Gen Z Rising? The 333rd Evolutionary Lens with Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying

Summary

DarkHorse Podcast #333: Gen Z Rising? The 333rd Evolutionary Lens
Hosts: Dr. Bret Weinstein & Dr. Heather Heying
Date: July 8, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Bret and Heather discuss headlines claiming Gen Z is thriving compared to previous generations, new research on mosquito repellents that don't use DEET, and a deep dive into the current state and politicization of Wikipedia. As always, their discussion is rooted in evolutionary biology, critical reasoning, and healthy skepticism.

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Key Topics & Insights

1. The Silliness of Numbers and Getting Started

• [00:00–01:47] Light banter about the auspicious number 333 sets a playful tone.
  • "It's math. Ish. Pseudo logic, I guess." – Bret (01:04)

2. Episode Agenda

• [01:47–02:08] Heather outlines today's main topics:
  • Mosquito avoidance without DEET
  • Whether Gen Z really is “doing better”
  • The state of Wikipedia

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3. Mosquito Repellents: Catnip vs. DEET

[10:12–32:09]

The Catnip Solution

• Heather introduces a Guardian article about catnip-based lotions rivaling DEET in effectiveness at repelling mosquitoes, based on a Ugandan field study.
  • “Can you see my... Catnip lotion as effective as DEET at repelling mosquitoes? Study finds. That seems promising.” – Heather (10:12)
• The study, presented at the Society for Experimental Biology, is praised for its potential to provide a local, natural, and safer alternative to DEET in malaria-endemic areas.
• The argument: Catnip's active component, nepetalactone, is highly effective in repelling mosquitoes.

DEET: Useful but Toxic

• Both hosts share their experiences as field biologists dreading DEET due to toxicity.
  • “DEET is crazy toxic. DEET is really nasty stuff.” – Heather (16:44)
  • Heather tells a memorable story: using DEET while photographing in the field, she left her fingerprint permanently imprinted in her camera body.
    • “That moment... I said, that's it, I'm done. No more DEET for me ever.” – Heather (19:26)

Broader Reflections on Health and Toxins

• Discuss the hidden risks of modern synthetic chemicals and the caution required when inhaling or absorbing aerosols (like bug sprays and sunscreens).
• The pair explain evolutionary cues: substances that smell bad once served as useful warnings, but modern chemistry can fool these instincts.
  • “Our ancestors didn't anticipate that smelling things that are off can now be the hazardous activity in and of itself.” – Bret (22:04)

Catnip Risks and Side Effects?

• The segment ends with playful banter about possible side effects:
  • “So you put on the catnip-based mosquito repellent...let's say it works to repel mosquitoes, but it attracts cats...” – Bret (26:42)
  • Joking discussion about attracting wild cats in Uganda, like leopards and lions.

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4. Is Gen Z Really "Doing Better"? Media Claims vs. Reality

[32:43–55:27]

The Headlines

• Media (specifically, the Guardian, citing a Resolution Foundation report) claims that Gen Z at age 24 is earning more than any cohort since the 1950s.

Dissecting the Data

• Heather and Bret, referencing Phil Harper’s Substack analysis, expose three main distortions in the headline claim:

A. Absorbing Parent Wealth

• The “income” metric used by Resolution Foundation includes the total household income divided among all members.
  • “Rather than actually assessing their income, we're going to assess household income and then divide evenly…” – Heather (37:17)

B. Ignoring Housing/Rent Costs

• By living at home, young adults don’t face market rent, inflating their apparent disposable income compared to earlier generations who moved out.

C. “Workforce Survivor Bias” (NEETs)

• Wage surveys only include those employed, omitting the rising number of “NEETs” (Not in Employment, Education, or Training). This falsifies median statistics, as the most vulnerable are invisible in wage data.
  • “Whenever a million of the most economically vulnerable...drop out of the workforce entirely, they simply do not turn up in the annual wage data...” – Heather quoting Harper (42:22)

Broader Analysis

• The institutions (think tanks, media) have incentives to frame generational economic progress positively.
  • “If a think tank publishes a headline saying young people are still structurally locked out... a newspaper editor will bury it on page 20.” – Heather quoting Harper (49:53)
• The hosts note how think tanks and media co-amplify positive government-friendly narratives, resulting in misleading coverage.

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5. Wikipedia – From Idealistic Dream to Tool of Political Capture

[55:27–99:06]

The Wikipedia Crisis

• Prompted by a new essay from Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger, who has been banned from editing, the hosts break down Wikipedia’s shifting role.
  • “Wikipedia is a mess. It's A mess of multiple kinds…” – Bret (65:20)
• Wikipedia’s value: unparalleled for non-political topics but dangerous for topics involving power or controversy.
  • “If you want to know the depth of Lake Baikal, it's probably a reliable enough source... But if you want to know what happened at Evergreen, it's not a good source.” – Bret (70:07)

Evidence of Politicized Editing

• Sanger exposes activist groups and staff-driven “edit-a-thons” biasing Wikipedia’s coverage on contentious issues.
  • “...Editing patterns reveal a gang of 40 accounts that together dominated articles about the Israeli Palestinian conflict with definite signs of off-wiki coordination.” – Heather quoting Sanger (67:47)

Wikipedia’s Founding Principles vs. Reality

• Outlines five pillars (neutrality, no original research, etc.), touching on the principle “ignore all rules,” originally meant to keep the encyclopedia mission-focused, now exploited for bad-faith manipulation.

Sanger’s Reform Proposals

• Sanger’s “Nine Theses,” calling for:
  1. Ending forced consensus (to allow competing positions on contentious topics)
  2. Allowing competing articles
  3. Abolishing source blacklists
  4. Reviving neutrality
  5. Revoking “ignore all rules” (which now shields bad actors)
  6. Requiring leader identification (most Wikipedia leaders are anonymous)
  7. Public article rating
  8. Ending indefinite blocks (even for co-founders!)
  9. Creating a legislative process for rule-making

Contrasted with Jimmy Wales’s “Seven Rules of Trust”

• Bret derides Wales’s self-help-style list (“Be trusting”, “Be positive about people”, etc.), calling it naive and empty compared to Sanger’s substantive reforms.
  • “Is he actually an idiot? What the hell is that?... That list is insane.” – Heather (92:55)

The Broader Crisis: Wikipedia and the “Cartesian Crisis”

• Wikipedia’s unique position as the “only” open encyclopedia makes its capture and decline uniquely damaging to societal ability to resolve what’s true.

Call to Action

• “We need a Wikipedia. Wikipedia, ain't it. So let's build one.” – Bret (102:13)
• Sanger’s academic rigor (“a deep understanding of epistemology”) makes him “the right guy for the job” to build a new, trustworthy resource.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• “DEET is crazy toxic. ...If it can do that [melt a camera], who knows what it is doing to us?” – Heather (16:44, 19:55)
• “[On Gen Z income metrics]...it's as cheating as you get and it's, it. You know, when you see claims that seem counterintuitive...dig deep...” – Heather (37:17)
• “So the point is, it’s headline justification, it's headline rationalization that is being generated.” – Bret (53:05)
• “Wikipedia is a mess. It's A mess of multiple kinds, one of which would be expected...There's obviously something much more sinister going on at Wikipedia.” – Bret (65:20)
• “We need a Wikipedia. Wikipedia, ain't it. So let's build one.” – Bret (102:13)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:00–01:47: Intro and playful number talk
• 01:47–02:08: Today's topics outlined
• 10:12–32:09: Mosquito repellent discussion: Catnip vs. DEET
• 32:43–55:27: Gen Z “success” — breakdown of misleading statistics and media framing
• 55:27–99:06: Wikipedia’s politicization, Sanger’s critique and reform proposals, Wales’s “rules,” and why open knowledge is at risk

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Tone & Style Notes

• Banter is playful, occasionally snarky, always intellectually engaged
• Strong critical thinking and skepticism towards headlines, institutions, and media narratives
• Willingness to connect personal anecdotes with broader evolutionary and societal implications

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In Sum:
This episode is a tour through media manipulation (the framing of Gen Z’s economic prospects), scientific optimism and skepticism (catnip as a DEET alternative), and philosophical depth on the role, risks, and future of shared knowledge platforms like Wikipedia. The call to action: value rigorous epistemology, beware manipulated narratives, and defend the possibility of objective, accessible knowledge.

Transcript

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Foreign. You. Welcome to the Dark Horse Podcast, live stream number 333. And you can call me a conspiracy theorist, but I feel you have been

[Dr. Heather Heying]

called a conspiracy theory.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, you won't be the first for sure.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

What about this number is going to prompt you to be called a conspiracy theorist?

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

I don't think it's prime, due largely to the action of 111, with a strong assist by the number three at the very least. I mean, I'm not going to be surprised if 9 or 6 is involved, but I know that those two at least have their fingerprints all over it.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Yeah. Yep, they do. No. And you. And you know that 9 and 6 are involved because 111 isn't divisible by 3, which would be required for 9 to be involved, and it's not divisible by 2, which would be required for 6 to be involved, so depends what

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

rules of division you're using. Because I can get three to divide into 111 by noticing that there are three ones involved. But that's next level math, if you know what I mean.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

That's lesser level math, I think is what it is.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

It's math. Ish. Pseudo logic, I guess.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Yeah.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

But anyway, yeah, I take your point. I take your point.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Yeah. So, 333, here we are.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Yes, I'm Dr. Brett Weinstein.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Third of the way. Almost to a thousand. Remarkable.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

That's true. Actually, a third of the way through this episode will be there. Yes. Right.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Or the next one. It's an inclusive exclusive issue.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Oh, God, those always trip me up. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. My, my, my liberal background.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

That's the next one I wanted, but.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

But I end up having to be exclusive for reasons of logic sometimes. Yeah. Anyway, I'm Dr. Brett Weinstein, you're Dr. Heather Hying. We've already named the podcast. No need to do that again.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

And today we're going to talk about how to avoid mosquitoes without deet. Some new research that's out that's promising, whether Gen Z is really doing better than its predecessors, as some headlines and research would suggest, despite what all of our lived experience would tell us. And what the hell happened to Wikipedia?

