This Will Collapse The West | Bret Weinstein PT 2

Summary

Podcast Summary: Impact Theory with Tom Bilyeu

Episode: This Will Collapse The West | Bret Weinstein PT 2
Date: August 9, 2024
Featured Guest: Bret Weinstein
Host: Tom Bilyeu

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Episode Overview

In this compelling episode, Bret Weinstein returns for Part 2 of a deep, intellectually rigorous conversation about the collapse of Western values and systems. The dialogue covers pressing topics including the attack on the scientific method, the breakdown of rationality in modern society, the dangers of abandoning “Western” tools, the threat posed by censorship, the evolutionary roots of group cooperation, education’s failures, power structures, and taboo subjects like race, IQ, sexuality, and the danger of losing collective memory. The tone is urgent, thoughtful, sometimes provocative, but always focused on seeking truth rather than easy answers.

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Major Themes & Key Discussion Points

1. The Attack on Rationality and the Scientific Method

• Critique of Modern Movements: Weinstein warns about the ideological push to decouple from the scientific method and logic, often labeling them as “white” or “Western” constructs.
  • “To the extent that one is willing to take a tool as universal as the scientific method and to critique it...to declare it white in order to nullify its power to speak is...Plato’s Cave.” (Bret, 01:06)
• Plato’s Cave & Suppression of Messengers: Weinstein likens current culture to Plato’s Cave, where enlightenment is met with hostility.
  • “There is this force of resistance...that wants to kill the messenger in order to keep doing what it’s doing.” (Bret, 01:06)

Memorable Quote

“We are fighting about so many things which are just simply unambiguous, that five years ago you would think 'there's no way we’re ever going to have an analytical argument about whether or not men and women are effectively the same thing.” — Bret Weinstein, 01:06

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2. America’s Founding & The Evolutionary Breakthrough

• What Makes the U.S. Unique: Weinstein argues that America’s experiment is to transcend tribal, lineage-based cooperation (rooted in evolutionary racism) for an inclusive, reciprocal model.
  • “The United States aims to set aside those population level differences to foster a cooperation based on something else... It's the Christian insight of the Good Samaritan.” (Bret, 03:56)
• The Dangers of Reverting: Returning to tribal conflicts and abandoning inclusive cooperation is “shameful” and leads to the old patterns of war and genocide.
• Contagiousness of the Idea: Many countries copied America’s model but regressing means opportunity is lost — “all there will be in the end is power.” (Bret, 03:56)

Memorable Quote

“The outgrowth of putting race first is... maybe Leonard Cohen got it: I’ve seen the future, brother. It’s murder.” — Bret Weinstein, 03:56

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3. Devaluing Success Tools: Logic, STEM, and Measuring Progress

• Tom’s Manufacturing Story: Tom shares personal experiences hiring former felons and helping them succeed through goal-setting and metrics, only to find such tools themselves are denigrated as "white."
  • “You’re stripping people of the most powerful possible tools by saying the tools themselves are somehow corrupt because of who created it. It’s fucking madness. It either works or it doesn’t.” (Tom, 11:25)
• Master’s Tools: Weinstein critiques Audre Lorde’s notion that “you can’t take apart the master’s house with the master’s tools,” arguing it actually keeps tools of empowerment away from the oppressed.

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4. Cancel Culture & Learning from Unpleasant Sources

• The Anaphylactic Shock Analogy: Tom posits a moral test: if a hated person knows how to save your daughter’s life, do you refuse their help? That’s the danger of refusing to learn from “despicable” people. (Tom, 13:41)
• Skills Have Utility! Tom stresses that learning is valuable because it grants real-world power – the ability to make imagined worlds real.

Memorable Quote

“Power is the ability to close your eyes, imagine a world better than this one, and then open your eyes and make that world come true...” — Tom, 13:41

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5. The Limits and Failings of Our Educational System

• Cognitive Sabotage: Weinstein argues many people sense they’ve been “cognitively maimed” by bad education and simply give up, surrendering to anger rather than curiosity or problem-solving. (Bret, 19:34)

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6. Evolution, Sex, and Pair Bonding

• Why Is the Clitoris on the Outside? Tom asks a bold, long-held question leading to evolutionary insights about human sexuality, the role of bonding, and reproductive strategies.
  • “Selection has altered the meaning of sex for humans... turned sex into a bonding mechanism... the orgasm has been democratized by selection...” (Bret, 20:54)
• Cultural & Anatomical Factors: Weinstein discusses cross-cultural awareness of female pleasure and anatomical constraints.

Notable Segment (Humor & Insight)

[20:33] Evolution and sexuality
[30:21] Why women’s orgasm may encourage male commitment

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7. Data, Policy, and the Dangers of Utopian Thinking

• Following Data Over Ideology: Tom and Bret both highlight intellectuals like Thomas Sowell, who champion data over agenda, lamenting movements that discard empirical evidence for narratives.
  • “If you look at the data and it doesn’t win, then don’t you want to find the thing that wins?” (Tom, 33:59)
• Dangers of Labeling Institutions (e.g., Family, STEM) as “White”: Weinstein is alarmed at declaring foundational structures “white” (and thus to be destroyed), saying “you cannot have power” if you “uninvent these things.” (Bret, 34:42)

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8. Where Is This Heading?

• Political Prognosis: Weinstein sees a dangerous fork: either instability from dramatic electoral moves, or the mainstreaming of destructive ideologies by powerful elites — both dire for the country. Unity 2020 is floated as a possible third way.
  • “Both prospects are absolutely dire... we have a system that not only delivers you unacceptable possibilities, but delivers them in pairs in which there's no escape—that's completely unacceptable.” (Bret, 36:00)

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9. Opportunity Hoarding and Public School Failure

• Why Are Public Schools So Bad? Weinstein suggests it’s not accidental: many with privilege don’t want other people’s children competing with their own, so schools are kept subpar by design.
  • “A large number of people do not want other people's children equipped to compete with their own children.” (Bret, 39:16)

Memorable Exchange

• [41:47] Tom suggests free-market incentives for teacher performance; Weinstein says the entire system is likely beyond saving and needs fundamental rethinking.

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10. The West, Lineages, and Reciprocal Altruism

• Evolutionary Perspective: Weinstein introduces “lineage” as a scale-independent, precise term for evolutionary cooperation, avoiding the sloppy and racist connotations of “race.”
• Reciprocal Altruism vs. Kinship: America’s success came by building an inclusive environment for reciprocal cooperation instead of solely kin-based.
  • “A lineage is any individual and all of their descendants.” (Bret, 51:47)
  • “Once other populations saw how productive [inclusion] was, they wanted in. So it was a contagious idea.” (Bret, 51:47)

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11. The Collapse of the West and Danger of Losing Rational Foundations

• End of Growth & Return to Tribalism: Weinstein argues inclusive, diverse cooperation works in times of growth; as growth ends, people revert to tribal identities — “blood is thicker than water.”
• Loss of Rationality: The scientific method and basic truths (men/women, 2+2=4, family) are being “uninvented,” which signals collapse.
  • “All the bedrock that civilization is built on is now up for discussion.” (Bret, 90:54)

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12. Censorship, Power, and the "Time Traveling Money Printer"

• Why Blind the Public? Weinstein introduces the metaphor of the “Time Traveling Money Printer”: powerful actors benefit from blinding the masses, as it allows them to profit from information asymmetries.
  • “[They] have enough control to render the truth seeking capability of humanity lame...and privatize the knowledge of what is coming, it is like they have a time machine.” (Bret, 85:44)
• Who Sabotages Education? Weinstein speculates about intentional (even if subconscious) sabotage from elites who profit when opportunity is not evenly spread.
• Censorship vs. Moderation: Tom asks about figures like Don Lemon, who advocate for more moderation. Weinstein warns that defining and enforcing “hate speech” almost always leads to ever more restrictive censorship.
  • “If you step on that slippery slope, it’s a disaster... You cannot have freedom if you let anybody start drawing the line as to which speech is acceptable.” (Bret, 90:54)

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13. Taboo Subjects: IQ, Race, Genocide, & Pornography

• Discussing Taboo Topics is Crucial: Weinstein and Tom grapple with whether discussing hot-button issues (race/IQ, sexual violence, etc.) does more harm or good.
  • “We are likely to find the solutions to these puzzles by understanding the puzzles. And if we don’t, the likelihood that we will make them worse...is vanishingly small.” (Bret, 73:31)
• Pornography & Violent Taboo: Weinstein draws a sharp but unconventional line between erotica and pornography—profit motive drives dangerous escalation and taboo violations—arguing that market-driven porn risks eroticizing violence, e.g., rape.
  • “If you want to see rape eliminated, the one thing we mustn’t do is eroticize it, which is what we’re doing...because the market can’t help but explore that niche.” (Bret, 68:36)

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Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• "It inverts the process of ending oppression...you should want to capture those tools...they work because they work." — Bret, 11:25
• "Do things that alleviate human suffering. That's sort of the thing below that. Like, if somebody disagrees with that, then...I don't know how to communicate." — Tom, 13:41
• "We don't attract very many people who have a passion...and those few who come in do so doing themselves massive economic harm." — Bret, 44:25
• "The reason that humans differ across all of these physical capabilities is that different habitats select for different things...this is not true cognitively. There's no habitat that selects for stupidity." — Bret, 75:39
• "We are losing sight of all the things that we understood, all of the bedrock that civilization is built on." — Bret, 90:54

