> 00:36:23,520
Speaker 3: that you're not explaining, well, you need to answer an

634
00:36:23,600 --> 00:36:27,160
Speaker 3: infinite number of questions from the world's smartest people, and

635
00:36:27,200 --> 00:36:29,440
Speaker 3: they need to know that they have a job on Monday,

636
00:36:29,920 --> 00:36:31,480
Speaker 3: if they do their job on a Friday.

637
00:36:31,760 --> 00:36:32,879
Speaker 2: You and I know.

638
00:36:32,960 --> 00:36:36,000
Speaker 3: People inside of the institutions who would have been very

639
00:36:36,040 --> 00:36:38,719
Speaker 3: capable of shouldering that burden. There was a lot of

640
00:36:38,760 --> 00:36:42,759
Speaker 3: fear inside of the universities that this was a bioweapon,

641
00:36:42,880 --> 00:36:45,080
Speaker 3: and then we pretended that people who said that on

642
00:36:45,160 --> 00:36:48,880
Speaker 3: the internet were stupid, they were crazy, they were conspiracy theorists.

643
00:36:48,880 --> 00:36:50,920
Speaker 3: How could you possibly imagine that this came out of

644
00:36:50,960 --> 00:36:53,400
Speaker 3: the wool One Institute of Virology? My god, are you

645
00:36:53,480 --> 00:36:58,480
Speaker 3: a racist? And the Lancet you know, fell behind, and

646
00:36:58,560 --> 00:37:01,600
Speaker 3: we had like, you know, seven seven Nobel laureates saying,

647
00:37:01,680 --> 00:37:05,040
Speaker 3: please don't shut off the grant of poor Peter Dajak.

648
00:37:05,840 --> 00:37:10,879
Speaker 2: Come on, this is just not adult level fiction, because

649
00:37:10,880 --> 00:37:11,440
Speaker 2: if we could.

650
00:37:11,320 --> 00:37:14,000
Speaker 1: Do it over again, you're saying we should look at

651
00:37:14,040 --> 00:37:15,719
Speaker 1: all the hypothesis, keep everything on the.

652
00:37:15,680 --> 00:37:19,160
Speaker 3: Time, saying that scientists have a right to be in

653
00:37:19,239 --> 00:37:24,399
Speaker 3: a more than equal relationship to the national interest complex. Yeah,

654
00:37:24,600 --> 00:37:27,920
Speaker 3: we are not your employees. We're not here to do

655
00:37:27,960 --> 00:37:31,279
Speaker 3: your dirty work. We're not here to cover up your mistakes.

656
00:37:32,719 --> 00:37:36,120
Speaker 3: We are public spirited individuals focused on truth. And don't

657
00:37:36,160 --> 00:37:38,320
Speaker 3: ever ask us to lie like this ever again.

658
00:37:39,600 --> 00:37:43,000
Speaker 1: Ever, who was asked to lie? Though, you're saying, in

659
00:37:43,120 --> 00:37:46,040
Speaker 1: terms of shutting down conversation about did this come out.

660
00:37:45,880 --> 00:37:50,040
Speaker 2: To Jabaria was asked to lie? Let's just start there,

661
00:37:50,120 --> 00:37:51,279
Speaker 2: great unpack that.

662
00:37:51,760 --> 00:37:57,400
Speaker 3: Okay, we have three fringe epidemiologists from fringe schools Stanford,

663
00:37:57,560 --> 00:38:06,000
Speaker 3: Harvard and Oxford. These crazy fringe epidemiologists who require, I

664
00:38:06,000 --> 00:38:09,719
Speaker 3: think from Francis's Collins and Email, a swift and devastating

665
00:38:09,800 --> 00:38:15,080
Speaker 3: takedown of their ideas. Swift and devastating takedown of their ideas. David,

666
00:38:16,000 --> 00:38:18,760
Speaker 3: this is madness. I talked to Jay, Jay's a friend.

667
00:38:20,520 --> 00:38:23,040
Speaker 3: Jay asked me, how did you learn how the universities

668
00:38:23,080 --> 00:38:26,640
Speaker 3: actually work so early in your career. I said, I

669
00:38:26,680 --> 00:38:30,400
Speaker 3: stumbled on it by making discoveries. I said, what do

670
00:38:30,480 --> 00:38:33,640
Speaker 3: you mean. He said, well, I was at Stanford I think,

671
00:38:33,680 --> 00:38:35,640
Speaker 3: he said, for thirty five years of my adult life

672
00:38:35,680 --> 00:38:38,959
Speaker 3: something like that. And he said I never had any

673
00:38:39,000 --> 00:38:41,960
Speaker 3: idea how this worked. And I said, what do you mean?

674
00:38:42,040 --> 00:38:44,680
Speaker 3: He said, It wasn't until I said, you know, we

675
00:38:44,719 --> 00:38:48,480
Speaker 3: don't do this for any pandemic. This is not the

676
00:38:48,480 --> 00:38:52,320
Speaker 3: standard operating procedure for any pandemic. What's not the standard

677
00:38:52,320 --> 00:38:54,560
Speaker 3: operating pu whatever we did in the face of COVID

678
00:38:54,800 --> 00:38:57,840
Speaker 3: two weeks to flatten the curved masks, yes, masks, no.

679
00:39:00,239 --> 00:39:01,120
Speaker 1: This you know what.

680
00:39:02,280 --> 00:39:04,560
Speaker 3: I had the Hong Kong flu in the end of

681
00:39:04,560 --> 00:39:08,480
Speaker 3: the sixties. It was a full on pandemic. That's what

682
00:39:08,520 --> 00:39:12,799
Speaker 3: happened during Woodstock. Woodstock took place during a pandemic. Right,

683
00:39:12,840 --> 00:39:15,680
Speaker 3: we don't remember the Hong Kong flu. Right, we're not

684
00:39:15,719 --> 00:39:17,840
Speaker 3: even allowed to call this the Wuhan flu or the

685
00:39:17,840 --> 00:39:21,760
Speaker 3: Wuhan virus. So their point was, what are we doing

686
00:39:23,200 --> 00:39:26,440
Speaker 3: as epidemiologists and virologists. We know that we have protocols

687
00:39:26,440 --> 00:39:31,120
Speaker 3: and we're not following them. What's happening. This is where

688
00:39:31,120 --> 00:39:33,760
Speaker 3: Francis Collins says, we need a swift and devastating takedown

689
00:39:33,800 --> 00:39:37,600
Speaker 3: of the ideas of these fringe epidemiologists. Suddenly, Ja Bodicharia

690
00:39:38,920 --> 00:39:41,960
Speaker 3: goes from being a darling of Stanford University, I think,

691
00:39:41,960 --> 00:39:44,600
Speaker 3: with an MD and a PhD in economics, some guy

692
00:39:44,600 --> 00:39:50,280
Speaker 3: who's like totally unassailable, to some fringe lunatic with an email.

693
00:39:51,239 --> 00:39:54,640
Speaker 3: You've never had this, David, You've never had this treatment,

694
00:39:55,280 --> 00:39:59,560
Speaker 3: and if you've ever had this treatment, you'll never forget it.

695
00:39:59,560 --> 00:40:03,160
Speaker 3: It's like you say something and it's treated like farting

696
00:40:03,200 --> 00:40:03,680
Speaker 3: in church.

697
00:40:03,960 --> 00:40:07,759
Speaker 1: The point is that their national security interests. Jay went

698
00:40:07,880 --> 00:40:10,280
Speaker 1: against that. He didn't know that he was doing without

699
00:40:10,360 --> 00:40:13,239
Speaker 1: knowing it, and found himself shut down.

700
00:40:13,440 --> 00:40:13,920
Speaker 2: Exactly.

701
00:40:13,960 --> 00:40:16,279
Speaker 3: The point was he was just trying to do what

702
00:40:16,320 --> 00:40:19,200
Speaker 3: he knew how to do. He's saying, I'm an expert,

703
00:40:20,000 --> 00:40:24,759
Speaker 3: let me contribute my expertise. We don't do this. This

704
00:40:24,880 --> 00:40:29,400
Speaker 3: is not standard operating protocol. So nobody pulled Jay aside

705
00:40:29,440 --> 00:40:34,359
Speaker 3: and said, hey, we may have created this. We have

706
00:40:34,440 --> 00:40:36,560
Speaker 3: a little bit of an issue of sensitivity with our

707
00:40:36,640 --> 00:40:39,319
Speaker 3: Chinese partners. I can't tell you everything. It's a need

708
00:40:39,360 --> 00:40:45,360
Speaker 3: to know basis. You see, in general, you have people

709
00:40:45,520 --> 00:40:50,000
Speaker 3: who know what a special access program is or an

710
00:40:50,080 --> 00:40:52,839
Speaker 3: unacknowledged special access program is, and you have people who

711
00:40:53,000 --> 00:40:54,560
Speaker 3: complain about conspiracy theories.

712
00:40:55,800 --> 00:40:57,279
Speaker 2: So tell us what that program is.

713
00:40:57,320 --> 00:41:00,440
Speaker 3: Well, I'm just saying it's a category of secrets stuff.

714
00:41:01,120 --> 00:41:05,399
Speaker 3: An unacknowledged special access program is some black budget thing

715
00:41:05,560 --> 00:41:08,080
Speaker 3: that we don't even talk about, and we don't even acknowledge.

716
00:41:08,160 --> 00:41:12,000
Speaker 3: It's a covert operation. It's deniable if it's ever discovered.

717
00:41:12,520 --> 00:41:18,200
Speaker 3: The right question about Wuhan and COVID is did this

718
00:41:18,920 --> 00:41:23,960
Speaker 3: involve a covert operation, did this involve a special access program?

719
00:41:24,120 --> 00:41:29,600
Speaker 3: And did it in particular involve an unacknowledged special access program?

720
00:41:29,760 --> 00:41:33,080
Speaker 3: And when you ask that question, you're clearly indicating that

721
00:41:33,160 --> 00:41:37,960
Speaker 3: you have knowledge of the architecture of how we keep secrets.

722
00:41:38,000 --> 00:41:40,560
Speaker 2: As a nation. We are entitled to keep secrets. We

723
00:41:40,640 --> 00:41:41,600
Speaker 2: have to keep secrets.

724
00:41:42,000 --> 00:41:46,640
Speaker 3: But somehow science and something called SSP or State Secrets privilege,

725
00:41:46,840 --> 00:41:51,360
Speaker 3: have collided, and now the world thinks that we're not

726
00:41:51,480 --> 00:41:54,000
Speaker 3: very good at our job. And my feeling is is

727
00:41:54,040 --> 00:41:57,240
Speaker 3: that we should say, hold my beer and we should

728
00:41:57,480 --> 00:42:01,000
Speaker 3: let our friends at Gspatial intelligen since the CIA the

729
00:42:01,120 --> 00:42:04,520
Speaker 3: NSA know that we are not in the business of

730
00:42:04,680 --> 00:42:21,279
Speaker 3: lying about science at this level, so let.

731
00:42:21,239 --> 00:42:23,719
Speaker 1: Me just zoom out to the big picture. The difficulty

732
00:42:23,800 --> 00:42:28,120
Speaker 1: is that you have scientists, academic scientists like me, for example,

733
00:42:28,480 --> 00:42:33,759
Speaker 1: who I would say I've been I'm very naive to this.

734
00:42:33,840 --> 00:42:37,480
Speaker 1: It's at the interface where there's all these problems because

735
00:42:38,120 --> 00:42:41,840
Speaker 1: it's not that I or my colleagues, to my knowledge

736
00:42:42,160 --> 00:42:46,560
Speaker 1: ever said hey, we'll do your bidding. But you're saying

737
00:42:47,520 --> 00:42:49,560
Speaker 1: just being naive is enough of a problem.

738
00:42:49,760 --> 00:42:50,360
Speaker 2: Great point.

739
00:42:50,480 --> 00:42:54,359
Speaker 3: Okay, So for example, we've known each other a long

740
00:42:54,400 --> 00:42:57,040
Speaker 3: time and one of the things that I loved was

741
00:42:57,120 --> 00:43:01,360
Speaker 3: mister potato head, thank you. Now, mister data is a

742
00:43:01,360 --> 00:43:03,600
Speaker 3: great idea that the brain is an all purpose computer

743
00:43:03,680 --> 00:43:04,920
Speaker 3: with default peripherals.

744
00:43:05,360 --> 00:43:06,760
Speaker 2: Correct me, if I'm wrong, that's perfect.

745
00:43:07,560 --> 00:43:11,000
Speaker 3: So now I've got my olfactory default peripherals in my nose,

746
00:43:11,040 --> 00:43:14,120
Speaker 3: in my mouth, I've got my visual default peripherals in

747
00:43:14,200 --> 00:43:17,840
Speaker 3: my eyes and ears that pick up frequencies either of

748
00:43:17,920 --> 00:43:20,920
Speaker 3: light or of sound waves. And I've got my skin.

749
00:43:21,360 --> 00:43:23,520
Speaker 3: But the question is what if I want to start

750
00:43:23,600 --> 00:43:26,400
Speaker 3: umvelt hacking. So I take the things that I can't perceive,

751
00:43:26,480 --> 00:43:30,600
Speaker 3: like ultraviolet or infrared light or polarization, let's say, and

752
00:43:30,640 --> 00:43:32,879
Speaker 3: I start coming up with new peripherals, and I jack

753
00:43:32,960 --> 00:43:35,640
Speaker 3: into the general all purpose computer that is my brain.