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, what the hell, indeed.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Yeah. Yeah. So no Q and A today, but check out past Q&As on locals. And we also got the Watch party going on now. And let's just. Let's get right into it with our sponsors right at the top of the hour. We got three, as always, that offer services or products that we truly vouch for. Let's do it.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

You want to guess what the first one is?

[Dr. Heather Heying]

I know what the first one is because I handed you the sheet of paper.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Yes, you did.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Yes.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

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[Dr. Heather Heying]

It is hard to read, actually. So I'm gonna say a little bit about that and then we'll say the number again. But you'll have to hand it to me for me to say it.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Oh, you're gonna say it.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

All right. So we really like these guys, but they specifically wanted us to make sure that it was said that way. And they wrote it out this way. And I rewrote it as numbers. And then I realized, well, when it's numbers, you don't necessarily say 5350.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Right?

[Dr. Heather Heying]

You might say a number of things and they really wanted to say 53.50. So the number for American financing is 866-886-5350. But yes, it's hard to write that in a way that you guarantee that it will be spoken in the way that you want it to be spoken. But it's maximally easy to read. I think those two things are somehow in tension, in tension with one another, which was, I don't know, it's a little surprising comment that I wasn't expecting to find when putting together an ad read.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

It sends the work that is ordinarily done by your numeric brain over to your language brain, which is not well practiced at it.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

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[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

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[Dr. Heather Heying]

Yes, we have.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Mostly my fault probably, but.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

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[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Right? Didn't intend. Never intend.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

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[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

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[Dr. Heather Heying]

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[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Hell yeah. I feel better not having the insurance every week.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Oh goodness, yeah. Is a burden that even if you feel like, okay, I got through November. I figured it out for this year. I know what I'm doing every month. You're paying out so much money and you know at least our experience and I know we were not alone was it was crazy expensive. We got no benefit and it was just money thrown away. Yeah.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

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[Dr. Heather Heying]

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[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Apologies.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Okay, we got a few stories, a few, few, three stories this week. As we said, we're going to talk about, let's, let's talk about mosquito repellent first. It's summer, right? It's summer in a lot of the country. In a lot of the northern hemisphere it is, it's summer. Northern hemisphere. It is summer in much of the northern hemisphere. It is therefore also mosquito season. And we've talked about sunscreen in weeks past and why you should likely avoid sunscreen. Sunscreen and get your skin used to being in the sun slowly at first and then soak in its healthful, healthful rays rather than slathering yourself especially with chemicals. But even with the physical stuff that is in say zinc based sunscreens, do that as little as possible and get as much sun as possible without burning. So we've talked about sun and one of the other harbingers of summer is mosquitoes, of course. So I found this story on in the Guardian this week. Can you see my, you can see my computer. Awesome. Catnip lotion. As effective as DEET at repelling mosquitoes. Study fines. That seems promising. I'm gonna just, you know, in general, I don't know that I trust the Guardian. In fact, I got to the Guardian from a different headline which turns out not to be all that trustworthy. And we'll get to, will get there next in the next story. But scroll down a little bit. Let's make this a little bit bigger. Oops, wrong way. Researchers testing a cheap homegrown oil in Uganda found what cats knew all along. It worked as well as the artificial chemical used globally. Now I'm going to stop right there and say what cats knew all along.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

So well, their argument is going to be that cats have an affinity for this stuff because it repels mosquitoes.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

That is the implied evolutionary argument. I don't think they have any idea that's what they're claiming really. Oh, it's certainly not in.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Oh, they're just being clever like.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Yeah, they're just being clever. Hey, look what cats do.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, yeah, they're being clever without being clever is kind of their specialty actually.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

But I mean I think that's, that's exactly what might be going on, that cats, cats are attracted to catnip because it does provide a benefit in keeping mosquitoes away, which cats as much as I think any mammal want to do. Because while many vector to mosquito vector diseases are pretty clade specific, many of them are not. And there are plenty of carnivoran specific diseases out there.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

So we're never going to know. But I'm just wondering if all this is true. If the cats are looking at the dogs thinking like what's wrong with you? This is, this is good stuff. Why aren't you into it?

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Yeah, yeah, maybe that, maybe the cats are like, you prefer deet. Really?

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, really.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

So I'm actually going to skip out of here because the, the paper, I mean the, the article is what the article is. But what it does say in the fourth paragraph is in a study presented at the Society for Experimental Biology conference in Florence on Tuesday. This is literally, this is not a research paper yet. It is a talk that was presented at a conference yesterday as we're speaking right now. So I'm now going to go to that, go to that. If I can have my screen back here for a second. Yeah, go to, Now go to that spot. Okay, so here we go. Here is the way of academic conferences is that most of the time you've written your abstract in advance of actually knowing what you will find and certainly well in advance of having therefore been able to put all of your research into a paper format and gotten it published in a journal. And so very often what happens at conferences is the leading edge of science. And sometimes it turns out not to be that much and sometimes it is. So this is the Society for Experimental Biology, a conference that is happening right now in Florence. And yesterday this, this piece, this paper was delivered that is to say there was a talk delivered at the conference called Developing a Nepetal Lactone based mosquito repellent to reduce the incidence of malaria in Uganda, a community enterprise model. It's got a bunch of authors on it, mostly from a combination of Cardiff University in Wales and a number of universities institutes in Uganda, which is where the research was done. And here is the text of the actual abstract, which I will read. Volatile plant secondary metabolites have a range of biological functions including insect attraction and repellents. Volatile iridoid monoterpene nepetalactone is primarily found in the essential oil of catnip family Lamiaceae Nepeta cataria. Nepetalactone acts as a natural insect repellent. I say that as if we already knew that, which I don't know if we already knew that, but they say it as if it's already known. Nepetalactone acts as a natural insect repellent and is highly effective at repelling mosquitoes which are responsible for the transmission of malaria and other vector vector borne diseases in sub Saharan Africa. Obviously not just in sub Saharan Africa. Mosquito repellents represent one of the primary measures used to reduce the risk of malaria by reducing mosquito landing and biting events. However, nepetalactone has not been widely exploited as a mosquito repellent in malaria endemic regions such as Uganda. In our recent work we evaluated the potential of a lotion containing catnip essential oil comprising over 92% Nepetalactone locally produced using a community enterprise model for for uses of mosquito repellent in eastern Uganda. Using the human landing catch method and field trials together with laboratory experiments, we found that our repellent lotion was highly effective at preventing mosquito landing with performance equivalent to deet.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Wow. Yeah. Without melting your camera or. Let me just.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Let me finish before, before the editorial. Our findings suggest that nepetalactone could be used as a natural, locally sourced and effective alternative to synthetic commercial mosquito repellents, thereby representing a viable import substitution option for protection against mosquito borne diseases in malaria endemic region. So obviously we weren't in Florence to see the talk. This is all we have to go on. It seems to be making primarily an economic argument as opposed to a health argument like the. The health. The health argument overall is mosquitoes aren't just a nuisance, they vector diseases that are killers such as malaria. Malaria also yellow fever, dengue, lots of other things. And DEET is expensive because it's not made in house in Uganda. Whereas something that can be grown and then Turned into a lotion right in Uganda could be more, more economical. That is one argument that I think is a good one. The better one, which you, which you began to get to is DEET is crazy toxic. DEET is really nasty stuff. And, and as you alluded to just now, I, you know, we, we have been tropical field biologists. We have spent a lot of time in the field contending with a lot of mosquitoes and being tropical field biologists, especially if what you're doing is animal behavior, which requires that you sit totally still for long periods of time, means that you draw a lot of attention from mosquitoes. And both of us have tried all

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

sorts of things, unless you stop exhaling. But that's.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

And then, you know, the, the observations that you make get less and less and less. And then your head.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, yeah. It's not, not a plan.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

It's not, it's not a great plan for avoiding mosquitoes. So if you're going to insist on continuing to do the whole respiratory thing, how is it that you're going to avoid the attraction being attractive to mosquitoes and, and getting bitten and perhaps getting any of the diseases that they vector? Well, you can put a giant head net on yourself. You can carry around those mosquito quails and occasionally set fire to your field clothing. I did this a lot.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

I was going to ask you how you knew, but I know you could

[Dr. Heather Heying]

use citronella for a while. It was it Avon's skin so soft was a suggested thing and I think we tried that. I have no memory of how successful that was. And early on we, much to our chagrin, we didn't like doing it because you can smell how toxic this stuff is used deet. And, you know, like, just like some people don't realize that when they're using Roundup, what they're using is glyphosate. And you'll actually get people saying to you, oh, I don't use glyphosate. I just use Roundup. Like, no, no. The active ingredient in the Roundup that you're using is glyphosate. Same thing with Off Off. The active ingredient is deet. If you're using off, you're using deet. And there's lots of other products out there that use DEET as their primary or only ingredient in them. And. Hold up. I once, early in our time as tropical field biologists, when I was still doing a fair bit of photography with really nice cameras and had a beautiful, I think it was a Canon slr and I had applied DEET to my hands to avoid the mosquito bites. And I went to take a photograph and came away with my fingerprint permanently reflected in the camera body, which was made possible by the deet.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

It is a decent anti theft measure. But

[Dr. Heather Heying]

that moment of seeing my fingerprint reflected like permanently embedded in the camera body as if I had put my finger in wet concrete, the only possible way that that had happened, the only thing that could have facilitated that was the deed. Because that's the only thing that I had done that was unusual, prompted me to say, that's it, I'm done. No more DEET for me ever. Because if it can, if it can do that, who knows what it is doing to us?

