This is a conversation with Eric Weinstein where we talk about how to make sense of the conversation around, vaccines around Ivermectin and yes, also around the ongoing controversy surrounding his brother Bret, Weinstein's podcast, the Dark Horse,
what's going on with Brett? What's going on with Ivermectin? The Joe Rogan podcast, all of this stuff is Downstream of a total.
It vacuum.
We have careerists, we have peacetime careerists where we need wartime, generals, what Brett is doing concerns me because it should concern everyone as it concerns Brett, but we're focusing on scapegoating, an individual is trying to make sense of this, when no one expects Pelosi Trump, Biden McConnell or fat.
G to recuse themselves to step down to admit responsibility. And in that world, there are no good
options. I got in touch with Eric after hearing that he had had a discussion on clubhouse With Yuri, Dagan the lab leak researcher and former guests of Brett's who co-authored a quintet article that was heavily, critical Eric and Brett's friend, Sam Harris. Also brought out a recent podcast that was critical of the dark horse's content.
Well, I
I think Sam kept his sword mostly in its sheath. I think that Sam is a Sam and I both maintain different versions of a principal. I'm more radical
I believe that there is a lot of residual wisdom in a corrupt system.
I believe that our institutions.
Are degrading, they are greatly degraded. I cannot stand the leadership class, but I believe that all of those things like,
All the things that are in place in a hospital to make sure they don't cut off the wrong leg. If you're having an amputation or something these things,
Are part of the wisdom, they were put there in part by people who are now dead where nobody remembers why they're there. So I think Sam has an instinctual feeling that the system
works. Now, obviously there's the personal Dimension here but we shouldn't get distracted by the soap opera. These are hugely significant topics of importance to everybody. And most importantly for me, and for Rebel wisdom, the question we've been wrestling with for years. How can we make sense of the world and find truth, when many of our
Institutions are struggling and how can we weed out the good ideas from the bad in the alternative media landscape?
Keep in mind that you're listening to somebody who's very worried about protecting The credibility of the heterodoxy. And we're going to have to confront the fact that our audiences want us to do things that are not safe, not good. Because of the fact that they want to shelling point, which either says the man is right, or the man is trying to stick it to us and neither of these, shelling points is viable,
Congratulations. You've entered, you've entered the Wilderness of modernity and David, you know, my personal opinion is you've been trying to balance this from the beginning of my relationship with you. And it's one of the reasons that this is the first podcast that I'm talking about this on because I know that you've been seeing this coming for quite some time. And now, we have the pandemic to show that both you and I have been right to be concerned about this the whole time.
So I hope you find this conversation useful. Eric, thank you for joining me.
David, thanks for having me,
we've talked about the information landscape before and I think it feels quite necessary to talk about this now because I mean we put out a few films recently about vaccines Ivermectin. Obviously a lot of this is a little bit close to home because of the focus on Brett's podcast at the moment. And but I think it flags up a lot of more interesting topics and deeper topics and one that I'm particularly concerned about personal.
A weaving. I've interviewed you before. We put out a film glitch in The Matrix to about your philosophy. We've talked to Brett quite a lot and I really value your analysis of culture and Analysis of the information landscape. But I'm also concerned from something that I see, particularly with Rebel wisdom and with the comment thread, and this sort of sense that in this wider heterodox space. There are people who are attracted to a lot of the arguments because they are
First principles thinkers, they're looking at things from kind of a heterodox perspective, but I also see a kind of reactive contrarian ISM as well, which for me is just falling over onto the other side of this divide. We can talk about the perverse incentives on the mainstream. But for me, there's a lot of perverse incentives on the other side as well. So I'd be interested in your take on that and whether you share some of those same concerns? Well
absolutely. I mean, I think I very often call it reflexive. Contrarian ISM. Where the idea is that you're bad cop.