754
00:43:36,680 --> 00:43:38,000
Speaker 2: Okay, that is.

755
00:43:37,960 --> 00:43:42,120
Speaker 3: Such a cool idea which I've just loved. Right one day,

756
00:43:42,480 --> 00:43:46,480
Speaker 3: somebody shows up and says, your lab is locked. Why

757
00:43:47,120 --> 00:43:49,960
Speaker 3: we're concerned that what you're doing is is that you're

758
00:43:50,000 --> 00:43:53,279
Speaker 3: developing something that equips a soldier to be able to

759
00:43:53,320 --> 00:43:57,000
Speaker 3: perceive aspects of the battlefield that are currently not available

760
00:43:57,040 --> 00:43:59,920
Speaker 3: to our adversaries. We believe that what you're doing is

761
00:44:00,160 --> 00:44:04,680
Speaker 3: creating a technology that allows for total situational awareness of

762
00:44:04,719 --> 00:44:07,919
Speaker 3: a soldier on a battlefield to be able to see

763
00:44:07,960 --> 00:44:09,879
Speaker 3: the battlefield in a way that no one else can.

764
00:44:10,480 --> 00:44:13,600
Speaker 3: And therefore we are going to restrict your technology. You

765
00:44:13,640 --> 00:44:16,600
Speaker 3: didn't think mister potato head, it's a goofy name, right.

766
00:44:17,200 --> 00:44:18,880
Speaker 3: It's just as you talk about this stuff and you

767
00:44:18,920 --> 00:44:24,120
Speaker 3: do science, this is how you get into trouble. Mister

768
00:44:24,160 --> 00:44:27,160
Speaker 3: potato head is an amazing military concept.

769
00:44:28,760 --> 00:44:29,120
Speaker 2: I see.

770
00:44:29,160 --> 00:44:32,920
Speaker 1: So this is how scientists accidentally bump up against.

771
00:44:32,640 --> 00:44:34,360
Speaker 2: This sort of thing at some point in their career.

772
00:44:34,800 --> 00:44:35,280
Speaker 1: Possibly.

773
00:44:35,400 --> 00:44:39,640
Speaker 3: Let's imagine you're not part of the Manhattan Project, and

774
00:44:39,800 --> 00:44:43,040
Speaker 3: during the Manhattan Project, we tried to create disinformation that

775
00:44:43,080 --> 00:44:46,080
Speaker 3: didn't call attention to the fact that uranium and plutonium

776
00:44:46,120 --> 00:44:49,360
Speaker 3: were particularly promising for physile material.

777
00:44:49,760 --> 00:44:53,000
Speaker 1: The Manhattan Project being where the world's great physicists all

778
00:44:53,040 --> 00:44:55,520
Speaker 1: gathered in the middle of New Mexico and Los Alamos, well,

779
00:44:55,520 --> 00:44:57,400
Speaker 1: they were actually more distributed. They were at the University

780
00:44:57,400 --> 00:45:00,239
Speaker 1: of Chicago and Oak Ridge.

781
00:45:00,320 --> 00:45:01,840
Speaker 2: Yes, the majority of them.

782
00:45:02,600 --> 00:45:04,839
Speaker 3: We're in this group of white badges, I believe at

783
00:45:04,920 --> 00:45:07,640
Speaker 3: Les Alamos who had access to the super secret information.

784
00:45:08,719 --> 00:45:11,280
Speaker 3: And one of the things we did is we engaged

785
00:45:11,360 --> 00:45:14,960
Speaker 3: in haystacking, which is that we talked about many more

786
00:45:15,000 --> 00:45:18,760
Speaker 3: elements than we thought were relevant in order to allow our.

787
00:45:19,400 --> 00:45:21,400
Speaker 2: Haystacking means you throw out more information.

788
00:45:21,520 --> 00:45:23,239
Speaker 3: You have a needle. I want to come up with

789
00:45:23,280 --> 00:45:26,799
Speaker 3: a haystack in order to hide it. So imagine that

790
00:45:26,840 --> 00:45:29,760
Speaker 3: you're like some guy who's not contacted by the Manhattan

791
00:45:29,760 --> 00:45:32,520
Speaker 3: Project and you say, actually, you know, it's really just

792
00:45:33,480 --> 00:45:35,960
Speaker 3: yourm and plutonium that we should be focused on.

793
00:45:36,239 --> 00:45:38,960
Speaker 2: You're doing science as far as you know. Ah.

794
00:45:39,000 --> 00:45:41,240
Speaker 1: But if I were that guy, I might receive a phone.

795
00:45:41,040 --> 00:45:43,160
Speaker 3: Call, or you might find that none of your work

796
00:45:43,640 --> 00:45:49,719
Speaker 3: is published. I see, suddenly the referees keep sending things back.

797
00:45:51,000 --> 00:45:56,080
Speaker 3: I see it requires further data, promising, but incomplete.

798
00:45:56,920 --> 00:45:57,399
Speaker 1: Got it.

799
00:45:57,960 --> 00:46:00,480
Speaker 3: Yeah, So my point is that you haven't bumped up

800
00:46:00,520 --> 00:46:04,800
Speaker 3: against this yet. It's just you haven't thought enough about

801
00:46:05,080 --> 00:46:09,840
Speaker 3: how powerful you are and how powerful national interest is

802
00:46:09,960 --> 00:46:12,600
Speaker 3: and the way in which science and national interests interact.

803
00:46:13,000 --> 00:46:15,400
Speaker 1: So let's get back to cowboys science then. So what

804
00:46:15,440 --> 00:46:17,000
Speaker 1: does that look like? What does that mean to you

805
00:46:17,040 --> 00:46:20,800
Speaker 1: to be able to do something outside of the standard channels.

806
00:46:21,239 --> 00:46:23,600
Speaker 3: Well, one thing it means is that if a cowboy

807
00:46:23,640 --> 00:46:26,520
Speaker 3: bumps up into the national interest complex, the national interest

808
00:46:26,560 --> 00:46:29,080
Speaker 3: complex comes and tells you, hey, you're riding on the

809
00:46:29,160 --> 00:46:33,839
Speaker 3: range here in New Mexico or Nevada, and we've got

810
00:46:33,880 --> 00:46:37,280
Speaker 3: some aerospace stuff going on, and maybe some nuclear stuff.

811
00:46:38,360 --> 00:46:42,680
Speaker 3: We need your cooperation. You should not train any of

812
00:46:42,760 --> 00:46:46,080
Speaker 3: us if you can't talk to us later us being scientists,

813
00:46:46,080 --> 00:46:49,960
Speaker 3: you should not train somebody at my level if you

814
00:46:50,000 --> 00:46:54,160
Speaker 3: can't have a conversation about national interest. If you think

815
00:46:54,200 --> 00:46:56,560
Speaker 3: that you can't trust me with a secret, then don't

816
00:46:56,560 --> 00:46:56,960
Speaker 3: train me.

817
00:46:59,400 --> 00:47:02,560
Speaker 1: You're saying the problem is scientists get trained and then

818
00:47:02,920 --> 00:47:04,760
Speaker 1: they might find something.

819
00:47:05,200 --> 00:47:07,759
Speaker 3: A mentally retarded eight year old child would not be

820
00:47:07,840 --> 00:47:10,440
Speaker 3: able to believe some of the lies told by Tony Fauci,

821
00:47:10,719 --> 00:47:13,080
Speaker 3: like what give me an example, two weeks to flatten

822
00:47:13,120 --> 00:47:13,520
Speaker 3: the curve?

823
00:47:13,640 --> 00:47:18,040
Speaker 2: What was that? Or we don't need masks?

824
00:47:18,040 --> 00:47:21,560
Speaker 3: We do, we don't, we do, we don't clearly based

825
00:47:21,600 --> 00:47:24,200
Speaker 3: on whether or not there was a failure to replenish

826
00:47:24,239 --> 00:47:29,279
Speaker 3: PPE after it was drawn down, I believe during the

827
00:47:29,280 --> 00:47:34,600
Speaker 3: Bush administration, like we didn't follow surge protocols or the

828
00:47:34,680 --> 00:47:37,160
Speaker 3: idea that it was racism to ask whether or not

829
00:47:37,200 --> 00:47:39,800
Speaker 3: something emerge from a lab and to emerge from a

830
00:47:39,880 --> 00:47:43,120
Speaker 3: lab in Wuhan. All of this stuff is nonsense and

831
00:47:43,160 --> 00:47:48,120
Speaker 3: it's absolutely insulting. Or vaccines are safe full stop, No

832
00:47:48,200 --> 00:47:52,560
Speaker 3: they're not. Water isn't safe, full stop.

833
00:47:53,040 --> 00:47:55,520
Speaker 1: So let me understand what this what do you see

834
00:47:55,520 --> 00:47:56,680
Speaker 1: as a solution to this?

835
00:47:57,280 --> 00:48:00,880
Speaker 3: First thing is I think twice three times before you

836
00:48:01,000 --> 00:48:02,840
Speaker 3: train somebody at public expense.

837
00:48:03,080 --> 00:48:07,759
Speaker 1: But you don't want to not train brilliant young physicists.

838
00:48:07,960 --> 00:48:09,040
Speaker 1: So what's a better solution?

839
00:48:09,160 --> 00:48:12,080
Speaker 3: No, no, I do want to not train. If we

840
00:48:12,080 --> 00:48:15,680
Speaker 3: have a class Fuchs, I don't want them trained. I'm sorry,

841
00:48:15,719 --> 00:48:18,480
Speaker 3: who's class fuchs? They spy at Los Alamos. If we

842
00:48:18,560 --> 00:48:21,440
Speaker 3: have somebody who's not patriotic enough to understand that in

843
00:48:21,520 --> 00:48:25,080
Speaker 3: the wake of Los Alamos, the Manhattan Project and the

844
00:48:25,120 --> 00:48:28,880
Speaker 3: teller Ulam design, that physics is not kidding around.

845
00:48:29,800 --> 00:48:30,880
Speaker 2: Don't train that person.

846
00:48:31,360 --> 00:48:34,320
Speaker 1: How do you determine I don't know, especially an interview

847
00:48:34,400 --> 00:48:40,479
Speaker 1: sixteen year old kid, give them an interview, Okay, you know, Okay, yeah,

848
00:48:40,560 --> 00:48:42,520
Speaker 1: I have a different view of science than anyone else

849
00:48:42,560 --> 00:48:44,799
Speaker 1: on planet Earth. So you happen to be foolish enough

850
00:48:44,800 --> 00:48:47,160
Speaker 1: to invite me to sit down. So here's you're getting something.

851
00:48:47,200 --> 00:48:49,400
Speaker 1: I think that we are intellectual ninjas.

852
00:48:49,560 --> 00:48:53,480
Speaker 3: We are dangerous. What we do is important. It's not cute,

853
00:48:53,520 --> 00:48:57,760
Speaker 3: it's not fun, it's not interesting. It's life and death.

854
00:48:59,320 --> 00:49:02,800
Speaker 3: Particularly within six months between nineteen fifty two and nineteen

855
00:49:02,840 --> 00:49:07,040
Speaker 3: fifty three. From November to April, everything changed, and it

856
00:49:07,160 --> 00:49:11,000
Speaker 3: changed in physics, and it changed in biology because of

857
00:49:11,040 --> 00:49:15,400
Speaker 3: the discovery of televite device in nineteen fifty two in

858
00:49:15,440 --> 00:49:17,920
Speaker 3: November and the explosion of ivy mic, which was a

859
00:49:17,960 --> 00:49:22,680
Speaker 3: successful thermonuclear test in the Pacific with a three stage weapon,

860
00:49:23,680 --> 00:49:27,640
Speaker 3: and because of the discovery of the repeating structure of

861
00:49:27,719 --> 00:49:33,120
Speaker 3: nucleic acid perfectly suited to being a data store translated

862
00:49:33,120 --> 00:49:36,440
Speaker 3: by ribosomes into protein, which are the machines that determine

863
00:49:36,440 --> 00:49:39,759
Speaker 3: everything in the world that matter. Right, This is the

864
00:49:39,800 --> 00:49:44,439
Speaker 3: structure of DNA, past structure of DNA leading to the

865
00:49:44,440 --> 00:49:49,920
Speaker 3: central dogma of translation of DNA into RNA and RNA

866
00:49:50,040 --> 00:49:56,960
Speaker 3: into protein and the genetic code. We have power that

867
00:49:57,160 --> 00:50:02,560
Speaker 3: is inconceivable, and if we are going to have national

868
00:50:02,560 --> 00:50:07,000
Speaker 3: interest issues, we need to have those national interests issues

869
00:50:07,040 --> 00:50:10,600
Speaker 3: out early, not late. I don't know why we're inviting

870
00:50:10,600 --> 00:50:14,600
Speaker 3: the Chinese to staff our labs. Is that because we

871
00:50:14,640 --> 00:50:16,799
Speaker 3: have an agreement with China that we are somehow going

872
00:50:16,840 --> 00:50:21,520
Speaker 3: to avoid war. But our graduate students are not graduate students,

873
00:50:21,560 --> 00:50:26,120
Speaker 3: they are workers. It is a cryptic labor program for

874
00:50:26,160 --> 00:50:30,319
Speaker 3: the universities and the best in the brightest is not that,

875
00:50:30,400 --> 00:50:33,120
Speaker 3: because we compete in a labor market. It's the best value,

876
00:50:33,200 --> 00:50:38,280
Speaker 3: not the best minds. Furthermore, the American product, the cowboy

877
00:50:38,400 --> 00:50:41,520
Speaker 3: scientists think Bruce Willis is in a lab code. That

878
00:50:41,640 --> 00:50:44,840
Speaker 3: product has high variants, but much much higher.