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, it's, it's clearly a solvent.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Clearly a solvent.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

At the very least it's, it's, it's bad stuff. I would also point out in the case of off that we see a common failure in thinking about health, which is as bad as DEET is to rub on as a liquid. The last thing you want to do is put it into tiny droplets in the air that you and others are breathing. And we see this with, you know, spray on insect repellent, we see it with spray on sunscreen, all of these things, you're compounding the damage because as vulnerable as you are putting the stuff on your skin, where a lot of it crosses, you're even more vulnerable if you're breathing it indirectly where it's like in intimate contact with your blood itself.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

You are more vulnerable by potentially inhaling the aerosolized sunscreens and insect repellents. And you have now made your poor choice, other people's problem as well, which is actually not, not your right to do. I would say like you perhaps can choose to put toxins on and in your body that will have bad effects on you. But the idea that people around you have no choice but to also inhale the toxins that you are choosing to use for yourself is not a legitimate choice.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, you're externalizing harm onto others, even if they're making better choices, which is something you shouldn't be able to do. I think also, you know, we cover in our book a point that I don't hear made elsewhere. I think it's really important, which is that once upon a time things that smelled bad, that was an indicator that you shouldn't interact with them, but it wasn't harmful for you to smell them. If there's a rotting fish and you think, oh God, that smells terrible, there's no downside that we know of from having smelled the fish.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

But, and it may, and it may have been an indicator of like I'm walking towards more and more of the smell. I should turn around, I should veer away. Like maybe the, the strong sell of smell of sulfur means I'm about to fall into a boiling sulfur pit.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Right? Exactly. It's a warning mechanism. Mechanism. But being warned is not any more harmful than, you know, getting an alert on your phone that, you know, there's wind coming that might be devastating or something like that, but in modern times, something like this, you know, a, it doesn't smell noxious.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

For those only listening, Brett just held up an open Sharpie.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

I did I open and every time I opened the Sharpie I smelled a little. And I think I should figure out a better way to do this story for another time. But point being, I don't think they

[Dr. Heather Heying]

smell as strong as some of the pens did when we were young.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

They don't. They don't. But nonetheless, the fact that that smell isn't noxious, maybe it should smell just absolutely God awful in light of the danger of whatever solvent it is I'm inhaling by opening it and you're inhaling not even having opened it. But the act of smelling itself, it's not, you know, if it was just warning you not to put the tip of the pen on your tongue because that's poisonous, that'd be one thing. But in fact, you're not, you're not getting an alert because it doesn't inher smell bad, it just smells weird. And the act of smelling itself is you bringing in the solvent, which is dangerous in a way that our ancestors didn't anticipate. So we don't intuit that smelling things that are off can now be the hazardous activity in and of itself.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Yes. So I think this research is super promising. Obviously we can't fully assess it because all we have is an abstract and it's based on a. And a talk was given just yesterday in Florence. Haven't seen the talk. I haven't yet seen any more elaboration on the research, but. But there's a lot going on in that family. So it's the mint family, the sage family. So all of these herbs with square stems that have a ton of secondary compounds that are either enticing or useful to humans in some way. And the idea that plants are creating are putting forth molecules that we could use to good effect that might actually be a little bit better for us in the end than slathering ourselves with something that was dreamed up in a lab, and no plant has ever managed to produce. That is not to say that if it's natural, it's good. That's, of course, not true. There is plenty that you can produce in a lab that would be safer than any number of things that we could name from nature. But in this case, this plant, with which the plant doesn't deserve a home. This plant with which we have extensive history and our cats have as long a history as we do. Presumably cats haven't been domesticated for that long. Brett keeps saying three or four thousand more years and they'll be ready.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

They'll be excellent pets.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Yeah, I. I think they're excellent pets now, but that's partly because they. They keep their wildness. And so you, like, you get to bring the wild inside and then deal with it when they bring in, for instance, a vole, as. As Fairfax did yesterday.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Yes, they are pets. They need another three or four thousand years to achieve excellent status. Isn't that right, Matty? Yeah.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

All right. She likes the cats.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Oh, yeah. Well enough. But she also recognizes their defects, which are not that subtle, to be honest with you. All right.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

I dealt with the bull, not you.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

So that is true. Had I been home, I don't know. But. All right, I see a couple. I like the idea of catnip as a mosquito repellent. I would use it and, like making

[Dr. Heather Heying]

an essential oil out of it. Right. You don't have to be, like, rubbing catnip all over you.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Frankly, if that worked, I'd do that, too. My sense is the likelihood that this is dangerous is pretty low. And especially in light of the baseline danger of all the synthetic stuff that we interact with day to day, my guess is catnip's a pretty good bet on the toxicity front.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Yeah.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

I will also say once and only once, I smoked catnip to see if there was something to be found in there. There wasn't so much.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

But you were free of mosquitoes for minutes.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

For minutes. And. And I'm mostly because of the clouds afterwards, but. Okay, but I spot.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

That's what that was.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Yes, honey, that's what that was. I spot two tiny flies in the ointment of this plan.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Okay.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

By the way, tiny flies in the ointment. Mosquito means tiny fly.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

That's true. Okay, good. Good.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Not bad. Not bad.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Yeah, well done. Well done.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Two tiny flies in the ointment. Okay. You put this. Hold on. Yes.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Mosquitoes are, in fact, tiny flies. So that's not one of these crazy words we're like it's a pineapple. Like it's neither of those things. What are you doing? A mosquito is actually a fly and it's a tiny fly. So our, our word in English is

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

actually it's a dipteran. Right? Yeah, yeah. So which is a fly.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Yeah.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

My guess is they were named tiny fly before we understood for sure.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Perhaps. But we got it right in this case.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, which is great. Which is great. But anyway, here are the two tiny flies and you're like, okay, so you put on the, the catnip based mosquito repellent and let's say it works to repel mosquitoes, but it attracts cats. You're a dog person. Yeah, exactly.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Yeah.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

So that's.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

For some of us. This is an obvious plus.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Okay. But not in Uganda. That's the second fly.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Why not?

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Have you seen the kinds of cats they grow in Uganda?

[Dr. Heather Heying]

I really have not.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

They're very dangerous. Oh, you see what I'm talking about?

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Big cats.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Well, I'm just thinking.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Yeah, you're worried about leopards.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

More like lions, leopards. I feel like, you know, a person who keeps their wits about them can handle it.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Isn't it leopards that we attribute to the early Homo, like Homo erectus with the giant fang marks in their heads that apparently were, were killed by leopards and then dragged backwards up trees and then eaten and then, you know, dropped.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Yeah. So the, the story on this Heather is quite right. What we have cave. Yep. Caves in which there are human remains. And the interpretation is that there was a tree growing above some depression where whatever the leopard dragged into the tree, the remains fell into the cave and then was buried by a sedimentation process. And so anyway, we have these.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

It's excavatable. It's excavatable in a way that it wouldn't have been had it just been on the veld.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Yes. And cave is misleading. We excavate it from a cave, but it's not a cave that somebody lived in. It's a cave that they. Well, they didn't die in it, but they went into it after. After death.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Yeah.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

And there are, is at least one and I think a couple of these fossils with these.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

And it's like it's early Homo. It's like Homo. It's not Australopithecus, I don't think, but I think it's like Homo erectus, maybe Homo habilis. I don't.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

But I would have thought Australopithecus, but I can't, I can't remember but anyway, there's at least one of these fossils where, amazingly enough, they not only have this skull which has what appear to be fang marks, but they have the skull of a leopard that matches perfectly. The animal probably died.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Oh, I didn't know this.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, it's. It's one of these great fossil stories of which there are a surprising number. So anyway, the two.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

I'd like to. I'd like to hear the adaptive story, like what. What happened to the leopard who was so distracted by eating his delicious little human that he was killed at the same time if the tree fell.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Yeah. Or he or she died in their sleep. That's what I hope, you know, but in any case, I'm just. I like cats, despite the danger. And in any case, yes, you are right that there are these multiple cases, I believe, where we have evidence of predation of early hominids by leopards. And so leopards are a danger to people.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

But lions can climb, but they don't tend to.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

If I remember correctly, the tooth marks in the skull are in the back of the skull. Yes. This person was not paying attention. So that's just selection at work.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Yeah, but I mean, you, You've met cats.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Yes.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

They're stealthy.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Yes. But a. A pride of lions is what I'm really worried about. You know, the leopard thing, you stand a chance. The lion thing, it's pretty rough. If they're on you, if they want

[Dr. Heather Heying]

you, if they're hungry.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, yeah. All right. Well, I feel that my addendum to this story has been full of useful information.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

So you feel you. You'd rather take the risk with malaria than the pride of lions who are trying. But. But if they eat you, they lose the catnip draw.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Here's my plan. My plan is to use this stuff and to think very carefully before I do it anywhere with lions.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

I see.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

That's the thing.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

So maybe, maybe not in Africa. You know, there are parts of Africa,

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

the zoo. I, I think that could be all right. But you think so? Yeah, but I'm not. I'm not going on safari without a Land Rover wearing this kind of repellent without thinking carefully about it.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

It's, it's, it's interesting, though it hadn't occurred to me to wonder if wild cats were attracted to catnip.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Yeah.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

I don't know what the distribution of catnip is. If I didn't. I didn't look into it before talking about this today, you know, is.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

It.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Is catnip natively in Uganda. Uganda. Or has that been introduced there? A lot of the mints and the, you know, the mint family of which catnip is one. In fact, some. It may be a different species or it may just sometimes be called catmint.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

I think it's the same species.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Yeah, It's. It seems to get everywhere, but I don't know if that was just it easily traversed once we were traversing the globe or if it really is sort of circum tropical at least, but really circumate.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, yeah. I don't know. Certainly in modern times it's everywhere, but who's to say? And I don't know what I.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Well, I don't. But I don't know. You said certainly in modern times it's everywhere. I don't know if that's true.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

I think so. Just by virtue of it being so easy to grow and cats being domestic, cats being everywhere. I think. I think you'd find at least a little bit everywhere. But I don't know.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Yeah, I do not. All right, so if you're in the business of making essential oils and that sounds like a niche thing, but actually a lot of people do it and you have catnip, maybe try this. Especially if you're considering what to do about all the mosquitoes and already know that you don't want to be dealing with deet.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Do you know what makes an oil essential?