Aryan attempts to put a minus sign in front of whatever it was. That was said by the mainstream and hopes that that's right, because the mainstream is always wrong. That doesn't work for, I mean, Myriad reasons, but in particular one thing is it means you're under the control of the mainstream because you're reflexively simply negating them at all times. And very often the most actually heterodox and difficult.
Thing for somebody, who's in that space is to say, I actually think the mainstream is correct about something. They may have gotten their through means that I don't approve of but I think that first principles thinking is very tough and one of the reasons I think we often claim that we want people to be critical thinkers. But then in practice that's honored in the breach is that very few people have the discipline. And that's why we've talked I think
About camping in decamping. About maintaining the dialectic with in the South and in practice this appears to be more than most people can handle.
And so I think that one of the reasons you're looking to heterodox thinkers as a population is that you're hoping to find somebody who doesn't lose their footing and that's very tough almost everyone loses his or her footing at some point on these topics and one, it's one of the pressures on the heterodox thinker are unbelievable. If you're going to be in public and you're going to try to get it, right? And you're going to try to
Maintain friendships, not stab people in the back. Also try to be critical but very often sometimes, you don't, you know, I think one of the great dangers on our side of the fence is that we want to show that we are the actually public-spirited people when we have private interests, we have loyalties, we have things that we'd prefer not to say that. We think we should be allowed, not to say, it's one of the reasons. If you look at my my feed you'll find the word institutional is used probably more.
More than by anyone else on Twitter. And the reason for that is I think that the ethics of individuals taking on institutions, are very sweet. The institution is not going to get harmed. The institution may be diminished, or may have, you know, fewer fewer benefactors. Let's say, but then institution isn't going to take its own life. It's not going to you know have an alcoholism problem. I think that individual on individual.
Institution against individual are, these are much more fraught. Now, I think in this one of the problems is some of these accounts have gotten quite large. And the question is, are they under any form of control at all? Are there any pressures when we hear don't platform that person, many of us have a reflexive feeling of all platform. Whoever the hell I want, I don't even think platform is a verb.
What is doing the gatekeeping? What is doing the quality control and David I want to just sing your Praises slightly. You and Barry Weiss were two of the earliest people who were really looking at this question about our is the head are the heterodox taking up the full Suite of responsibilities for the system that they seek to critique and displace. And one of those things is well once you get enough power, are you using it for
Possibly, and I think you've been on that from the beginning, I've recognized that, but I think that coming from the world of broadcast journalism, you are quite early to realize how important that was as we see these accounts get
large. Yeah and I guess the, the interesting thing from my perspective is what I've described as The Uncanny Valley between the mainstream in the alternative the mainstream. We see the incentive structures there and often it.
I'd say it's an existential project to be able to weed out the heterodox good ideas where the novelty is and from the, the incorrect. Like, that's an existential project and we don't trust the big Tech platforms to do it. My concern is that we I think we've been very critical of the incentive structures perverse incentives on the mainstream side. Whereas it seems clear to me that there's a lot of perverse incentives on the other side. We can talk about audience capture, we can talk about the way that these platforms kind of warp the world around us, and
This kind of being able to see or exploit our own biases and this sort of feels like yeah, and I get increasingly concerned that with. Do you think that it's that you might have had too much of a focus, only on the, on the, on the fault to the mainstream and not enough of the The Faults of the
alternative?
Appreciate that. Just as I've sung your Praises about being early, give me at least that I may have introduced the concept of audience capture because I've been worrying about the same thing from the beginning. You know, I think I've counseled many people that you have to put poisonous tweets for the people who follow you, who you wish would not follow you. You know, you have to make sure in some sense that they understand that you're not there to flatter them. I mean, you'll notice for example, David that I have
I've been trying to avoid any kind of a patreon enormous costs to myself. Do have a patreon like thing where people can contribute to
you. Yes, we've got a, we've got a membership model, I don't
In fact, I read ads. I've read ads from the beginning. I've just noticed, for example, that my brother and Heather have started reading ads. And my point has been, I would rather be dependent on carefully. Cultivated commercial relationships, then have a bunch of my audience because your audience will always say things like that's it. I'm unfollowing you, you've gone over the line, you know, including where they misinterpret you, and it's important to have a certain amount of antagonism at a healthy level.