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Important Segments & Timestamps

• [01:06] Attacks on science, logic, and "white" tools
• [03:56] What made the US (and the West) unique evolutionary experiment
• [11:25] The danger of refusing practical tools due to identity politics
• [13:41] The path from cancel culture to power and real-world change
• [20:54] Evolutionary biology of sex and human bonding
• [34:42] Labeling family, science as "white" as a destructive trend
• [39:16] Public education is intentionally kept broken
• [51:47] Lineage vs. race and how reciprocal altruism made the West thrive
• [59:02] How to protect the “little ember” of reason and truth
• [68:36] Pornography, taboos, and the dangers of market-driven sexual content
• [73:31] Grappling with the utility—and risk—of addressing taboo subjects head-on
• [85:44] The "Time Traveling Money Printer": elites, information control, and societal blindness
• [90:54] Censorship, the loss of foundational truths, and the collapse of Western rationality

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Final Takeaways

• Defend the Tools, Not the Team: The scientific method, logic, and rationality must be preserved regardless of their origins or associations; abandoning them for ideological reasons is self-destructive.
• Reject Power Grabs through Censorship: Calls for “moderation” and “hate speech” controls are often slippery slopes toward absolute censorship and information asymmetry, serving the interests of the elite.
• Understand, Don’t Blind Ourselves: Only unflinching, courageous examination of the most difficult subjects (from race to genocide to sexuality) offers hope for humane progress.
• Education is the Battleground: Whoever controls education, and thus cognitive empowerment, shapes the future—and current systems too often work to sabotage potential, not unlock it.
• Inter-group Collaboration is Humanity's Lightning in a Bottle: The collapse of Western civilization is not inevitable, but avoiding it demands we fight for inclusive, rational, reciprocal cooperation—even as tribal forces rise.

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This episode is a sobering, expansive conversation on the emergencies facing Western civilization, but it also points to the “little ember” of reason as the best hope for the future—so long as we are willing to defend and nurture it.

Transcript

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[Bret Weinstein]

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[Tommy]

Cap apply why are you worried about shutdown stem?

[Bret Weinstein]

I agree with you. It is absolutely the most terrifying piece of this. It's also the most absurd piece. But I think the reason that it is so terrifying is, is that it speaks to a willingness to uninvent insight in order to make progress, right? And that tells you what kind of progress they want to make. So to the extent that one is willing to take a tool as universal as the scientific method and to critique it, a, to declare it some sort of a, a European thing, right? To declare it white in order to nullify its power to speak is, I mean, I guess I know exactly what it is. It's Plato's Cave. And you know, you started talking about the Matrix and Plato's cave is the Matrix. And the thing about the Matrix in Plato's cave is the desire of most people, many people, some important force not to be enlightened, right? That there's something that is served by the killing of the person who's seen what's outside the cave when they come back and try to report, that's the most frightening process of all. And those of us who have tried to convey something about the danger that we are in know that there is this, this force of resistance that is very powerful that wants to kill the messenger in order to keep doing what it's doing. And to hear it spelled out, I mean, we are fighting about so many things which are just simply unambiguous, that five years ago you would think there's no way we're ever going to have an analytical argument about whether or not men and women are effectively the same thing, right? Because everybody, everybody knows that they're not the same thing, right? And then to find yourself there and to find Yourself trying to fend off arguments that make no sense tells you that there is some. That the momentum behind this is not driven by any sort of analysis. It is driven by just a naked desire for power. And I think the thing is we know how that ends. We don't necessarily know who the winners and losers are, but it ends with something of which we will all be terribly ashamed and spell out why that's true.

[Tommy]

I agree aggressively, but I want. I want you to say why that's true.

[Bret Weinstein]

So I've been thinking a lot about this of late, and it occurred to me at one point that the United States is special. And it's special because it attempts to do something that I know is possible, but is very, very difficult, which is to step out of the normal evolutionary dynamic and do something better. So the normal evolutionary dynamic has us cooperating on the basis of our relatedness. The same reason that you know you will aid your kids before you'll aid somebody else's kids works at a population level, which means that a kind of racism is wired into us as the default mode of cooperation and conflict. The United States aims to set aside those population level differences to foster a cooperation based on something else. In some weird sense, it is the Christian insight of the story of the Good Samaritan, that relatedness is not the basis on which we should view each other favorably. That there is something to be gained by being inclusive, empathically inclusive, and collaborating, because it makes us stronger. The problem is as great an idea as that obviously is. I mean, it's been incredibly contagious. The number of countries that have followed our example and, you know, modeled themselves on our pattern is stunning. For us to, instead of completing the project, instead of actually bringing ourselves to a place where opportunity is evenly distributed, to go in reverse and to reinvigorate the population against population conflict means that effectively all there will be in the end is power. And the limits of compassion will be genetically defined. And that is the recipe for, in which you find people genociding each other or cooking up reasons to go to war across a border. Whatever it is, it's uninteresting, to be sure. It is shameful to return there after having discovered that something else is possible. And I just. I can't imagine why anybody is going to be surprised that the outgrowth of putting race first is going to be, um, you know, I mean, maybe Leonard Cohen got it. I've seen the future, brother. It's murder.

[Tommy]

I really hope not. You said something not too long ago that was both Hilarious. And it made me worry. It's exactly what people aren't doing. You said, I want to emphasize one word, people, extrapolate. And I was like, yes, yes, please, like, follow that logic to its natural conclusion. And that sums up why I am freaked out by them coming after stem. Because it was the one thing that I held onto, was, okay, if you just get people to follow their own logic, you realize how problematic it gets. And they would have to do away with logic altogether. And they're never going to, wait, what? And it's like they're actually getting rid of logic. It's the moment in the argument where you're like, I'm not even going to say anything. I'm just going to ask questions. Because I know once I ask a certain number of questions, they will get to the point where they realize, oh, shit, I actually. Okay, cool. I see where this goes. Because it never occurs to you that they would actually throw out measuring progress, having a goal, seeing if you're actually getting towards that goal. Like, and so when they start going, yeah, like, the second most disturbing thing to come out of all of this was the Smithsonian. Like, these are all the things that are white and are therefore problematic. And it was like, hard work, progress, measuring results, striving to be the best. I was like, what the fuck is happening? You. You literally. I have. So I have to get into a little bit of my story, you know, a smidgen of it. Um, so when you're working in manufacturing, which is where I was working, you're in the inner cities, so you're around only people of color. I mean, almost exclusively. And so I'm encountering all these people and I'm like, okay, Tom, are your ideas real? Because you always say it doesn't matter who you are today, it only matters who you want to become and the price you're willing to pay to get there. Well, if that's true, Tom, then you'd be willing to hire convicted felons, would you not? And I was like, yeah, actually I would. And so we put out on the street, as they call it, that we would hire people, we would consider people for employment, even if they had a felony record. And so we ended up getting all of these, like, way low income people that had really struggled, had trouble with the law, former drug dealers, gang bangers, like guys with the teardrop tattoos and all that. And I was not everybody, but I was very impressed with the number of people who were extraordinary people, incredibly capable, able to do stuff. They just had a weird ass Frame of reference. And if I could give them an empowering frame of reference, then, you know, they could go on to do something. And walking them down the line of like, hey, here's how you improve something. You have a goal, you set it. You have a metric that you're marching towards that just seemed. If you can get them on that path, then you've really got something that's going to take you somewhere impactful. But once you strip away that ability and you say, hey, that's white. And so you don't want to act white or be white. I'm like, the one thing you've given me that's allowing me to help these people. Like, we had one guy, he went from. He took the job because he wanted a front for his drug money. Okay? Imagine that he comes in, he interviews because he hears this crazy guy is willing to hire people with felony convictions. He had been to prison, not for drugs, oddly enough, but he had been to prison for something else and then was dealing again, but had to show his parole officer where he was getting the money. So. And he tells me all this to my face later. Once we'd been. We had gained trust with each other. And he was like, dude, you've changed my life. You've changed the lives of my kids. Like, this is going to echo for generations. There was one guy that called me. I hadn't spoken to him probably in six years. He called me, this is a few weeks ago. He's like, tom, I'm on my way to a job. I'm getting paid almost a hundred thousand dollars. I would never have believed this was possible. And I just had to thank you. And I was like, this, this is why instead of buying an island and retiring, like, I've doubled down in my life because I. I see the number of people that, oh, change my frame of reference. I didn't get smarter. I just look at things differently. I'm using metrics like, I have a goal. Cause that was my whole thing. To them, you have a goal. And my thing I always preach is do and believe about yourself that which moves you towards your goals, right? So if because a lot of people get stuck in these loops of, I'm stupid, I'm dumb, the world's against me, whatever. And so I'm like, does that belief help you achieve your goal? No. Cool, then don't. Don't buy into it. Even if the world really is against you, even if the deck really is stacked against you, accepting defeat does not move you towards your goal. So don't do it. And so when I read that, and I was like, what are you doing? Like, you were stripping people of the most powerful possible tools by saying the tools themselves are somehow corrupt because of who quote, unquote, created it. I'm like, this is fucking madness. It either works or it doesn't.

