Eric Weinstein
3 HN recommenders · recommended in 5 months, 2020–2022
2:48:23 · 903K views · Apr 2, 2020
Eric Weinstein's roughly three-hour presentation of Geometric Unity, his proposed theory unifying physics, given as a special episode of The Portal. It includes clarifications at the end.
HN uses it as the primary source for Weinstein's theory, though some commenters note he never published a full math paper.
10 comments from Hacker News
this video - him releasing the video of his multi-hour long guest lecture. He's working on publishing a paper version soon to hash out all the math for people. As far as I know predictions wise, all of the math equations fit within his foundation, allowing a connection between string theory and relatively - which AFAIK didn't previously have math that allowed them to interconnect/co-exist. He's been trying for 15 years to get people in physics interested in it - and realized he has run into what he calls DISC and GIN, as mechanisms that keep outsiders ideas out and status quo narratives perpetuated. And so he's built an audience to educate, to share interviews/talks with high level conversation with a wide range of people, and build momentum/attention for his Geometric Unity theory because the existing institutions seem so indoctrinated into the last 50 years that they aren't looking into other ideas (yet); and an example of this is right here on HN, the previous commenter who called him a charlatan - with what experience are they themselves basing that off of, or who did they hear that narrative from, and how much time did that person invest investigating [interesting how invest is in the word investigating, it takes time which is an investment] and did they actually engage with Eric to see if they perhaps weren't understanding themselves and so then Eric could help them understand, etc.
No, this happened because our major institutions have driven out people that are able to think originally and avoid the herd mentality. This has happened because of embedded growth obligations that affect all of our institutions, both public and private. If you are suspicious, don't tune out. You might be surprised to hear that the solution to this problem is to give academics MORE funding. If you have never heard of embedded growth obligations, or the Great Nap, watch these two videos. The first is the first 35 minutes of Eric Weinstein's Portal podcast on his proposal to find a unified field theory: this video The second is an interview he does with Lex Fridman, calling for MIT to stop killing people like Aaron Schwartz (who faced a 35 year prison sentence for his attempt to battle Elsevier, yet received no support from MIT!) [LINK]
Questioning scientific dogma is NOT the sign of a crackpot. In fact thinking about things critically and coming up with your own theories is what science is all about. If it doesn't check out, rational people would simply note that the idea was wrong, not blame someone for thinking it, which is the sort of behavior you'd encounter in religious cults. You can listen to his reasoning here: this video
The headline should include the name Sir Roger Penrose, because he was awarded 1/2 the prize. Andrea Ghez and Reinhard Genzel were each awarded 1/4 of the prize. Burying the lede like this only undermines our trust in the very institutions we need most today. Please see these two videos by Eric Weinstein for a deeper explanation of what I am only hinting at: this video [LINK]
Eric Weinstein on April 2nd posted the lecture to his YouTube channel + at the end of video he goes over to clarify some details: this video I'd recommend his The Portal video podcast series as well: [LINK] Two other recent interviews he did with Lex Fridman [LINK] and Joe Rogan [LINK]