879
00:50:44,920 --> 00:50:45,120
Speaker 2: Mean.

880
00:50:46,440 --> 00:50:49,440
Speaker 3: We are the best in the world at science and engineering,

881
00:50:49,560 --> 00:50:53,839
Speaker 3: full stop. We being America, We being America, and our

882
00:50:53,960 --> 00:50:59,920
Speaker 3: friends the French of the world's greatest mathematicians. You know,

883
00:51:00,880 --> 00:51:05,560
Speaker 3: some of our friends are our Russians. The West. Something

884
00:51:05,640 --> 00:51:09,400
Speaker 3: happened in the West and in Japan. It just didn't

885
00:51:09,400 --> 00:51:10,560
Speaker 3: happen in the rest of the world.

886
00:51:10,800 --> 00:51:11,319
Speaker 1: What is that?

887
00:51:11,520 --> 00:51:16,160
Speaker 3: I don't know, the Enlightenment, the scientific method, some compounding

888
00:51:16,200 --> 00:51:20,000
Speaker 3: effect from colonization. Maybe it had to do with the

889
00:51:20,040 --> 00:51:23,600
Speaker 3: exploitation of the Third World. I don't know. But something

890
00:51:23,719 --> 00:51:33,320
Speaker 3: happened where the West got insanely powerful, and the US,

891
00:51:34,200 --> 00:51:36,440
Speaker 3: in part because of World War two and the mismanagement

892
00:51:36,480 --> 00:51:43,440
Speaker 3: of Europe by Adolf had learned Mussolinian other became the

893
00:51:43,480 --> 00:51:47,120
Speaker 3: dominant scientific power the world has ever seen. And we're

894
00:51:47,200 --> 00:51:50,000
Speaker 3: great at what we do. We've got all these scientific

895
00:51:50,000 --> 00:51:52,680
Speaker 3: employers who just lie, lie, lie, as long as the

896
00:51:52,800 --> 00:51:55,919
Speaker 3: day is long. About how Americans are lazy and they're

897
00:51:55,960 --> 00:51:58,719
Speaker 3: stupid and they can't do work. And we have to

898
00:51:58,719 --> 00:52:00,840
Speaker 3: look at the fact that we're being eaten by India

899
00:52:00,880 --> 00:52:03,200
Speaker 3: and China. We're not being beaten by Indian China. We

900
00:52:03,960 --> 00:52:07,160
Speaker 3: have to worry about England and France. And by the

901
00:52:07,200 --> 00:52:10,680
Speaker 3: way Indian China are going to get there, particularly India's

902
00:52:11,200 --> 00:52:15,040
Speaker 3: choice of the ITS and the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research.

903
00:52:16,400 --> 00:52:19,359
Speaker 3: China is buying up our talent left and right. We're

904
00:52:19,440 --> 00:52:23,319
Speaker 3: laying down on the job. My old officemate, Michael Kratzios,

905
00:52:23,480 --> 00:52:26,279
Speaker 3: I think, is the head of the Presidential Council on

906
00:52:26,360 --> 00:52:29,000
Speaker 3: Science and Technology as well as the Office of Science

907
00:52:29,040 --> 00:52:32,560
Speaker 3: and Technology Policy so P CASS and OSTP. I believe

908
00:52:32,560 --> 00:52:36,239
Speaker 3: that was a job previously held by Isidore Robbie, the

909
00:52:36,239 --> 00:52:40,239
Speaker 3: Nobel Laureate in physics. I love Michael Cratsios, he's a friend,

910
00:52:40,360 --> 00:52:45,320
Speaker 3: he's a great guy. But we are not taking science

911
00:52:45,920 --> 00:52:50,160
Speaker 3: and the destruction of science in the US as the

912
00:52:50,200 --> 00:52:53,480
Speaker 3: seventeen alarm fire that it is. We need to get

913
00:52:53,560 --> 00:52:57,560
Speaker 3: money and our own people, and we need to shove

914
00:52:57,600 --> 00:53:00,360
Speaker 3: them down the throats of our employers with government help.

915
00:53:01,200 --> 00:53:05,239
Speaker 3: And we need absolute scientific dominance, and it needs to

916
00:53:05,280 --> 00:53:07,759
Speaker 3: be much more public spirited, much less under the thumb

917
00:53:07,840 --> 00:53:13,400
Speaker 3: of the national security community. And it needs to be

918
00:53:13,480 --> 00:53:16,960
Speaker 3: friendly to the military. We cannot pretend that we are

919
00:53:16,960 --> 00:53:18,480
Speaker 3: not military adjacent.

920
00:53:19,760 --> 00:53:21,719
Speaker 1: How could it be friendly to the military and not

921
00:53:22,239 --> 00:53:24,120
Speaker 1: aligned with the national security interests.

922
00:53:25,040 --> 00:53:28,239
Speaker 3: We have to align with the national security interest The

923
00:53:28,360 --> 00:53:31,759
Speaker 3: national security community is not as good as we are.

924
00:53:31,960 --> 00:53:34,439
Speaker 1: There are two things that I'm trying to understand, which

925
00:53:34,480 --> 00:53:39,920
Speaker 1: is so One issue is that science. I've always loved

926
00:53:40,040 --> 00:53:41,680
Speaker 1: viewing as an international fellowship.

927
00:53:41,719 --> 00:53:42,839
Speaker 2: I can travel anywhere in the world.

928
00:53:42,920 --> 00:53:45,520
Speaker 1: If I meet someone who studies science like I do,

929
00:53:45,680 --> 00:53:49,879
Speaker 1: we can talk sometimes just with equations, whatever it is.

930
00:53:50,000 --> 00:53:53,200
Speaker 1: We get each other so deeply and fundamentally. But it

931
00:53:53,320 --> 00:53:56,680
Speaker 1: sounds like, on the other hand, you're saying it's it

932
00:53:56,760 --> 00:53:57,680
Speaker 1: shouldn't actually be.

933
00:53:57,760 --> 00:53:58,640
Speaker 2: I had the same feeling.

934
00:53:58,840 --> 00:54:03,239
Speaker 3: Yeah, And then suddenly all these physicists in Iran met

935
00:54:03,280 --> 00:54:06,600
Speaker 3: an end during the recent war. When I go for

936
00:54:06,640 --> 00:54:10,600
Speaker 3: a talk at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, which

937
00:54:10,600 --> 00:54:12,759
Speaker 3: by the way, is the nicest part of Bombay, really

938
00:54:12,960 --> 00:54:16,040
Speaker 3: just beautiful, I have to go through a military checkpoint

939
00:54:16,280 --> 00:54:19,279
Speaker 3: to go to my string theory talk because it's in

940
00:54:19,400 --> 00:54:23,760
Speaker 3: Navy Nutgart what is that. It's in the naval base. Okay,

941
00:54:25,160 --> 00:54:27,680
Speaker 3: science is not what you're trying to make it out

942
00:54:27,680 --> 00:54:31,360
Speaker 3: to me. We've got this naive singsong view of science,

943
00:54:31,400 --> 00:54:34,760
Speaker 3: which we love. Yeah, right, because when you're doing science,

944
00:54:34,840 --> 00:54:36,439
Speaker 3: you don't care where somebody was born.

945
00:54:36,600 --> 00:54:39,279
Speaker 1: You know what. I think, it's so much of the

946
00:54:39,440 --> 00:54:43,040
Speaker 1: territory of science. If I were going to make up

947
00:54:43,040 --> 00:54:45,520
Speaker 1: a number, let me just make up ninety percent of

948
00:54:45,560 --> 00:54:50,440
Speaker 1: the territory. Really is the sing song international fellowship stuff, kumbaya,

949
00:54:50,600 --> 00:54:53,080
Speaker 1: my friend? Yeah, exactly. You could go anywhere and talk

950
00:54:53,080 --> 00:54:55,759
Speaker 1: to people about zebrafish and the neurons and what's going on.

951
00:54:56,160 --> 00:54:58,719
Speaker 1: But I see where you're coming from. There is this

952
00:54:58,840 --> 00:55:01,480
Speaker 1: ten percent what I make up the number where it

953
00:55:01,600 --> 00:55:04,919
Speaker 1: actually really matters. And suddenly it's serious stuff, as you said,

954
00:55:04,960 --> 00:55:09,040
Speaker 1: life and death stuff. And that's where we can't put

955
00:55:09,040 --> 00:55:12,239
Speaker 1: that all under the same umbrella because.

956
00:55:12,000 --> 00:55:13,760
Speaker 2: It's a giant problem. David.

957
00:55:14,640 --> 00:55:21,960
Speaker 3: Let's imagine that you care about for manifold topology, no

958
00:55:22,000 --> 00:55:26,680
Speaker 3: known problem. Let's imagine you care about elliptic curves. Suddenly

959
00:55:26,719 --> 00:55:29,960
Speaker 3: you have to do it at fort Meat because it's

960
00:55:30,000 --> 00:55:34,440
Speaker 3: involved in cryptography. The naive sing song thing. None of

961
00:55:34,520 --> 00:55:35,920
Speaker 3: us should hold that perspective.

962
00:55:36,160 --> 00:55:39,160
Speaker 1: Could we hold that perspective by saying, look, I mean

963
00:55:39,200 --> 00:55:41,880
Speaker 1: I think I would say most of the stuff I do,

964
00:55:42,000 --> 00:55:45,840
Speaker 1: maybe not the potato, and you didn't think you're correct.

965
00:55:45,840 --> 00:55:48,160
Speaker 1: I did not think about that. But let's say plenty

966
00:55:48,200 --> 00:55:51,400
Speaker 1: of other stuff that I've done about sleeping and dreaming

967
00:55:51,520 --> 00:55:53,840
Speaker 1: and brain plasticy and vision and visual illusion.

968
00:55:53,880 --> 00:55:58,880
Speaker 3: How important sleep is to our Tier one operators in

969
00:55:58,960 --> 00:56:04,200
Speaker 3: Delta force and ground branch at the CIA. We don't

970
00:56:04,360 --> 00:56:05,160
Speaker 3: You don't know.

971
00:56:06,160 --> 00:56:08,520
Speaker 1: I'm just saying I agree, I don't know the things

972
00:56:08,560 --> 00:56:10,759
Speaker 1: that I do when I'm stepping on something that This

973
00:56:10,880 --> 00:56:11,920
Speaker 1: is my point.

974
00:56:11,800 --> 00:56:18,000
Speaker 3: Is we can't afford this extended childhood as scientists.

975
00:56:18,960 --> 00:56:21,279
Speaker 1: I think that's an excellent point. Here's the part I'm

976
00:56:21,280 --> 00:56:24,920
Speaker 1: trying to understand, though, is it sounds like you're saying

977
00:56:25,400 --> 00:56:29,440
Speaker 1: we need to mature as scientists to understand.

978
00:56:29,480 --> 00:56:31,800
Speaker 2: Wow, there's real national security interests here.

979
00:56:32,680 --> 00:56:35,040
Speaker 1: But I think I'm also hearing you saying we don't

980
00:56:35,080 --> 00:56:37,400
Speaker 1: want to be bossed around by national correctists.

981
00:56:37,480 --> 00:56:41,640
Speaker 3: No, but we need to be I'm really glad we're

982
00:56:41,640 --> 00:56:44,000
Speaker 3: having this. This is a very difficult conversation, so nobody

983
00:56:44,040 --> 00:56:48,000
Speaker 3: I'd rather be having it within you. People don't understand

984
00:56:48,000 --> 00:56:51,719
Speaker 3: my perspective on universities, on science and national interest. Great

985
00:56:51,760 --> 00:56:54,840
Speaker 3: science and good science are continuing to happen inside of universities.

986
00:56:54,880 --> 00:56:57,360
Speaker 3: There's much less great science. There's much more good science.

987
00:56:58,120 --> 00:57:01,360
Speaker 3: But I am a talks regularly at Caltech and UCLA

988
00:57:02,280 --> 00:57:04,680
Speaker 3: probably should be going to USC. I don't see any

989
00:57:04,760 --> 00:57:07,400
Speaker 3: of the tech leaders who are opining about science, and

990
00:57:07,480 --> 00:57:10,560
Speaker 3: any talks that I ever go to, it's just academicians.

991
00:57:10,560 --> 00:57:13,440
Speaker 3: There's nobody from outside. So I am a huge defender

992
00:57:13,600 --> 00:57:17,000
Speaker 3: that the universities are not over. Standard thing in my

993
00:57:17,280 --> 00:57:20,680
Speaker 3: tech circles is yep, science is over, universities are over.

994
00:57:20,880 --> 00:57:24,080
Speaker 3: Not true, far from true. I am also a major

995
00:57:24,120 --> 00:57:29,000
Speaker 3: critic of science, saying the public can see that we

996
00:57:29,080 --> 00:57:33,480
Speaker 3: blew it oh on COVID multiple ways. We're not honest

997
00:57:33,520 --> 00:57:36,160
Speaker 3: about things like the measurement of inflation. I can promise

998
00:57:36,200 --> 00:57:41,280
Speaker 3: you that. And they are detecting that there's a hidden

999
00:57:41,360 --> 00:57:44,480
Speaker 3: hand and that scientists are somehow not acting in the

1000
00:57:44,480 --> 00:57:47,040
Speaker 3: public interest. And I believe that there's really something to

1001
00:57:47,120 --> 00:57:49,320
Speaker 3: that and that we scientists have to talk about that.