[Bret Weinstein]

Yeah, it's crazy. Heather and I have long wondered about this Audre Lorde quote about, you can't take apart the master's house with the master's tools. And it's just the most disempowering viewpoint. I'm not even entirely sure what she meant. But the way this is understood, it just takes the most powerful things at human disposal and keeps them in the hands of those who have had them longest. I mean, it's just. It inverts the process of ending oppression. And it's hard to imagine why anybody who sees their objective as ending oppression would embrace this. You should want to capture those tools and you should want to learn to wield them as effectively as you possibly can. Right. The tools don't know who's wielding them. They work because they work. And if you're going to rule out things that work because of who discovered them first, and I'm not even sure it is who discovered them first, but who our collective narrative says discovered them first, then you're never going to get anywhere. So, yes, incredibly frightening to hear people go up against logic and science. And, you know, the funny thing is, Evergreen did allow us to have these conversations up close and personal. And so I think a lot of people dismiss the idea that people are against stem. People in this movement are against it because they haven't heard somebody say it while looking into their eyes. Oh, yes, science really is a white thing. It's like, what are you even. Did you just say that? I mean, that's almost all I need to know about your proposal for the world is that you just don't understand even the basics of, you know, where liberation would come from. Right. So, yeah, I wish I could convey that better. I'm glad somebody heard me say extrapolate and knew what I meant, because I really, very much. It's the missing parameter. If you just take what you know to be factual and extrapolate from it, you can see where we're headed. And it couldn't be more frightening.

[Tommy]

It really couldn't be more frightening. And staying on the notion of. One thing that bothers me is people are always looking for a reason not to listen to somebody. And so I have beliefs, and I wrote these beliefs a Very long time ago. So they have nothing to do with the current moment. Like you said, they are the things that have worked in my life, and I wrote them down so that I could give them to other people. Because I really am obsessed with equal opportunity. And that's been a passion of mine now for more than a decade. And look, I've made moves in my life that I will say put me beyond reproach in terms of, like I said, hiring former felons or felons, but no longer in prison and just putting my money where my mouth is and seeing what happens. And it really. I find a disturbing trend that people jump to any reason they have not to learn from somebody. So I mean, it obviously extrapolate. It becomes cancel culture. And I was giving an example yesterday and I thought this actually really, it. It is the trap that I would be curious to see how somebody who has this ideology would handle it. So let's say that you have a daughter. It's somehow worse if it's a little girl. For me, anyway, you have a daughter and she is in anaphylactic shock. Her throat has closed. And you call 911 and the most vile and despicable person in the world answers that call. But they know how to perform an infield tracheotomy, and so they can save your daughter. Do you hang up the phone and try to find somebody else who you agree with and you'd be willing to take their advice, which in my opinion, makes you an even more despicable person because you're now making your child suffer and the risk of death, you know, is skyrocketing. Or do you say, I don't give a shit that you are the most despicable person on earth. You have a piece of information that actually gets me something that I need and that I want. And my thing is, dude, it is a litmus test from which I will say, I can't understand your worldview. Like, your value system is so divorced from mine. And I'll say mine is probably like, if you boiled my value system down to just its basic, basic, basic irreducible building block, it's do things that alleviate human suffering. It's going to be something like that. That's sort of the thing below that. Like, if somebody disagrees with that, then I'm at a loss now I no longer how to communicate. I don't know how to communicate. So that argument to me is the sort of ultimate extrapolation of I'm trying to shut that person down because they're A bad person. I don't want to hear their ideas. My thing is, look, if there were two people in front of me and one was a despicable person and the other was somebody who inspired me and I thought they were amazing and they both have the same information, of course I'm going to gravitate towards the person, even in subtle ways of rewarding them with my thanks and praise. And you know, I have chosen them and of course that will feel good for them. I get why I would want to lavish people who I really believe in with that. So cool. All things being equal, I get it. We're all going to self select to, you know, celebrating things and people that we like. But, but shutting down, learning something. And now this brings you to like if Unity 2020 is, is the concept that you're just one of the things you really want to get out there. One of the things I am most desperate to get people to understand, like to really understand at a visceral level. It's that skills have utility. They let you do things. And you don't read a book to check a mark off. You don't go to college to impress your parents. You take architecture classes so you can build a bridge that doesn't fall down. And once you understand that and that if you can do something other people can't do, like you've now just moved humanity forward or your small group forward, like that shit is real. And when I say that, I don't see like this recognition in people's eyes of like, hey, the point of learning something is to actually be able to do something. And so my new thing is to get people to understand. Your mind is not a library. Your mind is a laboratory. And once you realize, ah, the point of this knowledge is to run tests against it to see what actually allows me to influence the world. And my obsession is power. Let that echo and let lightning strike and sinister noise play. Because whenever I tell people that I come seeking power, people get freaked the fuck out until I say let me define power for you. Power is the ability to close your eyes, imagine a world, a world better than this one, and then open your eyes and be able to make that world come true. Because it's going to require you to do things. And if you don't have the skillset to do those things, you are disempowered. So yeah, getting people to understand that feels like an uphill battle sometimes.

[Bret Weinstein]

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[Bret Weinstein]

No, I that's beautiful. And I resonate with it 100%. And in some sense, I think what's happened is we've so badly botched the job of educating people that they register in some sense that it's too late. And so the mind numbing prescriptions that were being delivered I think are surrender that basically people who understand that they have been effectively cognitively maimed are not really interested in the idea that the right way to solve the problem is to increase the capacity of your mind to find new possibilities and bring them into the world. So instead, it's the temper tantrum that you started with, which, you know, I get it, we can't do that, but I get it. I understand that they're angry and they have a right to be.

[Tommy]

All right, I want to shift gears because I would be horrified if I had an evolutionary biologist two hours with them and I did not ask a question that has been on my mind since I was like 15. Brett, as weird as this question is, it actually means something to me. And I ask it in all sincerity. Why is the clitoris on the outside?

[Bret Weinstein]

Well, okay, this is a good question. Let's put it this way. I don't think the focus should be on the anatomical structure. Right? There's bound to be an answer to that. Let's put it this way, the fact that testicles are on the outside is also an interesting oddity. But let's say the interesting thing is that selection has altered the meaning of sex for humans. Right? It has delivered us an incredible gift which we are now treating so horrifyingly. But the gift is it has turned sex into a bonding mechanism. And what that means is that unlike almost all Creatures, human beings have sex when the production of offspring is not a possibility. That is to say, people have sex after menopause. They have sex when it's not the fertile moment in a woman's cycle. And that, I think, people don't understand how unique a situation that is. And what it implies is that human bonding is a. A novel phenomenon that requires both parties to feel rewarded by the activity. So in some sense, the orgasm has been democratized by selection. And a mechanism for generating it has been provided by adaptation. And interestingly, the mechanism for generating it is not. It's not a simple button. Right? Right. It's just not a simple button. It actually requires an empathic connection in order to tune into your partner well enough to deliver the goods. In some sense, that's the magic of the thing is, by creating a puzzle surrounding sexual gratification in women, the necessity of a close connection is introduced into pair bonding. Is that making sense?

[Tommy]

It is. I have a loaded question waiting if that is the natural breakpoint. So my question is, am I wrong in assuming that for literally thousands of years, and maybe far longer than that, that it was neglected and that generation after generation after generation of women failed to have a life where orgasm was a regular part of it due to that. Which, if that's the case, it's. It does not seem that evolution would land on that as a strategy. It may be a byproduct, maybe a total accident, but it seems that it probably isn't a strategy. Unless. And this was. I can't remember where I read this. And it was so interesting to me that I thought, could this really be true? That it was put on the outside so that women. It wasn't like. If you think of the penis as a very. It's external, it's easily touched by anybody who wants to bond. And certainly in other animals, you'll see it isn't just the person that they're having intercourse with that will reach out and touch them in a way that we would call sexual as a way to ease tension or whatever. And so I thought, is this a way of putting something on the outside so that women also have just a social bonding, a way to soothe or extend sort of an olive branch of kinds between two people. Could be male, female, could be female, female. And that it needed to be on the outside to be more easily accessible?

[Bret Weinstein]

Well, that's a really interesting question. I don't know of any evidence to support it. I will say I'm doubtful that the orgasm in females was. It may be true that In European culture, for example, it was turned taboo and therefore a kind of, you know, generating orgasm for females is kind of a lost art. But I think in many other cultures it's quite clear that there was an awareness of the subtleties of sexual pleasure for females. So in any case, if Europeans really did lose touch with female orgasm, I believe that's an anomaly. Probably has a meaning to it. In other words, there are. It is true that the structures that exist are adaptations and it is true that religious prohibitions against their access are also evolutionary adaptations. And so there's a question about what is being managed by these tensions. But I love the idea that placing it on the outside means that it is not, strictly speaking, a, A, an intercourse triggered phenomenon. That of course raises questions about the G spot and its location. But anyway, it's an interesting. It's an interesting line of questioning. I understand why you're obsessed with it. It's fascinating. And clearly selection had something in mind. I will say the fly in the ointment of this discussion might be one of anatomical constraint. In other words, because the clitoris is made of the same tissue that the penis is made of, it may be that its position is constrained by the amount of shared blueprint that male and female have in terms of where tissues end up. So I don't know.