Not at a psychotic level with one's own audience, you know. I think that I frequently say it on air which is my I expect my audience to work their ass off.
And I'm not going to preach you everything. Why? Because I don't want the audience that needs everything pre-chewed. I don't want the audience that says, oh well, Eric said it. So we can stop thinking and one of the reasons why I think I've got a very, very large audience, but it's not Millions about maybe it is millions on something like Clubhouse, you know? But again, there's an active attempt to discourage, the people who will capture it and
Almost everyone who has numbers because I will move to a sponsorship model where people can contribute, but I'm sad about it.
I'm being forced to, to do it for reasons that I don't want to get into, but I've tried for the longest, I mean, I've look, I've taken my own podcast off the air at times because I don't want to be removed by the tech companies. I don't want to be in meshed, in certain battles. You'll notice that I almost always wear a jacket because I am the establishment in Waiting, not, you know, the sort of rebels living in the trees.
Enjoying terrorism calling a freedom fighting. Yet it requires an incredible amount of discipline to do this and most of us, myself included aren't equal to it all the time. So audience captures been a huge concern, but give me my do that, I've been worried about how do we take on the responsibilities of the thing with that word replacement? You're really asking a good question. My opinion. What is it that they had a ra Doc's have to do to avoid?
Do the same sorts of problems that corrupt the mainstream. Once these things become viable businesses
How do you avoid being captured by your own incentive structure? You make money from this, you one of the reasons you are having me on is that you know, that this will generate interest and you will make money from this.
True.
One of the reasons, I
guess just admit to it. Okay. One of the reasons I'm on is that I want to make sure that I have a trusted person. I can talk to so that I can. I've been incredibly silent on this Ivermectin.
I'm trusting you because I know you
and I'm not happy about the way this Ivermectin thing is playing out.
But do we need Brett Weinstein in the world? Hell, yes, we need. Brett Weinstein in the world. Am I worried about the incentives on Jordan Pederson? Sam Harris, Ben Shapiro myself. You Barry Weiss? Absolutely. Now, my personal stupidity is that, I've lost a tremendous amount of income trying to avoid certain problems so that I can continue to be a voice. And you can, you can say the selfishly, which is that I'd like to invest in my long term.
Ability by getting things, right? I know that if I watched a 20% hit in my bottom line, it would affect me.
So sometimes I take that to zero so I can't be hit so I continue to do sense-making. Do I think that's a good State of Affairs. Now it's lousy. I questioned myself every day. Am I an idiot for having given up this much income not even putting my hat out.
I don't know, I don't know how to do it, but I do know that. The following thing is, is that we are in an existential dance, and that those of us who need to be in leadership, positions have to show some amount of ability to forgo wealth.
I mean I think I think we need well I personally think that the best thing for me would be fuck you money.
I would like to be immunized from the market through, fuck you money rather than immunized from the market through stoicism. However,
we all have to figure this out for
ourselves. Yes. And I think we share a strong interest in that and a concern and a sense of responsibility on on that as well. I'd like to turn to the reason that we're having this conversation now is because of the controversy, that's erupting, like, around the Dark Horse podcast around your brother's podcast. And I, and this for me,
Brings into like clear and obvious contrast the need for a for a system for a foreigner, for a to be able to kind of assess the true and the false. And what I'm concerned is that we're seeing effectively silos of information and people not dialoguing in a healthy way to come to truth together. What is your sense of what's going on at the moment?
Around this.
