Ericisms

Eric often uses terms or turns-of-phrase that some people may not immediately understand. This page is a reference source for those only. This should not be confused with more general topic areas that may at first cause confusion such as the DISC, EGOs, Load-Bearing Fictions, etc.

See also:

• A Modern Contradictionary: New Words for our New World – a Twitter Moment by Eric with a vocabulary adapted to our changing world.
• Eric Weinstein Quotes

Adaptive Landscape

• Sewall Wright's theory of adaptive landscapes of fitness

Adaptive Valley

• Sewall Wright's theory of adaptive landscapes of fitness

Anthropic Capitalism

Anthropic Capitalism & the New Gimmick Economy

The Big 5 Personality Traits

Eric has referred to the Big 5 Personality Traits as a person's hedonic composition.

The Cosmic Spelling Bee

Bret Weinstein's term for the existential position humanity faces.

Don't screw yourself out of magic

• https://nilesjohnson.net/seven-manifolds.html
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Milnor

Don't wait for the bread to rise

"We Jews have a tradition that I wish everybody had, which is that we read one stupid story every God damn year, just to drill it into your head to make sure it's always fresh. And this is: when it's time to leave, when it's time to change, don't wait for the bread to rise. This is what I say to every Jewish person, like, you're sitting around waiting for the bread to rise, because they all know the story, which is you eat the goddamn matzah because the people who waited for the bread to rise are no longer with us; their descendants are no longer with us. And it is time to revolt. ~ Eric on JRE #1453 @ 36 min

The Educational Complex

A system of selective political, economic, and memetic pressures resulting in a cult of the teaching profession which prioritizes the careerist desires of the educators over the learning needs of the students.

Efficient Frontier

The efficient frontier is the blending of all possible components into portfolios with the highest possible return and the lowest possible volatility.

References:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient_frontier

Escher's Hands Drawing Hands

Eric uses this drawing as a metaphor when beginning his discussion of our Source Code.

Wiki's article will hopefully be growing with this community's influence.

Game B

Humankind has lived in Game A since we have escaped the Dunbar limit. Humankind has never seen or fully imagined Game B. People like Daniel Schmachtenberger, Jamie Wheal, and Jordan Hall speak about this process of dialogue and its risks on Rebel Wisdom. A fundamental shift from adversarial processing to opponent processing.

Gene Drive

A genetic engineering technology that propagates a particular suite of genes throughout a population by altering that a specific allele will be transmitted to offspring from the natural 50% probability.

High Agency

When you’re told that something is impossible, is that the end of the conversation, or does that start a second dialogue in your mind, how to get around whoever it is that’s just told you that you can’t do something? So how am I gonna get past this bouncer who told me that I can’t come into this nightclub? How am I going to start a business when my credit is terrible and I have no experience? You’re constantly looking for what is possible in a kind of MacGyverish sort of a way. And that’s your approach to the world.

- (https://tim.blog/2016/01/13/eric-weinstein/)

Irrationality

Irrationality is a feature, not a bug. It gives us the ability to Camp and decamp.

It's a beautiful thing

This originates from New York City.

Meaning: You can extract money from people who have no say in the matter.

Knarc

Knark is Swedish for very hard recreational drugs, but it's also "crank" spelled backwards with a slightly different spelling.

[1]

Long-Form Podcasting

Led by Joe Rogan, long form podcasting is where thoughts are exchanged at length among individuals in conversation. A threat to mainstream, legacy media, those who work in and around this space are often smeared.

Source

The Looting Party

Episode 27, 1:46:00:

when Bill Clinton decided that he couldn't take yet another loss to the Republican party, he was going to start experimenting with republicanism inside of the democratic party. By that point, we had two parties that more or less were two flavors of the same thing. I refer to that collective as the looting party.

Meaning

"The meaning of my life is the progressing struggle to impart meaning to meaning." [2]

New Gimmick Economy

Anthropic Capitalism & the New Gimmick Economy

New Orchards

Often people discuss the availability of "low-hanging fruit" when discussing growth and innovation. Instead of arguing over the existence of low-hanging fruit in the current paradigm, consider finding New Orchards.

Oral Torah

The Oral Torah is the set of traditional laws which are associated written texts... but not written.

Preference Falsification

Timur Kuran's theory brought forth in his book Private Truths, Public Lies.

Eric contests that the theory of Preference Falsification is Intellectual Kryptonite. "Because your theory can be accommodated within the standard theory... the problem is that it is a ready made upgrade to the existing theory in which nothing is lost but new degrees of freedom are gained; and that could have an absolutely unpredictable effect on the entire field because it is at the level of the substrate." #4 Prof. Timur Kuran @ 1:07:03

Rent-seeking Elites

References:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking
• https://twitter.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1233245397142794240?s=20
• https://twitter.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1236164753375940609?s=20
• https://twitter.com/EricRWeinstein/status/4358723892?s=20
• https://twitter.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1179425234312683520?s=20
• https://twitter.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1179425234312683520?s=20
• https://twitter.com/EricRWeinstein/status/947648146443714560?s=20
• https://twitter.com/EricRWeinstein/status/786770327225245696?s=20
• https://twitter.com/EricRWeinstein/status/799678548176834560?s=20
• https://twitter.com/EricRWeinstein/status/796376216294961152?s=20
• https://twitter.com/EricRWeinstein/status/775737838964924417?s=20
• https://twitter.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1177353828934377473?s=20
• https://twitter.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1096131757538066433?s=20
• https://twitter.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1096130594742755328?s=20

Responsible Conspiracy Theorizing

Mentioned in ep25

Rough Space

"Rough Space, n: A place to think, joke & observe that is neither safe nor tolerant of abuse."

We now need rough spaces to replace safe ones.

Seberging

"When [the] sport of personal reputational destruction is coordinated by members of the complex formed by institutional media, the intelligence community, the political parties, political consultants, finance, tech and the academy"

Source

Section A of the Reserve Index

Yes, our government developed a plan for rounding up people who could contradict the GIN. There‘s a plan for a coming total collapse of confidence in our system.

[Source]

Semi-reliable Communal Sense-making

There has been a breakdown in the Semi-reliable Communal Sense-making. Traditionally we used institutions to guide our collective sense-making, but this is no longer the case in the media landscape – so sense-making is no longer close to fully communal. Walter Cronkite was not always telling the truth, but what he said was a close approximation of the national consciousness and shared belief structure as a complex for the country to function upon, but this does not exist in the current media landscape – so it is no longer semi-reliable.

References:

• https://youtu.be/URS81okN0Mc?t=927

Skadoosh

• The Wuxi Finger Hold
• Eric discusses Kung Fu Panda on Quora

Sharp Minds vs. Sharp Elbows

References:

• 2:16:21 in Podcast Episode 41

Speaking Fee

"Speaking Fee, n: 1) Asynchronous Baksheesh received once a politician has left office. 2) (Archaic) A modest honorarium for giving a speech."

Split Level Argument

Related to the "Motte-and-Bailey Doctrine".

Steady Hands

This originates from Washington D.C.

"He has steady hands." You can count on him to do the wrong thing during an emergency to keep everyone on the inside okay Everyone on the inside is super dependent to burn all of their credibility in public

Steel-manning

The steel man argument (or steelmanning) is the exact opposite of the straw man argument. The idea is to find the best form of the opponent's argument to test opposing opinions.

Steelmanning

The Twin Nuclei Problem

• https://twitter.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1117085693883273218

There is no secret ingredient

This is a line from Eric's favorite movie, Kung Fu Panda.