[Dr. Heather Heying]

There's some clear etymological description of what that word means, but I don't remember.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, I don't. I don't know either. Yeah.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Now, of course there are other egg, eucalyptus and tea tree oil. And I think citronella are all often used as well. But I don't know, maybe. Maybe the catnip is the thing we've been waiting for to keep the mosquitoes away.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

That would be great.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

It would be great.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

And so not corporate at least yet.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Yeah, not corporate indeed. Okay, so that's one thing I picked up from the Guardian this week. And then I actually didn't start at the Guardian for this, but let me see. Here we go. We will get to Phil Harper's assessment of this. But. But he. This week, and we'll talk about his work, talked about this piece. Gen Z earning more than millennials did at the same age, says Think tank. At age 24, workers born in the late 1990s are paid more than any cohort since those born in the 1950s. Really?

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

That seems very unlikely.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Very unlikely. Like we have two Gen Z young men ourselves. They both actually are working full time this summer. And getting paid well, doing a variety of jobs, mostly outdoors, doing farming and landscaping and such. But what we hear from what they tell us and from their friends does not suggest this is true. Nor does the sort of economic picture in general suggest that this, that this rosy image is actually true. So let me just read a couple paragraphs from this and then, and then we'll get into Phil Harper's analysis. Gen Z's early careers are more financially rewarding than those of millennials, research suggests Those typically born between 1997 and 2012 are experiencing a mini rebound in pay packets, according to the research by the Resolution foundation. In a seeming contrast to how the previous generation entered the job market. Millennials, those born between the early 1980s and mid-1990s, are the first generation not to have enjoyed higher disposable incomes than previous generations, according to the think tank. Again, the think tank is the resolution. The researchers added that this setback was partly driven by Millennials careers kicking off at around the time of the 2008 financial crisis and the long stagnation of real wage growth that has taken place ever since. However, a preview of a report due on Thursday showed the Resolution Foundation's latest number suggests that real weekly pay at age 24 of those born in the late 1990s was 12% higher than for cohorts born in the late 1980s. So the Resolution foundation report in question is here. Let's see if I can make this a little bit bigger for us. And right, right off the bat we see that what they've called the report is they're coming home. And that is a preview of what is actually driving this result that they are claiming is about creating greater earning potential of Gen Z, but is actually really in some ways pointing to exactly the opposite. So let's just review a little bit of this before we get into what Harper has revealed this briefing. This is published June 25, 2026 by the Resolution Foundation. This briefing note provides an assessment of the living standards of younger millennials in Gen Z, given the increasing number of people in their 20s who live with their parents coming home and what policymakers should do to help ensure generational progress in both income and wealth. A little bit of review and then key findings. Nearly 2/3, 63% of people in their early 20s now remain at home, up 12 percentage points since 2011. Private rent levels have not become relatively more expensive in the decade to 2022, 2024, but the private rented sector is the most expensive and worst quality tenure. So young people today often opt to live with their parents than make financial sacrifices. Generational cohort by cohort, income progress has returned. Household incomes after housing costs. Ages 20 to 26 for those born in 1996-2001 are nearly a fifth higher than for Those born in 1986-1991 at the same age. However, exactly half of the apparent progress for the very youngest comes from income from other household members. Right there you got to say, what could that possibly mean? How could you possibly be attributing if kids, if people in their 20s are living with their parents? What progress could you be attributing to the income of the people in their 20s if you're collating their income with other household members? So that right there is the first trick that they are doing. And I'm just going to skip into to.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

So just to make it, just to make it obvious, if they are living with their parents, let's say they're living in a house with two parents.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

We're getting here.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, okay.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

All right.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

I mean, well, I just want to point out that if you take the income of the three adults living in the house and divide it by three and make that their income, this is an obvious way to, to get to that.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

It's, it's as cheating as you get and it's, it. You know, when you see claims that seem counterintuitive, like Gen Z is doing just fine, in fact they're doing better than any Cohort since the 1950s. Dig deep as Phil Harper has here in his substack the Digger and you will see he's identified three specific tricks that the Resolution foundation has used. First, he says he was involved in this conversation with a friend and the friend threw out this Guardian article and said no, Gen Z is doing great. And this is again this is based in the uk Maybe not. Again, I maybe didn't say that, but this is UK based data. And here again is the headline from the Guardian. Gen Z earning more than Millennials did at the same age says think tank. So the plea by play distortions one Absorbing the parents wealth. That's the one we already got to just by reading a couple of paragraphs into the Resolution Foundation's report. The report's primary metric, writes Harper for tracking standard of living is equivalized disposable household income. The critical structural flaw with this metric is that it treats a multi generational household as a single harmonious unit where everyone pools their ca cash evenly. The report states, quote again, quote now from the Resolution foundation report, that measure gives each person the equivalized total income of the household in which they live. This is a good measure of an individual's living standards of people in a household share their resources. Like if you're married, right? And as like if you're married and you actually share your resources, which like, that's a whole other question. But married people who don't have a different set of problems. This is a good measure of an individual's living standards of people in a household share their resources. But it is less likely to be the case in multi benefit unit households, including cases where individuals live as housemates or when adult children live with parents. So that that caveat that the Resolution foundation itself mentions points to the deep, deep flaw in the metric that they then have created and the Guardian has run with. But it's worse than that, writes Harper, because an unprecedented 63% of young people aged 20 to 24 are still living in their childhood bedrooms. Because of that, their recorded household income is heavily absorbing the peak career salaries, pensions and asset values of their parents. The authors themselves omit the scale of this distortion. Later in the text they write, the Resolution foundation writes just 10% of household income progress comes from that person's benefit unit's income, with 86% coming from others in the household. Again, in plain English, what the Resolution foundation did in trying to assess, or claiming to try to assess, when it really looks like they were conclusion driven all along, whether or not Genuine City was actually doing as poorly as we all think they are, they looked at all of these young people in their early 20s, early and mid-20s who are living at home with their parents and said, huh? Rather than actually assessing their income, we're going to assess household income and then divide evenly by the number of people in the household, which could not be a worse way to assess what these people are actually making. Furthermore, before you get to the next point, Systematic Eraser of Rental this again from Harper. Not only does the uptick include the wage and asset growth of parents, but by ignoring the distorting nature of the hotel of mom and dad, the study's primary data models systematically reduce the impact of housing costs. That is, if you don't leave home, you don't pay market rent, which means your disposable income looks artificially inflated compared to the historical cohorts who could afford to move out. That is to say, you're more likely to move in with your parents in the first place in your early 20s because you cannot afford the rent. And then once you cannot afford the rent, your Parents are either likely to not be charging you any rent at all or be charging you under market price because if you could afford market price you'd be paying market price elsewhere and that leaves you with a more disposable income than you would have if you were actually independent and living on your own.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

So admittedly I'm not certain of this, but I think there are actually two flaws hidden by an analogous feature here.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

There's a third one that maybe Harper is the one that Harper's going to get to, but let's see where you go.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

One is the neutralizing of the rent feature of the people who have moved into their parents house. The other is that this obscures the condition of that fraction of Gen Z that is most likely not doing well. In other words, if you took the distribution of how well Gen Z's are doing, the ones who move into their parents house are most likely to be the ones who need to. And therefore you are analyzing of the free Gen Zs who are living outside their parents houses they will be biased in the direction of those who are actually doing better than they might be. So you're biasing. You're not analyzing the whole of Gen Z. You're hiding the neediest of them under their parents roofs and obscuring what their actual income is. At the same time you're analyzing the income of the non random fraction that is living on their own and therefore can

[Dr. Heather Heying]

I think that is true, but it is also true that. Well yeah, I think that is true. I thought where you were going was Harper's third point, the workforce survivor bias. Then there was the labor market data, which is sort of the inverse of what you're saying actually, which is that the headline points to rising median weekly earnings to suggest the UK job market is in benign conditions for youth. But wage surveys like the annual survey of hours and earnings, which is what the Resolution foundation used, only sample people who are actively employed. Not only does it look at the people who are living independently and doing well, look at the people who are not living independently but are employed and then are having their income sort of averaged into that included their parents income included with theirs, which is then considered their average income, but it's also not including the people who are doing the least well because they are not employed at all. The report Harper writes casually drops a devastating counter statistic that invalidates the broader trend. The UK has a resurgent NEETs situation that is people not in employment, education or training. This is an acronym new to me. Neat. People not in employment Education or training. The UK has a resurgent neat situation with over a million young adults now in this category. So writes Harper, whenever a million of the most economically vulnerable, lower skilled young adults drop out of the workforce entirely, they simply do not turn up. In the annual wage data sets. The median wage of working Gen Z adults goes up because the bottom of the stack was never included in the denominator. It is survivor bias masked as progress. I think we have the three things happening. There are people who are making good money, living independently, and you know, maybe, maybe not doing better than generations before them. Certainly there will be individuals in this generation that are doing better than the average in generations before them. Of course, that will always be the case, hopefully. Right. And then there are the people who are living at home, often presumably because they don't have a choice, because most young people would rather be locked in themselves even if they want to be close to their parents. They would usually rather be living independently even if close by. But those people are all included in these data in a way that doesn't make any sense. And then there's a third cohort of people who are not included at all because they are not employed, that is to say, not in employment, education or training, or not included in the data at all. And if that number, if the number of NEETs, again people not in employment, education or training, is itself a larger fraction portion of the generational cohort than in generations past, then that right there puts the lie to the claim that the generation is doing better.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Yes. Now I want to add one other thing which I suspect is in here. I don't know how big an effect it is likely to be, but because of the era that they are living in, there are a tiny number of Gen Z's who are doing spectacularly well.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

True, true.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Right. The, you know, the occasional only fans girl who is making millions. The occasional clavicular or. I don't know how old Mr. Beast is, but the point is somebody who has a gargantuan. You didn't see that coming. No, but I at least know that there is such a thing.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

I, I think, I think Mr.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Beast is older he is now.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

I think Clav is solidly Gen Z solid.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Well, sure, he's breaking his own face and you'd have to, I don't know, do something as dumb that I feel

[Dr. Heather Heying]

like there are plenty of people in our generation who would have been willing to do it if the opportunity had provided itself.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

They hadn't thought of it. That's the thing.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Social media didn't exist.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Didn't exist.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

But anyway, how would you monetize that back in the. Back in the 90s?