[Tommy]

That is super interesting. There is certainly some logic to that. But the. So in terms of the design of the clitoris, if I'm not mistaken, there are elements of the nerve that wraps around the vaginal canal which. That always made more sense because then at least it seems like it's sort of in on the act and shows that you could put theoretically those tendrils anywhere and that one would assume that nature ran some sort of experiment where there was more involvement, you know, on. Because there are some women, at least as I understand it, there are some percentage of women that can have orgasm from traditional penetrative sex. So it becomes, you know, a question of why. If we think of that as sort of an experiment that nature ran, why did it not go all the way? Why did it hit some percentage of women, but not all, Especially if, and I am sort of making the base assumption that women are more likely to get pregnant if they also have an orgasm.

[Bret Weinstein]

There is actually data on this. I'm trying to remember what the conclusion is. You can't hold me to this. It's possible I have it wrong. But I think if I'm remembering it correctly, the result was that orgasm did increase the likelihood of fertilization. If One controls for fertile period. Right. For the place in a woman's cycle that sex is taking place. I hope that's correct.

[Tommy]

That's certainly what I encountered. I am by no means an expert on the subject, but that was the one that made me go, wow, this is so interesting. Then why are the two divorced? Like, it just seems so strange to me.

[Bret Weinstein]

Well, but in some sense, I think that's reflective of the. The answer I gave you initially, which is there's a tremendous amount about courting and other associated rituals which now become things like marriage and engagement in humans that is built to ensure that males don't game females. In other words, fema. So females have a tremendous investment in offspring automatically, just by virtue of carrying them internally and then feeding them by breast. Males can have a very high investment in offspring, and that's a very frequent way for males to reproduce. But they obviously can have an almost no investment version of the strategy, which, although it's less successful because raising offspring without a father is more difficult, it is such a bargain from the point of view of males that males find the prospect of it irresistible. Right. This is why males are obsessed with sex with women that they don't have any intention of seeing again. So in light of that, females are built. They are both wired and programmed to avoid men who are resistant to commitment. And so the point is, in some sense, the conception of a child with a man who is diligent about delivering sexual pleasure is liable to be. That's a more secure bond than sex with a man who's only interested in his own pleasure. So you could imagine the system. Would. Wouldn't that make sense?

[Tommy]

That is super fucking interesting. Now that's 4D chess right there. Like, all right, let's see how far you're willing to go to make sure that I'm taken care of as well. Jesus, that is fucking interesting, man. That is really interesting. Yeah, I.

[Bret Weinstein]

Well, yeah, go ahead.

[Tommy]

No, no, no, please. I want to learn more here.

[Bret Weinstein]

Well, I was just gonna say that this all raises this issue of how frivolously we are treating sex and how stupid it is, because in some sense we could have been given no greater gift than a weirdly yin yang symmetrical sexual landscape that you spend a lifetime exploring with somebody. I mean, that's just. It'd be hard to make up something that wonderful, and we're treating it just so stupidly.

[Tommy]

Dude, this is where, you know, going back to the data becomes so interesting because 1. Like the moment that I just had where you gave me something that I had a whole sort of belief around, like, why the guitar is on the outside, and I could tell it at cocktail parties and always gets a big reaction. And you came along, you gave me something that, like, totally knocks that off and is, like, even more interesting. And it's like, man, that's. I love those moments. Right? But it's an empirical question. You know, ultimately, you can look at the data and find out which one's real. And like, whoa, that's real. And then really beginning to understand it, like, begins to, you know, peel back the onion, as it were. And so even looking at sex and monogamy and the different types of pair bonding that we have and how they can change from one environment to the next, and why that, like, once you are able to look at the data and say, like, I never would have guessed. I've heard people say there's, like, three things you have to do to succeed in America. I may get these wrong, and if you know them, please tell me that I'm wrong. But I think they are. Don't get. Don't have a child out of wedlock. Get a high school diploma and get a job. It's something like that. Like, these really basic three things all but guarantee you entrance into the middle class. And it's one of those, look at the data. And Thomas Sowell is somebody that blew my mind when all of this kicked off. And it was like, I had some weird unease that Black Lives Matter wasn't about actually helping black people, but I didn't know enough about it. So I was like, I didn't want to post Black Lives Matter, but I was like, I need to go research this and figure out what's going on. And so I went on, like, this binge where I was like, I'm only going to seek out black intellectuals and see where they fall. And it introduced me to some of the greatest minds. Thomas Sowell to me in a subconscious way. When I look at him, I see he might as well be wearing a Superman outfit. Like, when you hear that guy talk, he's so smart in a way that I'm so covetous of. And he's so well researched, searched. It is crazy. And whenever somebody debates him, he's always like, show me the data. Like, I will follow the data wherever it goes. I don't have some agenda that I'm trying to push. I'm just telling you, you want this thing to win because it feels so good. And he was like, but if you look at the data and it doesn't Win, then don't you want to find the thing that wins? And that, to me, is just so powerful of like, data, data, data, man. Like, there is an answer. And if you have the discipline of not tying your identity up into an answer and you stay open to, you know, new truth, it's like, and you might know, I misquote this person all the time. I think it was Max Planck who said, science advances one funeral at a time.

[Bret Weinstein]

Yeah. Funeral by funeral.

[Tommy]

And. And I just thought, oh, my God. Why? Why? How do you not read that quote and go, oh, I have to change everything about myself because I refuse to to fall for something so predictable.

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[Bret Weinstein]

Yeah, I agree. And I think the point you were headed toward a minute ago, where the Black Lives Matter movement is explicitly anti nuclear family, that this is, again, one of these issues of, look, if you're going to attack science and you're going to declare it white and you're going to say the nuclear family is white and that therefore we have to uninvent these things, you cannot have power. If you have power over us, you'll destroy us. Because you're taking things that are actually part of our birthright and you're declaring them null and void. Either you know that's insane and you have an ulterior motive, or you don't know it's insane and you need to figure out how to think more clearly because this is just nuts.

[Tommy]

Absolutely nuts. Yeah. When people don't look at the data, I get super, super, super uneasy. That one really feels like a recipe for disaster. So really fast. Just I'm super curious, how do you think this plays out? Like, your predictions on where we were going back when this was just Evergreen were spot on. Your testimony in front of Congress, spot on. What comes next? Where are we headed in very specific terms?

[Bret Weinstein]

Well, I think it's very hard to be specific because you have a kind of fork that we can't tell which branch we're going to end up on. It's possible that events cause the election to go towards Trump, which I think is far more likely than people imagine based on current polling. One, we should have learned our lesson in 2016 about polls and Trump that they don't tell the full story. And two, this is 2020 and events. Even if you take the power of the presidency out of the question, events could turn things around inside of a week. So that could happen. But in light of the powers of the presidency, I don't see Trump allowing himself to go to a stunning defeat without dramatic moves on his part to reverse that. And I fear what he might do to avoid it. On the other hand, let's say Nothing happens in 2020 and the president resists the urge to, to do something dramatic, Biden somehow wins. Then we have an even more frightening prospect, potentially, which is not more of the same, but something brand new, which is the Democratic Party having partnered with, with the Black Lives Matter movement, where it actually takes some of the insanity that they've been saying and turns it into policy, which I think is quite plausible because the purpose of the Democratic Party has become the protection of those rent seeking elites that it represents. And this is the moment at which rent seeking elites are facing something like the French Revolution. And so directing the people at each other so that they ignore the folks who have hoarded the opportunity is a natural move. This is a new twist on it, but it's a familiar pattern of history. So, anyway, I guess what I would say is there's a reason that I really think we have to be looking at something like Unity 2020, which is both prospects are absolutely dire, and the fact that we have a system that not only delivers you unacceptable possibilities, but delivers them in pairs in which there's no escape, that's completely unacceptable. And I think we have to take up arms against it, metaphorically speaking, as

[Tommy]

somebody who doesn't want to hoard opportunity, but has literally no idea. Like, I don't feel like I'm hoarding opportunity. I feel like I am desperately trying to get more people, too. But when I hear you say that, I always feel like he knows something I don't. He's talking about something that I don't quite understand. How are people hoarding opportunity? And how can somebody like myself not hoard opportunity?

[Bret Weinstein]

Well, first of all, you don't sound to me like you're hoarding opportunity to the extent that you might be. It's, it's buried in your portfolio somewhere, but I don't think you're actively doing it.

[Tommy]

But what does active hoarding look like?

[Bret Weinstein]

Well, let's put it this way. There is a reason that Our public schools suck. Right. It never gets stated, which is that a large number of people do not want other people's children equipped to compete with their own children. Right.