Well, let's say a few, let's let's do a little bit of table manners and set the table. First of all, is I would be within my rights to recuse myself completely, because we're talking about my brother. I love my brother. I'm incredibly supportive of my brother. There is undoubtedly bias in my mind, coming from my relationship with my brother. And anyone who says, well,
That guy is Warped and he's, you know, who's he fooling, they never listen to this, but that was stated at the beginning of whatever it is, I'm about to say and I don't know what I'm about to say, but yeah, you can't ask me. Can you objectively? Tell us what you think about, Brett, Weinstein. And the penchant for telling people that tribal behavior is wrong, is something that I've railed against numerous times. So if I
Have private information. If I they're all sorts of I'm going to try not to lie. I'm going to try to not distort but recognize that my my obligations to your audience and giving them the fullest most complete picture are non-existent and they should grow up and expect that you're talking to the brother of a person at the center of the story. All right. My feeling about this is that medicine is a very funny area.
It, it's not a purely academic Pursuit. It's a life and death issue.
And it's a business issue. It's an issue of culture, it's an issue of corruption, it's an issue where there's corruption to get around the corruption. So that, you know, you file a form that you shouldn't in order to get around a barrier, that shouldn't be there. It takes place in a human context which I find. I'm very happy to avoid.
Because everyone gets diminished who has to play Within that system and somebody has to be there. We need doctors, we need public health professionals. But because of the number of
Ways in which the truth has to be bent and people's ethics. Have to be flexible and you groups have to come to consensus. I find that it's corrosive of the mind in general to play in this sphere.
I know that, for example, the scuttlebutt around certain Physicians is that guy's a quack that guy's an ax to grind. This requirement is a bad requirement, that was pushed through by lobbying by you know, medical companies like Pharma big Pharma, whatever in that context, we don't have a lot of good options and I think if I had one of the major themes that I'd like to communicate to your audience, is that all of the
Great options and handling handling, a pandemic.
Have been foreclosed by our leadership.
I think there is no concept of leadership at all. I don't think in the era in which we live. We have seen someone behave as a leader if I were Anthony fauci. For example, and I really cared about the saving the maximum number of lives. He would say, for for better or worse, I am associated with so many negatives that I believe that my presence here is in fact, detrimental to our objectives. And I wasn't going to allow a younger person without the baggage.
To inhabit this role and let them come to their own findings and we located a 37-year old up-and-coming lady at in Texas who I think is the right person for the job, something like that. I'll never do it again. See Pelosi will not recuse herself as say that I was the one who's, you know, encourage people to go to Chinatown celebrations at the beginning of the pandemic, nor Eric Garcetti about running the LA Marathon, all of the people in place, do not display the
After Mystics of a leader.
Big Pharma for example, has an amazing opportunity in the US, there was something called, I think the prep act which immunizes them from the liability of something going wrong. Now I'm not an expert in law and I'm not an expert in medicine so I don't really want to get into this. But if big Pharma would step out from the shadows and say we only need protection from frivolous lawsuits. We do not. If these vaccines were to go wrong we want to be on the hook. We are so confident of the long-term safety.
Not just the short-term safety of the vaccines that we were, we are choosing voluntarily to forgo the protection because lives are at stake. There is something about a war footing where we are 75 years out. Let's say, from World War Two.
We have not seen anyone on a wharf. We haven't seen anyone with the presence of Mind of a Neville, Chamberlain to step down because the good of the country is at stake. And so there's no concept of how we would actually deal with a pandemic in the modern era. What's going on with Brett? What's going on with Ivermectin? The Joe Rogan podcast with all of this stuff is Downstream of a total leadership vacuum.
I know what to do to build leadership. I know what I would do if I were a member of The Establishment, in terms of sitting in a seat at an institution,
We have careerists, we have peacetime careerists where we need wartime, generals.
And I know what to do as a wartime, General. I don't know what to do with peacetime careerists in a Wharf in a war footing.
Now, everything is Downstream from that, like blaming Bret Weinstein.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You told people not to wear masks.