1002
00:57:50,080 --> 00:57:52,800
Speaker 3: I believe that the national interest community and the national

1003
00:57:52,800 --> 00:57:58,000
Speaker 3: security community are extremely important I believe in national interest,

1004
00:57:58,040 --> 00:58:01,000
Speaker 3: and I believe in national security. I believe that many

1005
00:58:01,000 --> 00:58:03,240
Speaker 3: people in that community are not good enough to be

1006
00:58:03,280 --> 00:58:06,920
Speaker 3: our bosses. Ah, and I believe that we are not

1007
00:58:06,960 --> 00:58:09,520
Speaker 3: good enough to be our bosses because part of being

1008
00:58:09,560 --> 00:58:12,040
Speaker 3: a grown up in that idiom is to say, I

1009
00:58:12,080 --> 00:58:15,560
Speaker 3: think about quarks. Quarks make up nucleons, and nucleons make

1010
00:58:15,640 --> 00:58:19,640
Speaker 3: up nuclear weapons. So yes, I don't know whether something

1011
00:58:19,680 --> 00:58:22,440
Speaker 3: I'm going to discover or might have a security implication.

1012
00:58:23,560 --> 00:58:26,280
Speaker 3: So more or less, we've got all of these contradictions.

1013
00:58:26,800 --> 00:58:30,440
Speaker 3: We're not playing at an adult level, and that I

1014
00:58:30,480 --> 00:58:33,600
Speaker 3: want our national security community to get better. I want

1015
00:58:33,640 --> 00:58:37,040
Speaker 3: scientists to be full partners. I want us to be

1016
00:58:37,080 --> 00:58:41,680
Speaker 3: pushing back on particularly bad national interest to people and saying,

1017
00:58:41,920 --> 00:58:45,160
Speaker 3: don't ever force me to repeat these laws to the public.

1018
00:58:45,640 --> 00:58:48,760
Speaker 3: And nobody's even having anything remotely like this conversation so

1019
00:58:48,800 --> 00:58:50,840
Speaker 3: far as I know it, I'm basically having it with

1020
00:58:50,920 --> 00:58:52,520
Speaker 3: myself on podcasts.

1021
00:58:52,560 --> 00:58:56,280
Speaker 1: Would you see this as being a self maturation among

1022
00:58:56,320 --> 00:58:59,800
Speaker 1: scientists and among national security people, or would you see

1023
00:58:59,800 --> 00:59:02,880
Speaker 1: a somebody in charge of that, the president and whoever,

1024
00:59:02,960 --> 00:59:05,080
Speaker 1: is saying okay, guys, everyone get to the table.

1025
00:59:05,600 --> 00:59:09,760
Speaker 3: I think Michael Cratzios should be relocated to some terrific

1026
00:59:09,880 --> 00:59:12,920
Speaker 3: office because I think he's an able and capable person.

1027
00:59:13,320 --> 00:59:14,240
Speaker 1: Tell us about him.

1028
00:59:14,360 --> 00:59:18,160
Speaker 3: It doesn't matter, he's not a leading scientist. That office,

1029
00:59:18,560 --> 00:59:21,840
Speaker 3: that team that advises the president should not be selected

1030
00:59:21,920 --> 00:59:26,720
Speaker 3: for on presidential loyalty to Donald Trump, full stop. I'm sorry.

1031
00:59:27,120 --> 00:59:29,440
Speaker 3: I understand that Donald Trump has been treated in some

1032
00:59:29,520 --> 00:59:32,120
Speaker 3: ways unfairly by the outside world, and that he has

1033
00:59:32,120 --> 00:59:36,760
Speaker 3: a reason to surround himself with loyalists. Science is not loyal.

1034
00:59:37,280 --> 00:59:37,520
Speaker 1: Okay.

1035
00:59:37,600 --> 00:59:42,200
Speaker 3: You can ask scientists minorly to hold off on something

1036
00:59:42,920 --> 00:59:46,440
Speaker 3: or to play ball, but you cannot ask them to

1037
00:59:46,800 --> 00:59:48,240
Speaker 3: just lie.

1038
00:59:48,480 --> 00:59:48,640
Speaker 2: Right.

1039
00:59:49,440 --> 00:59:56,680
Speaker 3: We need somebody with universal respect. The Jason's pe cast

1040
00:59:58,600 --> 01:00:03,040
Speaker 3: and OST and the National Academy of Sciences and the

1041
01:00:03,120 --> 01:00:09,240
Speaker 3: National Science Board need to be top people and team players,

1042
01:00:09,760 --> 01:00:14,480
Speaker 3: and a lot of players with one another, team players

1043
01:00:14,520 --> 01:00:19,400
Speaker 3: with the national interest community. Okay, and this is gonna

1044
01:00:19,400 --> 01:00:26,560
Speaker 3: sound contradictory, but it isn't massive individualists. It's a very

1045
01:00:26,600 --> 01:00:27,240
Speaker 3: tricky thing.

1046
01:00:28,400 --> 01:00:28,560
Speaker 2: You know.

1047
01:00:28,680 --> 01:00:32,240
Speaker 3: Leo Zillard, who wrote the original letter to start off

1048
01:00:32,240 --> 01:00:36,479
Speaker 3: the Manhattan Project, wasn't allowed into the Manhattan Project because

1049
01:00:36,520 --> 01:00:37,320
Speaker 3: it was too independent.

1050
01:00:37,480 --> 01:00:41,760
Speaker 1: So you're saying the solution is what we need is

1051
01:00:42,360 --> 01:00:48,440
Speaker 1: a maturation across both communities. But I want to make

1052
01:00:48,440 --> 01:00:50,680
Speaker 1: sure I understand what would be the path there that

1053
01:00:50,720 --> 01:00:52,840
Speaker 1: you that you might see. I mean, maybe you think

1054
01:00:52,920 --> 01:00:55,479
Speaker 1: it's just a difficult, thorny problem, but do you see

1055
01:00:55,800 --> 01:00:56,480
Speaker 1: twinny squint.

1056
01:00:56,520 --> 01:01:03,160
Speaker 3: Suddenly Donald Trump invites a list of the top American scientists,

1057
01:01:03,440 --> 01:01:06,760
Speaker 3: not good scientists, but very often great scientists. Tomorrow lago

1058
01:01:07,200 --> 01:01:10,440
Speaker 3: the same way all our friends in the entertainment world,

1059
01:01:10,480 --> 01:01:14,280
Speaker 3: the business world, the finance world, the tech world have gone,

1060
01:01:14,520 --> 01:01:16,560
Speaker 3: and he says, we are going to have a scientific

1061
01:01:16,600 --> 01:01:19,960
Speaker 3: renaissance full stop. There's no way we are going to

1062
01:01:20,000 --> 01:01:24,400
Speaker 3: continue to destroy our seed corn for technology. We need

1063
01:01:24,440 --> 01:01:27,040
Speaker 3: to know. I hear you guys are suffering. I hear

1064
01:01:27,080 --> 01:01:29,680
Speaker 3: you guys are precarious. I want to know why nobody

1065
01:01:29,720 --> 01:01:32,600
Speaker 3: stood up Defauci and Collins the way we needed them to.

1066
01:01:33,400 --> 01:01:35,800
Speaker 3: What does it take to get academic freedom. We understand

1067
01:01:35,800 --> 01:01:38,600
Speaker 3: that we've tasked you with protecting the nation and making

1068
01:01:38,680 --> 01:01:42,040
Speaker 3: us rich and powerful, and you're not participating. How do

1069
01:01:42,120 --> 01:01:45,400
Speaker 3: we get you back to second homes? How do we

1070
01:01:45,440 --> 01:01:47,680
Speaker 3: get you retirements? How do we get you raising three

1071
01:01:47,720 --> 01:01:50,800
Speaker 3: to four kids on one income? With help in the house.

1072
01:01:51,880 --> 01:01:55,600
Speaker 3: You're our a team man, So my feeling is suck

1073
01:01:55,680 --> 01:01:58,480
Speaker 3: it up, open your pocketbook, shut your mouth, learn to

1074
01:01:58,520 --> 01:02:02,360
Speaker 3: deal with science as what it is, and learn to

1075
01:02:02,400 --> 01:02:08,200
Speaker 3: deal with scientists as equals and team players. And don't ever, ever, ever, ever,

1076
01:02:08,320 --> 01:02:11,160
Speaker 3: take the world's smartest people and feed them a B

1077
01:02:11,320 --> 01:02:15,760
Speaker 3: minus lie and expect them to shut up or repeat

1078
01:02:15,760 --> 01:02:18,680
Speaker 3: it because you control whether or not they can function.

1079
01:02:19,120 --> 01:02:21,880
Speaker 3: It is time for the scientists to mutiny, not against

1080
01:02:21,880 --> 01:02:24,760
Speaker 3: the United States of America, but to mutiny against our

1081
01:02:24,800 --> 01:02:29,439
Speaker 3: agreement with the National Interest Complex. You guys broke the deal.

1082
01:02:29,600 --> 01:02:34,000
Speaker 3: We had something called the Endless Frontier. You pass something

1083
01:02:34,000 --> 01:02:37,280
Speaker 3: called the Mansfield Amendment around nineteen seventy, which removed military

1084
01:02:37,320 --> 01:02:41,600
Speaker 3: funding from Blue Sky research. You've been eroding US ever since.

1085
01:02:41,640 --> 01:02:44,400
Speaker 3: You passed the Immigration Act of nineteen ninety based on

1086
01:02:44,440 --> 01:02:47,880
Speaker 3: a fraud that you perpetrated through the National Science Foundation

1087
01:02:49,240 --> 01:02:54,720
Speaker 3: in the Reagan era under Eric Bloch. Enough enough, you

1088
01:02:54,760 --> 01:02:58,160
Speaker 3: were going to treat scientists properly, and if you don't

1089
01:02:58,360 --> 01:03:00,560
Speaker 3: expect them to move to China and then you're going

1090
01:03:00,640 --> 01:03:05,040
Speaker 3: to deal with American scientists helping the Chinese. I just

1091
01:03:05,120 --> 01:03:07,720
Speaker 3: really don't know, is there no one in the national

1092
01:03:10,720 --> 01:03:15,520
Speaker 3: intelligence complex, the national interest complex, national security complex, who

1093
01:03:15,520 --> 01:03:19,080
Speaker 3: has thought about the fact that we are destroying ourselves.

1094
01:03:20,040 --> 01:03:22,720
Speaker 1: I just don't grasp it destroying ourselves in terms of

1095
01:03:22,760 --> 01:03:26,840
Speaker 1: not helping scientists blossom and thrive. What do you think

1096
01:03:26,880 --> 01:03:32,200
Speaker 1: about a million dollar salary per year for scientists for

1097
01:03:32,280 --> 01:03:35,680
Speaker 1: a scientists? What do you think about bonuses that look

1098
01:03:35,800 --> 01:03:41,200
Speaker 1: like bonuses granted to investment bankers? Right now, I think

1099
01:03:41,240 --> 01:03:44,160
Speaker 1: there's a million dollar prize for solving P equals NP

1100
01:03:44,520 --> 01:03:50,000
Speaker 1: and a million dollar prize for the Remont hypothesis. Like,

1101
01:03:50,080 --> 01:03:51,640
Speaker 1: I think you're missing a few zeros on that.

1102
01:03:51,920 --> 01:03:53,440
Speaker 2: You're saying it should be much more.

1103
01:03:53,640 --> 01:03:56,360
Speaker 3: Reach deep into your heart and into your checkbook, and

1104
01:03:56,400 --> 01:03:58,760
Speaker 3: when you get serious, come back to me with a number.

1105
01:03:59,520 --> 01:04:03,640
Speaker 3: How how dare you? I mean, who are these people?

1106
01:04:04,200 --> 01:04:06,480
Speaker 3: A million dollars for the Remonnt hypothesis?

1107
01:04:06,520 --> 01:04:07,040
Speaker 2: Wow?

1108
01:04:07,960 --> 01:04:10,000
Speaker 1: And your point is if they offered way more than that,

1109
01:04:10,080 --> 01:04:12,440
Speaker 1: let's it was fifty million dollars for doing that, you'd

1110
01:04:12,480 --> 01:04:15,560
Speaker 1: attract more people there and it would be more reflective

1111
01:04:15,600 --> 01:04:16,840
Speaker 1: of what the value is.

1112
01:04:17,000 --> 01:04:19,520
Speaker 3: Tell me something you're interested in AI. When do you

1113
01:04:19,520 --> 01:04:22,280
Speaker 3: think the large language model thing reached its point of

1114
01:04:22,480 --> 01:04:28,800
Speaker 3: just unbelievable discontinuity with respect to the intellectual underpinnings. What

1115
01:04:28,840 --> 01:04:30,520
Speaker 3: paper would you associate with?

1116
01:04:31,800 --> 01:04:34,640
Speaker 1: Twenty seventeen, Google Brain publishes the Transformer Model.

1117
01:04:34,800 --> 01:04:38,160
Speaker 3: Yeah, now that paper is called the Tension is all

1118
01:04:38,200 --> 01:04:38,560
Speaker 3: you need?

1119
01:04:38,760 --> 01:04:41,920
Speaker 2: Yes? How many authors are there on it?

1120
01:04:42,080 --> 01:04:42,480
Speaker 1: Three?

1121
01:04:42,960 --> 01:04:44,200
Speaker 2: I remember and it's eight?