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, that was a tough. That was a head scratcher back then.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

I would monetize face breaking.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

But the point is, one such person, you know, it's like the old joke, Bill Gates walks into a bar and. And somebody stands up and says, hey, congratulations, everybody. On average, we're all billionaires. And the answer is, yeah, on average, you are all billionaires. But what you really need is the. The median. Right? The median is the middle person. If you divide the bar into, you know, if you line the bar up with respect to income, from lowest to highest, and then you pick the middle person, then you have some idea what the income tends to be in that bar rather than the one outlier that drags the. The average way up. So.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

That's right.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

I would also just make one other point with respect to this issue of the neets, and I have forgotten what the acronym acronym stands for.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

People not in Employment, Education or Training.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Okay. This is a. A classic of this kind of fraud. If you wish to portray the economy like analytical fraud, I would say policy. Analytical fraud in service of policy. In service of policy, yes. If you want the economy to look like it's in a much better condition than it actually is, then what you need to do is find an excuse for getting rid of a tail of the distribution. And the answer is, well, those people aren't even looking for work, so the fact that they're unemployed is meaningless.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Oh, I don't know that. I don't know that anyone at the Resolution foundation has gone so far as to claim they're not looking for work. They're just. My guess is that the. That the quiet part of the argument sounds more like, well, how would we even know?

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, I don't think.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

How. How. How would we include them? There are no data, therefore, there are no data to.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

They've dropped off the bottom of the ladder, therefore, how. You know, it's like, well, those people fell off the ship. We don't know how they're doing. They could be living the life. It's just. No, I have a feeling they drowned hours ago. But the point is, I'm not saying that this foundation even knows that it's involved in a fraud. My point is this fraud is built in to, hey, if we want to retain power, what we're going to need to do is portray ourselves as more successful than we are. How are we going to do that? Well, let's put a smile on our face and let's justify it with certain techniques that superficially sound reasonable until you scrutinize them and realize they're batshit ins. Insane. Right.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

I wasn't necessarily going to go here, but Harper actually his next section in this piece is called why Do they do this? So let me just read a little bit of his analysis because I think it does it. It dovetails with what you're saying. Very well. It is easy to look at this, he writes, and feel a sense of profound cynicism. Why would an organization filled with smart, well meaning economists publish a model that relies on such transparently flawed assumptions? This isn't bad science per se. These think tanks are well aware of everything I've just told you. You. They do it because they are playing the specific, calculated game of the think tank attention economy. Think tanks like the Resolution foundation don't exist to publish dry, unread academic papers. They exist to actively shift government policy and shape public discourse. But the political landscape is completely deaf to status quo updates. If a think tank publishes a headline saying young people are still structurally locked out of the economy in predictable ways, a newspaper editor will bury it on page 20. To command the news cycle, you need a hook and pivot strategy.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Well done, Phil. That's exactly. It's exactly what's going on. And it becomes an institutional problem where the point is, if you make certain kinds of noises, then you do not rise in the institution and you will find yourself pulling your hair out and leaving. And if you make other kinds of noises, you'll find yourself doing surprisingly well. And so the institution that is disguised as an analytical element becomes just a reflexive producer of superficially surprising positive conclusions about how things are going, which of course justifies the status quo remaining as it is. Go ahead.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Well, to Harper's point, I ended up on a page at the Guardian here, which appears to be. I'm not even sure how I got here. All articles that are using information that came out of the Resolution Foundation. So that's a strange kind of search feature. And again, I don't know exactly how I got here, although I'll put the URL in the show notes. And we have from July 2026 already another piece. Almost no progress made on UK regional household income divide in 30 years, report finds. In June we had the one we were just talking about, plus another one. In May there was one. In April there were two. In March there were three. In February they were three. This one think tank, this one UK based think tank, has been effectively placing Pieces. And you know, placing may be the wrong word, that may be the wrong direction in which the movement is happening, but they have successfully gotten the Guardians attention such that every single month, going back months and months and months, we have one, two or three, usually two articles from the Resolution foundation that the Guardian is effectively borrowing wholesale. Now they're, you know, they're putting their sheen on it, but the entire thing is coming out of the so called analysis which is supposedly objective that the Resolution foundation is producing. Which is, which is remarkable.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Yes. And it points to a deeper layer. So you have this think tank and its purpose in the posiwid sense, the purpose of a system is what it does. The purpose of this think tank is to generate surprising happy pieces about the state of things that you might otherwise be inclined to change. The Guardians posiwood status is to do journalistic reporting on the analytic discoveries of these researchers and feed it to the public.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Right.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Okay.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Okay.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

So that is a niche that serves. It's a bootlicking niche. They're licking the boots of power and selling it to the public. And that has an obvious utility. Here's, here's the deeper layer. One thing that is true, and we know this from the COVID era, which I will point out is the pre AI era.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Yes.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Okay. Covid era, we saw approximately 16 gazillion articles written where the point of the article was the headline.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Oh yeah.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Where the point is as soon as you dig, you know the vaccines saved 3 million lives. Did they now? And you dig in, you know, approximately a millimeter and you find out that somebody built a model in which they fed it the answer. This saved millions of lives. And then lo and behold, the model spit out the answer. It saved millions of lives. There's nothing to report. But it doesn't matter that there's anything to report because the fraction of the audience that's going to get past the headline is very close to zero. So the point is it's headline justification, it's headline rationalization that is being generated. Now this has gotten way worse because now what people do is they consult something that seems to be intelligent and that something goes looking for, well, what are the balance of the articles that say that the vaccine saved millions of lives seems to be be a preponderance of articles. Yes, but they're all reporting on the same model.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

And it's exactly the same problem of averages. There is one measure of central tendency that we are like we are reverting to the mean. AI is reverting us all to the mean, we are getting less outliers, less uniqueness, less creative interpretations of things. And I mean, boy, you see this. I don't. I'm not saying I was seeing this in the Guardian articles, but so much of the text that comes across my screen now, including sub stacks from people that I have read in the past or newsletters from organizations that I've been a part of, I read them and oh my God, that, that is not human. That is not human writing. I recognize that writing. It is flawless at a grammatical level, but it is, it has been, There is a gloss over the whole thing and there is nothing particularly surprising. No. And you know, for better and for worse, there aren't places where I hiccup because like, oh, there should be a comma there, or that's not the right word to have used there. But you know what? Those little hiccups that we get when we read and when we listen, those are part of what keep us in tune with our humanity and also help us get better in terms of using language and discovering what is true about the world. If all we are ever fed and if all we are ever generating ourselves is the help of the averages that the AI are giving us all the time, then we become average and we lose our humanity.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Yes, we become homogenized in our low quality thinking. And imagine not very far in the future. I'm sure this is already happening, but not very far in the future. Who is it who's going to have the resources to create institutions whose sole purpose is to flood the conversation with a particular perspective based on a particular analysis that if you chase it far enough down, turns out not to be analytical at all? Right? You'll have the powerful people and they will be doing this. And you will go to the AI and you will say, well, is that even true? Yes, it is true. And you'll think, ah, why do you, why do you say that's true? And well, here's why I say it's true. Here are 11 sources that blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and it'll be nonsense. Yep, it will be a gamed AI, which will be worse by far than no AI.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Oh, of course.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

And so just, just like a gamed

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Wikipedia is worse than no Wikipedia.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Wow, you said a mouthful. And wouldn't you know it? That's on the agenda. Yep, yep.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

I think it segues perfectly because the, the piece that you found that you wanted to talk about from the founder of Wikipedia says, you know, is talking about humans who are going in and basically, you know, going in with an ideology and having editing parties where they change a whole bunch of content all at once. That's just going to be way more efficient if they train something to do it that's not human, that doesn't need to take breaks to eat and piss.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Right, exactly. And so the. We're going to need some new terms for things like astroturfing. You know, astroturfing used to be the creation of an apparently organic grassroots organization that was actually seeded by something powerful that wanted the appearance of a grassroots organization because, like, Black Lives Matter. Like Black Lives Matter, for example. Or I was returned to the evergreen story by reference to another story that came up this week in which. Never mind the details of it, but a group of students who had behaved badly during a protest were being effectively forced into modern times. Yeah, forced to. Well, the generous interpretation would be to apologize. The more sinister interpretation was basically being forced to speak as if they were sorry. And this raised the question by fire, I believe, about whether or not this was compelled speech and a violation deserving of a protection for these students. Anyway, this reminded me of the little element. Actually, this will be relevant to the Wikipedia story here. The little element of the evergreen story that history did not record correctly. Where history recorded that I protested the day of absence and students rebelled and came to my classroom. And then the videos that you all saw came out. The actual story, which took took quite a while to become clear, was that exactly one year to the day before that protest at my classroom, I had spoken against a resolution in our faculty meeting where the faculty were voting to require all professors to reflect annually on their progress against their own racism, which was simply assumed to exist. Exist. I spoke in opposition to this very vigorously. I said, I've never been afraid to speak about anything in this faculty, but I have some trepidation about this one. Exactly one other person in the room voted with me, and the rest of the faculty voted in favor of this resolution and, by the way, reflect annually. I don't remember. It was somebody I barely knew. I think they were. Okay, an adjunct, effectively. But the.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

I wasn't in the room. I didn't vote against Brett.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

No, she didn't. She. She was on sabbatical.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

No, I was recovering from a boat accident. That's what I was doing a year.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Oh, a year earlier. You're right. You were not yet on sabbatical. You were recovering from a boat accident. Forgive me for forgetting that detail, but it's hard to go back a year before the whole thing. But anyway, the reflections that faculty were going to be forced to make were official documents. These were going to be in your record. So basically, if you wanted to get rid of people, get them to reflect on their racism every year, either they're going to admit that they're racist, or they're going to deny that they're racist. Either way, it's going to win.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Win.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Right. So if you want to control an institution, this is the way to do it. Which is what I said in my probably too gentle attack on this ridiculous proposal. Yeah. But after the vote, several professors came up to me, tenured professors, and said, I agree with you, of course, but I couldn't possibly bring myself to vote against this thing in a public forum, which is a classic.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

And that I. I think that we had already been discussing between ourselves what the value of tenure is, what it's supposed to do, whether or not it actually does its job, long before we actually found that our tenure was worth nothing, absolutely worth nothing. So it didn't do what it was supposed to do. But it also didn't do for those who should have had no issue at all merely standing up and voting their conscience. It didn't even provide them. They believe the COVID to vote what they saw to be true. In which case, what is it doing?