Because they don't work. Or in fact, they retain germs. So you can get sick from your mask. So don't wear masks but make sure that the health professionals fair. I mean,
That's such an affront to the mind that and you're still sitting in your position. You're still lying to the public. I don't think we understand that. The era of pre-internet Public Health is permanently over for the rest of our lives. You cannot come up with cute little rhyme schemes or you know, my personal favorite is there's a tradition of Storytelling in public health where you try to get celebrities to do things because
They have the, the sort of the clout with the public and to have Ariana dancing to Ariana Grande dancing to this number. No, lockdowns anymore, we can have air kisses and bottomless mimosas know. Science is science and public health has to change for the modern era and what Brett is doing concerns me because it should concern everyone as it concerns Brett.
but,
We're focusing on scapegoating, an individual is trying to make sense of this, when no one expects Pelosi Trump, Biden McConnell, or fauci.
To recuse themselves to step down to admit responsibility. And in that world, there are no good options. I'm happy to pick through for the rest of our time. Together discussion about the options that are available to us, after all of the good ones have been foreclosed. But I want to be, I want to put a pin in this. The most important thing is, there were plenty of things that we could do with honorable people that we cannot do with current leadership. If leadership was understood, we
Have options in the absence of leadership, which is where we are.
You have people who belong in chairs that would allow them to be more measured, more careful to command. More resources, sitting in podcasting, Studios waiting for octogenarians to leave the stage.
and waiting for a post corporate era and
Let's now get into what you wanted to get into, but that's the most important note that your audience needs to hear leadership is possible. It is not possible with this generation of people who are anti leaders. We are talking about an epidemic of anti leadership with the people sitting in chairs of
leadership. You mentioned that bread is concerned. I'm concerned your concern, because of the, the immense gravity of some of these claims and some of the
Turns my focus more than anything is on what a healthy truth seeking mechanism might look like around this. And what I'm saying at the moment is not a truth is not a healthy truth seeking
mechanism, but it's not just about truth. So you do sense-making includes defeating prisoners dilemmas. And one of the things is that public health in war
Are probably the two best examples of a society needing to be something more than a collection of individuals pursuing their own freedom.
A society that can defeat prisoners, dilemmas that has a culture for defeating prisoners, dilemmas out-compete society, that cannot defeat a prisoner's dilemma, all things being equal. The problem of the epidemic of 75 years of peace with very little to equal the Spanish Flu World War 1 or World War II in the developed world.
This is that there is no culture of defeating a prisoner's dilemma, when you have to. Now, I don't know what covid is part of me. Still thinks covid is a really, really serious disease. That has killed and killed and killed. Another part of me thinks covid is an overblown Panic that is being used by various people and I believe both of those statements are true. I don't think Anthony fauci is somebody who thinks that he owes the public the truth in general. I think
Is somebody who believes that he was entitled to tell us not to wear masks to cover up for the failure to replace personal protective equipment. When the government was not heating. The literature, which is quite explicit that in any changing correlative environment, you need surge capacity. Surge capacity means that the trickle of need for something like personal. Protective equipment is not useful as a basis for predicting pandemic.
Need, so that wasn't replaced. And so Anthony fauci, believe that he was entitled to distort the truth, to try to get people, not to buy masks because medical people needed them more. Now, what I said to you at the beginning is there's a point one of the reasons you guys maintain a queen is that the queen may need to once or twice in a century.
Address the public and say something like time to pull together people. Right. Keep calm and carry on. We need you not to buy this up because there are people who need it more. This is a restriction on your Liberty were well aware of it. We wouldn't be asking if it wasn't critically important to us as a society and you looking directly into the camera and you level with people, we screwed up, we got a problem. We need your help.
Anthony fauci is attitude is, well, I'm going to tell people that they don't need to wear masks, because masks don't work, that's why Anthony fauci is a peacetime careerist, who needs to be in another. He needs to be enjoying his retirement, he can't be in a position of leadership. So yeah, we're they don't believe in Truth, David. In fact, Public Health in general. Doesn't believe in truth, Public Health believes that you have truthful conversations at an esoteric level and then you decide on a different exoteric strategy. Because the public doesn't
No Transfer RNA from messenger RNA. They don't understand, you know, viral replication, they wouldn't know T4 bacteriophage from coronavirus, that kind of contempt for public intellect. May be warranted, who knows? I don't know. But I can tell you that the Public Health Community does not believe that truth is their primary goal. Their primary goal is getting what they believe to be efficacious.