[Tommy]

How are really that sort of weak minded? Is that conscious? I think, oh God, this is terrible. But I do worry that there are a lot of well meaning people that just aren't. They don't, they don't cross a certain threshold of being able to think through the problem.

[Bret Weinstein]

I think the problem is that that's the real answer to why the schools are so bad, but it is not the answer to how it is recorded in the mind. In other words, we create a phony ideological difference about how to fix the schools that prevents them from being fixed, which results effectively in people with means opting out of public schools, which increases the problem because it means that sabotage of the public schools basically externalizes the problem of educational malpractice onto some populations and not others. And so anyway, a lot of things look like this where there's a solution to a problem. We could find it if we agreed that the problem was to be solved. But there's a kind of cryptic sabotage that takes hold because of the kind of competition we are in with each other. You know, we could make the same argument about why there's so much homelessness. Right. Why do we not solve the homelessness problem? Well, in part, the homelessness problem is the bottom of a ladder where depressing wages all the way along is a feature, not a bug. Right? You depress wages by having people below you. Whatever rung you're on, there are always people below you who would be more than happy to take your job, which reduces your bargaining power and trying to negotiate for more. And so in essence, the homelessness problem is the symptom we can't avoid seeing. It's an outgrowth of a system that is designed to do something it never states. And there are a lot of these things. And as you know, my sense is, if you put good people in power and you give them the opportunity not to have to pander to corrupting influences, these problems aren't so difficult to solve. But if you leave the corrupting influences in a position to veto everything, you'll never get anywhere.

[Tommy]

All right, so let's just take one thing and see if we agree on what the problem is. I'll state what I think the solution is and you punch me in the throat if I, if I'm missing something. Because what I'm about to say, I mean very, very sincerely. But it is also possible that I'm delusional in a way that I just don't see. So my mom works for a school and she'll occasionally tell me stories about, like. And she's not even saying it, like, she doesn't have a problem with it, but I hear it and I think this is madness. Like, the fact that there are teachers in some school districts that are. They're accused of some pretty insane shit, whether it's just, like, gross incompetence or potentially doing things with students that cross a potential sexual line and they're just shuttled off to a room somewhere where they continue to get paid and receive their benefits. Because the unions are so strong that you can't. It is so hard to get rid of even a horrendous teacher that you can't. It's just better to put them in a room and keep paying them and then slot somebody else into that. Now, as a business person, I can just tell you that is a recipe for disaster. You will have so much money being spent on the dumbest shit ever. And you don't have a way of encouraging. Like, this is an area where you want there to be a hierarchy. You want people like, if I could, and some universities actually do this, if I could create a hierarchy, a leaderboard so people could see who are the teachers killing it? The teachers. I don't know what the criteria would be. Fair enough, that's going to be for somebody more invested. But, like, student ratings, test scores, like, outside audit, something where it's like, yo, here are the people that are actually killing the game. And then here are the people that rank lower. For instance, Ray Dalio, largest hedge fund manager in the world, does these things where he has his employees do a force ranking of, say, managers, and the whole company will rate the managers and they put it up, up for everyone to see, and you see who's at the top and who's at the bottom. Ouch. That shit hurts. But, like, it inspires you to get better because you don't want to be at the bottom rung. Or you say, I want to go work for a company that doesn't do this, but either way, you're getting rid of the people at the bottom and you bring fresh blood in. So my thing is, look, you cannot be in a situation where either. And I don't know if it's school vouchers or what it's going to be, but if a school is underperforming, either the people teaching administrators, whatever they've got to go, or the union's got to go. Something's got to give so that, like, real talent can rise. Why am I wrong?

[Bret Weinstein]

You're not wrong, except that you're trying to save a system that's probably beyond help. Right, Go on. So look, the incentives have to line up. That's the thing. If you're going to pay people to sit in a room because they've misbehaved or because they're terrible at their job, then obviously going to accumulate some just parasitic class of people in the system who are just going to draw a paycheck for nothing. That's not a viable plan. On the other hand, there's a reason that schools are terrible. That has a lot to do with the fact that somehow we have allowed the market to set the wages of the teachers, when in fact we ought to be subsidizing this so that great people want to do it, and maybe not permanent. So if I was to try to fix the system, I would probably try to encourage people to spend a period of time teaching, to discover a if they were really good at it, but also to attract people who are really good at something else. In other words, being really good as a teacher is partially about knowing something. If you've set your sights on being a teacher rather than knowing something worth teaching, then you're probably off track. So we should want to attract people who are really good at, you know, math, physics, art, whatever it is, so that they have a passion coming in. And the problem is the way the system is structured, we don't attract very many people who have a passion. And frankly, those few who come in there do so doing themselves massive economic harm. Right. Their passion drives them to just effectively sideline themselves from the market in order to do this passion. And then what do we do is we hobble them with curriculum that's just absolutely authoritarian and draconian, which leaves them almost no freedom to engage this passion. So we drive out the good ones. This is not a stable system, and it misunderstands the purpose of education. The purpose of education should be to upgrade the mind so it's maximally capable. And the way to do that is to figure out who knows something has a passion for conveying it, and how do we bring them on board and give them the freedom to figure out how to convey it. One of the things that was true about Evergreen, which it's just killing Heather and me, that we can't manage to convey the importance of this to people, is that we had total freedom to teach however we wanted, teach whatever material we wanted. Now, lots of people abuse that freedom. You don't want those people, you want to figure out how to eliminate them quickly. But for anybody who actually has a passion to figure out what can be conveyed, having a blank canvas is magic. So you want the freedom to use it, and you want a system that gets rid of people who will abuse it. And if you can do those two things, then you'll end up having a marvelous educational system far better than what you would get if you just simply tried to rescue this one by getting rid of the worst teachers. I've done a lot of thinking about the west, and I think of myself as a patriot of the United States, but even more so a patriot of the West. And I believe that although the antecedents of the west can be traced back all the way to ancient Greece, that the west was really founded by the American Founding Fathers. And it was founded almost by accident that in order to get the colonies to confederate, they built a system that leveled playing fields in a way that hadn't been done before. And I don't think they knew what problem they actually solved. And I don't mean to take anything away from them. I'm, I'm a huge fan of the founding fathers and I think they did as well as they could possibly have done from their place in history.

[Tommy]

What did they think they were doing and what did they actually do?

[Bret Weinstein]

Well, I mean, consent of the governed is a radical idea and, you know, there are again, antecedents of it. But the idea that you're going to have broad scale voting to figure out the direction of a society is a radical departure. But once you decide that, that may be a better way of navigating, getting people to agree to it because they do not see the fix as being in. That's the trick. The idea of the west is that we shouldn't, you know, it's basically an application of the Rawlsian veil of ignorance before it existed. So you should want to make rules that you'd be as happy to live on the other side of. Right. Your desire for a rule should not be contingent on your position in society. We should want courts that can adjudicate questions of fact and questions of law without asking who that law is being applied to. It shouldn't matter. That's what they did. And in building that system, they actually solved an evolutionary puzzle before anybody knew what an evolutionary puzzle was. So we evolutionists have done a poor job of exploring what I call lineage. We have proper language and have since mid 20th century for understanding how Kin relationships affect behavior. Right? We understand why a mother may run into a burning building to save her offspring because that offspring is the conduit through which her genes will reach the future. But we evolutionists lost track of the fact that the logic that explains that when it's your offspring or your cousin continues to explain that at much larger scales for which we don't have precise terminology that says exactly how many genes are shared. A lineage is an evolutionary entity. Lineages carry our genes through time. And by acting in ways that benefit our lineage at the expense of other lineages, we can advance our genetic interests.

[Tommy]

Why do you avoid the word race?

[Bret Weinstein]

For a very particular reason. Lineage is the responsible version of the concept. Race is a racist bastardization of the legitimate concept. Right. The idea that you switch categories based on one drop of blood from some other group, that is a self serving racist notion. And so by saying lineage, I'm telling you what level of rigor I'm demanding from the concept.

[Tommy]

Is America one lineage?

[Bret Weinstein]

No, absolutely not. In fact, that's the amazing thing about it.

[Tommy]

Okay, so where if it isn't, I mean, the one drop thing just feels like gray area to an otherwise serviceable concept of race. But, but if it isn't breaking a long race and it isn't breaking a long nation, what is a lineage?