1122
01:04:44,440 --> 01:04:45,080
Speaker 1: Oh okay?

1123
01:04:45,480 --> 01:04:50,520
Speaker 3: What are their names? Any of them? Oops? Tell me something.

1124
01:04:51,200 --> 01:04:53,160
Speaker 3: What are some names that you associate with Google?

1125
01:04:53,560 --> 01:04:55,320
Speaker 1: Probably all the ones that come to mind or the

1126
01:04:55,360 --> 01:04:58,120
Speaker 1: executives give me who are you thinking? Well, you know

1127
01:04:58,240 --> 01:05:02,200
Speaker 1: Larry and SERGEI and Eric Schmid so on, anyone else?

1128
01:05:03,120 --> 01:05:08,680
Speaker 1: The people at Google X Maybe Jeff Okay, I mean

1129
01:05:08,680 --> 01:05:11,800
Speaker 1: I would name Jack Cadari and Adam Brown and other

1130
01:05:11,840 --> 01:05:12,800
Speaker 1: friends of mine who had.

1131
01:05:12,640 --> 01:05:15,800
Speaker 2: An expert shout out to Adam Brown. Yeah, quantum gravity

1132
01:05:16,000 --> 01:05:17,080
Speaker 2: going on at Google?

1133
01:05:17,240 --> 01:05:20,080
Speaker 1: Yeah okay, but of course demis.

1134
01:05:19,680 --> 01:05:24,120
Speaker 3: Okay, But my point is this is what we're doing.

1135
01:05:25,320 --> 01:05:32,640
Speaker 3: People create value, and you know I want to hear. Okay,

1136
01:05:32,680 --> 01:05:37,240
Speaker 3: he got plane rich from that paper? Hmm, by which

1137
01:05:37,280 --> 01:05:39,320
Speaker 3: you mean he could afford a private plane? Yeah, okay,

1138
01:05:39,480 --> 01:05:42,880
Speaker 3: you know he used to fly from lax to to JFK.

1139
01:05:43,120 --> 01:05:46,800
Speaker 3: Now he flies from Van Eys to Teeterborough. I used

1140
01:05:46,800 --> 01:05:50,440
Speaker 3: to swim naked with rowrobot off of his place in

1141
01:05:50,520 --> 01:05:54,560
Speaker 3: Martha's Vineyard. He was a Harvard professor, Casper Gratstein professor,

1142
01:05:55,720 --> 01:05:58,080
Speaker 3: and he had a second home on Martha's Vineyard. That's

1143
01:05:58,120 --> 01:06:02,120
Speaker 3: normal professors on Professor's Row. It was named Professor's Row

1144
01:06:02,160 --> 01:06:05,440
Speaker 3: because professors could afford the houses there. We've had a

1145
01:06:05,600 --> 01:06:09,360
Speaker 3: massive blowout of the genie coefficients. I want scientists to

1146
01:06:09,520 --> 01:06:12,320
Speaker 3: participate in the world they created for everyone else.

1147
01:06:12,600 --> 01:06:15,280
Speaker 1: One question is in the same way that you mentioned

1148
01:06:15,320 --> 01:06:20,959
Speaker 1: Fuchs before. It's very difficult to determine during somebody's career,

1149
01:06:21,040 --> 01:06:24,160
Speaker 1: first of all, whether they're patriot or they have other interests.

1150
01:06:24,200 --> 01:06:27,080
Speaker 1: And it's also difficult to determine who is going to

1151
01:06:27,200 --> 01:06:30,960
Speaker 1: make contributions and who is not. Really, it is because

1152
01:06:31,000 --> 01:06:34,360
Speaker 1: science is such a complex road. I know so many

1153
01:06:34,360 --> 01:06:36,880
Speaker 1: smart people, surely you do to who spent their lives

1154
01:06:36,960 --> 01:06:41,360
Speaker 1: doing hard work on things that happened to never yield something.

1155
01:06:41,640 --> 01:06:44,000
Speaker 1: And other people who are playing the what was that

1156
01:06:44,080 --> 01:06:48,320
Speaker 1: game with where you uncover squares with Mind's Minecraft? Not Minecraft,

1157
01:06:48,320 --> 01:06:52,080
Speaker 1: it's the Mind Sweeper mina. I'm sorry, Yeah, where you

1158
01:06:52,120 --> 01:06:54,400
Speaker 1: know you happen to click on a square when something

1159
01:06:54,480 --> 01:06:58,280
Speaker 1: huge opens up, and that, unfortunately is a matter of luck.

1160
01:06:58,320 --> 01:07:00,520
Speaker 1: Someometimes I have a totally different view on that. Okay,

1161
01:07:00,520 --> 01:07:01,360
Speaker 1: tell me yours.

1162
01:07:01,640 --> 01:07:05,080
Speaker 3: When somebody gets really lucky, really early, it often changes

1163
01:07:05,120 --> 01:07:08,280
Speaker 3: their brain chemistry, it changes how they swagger, how they

1164
01:07:08,520 --> 01:07:13,520
Speaker 3: approach the world. So in part, really good fortune, really

1165
01:07:13,560 --> 01:07:16,640
Speaker 3: early in life is a good thing can be. Yeah,

1166
01:07:16,680 --> 01:07:19,080
Speaker 3: that's what happened with Krick and Watson. Well, it didn't

1167
01:07:19,080 --> 01:07:20,840
Speaker 3: happen with Quick because Creek was in his thirties. It

1168
01:07:20,840 --> 01:07:22,000
Speaker 3: happened with Watson because he.

1169
01:07:22,000 --> 01:07:26,320
Speaker 1: Was, like, thirties is still pretty good. And come on, yeah, well,

1170
01:07:26,400 --> 01:07:29,840
Speaker 1: Krick was one of the great scientists of the I

1171
01:07:29,840 --> 01:07:31,080
Speaker 1: don't half at the twenty in the beginning of the

1172
01:07:31,120 --> 01:07:34,000
Speaker 1: twenty for such old man, my friend. No, he wasn't.

1173
01:07:34,040 --> 01:07:36,120
Speaker 3: He was in his thirties. It's different in biology, the

1174
01:07:36,120 --> 01:07:39,000
Speaker 3: whole thing has shifted. Well, but you don't know why

1175
01:07:39,040 --> 01:07:40,320
Speaker 3: it's different in biology.

1176
01:07:40,680 --> 01:07:41,640
Speaker 1: See, it's because it.

1177
01:07:41,560 --> 01:07:43,880
Speaker 2: Takes years to get a feeling for the organism. No

1178
01:07:44,000 --> 01:07:46,120
Speaker 2: it doesn't. Let me, let me explain why it happens.

1179
01:07:46,360 --> 01:07:48,800
Speaker 2: I'll tell me your opinion. Yes, well tell me.

1180
01:07:48,920 --> 01:07:54,000
Speaker 3: The American Society for Cell Biology ASCB worked with me,

1181
01:07:54,320 --> 01:07:57,400
Speaker 3: and I went around and I got to ask, I

1182
01:07:57,400 --> 01:08:01,400
Speaker 3: don't know, twenty twenty five of the world's top principal

1183
01:08:01,440 --> 01:08:04,160
Speaker 3: investigators why things were the way they are.

1184
01:08:05,800 --> 01:08:09,640
Speaker 2: Oh boy. We were not allowed to publish our findings

1185
01:08:09,640 --> 01:08:12,440
Speaker 2: in science until we took out our findings from the paper.

1186
01:08:13,680 --> 01:08:15,080
Speaker 1: Tell me what kind of stuff.

1187
01:08:15,120 --> 01:08:16,960
Speaker 3: One of the things that we collected in interviews with

1188
01:08:17,000 --> 01:08:23,520
Speaker 3: principal investigators is a discovery that when they did an analysis,

1189
01:08:23,560 --> 01:08:27,120
Speaker 3: they found that an unusually high number of female principal

1190
01:08:27,160 --> 01:08:31,599
Speaker 3: investigators changed their research patterns after the birth of their

1191
01:08:31,600 --> 01:08:35,880
Speaker 3: first child, that they found motherhood so fulfilling that it

1192
01:08:35,920 --> 01:08:39,440
Speaker 3: competed with what they were doing previously to run their labs.

1193
01:08:40,960 --> 01:08:46,879
Speaker 3: The claim was, we then decided to push academic freedom

1194
01:08:46,960 --> 01:08:50,720
Speaker 3: closer and closer to the point of geriatric pregnancy, so

1195
01:08:50,760 --> 01:08:54,919
Speaker 3: that we would not be surprised and that female principal

1196
01:08:54,960 --> 01:08:58,840
Speaker 3: investigators who had previously been all out in terms of

1197
01:08:58,880 --> 01:09:05,800
Speaker 3: their research would have zero or one children, but not

1198
01:09:06,439 --> 01:09:08,840
Speaker 3: multiple children and not get bogged down. And if you

1199
01:09:08,880 --> 01:09:10,720
Speaker 3: actually go back to the fifties and you look at

1200
01:09:10,720 --> 01:09:15,200
Speaker 3: some of the most successful female biologists before women's liberation,

1201
01:09:16,200 --> 01:09:19,479
Speaker 3: they were often fairly well to do and had help

1202
01:09:19,479 --> 01:09:25,240
Speaker 3: in the house, and we interviewed some people, for example,

1203
01:09:25,240 --> 01:09:28,400
Speaker 3: who had a child in the next day, brought the

1204
01:09:28,479 --> 01:09:32,679
Speaker 3: child into a playpen in the lab despite the presence

1205
01:09:32,680 --> 01:09:37,519
Speaker 3: of radioactive markers and mutagens, to show how serious they were.

1206
01:09:39,360 --> 01:09:45,760
Speaker 3: So my claim is that we've developed an entire rationale

1207
01:09:45,840 --> 01:09:49,760
Speaker 3: for why it now takes so long to become a

1208
01:09:49,920 --> 01:09:54,839
Speaker 3: full professor in biology. But it actually has different reasons.

1209
01:09:54,840 --> 01:09:57,800
Speaker 3: And when we put these quotes, because I recorded these

1210
01:09:57,840 --> 01:10:01,799
Speaker 3: on microconsettes, when we put these quotes into the paper,

1211
01:10:02,720 --> 01:10:06,639
Speaker 3: Science magazine, which is one of the top journals in biology,

1212
01:10:06,840 --> 01:10:09,480
Speaker 3: said you're going to have to take out these conclusions

1213
01:10:09,520 --> 01:10:11,320
Speaker 3: or we can't publish it. So I have a publication

1214
01:10:11,439 --> 01:10:14,600
Speaker 3: in Science, and the only reason that I have a

1215
01:10:14,600 --> 01:10:18,080
Speaker 3: publication in a top journal is that my co authors

1216
01:10:18,240 --> 01:10:24,760
Speaker 3: agree to take the findings out of the paper. This

1217
01:10:24,800 --> 01:10:28,760
Speaker 3: is how the game is really played. People say, well, Eric,

1218
01:10:29,400 --> 01:10:32,920
Speaker 3: you know you're against peer review because you can't pass it.

1219
01:10:33,000 --> 01:10:36,160
Speaker 3: I have peer reviewed papers. The issue is is that

1220
01:10:36,360 --> 01:10:40,000
Speaker 3: I know what it is. They won't let you publish

1221
01:10:40,640 --> 01:10:52,400
Speaker 3: the most interesting stuff if it disrupts the field.

1222
01:10:56,960 --> 01:10:59,120
Speaker 1: So this brings us back to the main theme of

1223
01:10:59,200 --> 01:11:03,840
Speaker 1: cowboys side. So what should that look like or what

1224
01:11:03,880 --> 01:11:06,640
Speaker 1: could that look like? First of all, we agree that

1225
01:11:06,680 --> 01:11:09,640
Speaker 1: there are great scientists and good scientists. This is your

1226
01:11:09,680 --> 01:11:12,840
Speaker 1: framing of it, which I agree with. The great scientists

1227
01:11:13,760 --> 01:11:15,439
Speaker 1: those are the ones that you want to do the

1228
01:11:15,439 --> 01:11:18,240
Speaker 1: cowboys science, whereas the good scientists are the ones sort of,

1229
01:11:18,520 --> 01:11:21,639
Speaker 1: you know, doing the hard, good work, but not coming

1230
01:11:21,680 --> 01:11:24,360
Speaker 1: up with the giant new frameworks on stuff they could.

1231
01:11:24,840 --> 01:11:27,799
Speaker 1: They could. But I'm just trying to frame your framework

1232
01:11:27,840 --> 01:11:28,960
Speaker 1: in a hopefully act.

1233
01:11:29,360 --> 01:11:31,080
Speaker 2: But again, I'm not against.

1234
01:11:31,840 --> 01:11:32,559
Speaker 1: You have nothing against.

1235
01:11:32,600 --> 01:11:35,280
Speaker 2: The good scientists might come up with something you don't expect.

1236
01:11:35,360 --> 01:11:37,080
Speaker 1: They might click on the square and mind sweeper that

1237
01:11:37,120 --> 01:11:40,280
Speaker 1: opens up something exactly exactly. Okay, So, but how do

1238
01:11:40,360 --> 01:11:43,280
Speaker 1: we encourage cowboy science? How do we make sure that

1239
01:11:43,360 --> 01:11:46,080
Speaker 1: the Jim Watson's and the so many others.

1240
01:11:46,120 --> 01:11:50,520
Speaker 3: We need national interest exemptions from the Civil Rights Act,

1241
01:11:50,920 --> 01:11:54,320
Speaker 3: we need slush funds, We need a lack of oversight.