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, what is it doing? It's not doing its job. And it does a lot of terrible stuff where dead wood can't be eliminated from the faculty, even though it has long ago decided to stop doing the work. But anyway, my point is, a year to the day later, students that I've never met show up at my classroom and initiate this protest and demand I be fired. There was no student presence in that faculty meeting. There was not a single student in the room. So this was faculty payback. And my point is, it looked, if you just looked at your YouTube videos, it looked like an organic protest of students, confused as they may have been. But that's not what it was. Those students were intentionally confused by faculty who sent them on a mission.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Well, unfortunately, and we've spoken about this at length before, but even at Evergreen, where, because of the model of high engagement with students, a lot of engagement, and where teaching was the thing that you were supposed to be focusing on rather than research, Even there, where if you didn't actually care about teaching and didn't care about students, you had no business being there because you would hate your life if that's what was the case. Even there, we found many, many faculty who, in fact, hated teaching and hating students. And as soon as the students were out of the room, they would bitch about them and say rude things and unacceptable things. And clearly, many students were being used as useful idiots by faculty. And this is exactly what many students sometimes feel. They intuit that they're not being taken seriously, that there is nothing they can do to be taken seriously by some facult. And unfortunately, they're right. Unfortunately, you're right.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Yeah. And maybe the reason that those videos are interesting is that the students were thrown by the fact that I wasn't what they were told I was. That I was actually willing to talk

[Dr. Heather Heying]

to them and that your students stood by your side.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

My students stood by my side. And some of them not only did that, but they spoke in my defense. Students of color, who were then denounced, denounced and punished by the protesting students. So, anyway, the point is, the story is not exactly the one that you've heard or read. If you go to Wikipedia, you'll get the standard slop. You won't get the detailed story, even though I've told it multiple times. You'll also see lots of wrong information on my Wikipedia page. You'll find out that you and I met in college at ucsc. Did you know that?

[Dr. Heather Heying]

I mean, I haven't gone back. I think it was shortly into Covid, when we started talking about our skepticism about the vaccines that our Wikipedia pages turned like, you had one for a while. I didn't have one for a while. It was up, it was fine, it was simple. And then they became filled with lies. Hostile, vicious lies.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Hostile, vicious lies.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

And so I haven't been back in a few years. But, no, I didn't know we'd met in college. But that seems like a generic error as opposed to a hostile one.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

That's a benign enough error. They do go to great pains. They do report that our book was fourth on the New York Times overall bestseller list for hardcovers. But they note that the New York Times put a dagger next to it, implying that some retailers had received bulk orders. As if we had orchestrated that. As if. Bulk orders.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

I wonder if the dagger actually means. The New York Times dropped it off the list for many weeks when Amazon claimed not to have any copies. Literally for three weeks within a few days of it coming out. And everyone at the publishing house like, nope, they got them. The chicanery with our book was extraordinary.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

It was. And I think the dagger just means that they've got the daggers out for you. That's what I think it means. But anyway, I have digressed. The point is, Wikipedia is a mess. It's A mess of multiple kinds, one of which would be expected. Obviously an encyclopedia that is written in the way that Wikipedia is written is going to have errors in it. The nice thing about it would be that they should be self correcting. But there's obviously something much more sinister going on at Wikipedia. And I was reminded of how important this story was by an article that has just been released, released in the Washington examiner by Larry Sanger, who is somebody I sort of barely. No, I interact with him sometimes online. He is one of the co founders of Wikipedia and he has become a Wikipedia dissident. He's very troubled by the way Wikipedia functions now and he has been mounting a one man campaign to reform it. So it goes back to doing what it was supposed to do.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Now, do you want to share any of the article itself or not?

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

I don't think we need to share it. I want to talk about what's taking place there. If you had anything you wanted to.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Yeah, there are a couple of. So I've got the, the piece up here and I, I referred earlier to one of the things that he was, he was talking about. Let me see. We do know that special interest Wikipedia groups exist offline, such as the so called guerrilla skeptics. It is an open secret that they operate a backchannel discussion group similar as journalist Ashley Rinsberg has shown. Editing patterns reveal a gang of 40 accounts that together dominated articles about the Israeli Palestinian conflict with definite signs of off wiki coordination. There sure are a lot of people who call themselves anti fascists on Wikipedia. Probably activist funding pays some of them to edit, but since they're anonymous, how could we tell? In any event, we do know that the Wikimedia foundation directly funds a number of nonprofit organizations that edit articles of keen interest to progressives. Just for example, one group is called Whose Knowledge, which runs Edit a thons engaged in quote, centering the plurality of decolonial feminist practices. Yeah, that was, that was the bit that I wanted to get to. Yeah, this is again from Larry Sanger's piece published today in the Washington Examiner.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

So I wanted to put this in context. First of all, I think that Wikipedia is one of the greatest human accomplishments that has ever been. It's like the Library of Alexandria to the tenth power. At least in principle, or at least that was its trajectory. That the idea that there is some place that you can go and you can get an encyclopedic exploration of any topic within the legitimate confines of an encyclopedia, it's way better than any encyclopedia that ever existed. Because encyclopedias are fixed in time, because they're limited in scope, because they're actually published on paper. There's only so many things in them. So the idea of a, A, an encyclopedia without limit, equally accessible to everybody, not behind a paywall, is a truly beautiful thing. And I will say I still use Wikipedia. Why? Because there are lots of topics on which you can. And there's no better way to go about stuff. Maybe the AI era is changing that a bit. But if you, for example, want to find out, you know, it turns out that Kilauea volcano, which you and I have recently visited, is involved in a spectacular series of eruptions. Right? Now, if you want to know what the pattern of eruptions is from Kilauea, you can go to their Kilauea page and you can scroll down and you can look at the eruptive history and. And it will give you a compendium of all of the eruptions. And there's even a nice graph in here where you can look at how they look on a timeline so you have some sense about the periodicity and all of that. Now, do I know that it's true? No. But the chances that this is false are very low, or that it's false in any particularly spectacular way or false, because there's nothing at stake here, right? There's no fight, there's no political fight over how often the eruptions happen or anything like that. So the point is, even those of us who know that Wikipedia is broken and has become this politically diabolical site, there's still a lot on it that's really, really useful, and that's a problem. So it's a problem, especially at a moment of Cartesian crisis, the Cartesian crisis being a moment where it's ever harder to know what's actually true, because. Because everything that is true, but in which somebody powerful has a stake, can be modified by modifying the online environment so that you can't assess it yourself. So this is a terrible moment not to have a Wikipedia. And the problem is we do, and we don't have one. We have a Wikipedia that if you want to know the depth of Lake Baikal, it's probably a reliable enough source. If you want to know, you know, how many quasars there are in the Milky Way, you might look there. But if you want to know what happened at Evergreen, it's not a good source. If you want to know whether the COVID shots are safe, it's a terrible source. So, you know. So the fact that it both does and does not exist as the thing that it was designed to be is a profound problem. And this is because zero is a special number. The fact is, if the number of encyclopedias that sought to as objectively as possible portray the sum total of what we know about things that are factual, if there wasn't one, then somebody would produce one, because you can now, because the technology allows it to be done easier than it was done back in 2001 when I believe it started. But because there is one, and because it has this dominant position in the landscape, it's very hard to start another. Now, maybe I know that Elon wants to produce one. There was a brief flurry of excitement over Grokopedia, and frankly, Grokopedia did a pretty decent job as far as it went. But I can't remember the last time I went to Grokopedia, so it's not catching on the way it would have to to display place Wikipedia.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Okay, it also, I think people, and by people, maybe I just mean me, but I think I, I think people are not going to be as enthusiastic about more things that look like they will collate all human experience into the place that, that you go from a guy who is doing that in some ways extraordinarily successfully, but. But who many of us do not want to see concentrating further power with regard to how we interpret our reality.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Well, I agree it's a mixed bag. It shouldn't be under anyone's control, which of course was the initial plan at Wikipedia. Right, right. And there's an interesting story here because the battle. This article is motivated by the fact that Larry Sanger has now been permanently banned from editing Wikipedia of language. He is one of the two co founders, the other one being Jimmy Wales. Now, in sorting out the story, I learned some things about Larry Sanger, one that I didn't know. I'm surprised I didn't know it. So he actually has a PhD in epistemology. Epistemology, which is the study of the nature, origin and limits of knowledge, which is exactly what you would want somebody to be. And I mean, I'm not a huge fan of the idea that PhD means you're a real expert, but Larry's a very deep guy. Guy. He's spent a PhD's worth of effort studying epistemology, which is exactly the kind of thing you would want for somebody who is in a founding role at something like Wikipedia. I was hoping when I dug that I was going to find Jimmy Wales had a similar origin story. And he in fact does not. He has an undergraduate degree. Degree in finance, which is all well and good. I mean, I don't think there should be undergraduate degrees in finance necessarily, but at least it's a real subject. And you know, I don't take anything away from him for that. But he also has a history in business, in a site, see if I can remember what the name of it is. So some site I'd never heard of. Yeah, it's called Bomas. And this site distributed male targeted adult content.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Oh good.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

So that is apparently where the money came from to start the project that both he and Larry Sanger were involved with before Wikipedia, which was called Nupedia. And Nupedia was a encyclopedia and their plan for it was for it to be expert. The stuff in it was expert vetted. So they wanted to get a bunch of real experts, figure out what's true, make a global encyclopedia. Apparently they tacked a wiki element onto it at some point and the wiki element eclipsed the expert vetted element and went on to be Wikipedia.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Eclipsed in terms of being able to generate content or eclipse in terms of where people were attracted to go.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