[Bret Weinstein]

Well, no, no. Lineages are the rigorous version of what we sloppily call race. Now, I can define it precisely and you can extrapolate from it. A lineage is any individual and all of their descendants. Okay, okay. Now what will not be immediately obvious is that that becomes an absolute power tool of a concept because it is scale independent. If you have no children, you are a lineage. You and all of your children and grandchildren, if you have them. Our lineage. But so too is your species a lineage. There was a most recent common ancestor and all of its descendants. That's a lineage. Mammalia is a lineage. The idea that these things are in play evolutionarily is very important. It has profound implications. The idea that, that the way the dynamics in a room play out based on the lineage relationships that are represented, there is only something you can comprehend. If you've looked at that fractal and you realize that the Frenchman and the Irishman may view each other as competing lineages until the Japanese person walks through the door. Right? That the, these, these dynamics play out in ways we're all familiar with and we don't understand that we're looking at an evolutionary story. But back to the Founders. In order to confederate the states, the Founders built a crude set of level playing fields. Now, they weren't perfectly level, and there were some major flaws in those formulations, but nonetheless, what they had to do to get the signatories to agree was figure out how to level them enough that people's fears were put to rest. But here's where the rubber meets the road on this one. There are two evolutionary bases for cooperation. One of them is genes. Shared genes. That's what is flowing through lineages, and that is why lineages more naturally collaborate against other lineages than at random. But there's another basis, which is reciprocal altruism. Reciprocity can take two individuals that look very different and cause them to collaborate because it's profitable to do so. And this is, if you squinted it correctly, the reason that an orchid flower and a hummingbird collaborate. Right? Those are very distinct lineages. I mean, one's an animal and one's a plant that's pretty widely separated. They collaborate not because of their shared genes, of which they do have some. They collaborate because it is profitable for each of them to do so. Now, in leveling the playing fields, the founders created an environment in which people who did come from many different lineages had a basis for collaborating with other individuals, irrespective of their lineage background, irrespective of race. Now, that is lightning in a bottle. And the reason that it's lightning in a bottle is that if you imagine that there's a lot of productivity to be discovered through collaboration. Well, if you decide only to collaborate with people who look like you, how far you're going to get is going to be limited, because some of the best people to collaborate probably don't look like you. So to the extent that you build a system in which people collaborate with whoever else brings the right stuff to the table, you do a lot better. And all of the amazing list of innovations that are American in origin, I believe, is downstream of this very thing that the founders created, an environment in which people collaborated with others. Now, did they tell, you know, racial jokes behind each other's backs? Yeah, they did. They mocked each other and mimicked each other's accents and all of that stuff. But the point is, at the end of the day, there was an awful lot of collaboration that was indifferent to what you look like and who your ancestors were. And once other populations saw how productive that was, they wanted in. So it was a contagious idea. This is why the west is bigger than the United States, is that there's just no argument for behaving in another way. Once you've seen how good this is in good times. But the problem is it only works when you are in a period of growth. And we have been in an amazing period of growth, when the growth runs out, blood is thicker than water. And what happens is we go back to our corners, and that's what's happening now. That's why the west is collapsing. That's why our blindness to where we are is going to result in a massive loss for all of humanity, is that it is not going to allow us to avoid that pitfall. All we're going to go back to doing what we have done. Genocide is going to become more common and more unavoidable. And anybody who sees that connection would do virtually anything to prevent it from happening because it's such a terrible loss to humanity.

[Tommy]

We seem to be doing the exact opposite, though it's very much under attack. Like, even if you widen that definition out and say that part of the way that we collaborate beyond lineage is through specialization, so you're good at a thing. And we're both going to use reason in order to get us where we want to go. So the scientific method you've talked really interestingly about, people need to deal with the physical world. You can't do everything at a social, intellectual level. Go make a car run. Like, you know, nobody has to tell you whether it worked or not. Either the car turned on and it runs or it didn't. And having that kind of very tactile relationship with something either works or it doesn't becomes really, really important. So we are living in a time where that very process of rationality is being hand waved away as somehow white supremacist or whatever, which is crazy town to me. So how do we protect this little ember? So if we're right now stopping people from talking about things, censoring people to death, in fact, one thing I'd love to hear you talk about is Don Lemon and Elon Musk and Elon saying, you want censorship so badly you can taste it. I thought that was a great line and really endemic of something far more than just Don Lemon. I think a lot of people want to moderate and. And make sure that some things just can't be talked about. So anyway, how do we protect that little flame when it is under assault from so many different directions?

[Bret Weinstein]

I mean, it's a great question, and I think it's what we've been getting at for this whole discussion. I may be wrong about how we protect it, but in my opinion, the thing to do is to understand it, to understand what it's doing for us, to understand what the likelihood is of whatever replaces the system exceeding it in this capability, I think the chances are almost nil. If you destroyed this system, what will replace it? It will look a lot like history and it will be a lot worse. Which is not to say that we should ignore any of the glaring defects of our system, but we should at least compare it to something other than phony utopian alternatives that have never been established to be possible. So anyway, I'm trying to do it. I'm trying to explain why we've got it pretty good, why addressing the flaws of our system will always be better than scrapping it in favor of some system that hasn't shown any promise in accomplishing what we've got. And I think also exploring, you know, why history looked the way it did. Right. There is a reason to talk about Hitler. And my term for Hitler is rational monster, right? I don't diminish the horror of what he did, obviously. In fact, I'm more familiar with it than most. But understanding why that would have happened, if you imagine the. The reason I engaged in that exploration when I was a college student was I was afraid that it was just too easy to dismiss him as nuts. If you dismiss Hitler as nuts, well, then there is nothing to be done to prevent the next one, right? You can't prevent radical dysfunction. Somebody's going to be radically dysfunctional. If that's it, it's just, there's nothing to be said. On the other hand, a rational monster can be disincentivized from doing what they do. You can prevent Hitler from emerging by making it irrational to do what he did.

[Tommy]

How do we decide who's an irrational monster?

[Bret Weinstein]

We don't have to. We don't have to. Okay, so this is actually bringing back a bunch of threads. Let's take the case of rape, right? And let's remember that the reason that rape is on the table here as a topic is that it's the, the shallow end of the pool with respect to how knowledge helps us prevent something that we, that all reasonable people agree is, is terrible. A rapist can pass their genes into the future by raping. Civilization can prevent men from doing this, by driving the cost up so high that it's not worth it, that the profit that can be made by doing this is small or negative. But even more importantly, let's just notice that rape is essentially impossible for many men to commit. And the reason is because it's not a Turn on. Right. In order to rape, you have to be turned on by the process. So why is it that so many men are really incapable of it? Is that genetic difference? No, it's a developmental difference. We have the power to make rape disgusting, and if we do rape, make rape disgusting, then it becomes vanishingly rare by virtue of the fact that it's just off the table for most of the people who are physically equipped to do it. That is an important leverage point. We as a society ought to hold values that cause us to raise boys in such a way that rape is disgusting to them by the time they become adults. And that's readily possible. So if you didn't have the discussion, if you said, well, look, I don't want to hear any discussion of why rape happens because you're going to legitimize it, then you never get to the point of realizing, oh, well, actually we have a tool at our disposal. It's not a simple one. It's not. You can't snap your fingers and make it go away, but you can say, well, three generations from now, would we like rape to be a historical consideration and not a modern consideration? Of course you would. Right. The leverage point exists in understanding it. But you have to have the courage to get to the end of the book before you realize that you have that tool at your disposal. Now, the question is, rape is loosely analogous to genocide. Rape is the individual version. Genocide is the lineage level version. Do we have a tool that takes genocide off the table? If we are capable of understanding why the idea keeps reemerging. We said never again after the Holocaust, but how many genocides have we seen since never again didn't work? So if you really believe in never again, then the question is, what tool gets us to never again? And I would argue I don't know what the tool is, but I will tell you the most likely place to find it is with an unflinching investigation of genocides, their causes, and any instances in which they've been averted through wisdom or the altering of incentives or whatever it may be. So why am I going down that road? Is it because there's something perverse about me? Am I fascinated by despicable historical patterns? No, I'm. I'm terrified by them. And that's why I. I really think the route to preventing them comes and understanding them.

[Tommy]

Interesting that we have to. So it. You're spreading the meme through the layer of culture, you're saying we have to bake into culture, that this is just absolutely abhorrent I think what people are going to. Well, people may or may not hear, but as you were saying it, this was the first thing that I thought is that this idea ends up becoming so identified with being disgusting that it trips the disgust filter, which then makes people want you to stop talking about it. And so there's a potential fascinating oscillating loop of people force other people to stop talking about it so much that it becomes so taboo that suddenly it has to be reinforced. It's possible that we're living through a moment like that with certain things, though I would. I'm either old school, but rape is still pretty disgust triggering for me. Does not feel like that needs reinforcing.

[Bret Weinstein]

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

[Tommy]

Yep.

[Bret Weinstein]

I think we're missing something though now, because, I mean, I'm not into porn. I. I think porn is a. A terrible error. I'm not against erotica. It's not that erotic content throws me, but.

[Tommy]

Interesting. You have a line, though. Oh, erotica, fine. Porn bad.

[Bret Weinstein]

Yes, porn apocalyptically bad.

[Tommy]

Can you draw a line?

[Bret Weinstein]

I can. I can't operationalize the line, but I can tell you exactly where the line is.

[Tommy]

Okay.

[Bret Weinstein]

The line is. Was the motivation for the production of the content. Profit.

[Tommy]

Interesting.

[Bret Weinstein]

Okay. You could make great art and get paid for it. In fact, I think you aspire to this.

[Tommy]

Yes.

[Bret Weinstein]

So the fact that you get paid for it, the fact that you did profit, doesn't tell us whether that's what drove you to make it. But if the thing that drove you to make it is profit and it's erotic in nature, that's pornography.

[Tommy]

Interesting.

[Bret Weinstein]

Which isn't to say that every item in porn is so harmful.

[Tommy]

Hold on.