1242
01:11:54,880 --> 01:11:56,920
Speaker 3: We need to be able to determine who the smart

1243
01:11:56,920 --> 01:12:00,840
Speaker 3: people are based on our own determinations, and screw off

1244
01:12:00,840 --> 01:12:02,560
Speaker 3: if you don't agree with us.

1245
01:12:03,720 --> 01:12:06,040
Speaker 2: How is that consistent with national security interest?

1246
01:12:06,120 --> 01:12:08,840
Speaker 3: This is what we did before we had a bunch

1247
01:12:08,840 --> 01:12:10,040
Speaker 3: of really crazy.

1248
01:12:09,680 --> 01:12:14,599
Speaker 2: People, good crazy, I see mean good crazy mostly okay,

1249
01:12:14,640 --> 01:12:18,040
Speaker 2: but these are strong spices. Right.

1250
01:12:18,080 --> 01:12:22,479
Speaker 3: If you look at Elon Musk, he makes his own

1251
01:12:22,520 --> 01:12:26,320
Speaker 3: rules every chance he gets. Our guys made their own rules.

1252
01:12:27,640 --> 01:12:29,479
Speaker 3: We had Elon Musk's and science.

1253
01:12:29,840 --> 01:12:32,400
Speaker 1: Who are you thinking of when you say that Alexander

1254
01:12:32,520 --> 01:12:38,360
Speaker 1: Grothendieg is a door singer Sidney Brenner. See you got

1255
01:12:38,400 --> 01:12:41,160
Speaker 1: Reverend Sidney Brenner. Yeah, I knew him as well at

1256
01:12:41,160 --> 01:12:42,800
Speaker 1: the Amazing, Amazing guy.

1257
01:12:42,880 --> 01:12:45,599
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm not supposed to know who that is. But like,

1258
01:12:45,880 --> 01:12:50,519
Speaker 3: these are my heroes. These people in general, they need

1259
01:12:50,560 --> 01:12:53,080
Speaker 3: to not ask mommy and daddy whether they can fund somebody.

1260
01:12:53,120 --> 01:12:56,080
Speaker 3: They need to not worry about their students being able

1261
01:12:56,080 --> 01:12:57,560
Speaker 3: to get a job. They pick up the phone and

1262
01:12:57,600 --> 01:12:59,840
Speaker 3: they say my student needs a job, and that they

1263
01:13:00,040 --> 01:13:03,520
Speaker 3: put it down and there's not some process.

1264
01:13:02,680 --> 01:13:05,880
Speaker 1: M I wonder about that. Let me give you a

1265
01:13:05,920 --> 01:13:09,120
Speaker 1: quick analogy. In Silicon Valley, what I see are startups,

1266
01:13:09,200 --> 01:13:11,920
Speaker 1: young startups. You got three people in a garage things,

1267
01:13:12,560 --> 01:13:15,080
Speaker 1: And then you see what happens as companies mature, when

1268
01:13:15,120 --> 01:13:18,240
Speaker 1: they become Google and Facebook and Amazon and so on,

1269
01:13:18,600 --> 01:13:20,800
Speaker 1: and they have to or they feel that they have

1270
01:13:20,840 --> 01:13:22,599
Speaker 1: to put the rule books in place and make these

1271
01:13:22,680 --> 01:13:23,479
Speaker 1: judges a number.

1272
01:13:23,520 --> 01:13:26,200
Speaker 3: I think it's like fifteen employees and suddenly the rules

1273
01:13:26,280 --> 01:13:30,040
Speaker 3: change on. Yeah, that's right, That's what I'm trying to say, right, So, okay,

1274
01:13:30,040 --> 01:13:30,639
Speaker 3: so how do we.

1275
01:13:30,640 --> 01:13:33,040
Speaker 2: Need national interest exemptions for science?

1276
01:13:33,320 --> 01:13:38,120
Speaker 1: I see you're saying the national interests. They're the ones

1277
01:13:38,200 --> 01:13:41,840
Speaker 1: who in this future, in this utopia that that we're

1278
01:13:41,840 --> 01:13:45,320
Speaker 1: trying to get to what it could look like. They watch,

1279
01:13:45,439 --> 01:13:47,439
Speaker 1: they see who the young scientists are who are doing

1280
01:13:47,479 --> 01:13:50,519
Speaker 1: something very bold, and they say, you have an exemption.

1281
01:13:50,600 --> 01:13:56,400
Speaker 3: We're going to Yeah, I see if there's some Okay,

1282
01:13:56,520 --> 01:14:00,760
Speaker 3: if there's some c elegans researcher who also wants to

1283
01:14:00,800 --> 01:14:04,679
Speaker 3: have her own OnlyFans account, I may not be thrilled,

1284
01:14:04,680 --> 01:14:07,760
Speaker 3: but that is a life choice. But I don't want

1285
01:14:07,800 --> 01:14:10,520
Speaker 3: to tell her that she has to leave the academy

1286
01:14:10,560 --> 01:14:15,280
Speaker 3: because she's behaving inappropriately. If people want to take drugs

1287
01:14:15,320 --> 01:14:17,320
Speaker 3: and go to Burning Man, they need to take drugs

1288
01:14:17,360 --> 01:14:20,479
Speaker 3: and they need to go to Burning Man. If people

1289
01:14:20,479 --> 01:14:22,599
Speaker 3: want to tell a joke about two imms go into

1290
01:14:22,640 --> 01:14:24,080
Speaker 3: a bar, they need to be able to tell a

1291
01:14:24,160 --> 01:14:28,599
Speaker 3: joke about two imms go into a bar, get out

1292
01:14:28,640 --> 01:14:31,160
Speaker 3: of the way of great science. We know how to

1293
01:14:31,200 --> 01:14:33,479
Speaker 3: do this. We need to go back to being the

1294
01:14:33,560 --> 01:14:36,200
Speaker 3: United States of America. We need to fire Claudine Gay

1295
01:14:36,280 --> 01:14:39,400
Speaker 3: from her professorship at Harvard to send a message we don't.

1296
01:14:39,240 --> 01:14:40,000
Speaker 1: Do that anymore.

1297
01:14:40,640 --> 01:14:44,479
Speaker 3: We don't do rich we don't protect plagiarists and pretend

1298
01:14:44,520 --> 01:14:48,599
Speaker 3: to people. I remember getting my Harvard Alumni magazine, and

1299
01:14:48,640 --> 01:14:51,040
Speaker 3: I think that the cover article when Clauding Gay was

1300
01:14:51,080 --> 01:14:55,040
Speaker 3: being announced was a scholars scholar and I knew from that.

1301
01:14:55,720 --> 01:14:58,920
Speaker 3: It's like, you're trying too hard. We know who's good

1302
01:14:59,200 --> 01:15:02,600
Speaker 3: more or less. We don't always get it right, but

1303
01:15:02,680 --> 01:15:04,800
Speaker 3: imagine fifty percent of the time we get it right.

1304
01:15:05,800 --> 01:15:06,960
Speaker 3: Let us do our work.

1305
01:15:07,760 --> 01:15:09,439
Speaker 1: Let me make sure I understand one thing, though. So

1306
01:15:09,920 --> 01:15:13,679
Speaker 1: if you say, hey, these scientists over here are really

1307
01:15:14,120 --> 01:15:16,519
Speaker 1: brave and bold and smart, and we're going to give

1308
01:15:16,560 --> 01:15:21,439
Speaker 1: them national security exemption, what does that exemption mean? Does

1309
01:15:21,520 --> 01:15:22,160
Speaker 1: that mean that I don't know?

1310
01:15:22,200 --> 01:15:24,719
Speaker 2: Ad mean that they don't have to hire? According to some.

1311
01:15:26,040 --> 01:15:29,719
Speaker 1: Here's the question. If let's say one of these brilliant

1312
01:15:29,760 --> 01:15:32,960
Speaker 1: young scientists comes up with the next thing, the next

1313
01:15:32,960 --> 01:15:35,400
Speaker 1: thing that can be turned into a great, big weapon,

1314
01:15:36,080 --> 01:15:39,040
Speaker 1: the exemption means that they're free to publish that or

1315
01:15:39,040 --> 01:15:40,160
Speaker 1: they're not free to it.

1316
01:15:40,240 --> 01:15:40,680
Speaker 2: What does it mean.

1317
01:15:40,760 --> 01:15:43,280
Speaker 3: Look, I think it's important to understand what I'm advocating.

1318
01:15:43,960 --> 01:15:47,920
Speaker 3: I'm advocating that we begin a new relationship based on

1319
01:15:47,960 --> 01:15:51,600
Speaker 3: the fact that the National interest complex welched on the

1320
01:15:51,680 --> 01:15:55,920
Speaker 3: last one. We had an agreement, you broke it. The

1321
01:15:55,960 --> 01:16:00,080
Speaker 3: agreement is called the Endless Frontier of vanavar Bush. So

1322
01:16:00,120 --> 01:16:02,880
Speaker 3: you welched on a series of tacit agreements.

1323
01:16:02,920 --> 01:16:06,320
Speaker 2: Fine, in the agreement was scientists can do anything they want.

1324
01:16:06,439 --> 01:16:11,120
Speaker 3: The agreement was that more or less science was a rebellious,

1325
01:16:12,280 --> 01:16:16,360
Speaker 3: fiercely independent part of the National interest complex. The National

1326
01:16:16,400 --> 01:16:19,559
Speaker 3: interest complex agreed to fund us through universities, that that

1327
01:16:19,560 --> 01:16:22,760
Speaker 3: would be where they would do their the line share

1328
01:16:22,760 --> 01:16:26,519
Speaker 3: of their research. That we would have academic freedom, that

1329
01:16:26,560 --> 01:16:28,559
Speaker 3: they could call on us in times of war, that

1330
01:16:28,600 --> 01:16:30,320
Speaker 3: they would not call on us frivolously.

1331
01:16:30,560 --> 01:16:31,320
Speaker 2: We have an agreement.

1332
01:16:31,439 --> 01:16:35,879
Speaker 3: It's a series of interlocking tacit understanding. Some of them

1333
01:16:36,120 --> 01:16:37,600
Speaker 3: made explicit, most of them not.

1334
01:16:38,280 --> 01:16:40,960
Speaker 1: I see, and that has changed. But you're saying, let's

1335
01:16:41,000 --> 01:16:43,200
Speaker 1: get back to that. Let's get back to the spirit

1336
01:16:43,240 --> 01:16:45,000
Speaker 1: that we want. We want to get back to the

1337
01:16:45,080 --> 01:16:48,400
Speaker 1: spirit of the endless frontier. So endless Frontier take two.

1338
01:16:48,439 --> 01:16:51,000
Speaker 3: Given that you welched on our last agreement, so I

1339
01:16:51,040 --> 01:16:54,439
Speaker 3: think we need to reassert ourselves and say we're not

1340
01:16:54,560 --> 01:16:55,560
Speaker 3: playing ball.

1341
01:16:55,960 --> 01:16:57,800
Speaker 1: And endless front of your Part two looks like what

1342
01:16:58,000 --> 01:17:00,439
Speaker 1: it looks like. Hey, here's a brilliant scientist. I'm going

1343
01:17:00,479 --> 01:17:03,000
Speaker 1: to make sure that they have what they need to

1344
01:17:03,000 --> 01:17:04,000
Speaker 1: do their science.

1345
01:17:04,360 --> 01:17:08,360
Speaker 3: We train people, we plan to employ. We stop pretending

1346
01:17:08,439 --> 01:17:11,960
Speaker 3: that we are going to train you up only to

1347
01:17:12,000 --> 01:17:14,040
Speaker 3: abandon you to say I can't believe you ever got

1348
01:17:14,080 --> 01:17:16,200
Speaker 3: the idea you were going to have a research career.

1349
01:17:16,439 --> 01:17:19,800
Speaker 3: See if you look at Norman Steenrod, who is a

1350
01:17:19,840 --> 01:17:22,959
Speaker 3: mathematician active in I don't know the forties and fifties,

1351
01:17:25,600 --> 01:17:29,599
Speaker 3: all of his students survive to become professors. He has

1352
01:17:29,640 --> 01:17:33,040
Speaker 3: twenty three or something except for the last one around

1353
01:17:33,080 --> 01:17:37,679
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy two seventy three. And if you just take

1354
01:17:37,800 --> 01:17:43,160
Speaker 3: in and you raise it to hire and higher power,

1355
01:17:43,479 --> 01:17:46,080
Speaker 3: you can't keep having twenty three offspring and expecting them

1356
01:17:46,080 --> 01:17:49,200
Speaker 3: all to become professors. So you need something like you

1357
01:17:49,320 --> 01:17:53,400
Speaker 3: social employment, where most of us don't end up producing anyone.

1358
01:17:54,400 --> 01:17:56,800
Speaker 3: But you need to employ them, and you need to

1359
01:17:56,840 --> 01:17:59,840
Speaker 3: stop pretending that the graduate students are.

1360
01:18:00,360 --> 01:18:02,799
Speaker 2: Students, particularly foreign exchange students.

1361
01:18:03,200 --> 01:18:06,439
Speaker 3: They're not. They're workers. They're workers who do not have

1362
01:18:06,560 --> 01:18:09,920
Speaker 3: protections of workers because you've classified them as students.

1363
01:18:11,200 --> 01:18:13,000
Speaker 1: But the idea is the situation where now is those

1364
01:18:13,000 --> 01:18:16,280
Speaker 1: students are very unlikely to become professors someday because there's

1365
01:18:16,320 --> 01:18:16,960
Speaker 1: just too many.