This public outcomes through messaging storytelling simplification and in fact, coercion in the form of like, Cass, sunstein and nudge, and trying to effectively modify people's behavior. Who they don't think are capable of having a conversation at the level of virology or epidemiology.
Can you sign more about the Ivermectin thing that you're not happy with? What are you not happy with about it?
I don't like the way the bed is structured.
I think Ivermectin is interesting.
I think that the so I'm vaccinated.
And I don't think I knew about Ivermectin before. I got vaccinated.
But I don't trust Johnson & Johnson who I chose to be my vax Mayan vaccine provider. I trusted the older technology of not using mRNA.
Not because I think that mRNA technology won't work in the long run. I think it will replace the technology, I chose but it was new and fresh and new fresh things often have unforeseen consequences. So my feeling is that I chose an inferior technology because it was too new. I chose to get a vaccine from a company. I don't trust
I chose to follow the recommendations of people inside of the mainstream, who I despise
I don't think the average person can do such a thing.
I think the cognitive dissonance of saying, I don't trust you, I know you're lying. I know you're perversely incentivized. I know that this is running risks. I know that you're claiming that it's safer than the thing that I took.
I still think it was the right thing to do.
It's not a shelling point where people can collect, they tend to collect either at for god, sakes those people who don't listen or quacks, listen to the recommendation, people to CDC and the Surgeon General or singing from the same Hymnal, there's that shelling point. And there's the shelling Point, man. You can't trust these guys because they're, they're in bed with each other and they're corrupt.
Okay. These are the reflexive positions that you talk to about the reflexive contrarian position. The reflexive sort of establishment position, waking up every day and trying to do your own. Sense-making is exhausting and it's not viable for the world. We need institutions to do this people claim. You know, I was just talking to Sam Harris two nights ago, he said, well, your auntie institutions, like, no, I'm Auntie the group of people who inhabits the institutions. Why do you think I'm wearing a jacket and sweltering Heat?
I am the institution class. I'm just in Exile. It's like
Hating Vichy France is not the same thing as hitting France. I love France, so I hate Vichy France. If this is too confusing for people, people need simpler stories and we need a shelling point where people can collect. That make sense. There is none available and that's the key issue. Now with Ivermectin, my feeling about it is
there's not enough data.
The data that's there may have its own problems. The studies may be too small. Come under question, don't know. I don't understand the pathways of tried to understand the pathways that are claimed. I'm not in this field, so you wouldn't expect that. I would just have an easy time walking in and understanding it.
I
personally, the way I read the whole thing is I think the vaccines are riskier than their claimed. I think that vaccines in general are riskier than ours, claimed by their proponents. I think that the claim that vaccines are safe is the vaccines are. Safe, is the three-line thing that you do. When you when you really trying to say something like vaccines aren't perfectly safe. They do have negative side effects may be, they have far more than we've ever thought, but that on balance.
Science vaccines for a population or safe and we have to spread the risk. So you're taking a risk and we expect you to do it just the way we expect you to Beacon, scribed into an army when there's a war. So I'm very comfortable.
But we don't have a culture of adult communication to the public, so we say things like vaccines are safe, no lockdowns anymore.
Vacs that are mask it. You know, it's basically Singsong rhymes from kindergarten and
The way I always took it as those were the lies. The real truth is we expect you to buried the risk. We recognize that we are perversely incentive. It's still on balance, fairly safe, cost of the energy of the illness. Particularly in terms of morbidity, not just mortality. And we always focus on mortality and we somehow don't focus on negative long-term side effects, it has on balance, been in favor of the vaccines
And what I don't want to do is I don't want, I'm not in a position of leadership David. I'm out here. You know, you're in my dining room right now,
Sheila. But you all someone who some people look to for understanding and you have some influence?