[Bret Weinstein]

Yeah.

[Tommy]

If I make hardcore bondage, super dominant, aggressive, almost rape like porn, but I'm not doing it for money. I just think it's beautiful art. Sincerely.

[Bret Weinstein]

Yep. No, I get it.

[Tommy]

That would be. Okay.

[Bret Weinstein]

Well, it's okay. The line I'm drawing, I. My feeling is a wise person. And unfortunately, young people are never wise. They can be wise beyond their years, but they're not wise because there's no way for them to be that. But for a young person, I would say you draw this line in an absolute fashion. You do not let anything that is likely to be pornography. Right. You maybe you don't know for sure why they made it, but if you think that somebody made that thing for profit, you. You do not let that into your sexual mind. It's terrible for you, and it's terrible for your future partner.

[Tommy]

That seems like a really Weird line to draw with the profit thing. I would. So just as one guy speaking from experience, the loop I would worry about is volume, initial age of contact, given how brains develop, and then the type. So if it were like super vanilla, it's, you know, like wedding night, missionary, like really simple, loving, awkward. I'm less concerned if it's an ever escalating loop of like, freak show that starts at age 11. Now I'm very worried about what they will imbue. But even if that was art from top to bottom, and the person making it was just like, I just want to give to the world, yeah. I'd still be like, don't do it.

[Bret Weinstein]

Well, look, I'm not arguing that everything that would fall under the category of erotica is inherently defensible, just as I believe in free speech. But I don't believe that you should say everything. I believe, you know, you should choose very carefully what to say. And most speech is probably bad, even though you should be entitled to make any argument you want. But let's look at the case. You've drawn a continuum between plain vanilla stuff that's erotic for the most basic human reasons up through super extreme stuff. Here's my point about the profit motive. The profit motive inherently drives you towards the end of the continuum that you instinctively are repelled by. And the reason for that is because all pornographers are selling the same thing, sex. So how do you compete in a world where all of your competitors have the same thing for sale? And the answer is through an escalating battle over extremeness that inevitably eventually goes to taboo. I believe that those taboos, presumably all of them evolved for a reason. Those reasons may not be things that we understand, or in some cases we might understand them, but the idea that you, because you can sell people something because they haven't seen it before, because it's taboo that you should do that, that's insane, right? Those taboos. This is a Chesterton's fence issue. You don't know why something has been off limits, but the fact that the market will drive people to explore it tells you that that motive is suspect. And so, anyway, again, I'm not telling you I know how to operationalize the line between porn for profit and erotica that's made for other reasons. And I'm not telling you that all erotica is good, but I am telling you there's no defense necessary for human beings producing sexual content or gravitating to it. I mean, I do look at marvelous sculptures of naked women, and I Wonder. Is that the porn of the day? Right. And is the fact that I'm looking at such a sculpture in a museum and that I appear to be engaged in an elevated activity rather than a base activity, is that that the distortion of history and the fact that our civilization has grown so crass that we. We miss what's going on? And I don't know the answer to the question, but human beings make erotica. They always have, and there's nothing wrong with it. And I would argue against anybody who said that we shouldn't, because I don't know what role it has played. But pornography for profit is dangerous precisely because it leads in the direction of exploring realms that are bad, most especially violence. This is one of the things that, again, I don't think this is an abstract discussion at all. The. If you want to see rape eliminated, then the one thing we mustn't do is eroticize it, which is what we're doing, because the market can't help but explore that niche. So, I mean, I think this is a great test case. Right. Does it make sense to explore all of these things that people don't want talked about? Well, I don't know. I feel like I just presented. I'm not saying that we will embrace a it, but I feel like I've just presented a map for how, if society decided it was serious about eliminating the scourge of rape, it would go about doing it, not eroticizing. Rape would be a great start, because to the extent that rape is not erotic, it becomes near impossible. And I believe the same thing is true for genocide. It's just a more complicated puzzle. So. And to go back to an earlier point, I don't think anybody out there has a valid argument that says you will not find the solution to those puzzles by understanding them. I think that argument is suspect on its face. I think we. We are likely to find the solutions to these puzzles by understanding the puzzles. And if we don't, the likelihood that we will make them worse, I think is vanishingly small.

[Tommy]

Elon Musk has said multiple times, and I actually think he's right. If you want racism to go away, you have to stop talking about it all the time. That flies in the face of what you're saying right now, which is, we need to talk about it, make it taboo, keep it in a certain box.

[Bret Weinstein]

No, no, no, no. I. I would. I would instantiate the principle that I'm elucidating differently. And in fact, this is why I thought the question of IQ is another good test. Case, what do we find if we actually go down that road? Well, I don't think most people are ready for it, but I think if we did go down that road, what we would find actually it didn't have to be a good answer, but I believe it is a good answer when

[Tommy]

you say it's a good answer. So here's what I imagine happens and I do want to get back to the context we started this in which is is happening to western civilization. But just to take the IQ thing so it doesn't keep coming back up, I think there are two hyper dangerous things that if solidified can create real problems. I Whatever's true is true. I think the truth is an absolute defense. I am not saying people should not look at this. I'm just saying I get why you're not going to find me running to have this conversation. If you find that Jews really do have a higher iq, that's not going to go good. Like people are gonna have a real hard time with that. That, that is going to be weaponized.

[Bret Weinstein]

Yep.

[Tommy]

And if you find that black people have a slightly lower iq, then that is going to be weaponized. And both of those things are horrific and they will. There's no good that comes out of it. Now again, the truth is an absolute defense. Whatever's true is true. But God damn, like those are the landmines, those are that people are trying to avoid. And given that I think ideas really do run the things, they run the cultural currents that there are some ideas I just don't want to spend a lot of time with.

[Bret Weinstein]

I get it. But I think I get it really well because I do think that if the truth were as simple as what you just outlined and the implication were the one that you didn't state but was carried in what you said, that would be a disaster for humanity. And it's possible. I'm not interested in that answer. I'm relieved that I don't believe it's true. But here's the thing that was missing from your description, your hypothetical description of a bad answer that would do harm to humans to explore it. To say that IQs differ between populations is almost certainly true and substantially so true. That is not what most people hear when they hear a claim like that is that that must mean that the genes produce those differences. That's not what it means. And the difference between distinctions in cognitive capacity that are the result of genetic differences between populations and the significant distinctions in cognitive capacity that are the result of things that are developmental is all the Difference in the world. If you knew that there were important distinctions between populations, but that those distinctions were not based in genes, then the answer is, oh, well, can we level everybody up? Is part of the game the reason that people are blinding each other about keeping your competitors in the dark? This is obviously an undercurrent for the cryptic warfare between populations. And so my feeling is, look, I don't believe here's what I think people imagine and here's what I think underlies the hypothetical you put on the table. People look at sport and they think they know what must be going on with the brain, right? Because it seems like it should be analogous. We all understand that the capacity to engage in different sports is not evenly distributed between populations. It's is radically unevenly distributed. And somebody who hasn't thought deeply about this may say, well, seems like there should be every analogy between cognitive capacity and physical capacity. And so I think we know the truth about the differences between races because we've seen it, you know, on the basketball court and the hockey rank and the long jump pit and all of that, that it's a bad analogy. And the reason it's a bad analogy is that there's a very good reason that human populations radically differ in their athletic capability across different sports. There's a very good reason, and it's because they came from different habitats. So you find Ethiopians are absolutely dominant in marathon running. Why? Oh, because Ethiopia is really freaking hot. And the key skill, if you're an Ethiopian at a physiological level is the shedding of excess heat. Right. The ability to build up too much heat is lethal. And so they become lanky and lean. Right. They are shaped in such a way that maximizes their surface area to volume ratio so they can shed heat. It's the exact inverse of what an Inuit has. Why are Inuits round? Well, Inuits are round because it's freaking cold and you want to shed as little heat as possible. So you want to minimize the surface to volume ratio if you're an Inuit. And so why are the Inuits not dominating marathon running? Because they come from the Arctic. So the reason that humans differ across all of these physical capabilities is that different habitats select for different things. You would expect them to differ because is it better to be round or lanky? Well, tell me where we're going to compete and I'll tell you which. Right there is no better. It's all about adaptation to particular habitats. This is not true cognitively. There's no habitat that selects for stupidity. What's more, the Ability for genes to alter your physical structure. Right. The ratio of one bone to another is tremendous. But that's not how the mind forms. There aren't enough genes to build a mind by blueprint. The mind is the result of a very basic process that is set in motion that then is exposed to all of these developmental influences. So here's the bitter pillar of iq. Populations differ in their cognitive capacity as adults. That does not say that those differences came from the genome. Here's another bitter pill. There have to have been in evolutionary history significant differences in cognitive capacity between populations that did come from the genesis. Now, in order for our brains to have gotten as large as they did, those with more capacity had to have out competed those with less capacity. So that did happen. It is possible. But the question that we are left with, the one, the one that we are avoiding because of what we see on the basketball court and because of what we see, you know, on the soccer field, the question that we are avoiding is what would you have to do to democratize the things that make us smarter? My feeling is every population is undershooting the mark substantially. Right. We have not properly studied the question of what developing developmental environment actually makes you smarter. Right. And we are not doing well. I think it could be done much better. And you would find every single population on earth would rise radically if we actually put kids in an environment that brought the best out of their capabilities. But what I don't see is a substantial reason to think that within a species with lots of interbreeding that we have these genetically based cognitive differences that reside in one population and not another. It doesn't make sense that they would. So what was that? Eight minutes? Eight minutes. And what I've said is there is a very strong chance that by avoiding the question of how cognitive capacity is distributed by lineage that you are avoiding the remedy that might make us all radically smarter and neutralize the differences. Do we really want to avoid that question? I think the solution lies down the road of understanding what the distinctions are. And frankly, I think we all believe in the distinctions. Why would anybody fight for better schools if. How. If the quality of your developmental environment didn't have an influence on how smart you ended up?