1366
01:18:16,800 --> 01:18:22,439
Speaker 3: Of them and we're training our rivals. I look, nobody

1367
01:18:22,520 --> 01:18:24,320
Speaker 3: has thought this through. This is a lot like what

1368
01:18:24,400 --> 01:18:28,840
Speaker 3: happened with USAID. USAID was a slush fund for the

1369
01:18:28,880 --> 01:18:33,280
Speaker 3: CIA and the State Department. So you look at it,

1370
01:18:33,360 --> 01:18:35,680
Speaker 3: it doesn't make any sense. Why are we funding a

1371
01:18:35,800 --> 01:18:39,759
Speaker 3: transgender opera in Bolivia? I would imagine we are trying

1372
01:18:39,800 --> 01:18:47,120
Speaker 3: to topple the Bolivian regime and trans issues are fabulously divisive. Okay,

1373
01:18:47,240 --> 01:18:48,880
Speaker 3: now you can decide whether that's a good thing or

1374
01:18:48,920 --> 01:18:56,880
Speaker 3: a bad thing. But we didn't just fund that stupidly, right,

1375
01:18:57,360 --> 01:19:00,920
Speaker 3: that was an issue of stake craft. Well, science is

1376
01:19:00,960 --> 01:19:03,439
Speaker 3: also an instrument of state craft, but science is also

1377
01:19:03,560 --> 01:19:06,000
Speaker 3: just science. So what I'm trying to say is that

1378
01:19:06,120 --> 01:19:08,360
Speaker 3: rather than having these colleagues who put their finger in

1379
01:19:08,400 --> 01:19:11,400
Speaker 3: their cheek and say gosh, she will you know, she whiz?

1380
01:19:11,640 --> 01:19:14,639
Speaker 3: You sound like a conspiracy theorist. For God's sakes, man,

1381
01:19:15,640 --> 01:19:18,120
Speaker 3: you're part of the National Interest complex, act like it.

1382
01:19:18,360 --> 01:19:21,439
Speaker 3: The Department of Energy is the Department of Physics. It's

1383
01:19:21,479 --> 01:19:24,680
Speaker 3: the old AEC turned into the Department of Energy by

1384
01:19:24,800 --> 01:19:28,320
Speaker 3: Jimmy Carter. What was the Atomic Energy Commission?

1385
01:19:30,200 --> 01:19:30,400
Speaker 2: You know?

1386
01:19:30,600 --> 01:19:34,120
Speaker 3: So the idea is, well, maybe it's oil and gas. Really,

1387
01:19:34,800 --> 01:19:38,040
Speaker 3: is that what they told you? We have a fake

1388
01:19:38,240 --> 01:19:40,640
Speaker 3: cryptic system and it used to work when there were

1389
01:19:40,640 --> 01:19:43,559
Speaker 3: smart people who could do the crypsis, and then around

1390
01:19:43,600 --> 01:19:47,080
Speaker 3: about nineteen seventy it all broke. So we're now like

1391
01:19:47,200 --> 01:19:50,240
Speaker 3: fifty five years into a cryptic system that's getting weaker

1392
01:19:50,240 --> 01:19:52,760
Speaker 3: and weaker all the time. We need a new van

1393
01:19:52,800 --> 01:19:54,439
Speaker 3: of var Bush and it needs to come through the

1394
01:19:54,439 --> 01:19:57,760
Speaker 3: Office of Science and Technology Policy OSTP, and it needs

1395
01:19:57,800 --> 01:20:00,160
Speaker 3: to go through Pea CAST, and it needs to go

1396
01:20:00,200 --> 01:20:05,639
Speaker 3: through the National Academy's complex. And it needs to be

1397
01:20:06,160 --> 01:20:09,040
Speaker 3: a highly elite and the elite have a terrible name

1398
01:20:09,080 --> 01:20:14,639
Speaker 3: because the people we've been calling elite aren't so elite

1399
01:20:14,680 --> 01:20:18,640
Speaker 3: surgeons still have a great name, or elite athletes have

1400
01:20:18,640 --> 01:20:21,759
Speaker 3: a great name, or elite Tier one operators in special

1401
01:20:21,760 --> 01:20:24,360
Speaker 3: forces have a great name, but the elite has a

1402
01:20:24,439 --> 01:20:27,040
Speaker 3: terrible name, because that's what we associate with Davos, people

1403
01:20:27,120 --> 01:20:30,120
Speaker 3: gathering on their private jets to tell us to lower

1404
01:20:30,120 --> 01:20:33,640
Speaker 3: our carbon footprints. Right, So basically we need to go

1405
01:20:33,720 --> 01:20:37,480
Speaker 3: back to public spirited elite scientists. We're very well compensated,

1406
01:20:37,600 --> 01:20:41,400
Speaker 3: very well protected. We're public spirited who do not allow

1407
01:20:41,439 --> 01:20:44,160
Speaker 3: themselves to get pushed around trivially, but in a pinch,

1408
01:20:44,560 --> 01:20:48,200
Speaker 3: know how to behave as patriotic Americans. And we need

1409
01:20:48,240 --> 01:20:50,280
Speaker 3: to lead the West, and we need to help out

1410
01:20:50,320 --> 01:20:55,360
Speaker 3: our European friends and our Japanese allies. This just isn't

1411
01:20:55,360 --> 01:20:58,000
Speaker 3: that hard. It's just nobody gets it.

1412
01:20:59,280 --> 01:21:01,840
Speaker 1: So what would you say, She's the path, the best

1413
01:21:01,880 --> 01:21:02,920
Speaker 1: path for us to get there.

1414
01:21:03,960 --> 01:21:09,800
Speaker 2: Hold a conference of smart people, do it quietly.

1415
01:21:09,479 --> 01:21:13,200
Speaker 1: Like in a silamar where you're inviting the who exactly

1416
01:21:13,400 --> 01:21:15,599
Speaker 1: you write the national interest people as well as the scientist.

1417
01:21:15,640 --> 01:21:18,800
Speaker 3: You figure out who knows how to play okay, and

1418
01:21:18,840 --> 01:21:21,479
Speaker 3: you do it as a closed conference and everybody checks

1419
01:21:21,520 --> 01:21:25,040
Speaker 3: their phone at the door, and you have the people

1420
01:21:25,040 --> 01:21:28,840
Speaker 3: in the fields that really matter. I want cryptography people,

1421
01:21:29,120 --> 01:21:32,800
Speaker 3: I want people who do fundamental physics. I want people

1422
01:21:32,880 --> 01:21:40,679
Speaker 3: in molecular biology, and you say, look, we had a deal,

1423
01:21:42,200 --> 01:21:45,599
Speaker 3: what is our new version of that deal. Because it's

1424
01:21:45,600 --> 01:21:48,880
Speaker 3: not poverty, it's not being precarious, it's not begging for

1425
01:21:48,920 --> 01:21:53,120
Speaker 3: a grill. Please Tony Fauci continue my funding. We need

1426
01:21:53,240 --> 01:21:55,840
Speaker 3: to tell Fauci in Collins to take a hike when

1427
01:21:55,840 --> 01:21:58,439
Speaker 3: they are behaving counter to the interests of the United

1428
01:21:58,479 --> 01:22:02,599
Speaker 3: States of America, to the interests of science. The public

1429
01:22:02,680 --> 01:22:05,280
Speaker 3: needs to be able to rely on us for ground

1430
01:22:05,320 --> 01:22:08,559
Speaker 3: truth ninety eight percent of the time and the two

1431
01:22:08,600 --> 01:22:10,799
Speaker 3: percent that they can't, We've got to be very careful.

1432
01:22:12,720 --> 01:22:15,200
Speaker 3: I understand that you have, you know, weaponized answers. I'm

1433
01:22:15,200 --> 01:22:20,680
Speaker 3: not saying be naive, publish everything science, science science, but

1434
01:22:20,760 --> 01:22:23,400
Speaker 3: for the most part, we have to be absolutely reliable.

1435
01:22:24,439 --> 01:22:26,520
Speaker 3: And we need to save theoretical physics.

1436
01:22:27,120 --> 01:22:28,640
Speaker 2: First.

1437
01:22:29,320 --> 01:22:33,240
Speaker 3: Fundamental physics is in such bad shape and you can't

1438
01:22:33,280 --> 01:22:36,880
Speaker 3: peer review your way out of it because all the

1439
01:22:36,920 --> 01:22:42,000
Speaker 3: peers are infected with the same mind virus. So you're

1440
01:22:42,000 --> 01:22:43,439
Speaker 3: just going to get more of the same. If you

1441
01:22:43,520 --> 01:22:46,640
Speaker 3: keep saying peer peer peer, you need to ask, Okay.

1442
01:22:46,600 --> 01:22:48,280
Speaker 1: You're referring, for example, string theory.

1443
01:22:48,320 --> 01:22:52,040
Speaker 3: Here, I'm referring to particle theory of the standard model

1444
01:22:52,960 --> 01:22:58,960
Speaker 3: the basis of general relativity need to be advanced. In

1445
01:22:59,000 --> 01:23:02,160
Speaker 3: Neither of these theories is measured by their fundamental constituent

1446
01:23:02,240 --> 01:23:09,880
Speaker 3: called the Lagrangian or the action has really moved in

1447
01:23:10,120 --> 01:23:11,680
Speaker 3: fifty two years?

1448
01:23:12,120 --> 01:23:14,400
Speaker 1: And has it not moved because it's so successful, or

1449
01:23:14,439 --> 01:23:15,240
Speaker 1: you're saying it.

1450
01:23:15,040 --> 01:23:19,680
Speaker 2: It's very successful. Okay, But imagine that you knew.

1451
01:23:22,040 --> 01:23:26,680
Speaker 3: Twenty three of the sixty four codons in biology, and

1452
01:23:26,720 --> 01:23:29,679
Speaker 3: fifty two years later you still knew exactly that number

1453
01:23:29,680 --> 01:23:31,360
Speaker 3: of codons and you didn't have the rest of the

1454
01:23:31,400 --> 01:23:32,600
Speaker 3: genetic code.

1455
01:23:34,040 --> 01:23:38,120
Speaker 1: Enough in that analogy, though those twenty three are still correct,

1456
01:23:38,160 --> 01:23:40,920
Speaker 1: we're just looking for the remainder. But is that how

1457
01:23:40,960 --> 01:23:42,160
Speaker 1: you see that? Pretty much?

1458
01:23:42,200 --> 01:23:45,880
Speaker 3: The standard model is amazing, But you know again, crocodile

1459
01:23:46,000 --> 01:23:48,679
Speaker 3: rock is amazing, and that came from the same exact era,

1460
01:23:49,880 --> 01:23:53,320
Speaker 3: and I cannot stand listening to crocodile Rock on repeat

1461
01:23:54,240 --> 01:23:57,640
Speaker 3: for fifty two years.

1462
01:23:58,400 --> 01:24:00,519
Speaker 1: But is it that it's a hard problem and that's

1463
01:24:00,520 --> 01:24:03,840
Speaker 1: why the other codons haven't been figured out.

1464
01:24:04,360 --> 01:24:06,559
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a very hard problem.

1465
01:24:06,720 --> 01:24:09,160
Speaker 3: But it gets a lot harder when you only listen

1466
01:24:09,280 --> 01:24:15,160
Speaker 3: to suspiciously ten leaders of the field who all are

1467
01:24:16,680 --> 01:24:20,960
Speaker 3: interchangeably convinced of the same wrong things, which is quantum

1468
01:24:21,000 --> 01:24:23,080
Speaker 3: gravity was not what we were Well, it's not even

1469
01:24:23,280 --> 01:24:27,360
Speaker 3: string theory. Who said quantum gravity was the task that

1470
01:24:27,400 --> 01:24:30,160
Speaker 3: we all needed to get on in nineteen eighty three

1471
01:24:30,200 --> 01:24:35,000
Speaker 3: eighty four, who said that the standard model is ugly.

1472
01:24:35,760 --> 01:24:38,840
Speaker 3: It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. Who said

1473
01:24:38,840 --> 01:24:41,599
Speaker 3: that we stopped listening to our colleagues and we call

1474
01:24:41,680 --> 01:24:44,160
Speaker 3: them names, as opposed to saying, well, do you have

1475
01:24:44,200 --> 01:24:49,400
Speaker 3: a different idea. There is no world in which our

1476
01:24:49,479 --> 01:24:52,720
Speaker 3: physics thing makes sense except for a security context. So

1477
01:24:52,880 --> 01:25:00,559
Speaker 3: either we now have the world's worst accidental culture in

1478
01:25:00,720 --> 01:25:04,559
Speaker 3: fundamental physics, or we have a security regime in which

1479
01:25:04,600 --> 01:25:06,920
Speaker 3: we're not supposed to actually advance and what we're doing

1480
01:25:07,040 --> 01:25:07,519
Speaker 3: is safe.

1481
01:25:09,000 --> 01:25:12,799
Speaker 1: Does that mean that in that model that somebody has

1482
01:25:13,479 --> 01:25:17,240
Speaker 1: broken through that wall and they met Well, we don't know.