Well, this is the really uncomfortable part.
I don't think Brett really understands that he's a celebrity.
And I don't think I understand that I'm a celebrity.
it's a weird thing to say, you know, it's you're like an academic, you're you're 55 years old in my case, Brett's over 50 now,
What are we? You know, I tell myself a story that I go down the Sunset Strip and people say are a great job out of a car. Something
and I said, well, I'm a mathematician, you know, and then it's harder for me to say I'm an Entertainer
I'm a podcaster. I'm an influencer. So if somebody offered to send me their clothing, so I'd wear it on Instagrams, very funny. I don't think that there's an acceptance of this because in part saying, I am a celebrity, feels like I saying I'm a douchebag, you know, and then understanding the ways in which a celebrity can influence or the idea that people are turning to you to Outsource their thinking, your message, maybe, I'm trying to teach you to fish the way I fish.
And their point is keep showing us how to fish by pulling fish out. And then we can eat more. Oh my gosh, it really
So yeah, none of us know how to do this and we're fumbling. But in general, my feeling is that the mainstream is angry because it's trying to say you're fumbling the wrong way. You're having, you're having your thoughts out loud on large channels when we have a public health campaign that you're interfering with,
And the feeling is you have a bad Public Health campaign, that's misconfigured. You have anti leaders and Leadership positions. So people are going to think for themselves. You have a new technology, the internet, which is meeting it. You know, I had Hong Kong flu in the late 60s. There was no internet.
And by the way, you know, Woodstock was held in the middle of the onion Hong Kong flu.
We don't understand where we are. We have no concept of what we're doing. We're figuring it out in real time and the biggest problem that we're having is there are two strategies. One strategy is, let's get everybody singing from the same Hymnal as if the internet hadn't been invented. Let's imagine that the journalist had the higher reputation they did. After let's say, Watergate when they went after institutions in the powerful as opposed to protecting the powerful. Let's imagine that we were doing this in a
Totally different context, everybody who's contradicting. That doesn't realize they're getting in the way of the war effort, the war on the virus.
We say there's no war effort. You guys are a bunch of losers and clowns. What the fuck are you doing? I don't see a Churchill, or a patent or a MacArthur. I don't see any one of Competency. I don't see a Montgomery. So what the rest of us have pitch forks, and knives, and Swiss Army, you know, blades and we're supposed to defend against an invading, invading Panzer Division. I don't know. How are we supposed to be doing this day? So bread is thinking out loud.
He's doing things that are interesting and he doesn't understand in part what happened. Well, what happened was war and pandemic are two places where everything changes this leaves. None of us any options, David? This is the big problem, which is what am I supposed to do? In the face of Joe Biden? Donald Trump?
Anthony fauci. I don't know.
Bread is thinking out loud, he's thinking out loud in a room. So quiet, you could hear a pin drop.
You mentioned these fucking to Sam Harris before. Obviously, Sam put out that podcast that was very critical of Brett recently. Did you worked at? What did you make of
that?
Well, I think Sam kept his sword mostly in its sheath. I think that Sam is a
Sam and I both maintain different versions of a principal on more radical.
I believe that there is a lot of residual wisdom in a corrupt system.
I believe that our institutions.
Are degrading, they are greatly degraded. I cannot stand the leadership class, but I believe that all of those things like,
All
the things that are in place in a hospital to make sure they don't cut off the wrong leg. If you're having an amputation or something these things,
Are part of the wisdom, they were put there in part by people who are now dead where nobody remembers why they're there. So I think Sam has an instinctual feeling that the system works. We know that the vaccines are fairly safe. We know that the, the vet, the virus is fairly dangerous. My guess is that bread, is particularly motivated by a subset of issues. Why are we not talking about the long-term safety?