[Tommy]

I think there's a lot of assumptions in the things that you're saying. I'm not familiar with the literature. I have certainly heard that intelligence is inheritable to a hyper distressing degree. Now across lineages. I have no idea. I think I made my reasons for not even wanting to look at it pretty clear. So I'll leave that alone. But yeah, I think you've explained it perfectly. It unfortunately brings me back full circle to. But the moment we're in now in the west, despite all the incredible things that it has rained upon us, the absolute just embarrassment of riches that it is to be born into the Western democratic world, now people are tearing it apart. I saw a video the other day where that the guy was like, oh, I'm at this march because I want to end America. He was like, all of us do. And I was like, what? So you've got, at the ground level, people are trying to tear the west apart. You've got just absolute weird things happening at the government level, clearly power grabs. You've got censorship going on left, right and center. Given how much ground we've just traversed, can you put a button on? Why blind us? Why are they so worried about what we see and say?

[Bret Weinstein]

Yeah, let me flesh out the concept I started with and then let me.

[Tommy]

As long as the punchline is why they are doing this, I'm here for it.

[Bret Weinstein]

Yeah, well, I mean the problem is who are they and how specific can we be about why they're doing it? But if we put those nuances aside and then I will return to the question of where there might be hope given all of the reasons that you've just outlined for despair. I've come up with a concept called the Time Traveling Money Printer. The Time Traveling Money Printer is based on the idea that we all have been through the thought exercise of what would you do if you had a time machine? Right. Well, if you had a time machine that could go forward in time, you could go figure out what's going to happen and you could come back to the present and place your bets in the market and make tons of money. Right. If you had a time machine that went backwards, you could go back and you could buy Apple and Microsoft and Amazon, make tons of money. So we all get that a time machine is a money maker, but there are no time machines as far as we know. I'm concerned that some rent seeking elites have.

[Tommy]

Rent seeking for those that don't know, because I always have to look this up, is people that manipulate the political system to their personal gain.

[Bret Weinstein]

I would describe it differently. I would say it's people who make a profit through activity that is not productive.

[Tommy]

The dictionary disagrees with you.

[Bret Weinstein]

Oh God. Well, I'd be willing to hash this out in a fight to the death with a dictionary, but. But in any case, let's imagine that we have some folks who have got some unearned power, who wish to have more power and control and don't wish to be upended by competitors who are more clever than they are, or something like that. Well, they don't have a time machine, but what they do have is enough control to render the truth seeking capability of humanity lame. They have the ability to pollute what we are able to deduce and therefore if they can privatize the knowledge of what is coming, it is like they have a time machine. Right. Let's take an example. Strong evidence suggests that, that the COVID pandemic, whatever its nature, was already happening in China in September, October of 2019. And that elites knew this. Did they immediately run to the public and tell us or did they make some phone calls and say, here's what's coming down the pike. Cruise ships are a bad bet. You should short, you know, the cruise ship industry, airlines. I would go big on home deliveries of this, that and the other. So you could just imagine it's as good as a time machine if you privately hold the information about what history is about to do and the public is unaware of it. The opportunity to make money is limitless. So that's a why somebody would have engaged in blinding us. Because the blinder we are, the more powerful their money printer is. And I believe that this happened. And actually there's a tremendous amount of evidence, much of it is laid out in Bobby Kennedy's book on Wuhan, that there were incredibly prescient investments made by Bill Gates and others in companies that you would have no reason to think were about to have a spectacular rise that just so happened to have the, the goods for producing MRNA vaccines that would just so happen to take over the world, this sort of thing. So anyway, I don't know exactly who. We know some of the players. Gates appears to be an important player who seems to know what's going to happen in the future before the rest of us do. And why is obvious because for the same reason that people rob a bank, you know, this is safer and much more lucrative to place bets in the world based on private information. It's a good gig. And so anyway, that's what I think is happening. We're being systematically blinded because there are some people who are sophisticated in their own diabolical way who think, well, why the hell would I share useful information about reality if I could use it to my own advantage instead?

[Tommy]

What do you think about somebody like Don Lemon who really does seem to want to censor? He's not I really don't think he's doing it because he's going to make some pressure bets and he wants to keep everybody dumb. I think he represents the person who's like, yeah, you've tripped a moral thing in him that probably plays out something like, somebody needs to be the adult in the room. The thing that he kept saying in the interview with Elon Musk was, you, you need to moderate this hate speech. Like, hate speech has gone up. What are you doing? You need to take this stuff off your platform. And no matter how many times Elon said, if it doesn't violate the law or our policies, we don't take it down, we just don't promote it. And he just kept going, you need to moderate this stuff.

[Bret Weinstein]

Stuff.

[Tommy]

What do you think about that? Is. Is moderation propaganda for censorship, as Elon says, or is it the flagrant embrace of hate speech that Don Lemon sees it as?

[Bret Weinstein]

Well, I know very little about Don Lemon, except that the six times he has risen to my awareness, he's been impressively foolish. So I don't know what that is. I don't know that he's organic or not organic. I don't know. I don't know what. What his role in the universe is. But let's put it this way. You've got a vacuum of comprehension based on the sabotage of our educational institutions. So people are dumber.

[Tommy]

Intentional sabotage?

[Bret Weinstein]

I don't know. I assume the same. Think about it this way. An institution that makes other people's kids smarter would be viewed hostilely by ruthless players who wished to take every advantage they have and parlay it into wealth and power. So I don't think it's an accident that our universities are completely incapable of figuring out whether two plus two equals four or whether men can become women. That confusion is serving somebody. At what level was this? A bunch of industries that decided that they needed to disrupt the discovery of inconvenient things? Was it more systematic than that? I can't say. I think there probably is a certain amount of systematic sabotage, but I. How would I know? But in any case, in a world where you just don't have those truth seeking mechanisms, they don't work. In fact, they are more likely to spit out the inverse of the truth than truth itself. There's an awful lot of room for various bad thought processes to take over. And one of the things that you should absolutely expect is that where our forefathers have discovered a counterintuitive truth, it's going to get uninvented. Free Speech, it's not obvious. Most speech is probably pointless. And of the speech that has an impact, a huge fraction of it is just bad. So of course, somebody with a childlike view of the universe would think, well, why don't we just get rid of the bad speech? And certainly there are some things that are so obviously bad speech. Let's just start with that. That. Right. But as soon as you get there, you realize, oh, somebody's going to have to draw a line, and they're going to come up with all kinds of utilitarian reasons that they have to draw the line farther and farther and farther. And so the point is, no, actually, you can't do any of that. Don't do any of that, because if you step on that slippery slope, it's a disaster. So it's counterintuitive. Likewise, the standard and burden of proof in a court is also counterintuitive. Most of the people that we charge with a crime are probably guilty. So why would we force the state to prove that beyond a reasonable doubt? Why wouldn't we just say, well, if the evidence suggests that the person committed the crime, they probably did. And, you know, how often is that going to go wrong? No, founders, they had a counterintuitive understanding, which is the power of the state is too ferocious, and that you have to hobble the state in order to give a person a fighting chance. Because even if on the average day, a person where the evidence points to their having committed the crime probably did, if anything, causes the government to take a dim view of political competitors or whatever, the government needs to be hobbled in its capacity to rob you of your freedoms. Right? That's counterintuitive. So anyway, my point would be we have lost sight of all of the things that we used to understand. Right? There are men and there are women. We used to understand that. Now it's. That's some crazy battle, right? Two plus two equals four. Yep. The symbols are arbitrary, but the concept is not the least bit arbitrary. It doesn't need discussion. Right. But it's now up for discussion. You know, is pedophilia bad? Yeah, we used to know that pedophilia was really bad. And there was no reason to, you know, play devil's advocate over this. And yet suddenly this topic is back on the table. So we are losing sight of all the things that we understood, all of the bedrock that civilization is built on. That's in part because the vacuum of understanding and the sabotage of education is opening the door to us just simply dusting off concepts that we had gotten past. But. But the other thing is, when somebody is advocating for censorship, what probably happened is they find themselves in a temporarily advantaged position, and they would like somebody to hard code the biases that favor them in the moment so that they continue to. And they don't understand that they are very likely to end up on the wrong end of those very same principles. And therefore, the wise position is, no, we don't do that. We don't do that. It means you're gonna have to tolerate some bad speech.