I think it's the latter. I think the point is it was just so much more successful at generating an encyclopedia that there was no point in doing the expert thing. And it probably revealed, you know, at the beginning Wikipedia was pretty darn useful. Useful, yep. And so in any case, you now have a battle between Jimmy Wales, who is, I think he's not, he's obviously not involved in the day to day operations of Wikipedia, but he has a prominent role as a founder on the board and, and has, you know, staunchly defended the way it works. And what you really have is two competing visions of what Wikipedia should be. Jimmy Wales is, you know, happy with it as it is, thinks it's a good encyclopedia. Larry Sanger is at his wits end with the politicization of it. And Larry Sanger has put out a. Oh, I should point out before this that there are principles on which Wikipedia is based, two of which Larry Sanger is in particular responsible for. One is the impartiality and two is a rule that goes by the heading of iar, ignore all rules. Now when I first read that I thought, aha, I know exactly what he's talking about. And actually listeners to Dark Horse may know it too, because you will have heard me say that all, all complex institutional systems that actually function, function because somebody intelligent and mission aligned has discretion. What you want is the person at the head of the court who is in a position to say yes, this is what the law is. Yes, you violated it, but the reason that you did violate it was not anticipated by the people who wrote that law. And the just thing to happen is therefore this right. You want somebody with discretion in a position to make the right thing happen based on, on mission alignment over the ultimate mission of the thing, which in this case is a global encyclopedia. So when I read.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

And averages based thinking doesn't allow for discretion.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Right, exactly. And the difference between. So the basic point of that, as it's written into the founding documents of Wikipedia, is that if a rule, rule prevents you from doing the thing that Wikipedia is designed to do, ignore it. You know, do not let the structure become sacred.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

So it's not a global ignore all rules because that obviously then includes everything else. Yeah, but I mean, it's a little bit, Is it a little bit like maybe this is a wrong analogy and it's obviously not the same thing, but like the 10th Amendment in the, in the Bill of Rights, which is like every, everything that we haven't already talked about, anything that is not mentioned, mentioned, that goes to the states that does not belong to the feds. And so this, like, if you're trying to accomplish something and we've, we've told you how and you can't do it that way, you, you got to get it done. Like, you got to find another way to get it done. You're allowed to break the rules and so that. It's obviously not the same thing.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

No, I think you're on the right track.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Yeah.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

The point is you will find wise people in many places do something like this. Right. And programmers, you will find, do something like this if something escapes the bounds of what I foresaw saw. Here's how to catch it so the program doesn't crash.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

By the way, I'm not omniscient.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Right.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

I know that you should recognize that, you know, do the thing that needs done rather than try to respect me if I haven't seen the future accurately enough.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Right. And so I'm probably going to get this wrong. You might even look it up for me. But I think it's going to be Thurgood Marshall who said the Constitution is not a suicide pact. But in any case, the point is the Constitution is not a suicide pact. Is a similar acknowledgement that you can't anticipate all contingencies. And so if the following the Constitution causes you to destroy the nation, something isn't right. And you have to do something other than just blindly follow it because the rule Says, and actually, in my own group of principles, people will have heard me mention that I used to tell students, students, answer the question I should have asked you rather than the one I did ask you, because the number of students who would give me a dull answer when they knew something right in the right zone that was awesome. Was just too high.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

You asked a question that was five

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

degrees to the left because I don't know what a question to ask to get the student to tell me the thing that they know. And so I, I gave them license to do it. So it's the same, same kind of thing. You want mission aligned, intelligent people to have discretion because nothing else makes sense. You know, this is. It's essentially why a captain is sovereign on a ship at sea is that you can't have rules that were written into a logbook and, you know, before they set sail that govern all contingencies and that sort of thing.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

It looks like we have have justices talking about the Constitution not being a suicide pact, but not Thurgood Marshall, not Thurgood Marshal.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Okay. All right.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

So originally first mentioned from Justice Robert Jackson in 1949, quote, There is danger that if the court does not temper its doctrinaire logic with a little practical wisdom, it will convert the constitutional Bill of Rights into a suicide pact.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

All right, so.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

So

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

let's talk about what Larry Sanger has proposed that you might argue has gotten him. Let's first talk about the five pillars of Wikipedia as it was formulated. Wikipedia was formulated. The first pillar is it's an encyclopedia. It's not a dictionary or a soapbox or a news outlet or a collection of original research. It's not intended to be those things supposed to have a neutral point of view. That's one of Larry Sanger's contributions here. The content is to be free. It's not supposed to be paywalled. Everybody's supposed to have access to it. Fourth, editors should act in good faith and treat each other with respect. And the fifth is that there are no firm. Yeah, See me squinting? You see me not reading? Yeah, but I got all the words right. No firm rules, principles, which is basically an argument for discretion. Now, that was the founding principles. It's obviously turned into a disaster. So Larry has proposed nine theses for reform.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Okay.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

And this is.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

This is not in the Washington examiner article. This is separate out there in the world at this point.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Yep.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Okay.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

So his nine theses is obviously a reference. Reference to Martin Luther's 95 theses that he nailed to the door of the church that started Protestantism. So the first one is end decision making by consensus. And the reasoning is that that hides dissent. That the idea that you should default to an article saying that something is true doesn't make sense if something is contentious to enable competing articles. This seems to me huge. The idea that you could have a, a, you know, vaccines are safe and effective article because there are a lot of things that say that it is. But you also have an article explaining why that doesn't make sense as a conclusion. Abolish source blacklists. I don't know what that means. It means that they say, well, if your sourcing is from the Dark Horse podcast, it's a known spreader of misinformation. So that's not a source. So the point is it's a hidden structural bias that causes articles to come out one way and not another. Another.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Yep.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Revive neutrality. Basically go back to the principle from the original that neutrality is important because Wikipedia is obviously not neutral. Now he wants to repeal the ignore all rules principle. And his point is that that was well intended and the right idea, but that it has become a shield for all kinds of ridiculous lawlessness, as of course it would. As of course did you know, know, do no evil from Google become an absurdity as Google matured into, you know, the source of much evil.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Yeah, although I don't think that's the same. The same that I don't feel like that's analogous because in this case it was a well intended anti rule really that then got weaponized to do its. Its bidding. Whereas Google just sort of grew beyond the scope of. Of ever imagining that it would honor its initial motto.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Yep, I agree with that. So he wants to repeal it on the basis that it shields insiders who are doing bad things. Six is to reveal Wikipedia's leaders. And he quotes something. Only 14% of them are known who they are. So there's a large percentage of the leaders who are are effectively anonymous.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

What's a leader?

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

He goes through an analysis of what actually runs Wikipedia.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

So is this, is this from something that's out there in the world?

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

It's from multiple things that are out there in the world. But in any case, there is a de facto structure inside what is supposed to be a horizontal editing collective. Of course there would be, but it has.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

It's amazing how non hierarchical systems actually are covering like deep hierarchy.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

So often it reminds me, always it reminds me of Jordan Peterson's excellent point about lobsters and the ancientness of the structures that build hierarchies and they Therefore tend to reassert themselves. Okay, so reveal Wikipedia's leaders, let the public rate articles so that if you.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Well, I mean, that. Yeah, that's. That seems to be returning to the roots. Like if Wikipedia is publicly written, publicly sourced, and let the ratings begin.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Absolutely, yeah. He wants to end indefinite blocking, which is, of course, I don't know if that's ironic in light of the fact that he's just been permanently blocked, but it's obviously necessary, it shouldn't be that a founder who is as mission aligned as anyone on earth isn't even allowed in. And last, he wants to adopt a legislative process with something like a Constitutional Convention. So that basically a. A system in which things can be.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

To litigate disagreements.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, exactly. And I would argue that this is actually something that is also missing from X and needs to be there. Right. People are still being thrown off of X sometimes for preposterous things. I don't know what the resolution of it has been, but Warren Smith, who has been a voice of reason and very courageous war, was recently thrown off. I don't know if he's been restored, but was recently thrown off. Thrown off for plagiarism. What, did he plagiarize his own book? Oh, right.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Dare he?

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

How dare he? Exactly. Without even paying himself royalties.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

So, I mean, seriously, like he quoted himself.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Yeah. That's how stupid things have become. But you know, you have this architecture where if it decides that you've done Fox X. Back to the Evergreen story. There's an important moment in the Evergreen story where I was being accused of racism with a capital R. That's a quote in a faculty meeting.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Yep.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

And I.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Before the blow up or after?

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Before.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Yeah.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

And I started to articulate what. Why that was an absurd claim. And I was told, brett, this is not the place to adjudicate accusations of racism. And I literally said, fine, where is the place? And the literal. Next thing that was said was, you should not expect a place. So.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Yep.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

You know, so I remember this. Yeah.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Do you remember this?

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

It was quite a wild thing. But the point is, you don't ever want to build an institution in which that's the nature of, you know, if there's a process in which this thing can be decided about you and it has that consequence. There has to be some place to evaluate the evidence, to respond to it, to provide evidence. They have not.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

If you have original sin, like, that's, that's, that's how the construct works. If you try, like the, the best, the, the best way to put Together, their argument. And most of them didn't even have this right. But is, you are only due a place to defend yourself if you don't come here with so much sin in your soul that there cannot possibly be a way for you to be innocent.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Yeah. In fact.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

And because we are all born with the racism inside of us, we do not deserve to have a hearing. Yeah, that's. That's. That's the logic.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Right. It was an accusation of original skin. I had the wrong skin color to be able to level a defense of myself, because no defense is really conceivable. What. What would it even sound like?

