Today we have Bret Weinstein on the podcast. Bret has spent two decades advancing the field of evolutionary biology, earning his Ph.D. at the University of Michigan before teaching at the Evergreen State College for fourteen years. He has developed a new Darwinian framework based on design tradeoffs and made important discoveries regarding the evolution of cancer, senescence, and the adaptive significance of moral self-sacrifice. He is currently working to uncover the evolutionary meaning of large-scale patterns in human history and seeking a game theoretically stable path forward for humanity. With his wife Heather Heying, he is co-writing A Hunter Gatherer’s Guide to the Twenty-First Century and is the host of Bret Weinstein’s Dark Horse Podcast.
Time Stamps
[00:00:00] Introducing Bret Weinstein
[00:00:43] The meaning of “evolutionary theoretical biology”
[00:01:37] Critiques of evolutionary psychology
[00:03:08] Critiques of epigenetics
[00:03:59] The unfortunate competition between theory and empiricism in academia
[00:05:19] Protests against Bret at Evergreen State College
[00:07:35] The role of fear in collective protests
[00:08:47] Sources of racial tensions in the US: deindividuation on the left & a lack of interracial compassion on the right
[00:12:37] Defining the deindividuation problem
[00:15:08] Unity2020and the fight to return policymaking to the average American
[00:17:15] The meaning of "wokeness": then and now
[00:21:51] Encouraging Black Lives Matter (BLM) supporters to join Unity2020
[00:27:33] Considering Andrew Yang as a center-left candidate for Unity2020
[00:28:45] Considering Admiral William McRaven as a center-right candidate for Unity 2020
[00:29:53] Influencing Trump supporters to join Unity2020
[00:32:07] Analogies between religion and political polarization
[00:35:04] "Dichotomy-transcendence"
[00:43:25] Scott’s Twitter run in with the Intellectual Dark Web
[00:45:13] Defining principles of the Intellectual Dark Web
[00:50:26] Possible criticisms of the Intellectual Dark Web
[00:55:05] Bret’s experience growing up with a learning disability
[01:00:57] Assessing IQ as a measure of intelligence
[01:02:07] The danger of studying the correlations between genetics and intelligence
[01:07:00] How we are a long way from understanding how the mind works
[01:12:10] Answering Twitter questions for Bret
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