1483
01:25:17,400 --> 01:25:19,880
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm almost positive that we don't have a

1484
01:25:19,920 --> 01:25:27,240
Speaker 3: fundamental theory. But you know, we know that Marc Andreessen

1485
01:25:27,680 --> 01:25:30,280
Speaker 3: and Ben Horowitz were in the White House during the

1486
01:25:30,280 --> 01:25:34,479
Speaker 3: Biden administration and they said they were told don't invest

1487
01:25:34,520 --> 01:25:37,400
Speaker 3: in AI startups because we're not going to allow them

1488
01:25:37,800 --> 01:25:41,599
Speaker 3: to continue and these guys said, well, what do you mean,

1489
01:25:41,680 --> 01:25:42,840
Speaker 3: it's just based on math.

1490
01:25:42,920 --> 01:25:43,960
Speaker 2: You can't outlaw math.

1491
01:25:44,800 --> 01:25:46,880
Speaker 3: And they said, we will classify math just the way

1492
01:25:46,880 --> 01:25:56,000
Speaker 3: we classified fields of theoretical physics. Hmm, okay, so nobody

1493
01:25:56,000 --> 01:25:59,120
Speaker 3: knows what that means. Didn't sound like it was just

1494
01:25:59,200 --> 01:26:02,280
Speaker 3: nuclear physics. I highly recommend everyone go to a website

1495
01:26:02,360 --> 01:26:05,839
Speaker 3: run by Alex Wellerstein. It was at the Stevens Institute

1496
01:26:05,880 --> 01:26:07,560
Speaker 3: of Technology in New Jersey.

1497
01:26:08,360 --> 01:26:09,240
Speaker 2: And he is.

1498
01:26:10,680 --> 01:26:15,960
Speaker 3: I think the world expert on the atomic security. And

1499
01:26:16,000 --> 01:26:18,759
Speaker 3: you can learn all the things we did around science

1500
01:26:18,960 --> 01:26:21,160
Speaker 3: around nuclear weapons from his sites.

1501
01:26:21,680 --> 01:26:23,160
Speaker 2: So we can just know.

1502
01:26:23,320 --> 01:26:25,479
Speaker 3: We don't have to guess or speculate as to what

1503
01:26:25,520 --> 01:26:27,840
Speaker 3: it looks like when national interest in science run into

1504
01:26:27,880 --> 01:26:28,200
Speaker 3: each other.

1505
01:26:28,240 --> 01:26:31,400
Speaker 2: We can say, oh, here's what happened.

1506
01:26:31,320 --> 01:26:31,479
Speaker 3: Like.

1507
01:26:33,200 --> 01:26:36,120
Speaker 1: Scientists ideas were shut down from the public that kind

1508
01:26:36,120 --> 01:26:37,599
Speaker 1: of thing, or what are we talking about?

1509
01:26:39,920 --> 01:26:47,719
Speaker 3: Newspaper stories were spiked, disinformation was distributed in the scientific literature.

1510
01:26:49,000 --> 01:26:51,840
Speaker 3: Volumes were taken off of the shelves that thought were

1511
01:26:51,840 --> 01:26:55,320
Speaker 3: thought to be advantageous to the enemy. Review boards were

1512
01:26:55,360 --> 01:27:01,479
Speaker 3: set up that would intermediate between journals and researchers in

1513
01:27:01,479 --> 01:27:06,639
Speaker 3: case somebody submitted something that might have security implications, so

1514
01:27:06,800 --> 01:27:11,000
Speaker 3: we know exactly what it looks like when the national

1515
01:27:11,000 --> 01:27:15,000
Speaker 3: interest complex decides that something like neutrons is too dangerous

1516
01:27:15,040 --> 01:27:16,919
Speaker 3: to simply do as g wiz science.

1517
01:27:18,920 --> 01:27:19,200
Speaker 2: Right.

1518
01:27:19,280 --> 01:27:23,000
Speaker 3: And so as a result of this, if you tell me, well, Eric,

1519
01:27:23,160 --> 01:27:25,960
Speaker 3: that's conspiracy theorizing, I'm just going to tell you, go

1520
01:27:25,960 --> 01:27:29,720
Speaker 3: find a blog called restricted Data. Knock yourself out and

1521
01:27:29,760 --> 01:27:34,440
Speaker 3: tell me why you imagine that secret facilities, secret protocols,

1522
01:27:34,479 --> 01:27:41,360
Speaker 3: secret agreements aren't all through national interests interfaces with the

1523
01:27:41,400 --> 01:27:44,720
Speaker 3: scientific community, because clearly we know that that it has

1524
01:27:44,840 --> 01:27:47,439
Speaker 3: been the case. We have it documented eight ways to Sunday.

1525
01:27:48,000 --> 01:27:50,400
Speaker 3: Why are you claiming that this is somehow the product

1526
01:27:50,400 --> 01:27:53,559
Speaker 3: of an overactive imagination. You're just not well read.

1527
01:27:53,960 --> 01:27:56,000
Speaker 1: But in some sense you're in favor of that right,

1528
01:27:56,240 --> 01:27:59,120
Speaker 1: in the sense of the call it the two percent

1529
01:27:59,200 --> 01:28:03,040
Speaker 1: of science that you think for national security interests should

1530
01:28:03,040 --> 01:28:07,280
Speaker 1: be masked, you would or wouldn't be in favor of.

1531
01:28:07,600 --> 01:28:10,960
Speaker 3: I'm in favor of getting rid of the g willakers

1532
01:28:11,000 --> 01:28:12,240
Speaker 3: attitude towards science.

1533
01:28:15,000 --> 01:28:21,960
Speaker 2: It's garish. Science is fun enough, Science is too important.

1534
01:28:23,000 --> 01:28:25,439
Speaker 3: We have the right to national security interests, and we

1535
01:28:25,520 --> 01:28:29,000
Speaker 3: have the right to not have national security interests completely

1536
01:28:29,760 --> 01:28:33,040
Speaker 3: destroy our credibility with each other, the public, and the world.

1537
01:28:33,600 --> 01:28:34,080
Speaker 2: And so the.

1538
01:28:34,080 --> 01:28:40,040
Speaker 3: Issue is, I want a high resolution relationship where we

1539
01:28:40,080 --> 01:28:43,040
Speaker 3: think a great deal about these issues. We continue to

1540
01:28:43,080 --> 01:28:45,560
Speaker 3: going back. If you can't be done in an open environment,

1541
01:28:46,200 --> 01:28:48,640
Speaker 3: take it into the national labs. If it can't be

1542
01:28:48,680 --> 01:28:52,680
Speaker 3: done in the national labs, do it in an unannounced facility.

1543
01:28:53,280 --> 01:28:55,320
Speaker 3: But what I don't want is I don't want us

1544
01:28:55,400 --> 01:28:58,639
Speaker 3: training up super smart people who can see through the liawes,

1545
01:28:58,880 --> 01:29:02,360
Speaker 3: not being told that they're part of some sort of

1546
01:29:02,479 --> 01:29:05,960
Speaker 3: agreement that they never signed up for, and sitting there

1547
01:29:06,000 --> 01:29:10,919
Speaker 3: getting destroyed through let's say, COVID influence campaigns, where suddenly

1548
01:29:11,160 --> 01:29:14,559
Speaker 3: you know, every time you say anything in public, there's

1549
01:29:14,600 --> 01:29:18,040
Speaker 3: one hundred and fifty accounts that suspiciously never have people

1550
01:29:18,080 --> 01:29:21,160
Speaker 3: behind them that are constantly starking at you. I mean,

1551
01:29:22,120 --> 01:29:25,000
Speaker 3: whatever this thing is, it's intolerable, and we should we

1552
01:29:25,000 --> 01:29:26,840
Speaker 3: should put a bullet through it. We should drive a

1553
01:29:26,880 --> 01:29:30,120
Speaker 3: stake through its heart and kill off whatever this thing

1554
01:29:30,240 --> 01:29:34,400
Speaker 3: is in favor of a reasonable agreement between the scientific world,

1555
01:29:34,520 --> 01:29:36,479
Speaker 3: the tech world, and the national interest world.

1556
01:29:36,560 --> 01:29:40,800
Speaker 1: And your point is that if scientists grow up understanding

1557
01:29:40,800 --> 01:29:43,559
Speaker 1: that that's the situation that the stuff they do matters.

1558
01:29:44,280 --> 01:29:47,080
Speaker 1: Then if you're okay with this, there are plenty of

1559
01:29:47,160 --> 01:29:50,280
Speaker 1: couriers for you. Yeah, if you want to believe that

1560
01:29:50,320 --> 01:29:54,160
Speaker 1: somehow science is just about open inquiry and g whiz. Look,

1561
01:29:54,400 --> 01:29:57,720
Speaker 1: I'm all for cowboys, I'm all for hyper independence. I

1562
01:29:58,080 --> 01:30:00,920
Speaker 1: view iin Rand as a collectivist. I am off the

1563
01:30:01,040 --> 01:30:04,000
Speaker 1: charts individualist. But I'm not stupid.

1564
01:30:04,120 --> 01:30:07,240
Speaker 3: And so my claim is is that an Oppenheimer of

1565
01:30:07,280 --> 01:30:11,240
Speaker 3: Annoyman a Fineman worked within a world in which they

1566
01:30:11,320 --> 01:30:16,040
Speaker 3: respected the national security complex. Put somebody at the top,

1567
01:30:16,120 --> 01:30:19,600
Speaker 3: like a Leslie Groves and you'll get compliance. But you

1568
01:30:19,760 --> 01:30:22,880
Speaker 3: can't have this as some sort of low level administrative thing.

1569
01:30:23,479 --> 01:30:26,240
Speaker 3: This is life and death to the United States. And

1570
01:30:26,400 --> 01:30:29,280
Speaker 3: China is going to eat our lunch. I guarantee it.

1571
01:30:29,320 --> 01:30:32,200
Speaker 3: They will hire our best people away because we are

1572
01:30:32,479 --> 01:30:35,520
Speaker 3: in some sort of a mental spiral.

1573
01:30:36,280 --> 01:30:37,679
Speaker 2: We're going straight down the drain.

1574
01:30:37,760 --> 01:30:41,080
Speaker 3: Because we don't think that a scientist should be able

1575
01:30:41,120 --> 01:30:44,000
Speaker 3: to check in at the four seasons without thinking about it,

1576
01:30:44,680 --> 01:30:47,519
Speaker 3: that they shouldn't be able to fly business class, that

1577
01:30:47,560 --> 01:30:50,320
Speaker 3: they shouldn't have a retirement and a second home. And

1578
01:30:50,400 --> 01:30:53,200
Speaker 3: I just I want the people who think that that's

1579
01:30:53,720 --> 01:30:57,200
Speaker 3: garish and that this is like, as the phrase goes,

1580
01:30:57,439 --> 01:31:00,360
Speaker 3: welfare queens and white lab coats. I want them to

1581
01:31:00,439 --> 01:31:04,040
Speaker 3: choke on this particular fur ball, and I want them

1582
01:31:04,080 --> 01:31:06,800
Speaker 3: to recognize. Now, what you did is you took the

1583
01:31:06,800 --> 01:31:09,880
Speaker 3: world's greatest scientific community. You asked them to keep you safe,

1584
01:31:09,960 --> 01:31:12,360
Speaker 3: you asked them to keep you rich, and you told

1585
01:31:12,360 --> 01:31:14,360
Speaker 3: them to stay outside while you held a party.

1586
01:31:14,680 --> 01:31:17,040
Speaker 2: Enough, it's over.

1587
01:31:20,240 --> 01:31:25,240
Speaker 1: That was my conversation with Eric Weinstein. So wrapping this up. Generally,

1588
01:31:25,280 --> 01:31:28,639
Speaker 1: when we talk about science, we think of discoveries as

1589
01:31:28,680 --> 01:31:32,560
Speaker 1: having a pretty simple structure. A paper against published, or

1590
01:31:32,600 --> 01:31:36,479
Speaker 1: a breakthrough gets announced, maybe a prize is awarded. But

1591
01:31:36,560 --> 01:31:40,360
Speaker 1: the truth is that underneath every insight is a huge

1592
01:31:40,400 --> 01:31:47,200
Speaker 1: scaffolding of institutions and incentives and traditions and also unspoken rules.

1593
01:31:47,840 --> 01:31:54,200
Speaker 1: That scaffolding shapes which questions feel askable and which ideas

1594
01:31:54,280 --> 01:31:59,879
Speaker 1: feel risky, in which paths seem invisible until someone insists

1595
01:31:59,920 --> 01:32:04,040
Speaker 1: on walking them anyway. Conversations like today's remind us that

1596
01:32:04,080 --> 01:32:07,320
Speaker 1: science is not just a method for understanding the world.

1597
01:32:07,400 --> 01:32:11,800
Speaker 1: It is also a human system with pressures and power

1598
01:32:11,880 --> 01:32:17,240
Speaker 1: dynamics that influence its trajectory, paying attention to that system,

1599
01:32:17,800 --> 01:32:22,679
Speaker 1: questioning how it works and who it serves, and how

1600
01:32:22,720 --> 01:32:28,760
Speaker 1: it evolves. This might be as important as any single experiment.

1601
01:32:34,640 --> 01:32:37,479
Speaker 1: Go to eagleman dot com slash podcast for more information

1602
01:32:37,840 --> 01:32:41,080
Speaker 1: and to find further reading. Join the weekly discussions on

1603
01:32:41,080 --> 01:32:44,280
Speaker 1: my substack and check out Subscribe to Inner Cosmos on

1604
01:32:44,320 --> 01:32:47,480
Speaker 1: YouTube for videos of each episode and to leave comments

1605
01:32:47,800 --> 01:32:51,680
Speaker 1: until next time. I'm David Eagleman and this is inner Cosmos.