[Dr. Heather Heying]

That was cute.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Thank you.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Yeah.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Okay.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

I am reminded, too, that you were accused, nay, valorized, even maybe for being spicy white.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Spicy white. Because Jewish. I'm. Yes. I'm only. I'm only white when being Jewish is not disqualifying. But you is another thing I would love to see the rule set for. But. Okay, so I want to put this in contrast. You've just heard what Larry Sanger's proposal for reforming Wikipedia is.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

It's nine theses.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Nine theses. Now, it happens that Jimmy Wales has put out seven rules of trust in response. I don't think it's in response, but he's written a book. And so basically, you've got the. The finance and porn guy up against the epistemology guy, and they are vying for the role of the person who best understands how you would build an organization to create a.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Okay, before, like, I actually know nothing about either of these people except that I've read Sanger's article in the Washington examiner today. Just. Just to be fair.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Yes.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Calling Whale the finance and porn guy is a little bit like calling Spencer Pratt the reality TV guy. You know, it's. It's something that. That, you know, I don't know. I like. I. I personally, I feel like porn is disqualifying if. If you want me to take you seriously if you were ever involved in producing porn. But that's. That's for me to decide for in my assessing you if the guy made porn. Finance porn, whatever, as a younger man and his long sense decried it.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Yeah.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

I don't think that we still should be calling him the boring guy.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Okay. First of all, should debatable.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Did.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

And feel fine about it. Not debatable now, in part, I feel fine about it because Jimmy Wales runs a site that has been slandering you and me since early Covid.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Wikipedia.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Yeah.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Okay.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

So. So I don't feel generous towards the Man. And the fact is, what he's accused us of is potentially dead.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

What his site has accused us.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Fair enough. But he's refusing to clean up that site and the process that did it. And a lot of people, it. It's harmful to reputations and more and hiding.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

But I just. Like there's. There's so much that happens in modern times where, you know, the. The individual is accused of. The AG is. Is accused of being guilty of everything the aggregate does.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Fair enough. You're. You're making good points. Would it be better if I said he was the porn guy? Not that there's anything wrong with that.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

That's far worse than you might.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

It is far worse. But it's funny. I thought it's. It's not. Not funny. No.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

The. The epistemology guy versus the finance and porn guy. That was funny. I just thought I needed to step in and defend the finance important guy because I don't know, that's apparently my role.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Jimmy, are you. This conversation here we have two people of good faith having a respectful disagreement over my.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Whether or not you're worth defending, Frank.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, actually, that. So anyway, that is how it's done now. Jimmy's.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

So in contrast to Sanger's nine thesis,

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

you've got Jimmy's seven rules of trust. They are. One, make it personal. Personal. Two, be positive about people.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Wait, what does that. What does make it personal mean? I don't know. Okay.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Two, be positive about people. Three, create a clear purpose. Four, be trusting. Five, be civil. Six, be independent. Seven, be transparent. And then he's got an eighth principle, which is a bonus. Actually, do it.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Okay, I have a question.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Yeah?

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Is he actually an idiot? What? What is.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Look.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

What the hell? What the hell is that?

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Just because people say what? And look.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

I mean, what.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

He may be a diabolical genius masquerading as an idiot, but what.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

That list is insane.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

I know. This is my point is that you've got a deep guy now banned rules of trust.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Sub. Fourth rule of trust. Be trust. Trusting. What?

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

I mean, it's pretty good rule if you're gonna.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Also his seven rules of trust that have eight rules.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Yeah.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

B and B, civil league. Play better tennis while you're at it. Jimmy Wales.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Right. Okay. So anyway, point is, look, I spot when I. Larry Singer Sanger is not a natural fellow traveler to a guy like me. Right? He's a religious guy. He's on the right end of the spectrum. But I love him. I love him because he's deep and he knows what he thinks, and he knows why he thinks it. And he thinks about systems in a way that's actually respectful of the way they function, rather than purely aspirational with respect to how you might want them to function. You know, he spots the error in his own rule and, you know, does the right thing and argues that it should be retracted because it's an obstacle to progress. He understands this point about discretion, which is so vital. Vital to making anything like this function. So the thing is, when I look at the actual output of Larry Sanger, I think, yeah, more of that. Right. In fact, there's one thing I haven't even mentioned to you, which is that he's got another project which he was gracious enough to send us an example of, which is he's tried to put on a single flash drive the whole of the. What is it called, the Gutenberg Project, some large collection of vital texts that he is afraid going to lose access to that you should have under your personal control also sounds like a very good idea to me. So the point is, this person is very, very sober and Jimmy Wales.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

So you began that by saying you wouldn't expect him to be a fellow traveler. You said he's religious, he's fairly far right politically. But I think anyone who pursued and earned a PhD in epistemology is inherently a fellow travel traveled. So you. You started with some definition. I happen to have just been working on a chapter, my book called Epistemology, which I begin with the OED's most recent definition of epistemology, which is epistemology, noun, the theory of knowledge and understanding, especially with regard. The theory of knowledge and understanding, especially with regard to its methods, validity and scope, and the distinction between justified belief and a opinion. There are a lot of definitions of epistemology out there. That happens to be the most recent OED definition, and it's perfect. And I think that anyone who earns, you know, an advanced degree in that pursuit, and, you know, and I used to say, you know, everyone with a PhD has a doctorate in philosophy. And I would say this to people with, you know, PhDs in literature, they're like, yes, but scientists, like, no, all scientists. Anyone with a PhD is supposed to have thought deeply about the philosophy of what it is they're doing, which if you're in the science, that means that you have to have thought deeply about epistemological questions. How is it that we make claims of truth? What is it that we think we know? And how is it that we came to believe what we know? How would we know if it's true. All of these questions are absolutely fundamental to any scientific approach to anything. And so I think Sanger is. Is. Is inherently going to be a fellow traveler, regardless of what he believes about the soul or the spirit in the universe or what. What political systems might work best. I think the epistemological foundation is more, is deeper.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

This is one of those not very rare cases in which you are 100% right. I should not have said fellow traveler. I was grasping for the right term, and I still don't have it. He's not the natural person that you would generally imagine that I would hang out with. Yeah, he's somebody I would love to hang out with because of exactly what you're pointing to at the deepest level. He is, as far as I can tell, completely aligned and completely aligned at another level that I think is important. My favorite philosopher is Steve Patterson, who has been a guest of the two Channel, who, among his greatest things you said, is, philosophy is where it's at. Philosophers aren't. Yeah, okay. Now, my gripe with philosophers in modern times at least, is that they seem to have fallen under the false belief that the purpose of philosophers is to talk to other philosophers rather than to elucidate something that would be of use to the general public. So most philosophers are just in academic departments writing papers for each other. Completely pointless. Rather than weighing into the important discussions of the day and talking to us about where we're doing the logic in a justifiable way, where we're violating the philosophical underpinnings of science and making an error, they should be doing that job, and they don't. But what's Larry Sanger doing? Larry Sanger is taking a deep understanding of epistemology and trying to bring it to the public in the form of the greatest encyclopedia that has ever existed on planet Earth, where the basis of what is found in it is epistemologically scientific sound, and it's been hijacked by other people. So, yeah, absolutely, a fellow traveler and would be by his very nature, even if, you know, it's a, you know, strange bedfellow situation. But all right, that's about where I wanted to take this. I find this story is not only fascinating because you have these two competing visions of how to run this thing. One of these visions is obviously, at least directionally correct, and the other one is obviously a train wreck.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

But just be trusting, Brett. Be trusting.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

I should have been more trusting.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

That's Wales's fourth rule of being uncivil.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

How many of his rules. Make it personal. I've made it personal. Let's see.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Be independent.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Oh, I'm doing that. Create a clear purpose. I think I'd like humanity to survive as long as possible and people to be as free as possible while we're surviving. Independent, Transparent.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

No, I can't see through you. You're opaque.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

I'll work on it. And I'm actually just doing it, or at least attempting it. But bottom line of this story is

[Dr. Heather Heying]

that's such an inane list.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

It's bad.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

I mean, I hope for the porn of finance guy's sake that that came in with some context, at least. Some context of like when you are editing a Wikipedia entry, do these things. Yeah, because on its own it makes. It's. It's main is kind.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

I should have dealt deeper. But anyway, the point is, when I talk to people, I get one of two reactions about Wikipedia. Many people, you know, boomers, aren't aware that there's a problem and so they use it as a source without realizing that every time time they deal with something where something is at stake, they are running the risk of it being highly politicized. Or they're people who are aware of the bias in Wikipedia and have stopped taking it seriously, just don't go there at all anymore. Right. Sort of like people treat aware people treat the New York Times.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Exactly.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

However, this ain't the fricking New York Times. It's bad enough that something that we referred to as the paper of record has been captured by a cynical political force and is now a weapon of war. That's bad. That's really bad. But you could start another newspaper if you started one that was any good. It would be a threat to so many things that you're going to have trouble starting it. But nonetheless, it hasn't absorbed the entire space of newspaper and destroyed it. Yes, the way Wikipedia has absorbed the entire space of encyclopedia and destroyed it, turned it into an absolute weapon on one side of a political battle. Maybe it's, you know, purchasable by dark forces that wish to portray MRNA vaccines as safe and effective or whatever it's doing. But the point is, this is intolerable. That we would face a Cartesian crisis with a Jimmy Wales version of Wikipedia rather than a Larry Sanger version. So I don't know how many billionaires are watching. Watching. If you want to back somebody to build a tool that will make humanity better, that will increase the likelihood that we're going to make it through the next 150 years back Larry Sanger. He seems to know what he's talking about. He's done a lot of this work already, and he's the right guy for the job. He understands the deep part. If you, you know, giving people discretion is scary because they can misuse it. If you give Larry Sanger discretion, I'm not worried. Worried. So, anyway, we need a Wikipedia. Wikipedia, ain't it? So let's build one.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Excellent. All right. I think that's it. I think we got to the end there.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

We did.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Yeah. So check out our sponsors this week. American Financing, Masa chips, and crowd health. All awesome. All worth your time if you are in the market for a mortgage, something better than health insurance or some really delicious chips.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

I involuntarily open my mouth of a bag of chips.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

Yeah, that's that. That'll happen to you, too. So, you know, buyer beware.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Yeah.

[Dr. Heather Heying]

And we'll be back same time next week. And until you see us, then, be good to the ones you love, eat good food and get outside.

[Dr. Brett Weinstein]

Well, everyone. Sam.