Of the vaccines as opposed to the short term only the short term.
I think the point that you made earlier about
the narrative around the vaccines is is interesting because my sense is that you get. I know it's a loaded term but conspiracy theories. More generally tend to grow in the gaps in the official narrative. So I think the vaccine narrative is a really good example because it's a it's a simplification to say vaccines are entirely safe whereas a true story might be too.
A vaccines are a medical intervention or medical interventions have a benefit and cost ratio. Our judgment is at the benefit ratio versus the cost for vaccines is extremely good. And and the problem is that because a simplistic narrative is offered. You, you incentivize and you get these, you get these conspiracy narratives, right? Right. Thriving, thriving in the gaps.
That's exactly, right. So this is why I'm not a reflexive.
I can't stand the people to put a minus sign in front of whatever the man says and says that while, I think for myself because there's nothing less individualistic. Now, the hardest thing is to say, I'm going to go with the people who are lying to me which is what I did.
You know, and I'm trying to show leadership, I'm trying to say, I did this at the beginning of the pandemic, which is you sit down, you say, okay, this is going to suck.
You can ask us when this is going to be over. At the short answer is, we don't know, two weeks to flatten the curve. I never understood that never made any sense.
you know, and the reason it made no sense is because to me is it was nonsensical herd immunity we speak, like like like
We speak like people with cognitive defects.
We talk in such simplistic terms that can't possibly support the weight of the conversation. The key point is we expect you to get vaccinated. We expect you to get vaccinated at risk to yourself and your family. We expect you to take something that we cooked up.
And break your Skin's barrier and have it course through your body even though you can't understand how it works.
That is a profound ask.
It is similar to saying, we expect your son's to go to war. When we say it's time to go to
war
that does not ring in modern ears. We don't understand what. Wait, why do you get my son? I'd my son, you're some sort of distant thing. This is why government is a profound responsibility and I think that people think it's a profit opportunity.
You know, you do it for a few years and then you get the sweet Consulting gigs in the speak speaking Arrangements, afterwards. I can't get past it David. I can't get past the idea that somehow the lessons of the 20th century appear to have been learned by absolutely no
one and we're just about to wrap up. Is there anything that we missed that you wanted to say?
Yeah, I mean, I think there's the issue about the Ivermectin is that it's there's something interesting to investigate and
and the right way to think about this, in my opinion is to say that you're running the opportunity cost of being exposed to increased damage from covid.
Should you get it while you were waiting for something else to occur?
The morbidity Associated, if you happen to be in the population of people who get long covid with all of these bad symptoms, and you know, I'm worried about long-term cognitive impairment long-term, respiratory impairment with significant histological damage to your lung tissue, there are concerns about the vaccines.
They are not it's not wrong to be concerned about vaccines, I want to reach the people who are aware that public health is not getting it done. What I would say. Differently from bread is you're not crazy for fear for fear that vaccines aren't as safe as claimed. You're not crazy for thinking that the public health people are lying to you and have lied to you.
You are obligated to think about whether or not this is so bad that you want to forego the vaccines.
In order to do something where there isn't a tremendous amount of data, or a tremendous amount of understanding where the experts were alternative, experts may have things, that they are choosing to do, which show that they might be, they may be Noble, they may be courageous, but they may also be self-interested. You have to take on the full responsibility of what you're doing. And if you've never heard somebody say I'm going with the people, I don't trust over the people. I do. That's how crazy.
We are. It's now you can disagree with me. You can say, Eric, you should have understood Ivermectin. Let's imagine Ivermectin, comes and wins the day.
Let's imagine that Ivermectin is as good as anyone has said. It is, if not better, it will still have been badly structured, ex ante as an argument, the way it has been. And I want to put a Post-It note here, if it turns out that that's true. It reminds me in part of the, the father who says, you know, our family's in terrible financial trouble. But
I met a man who said that he will pay 10 million dollars for us to have one round of Russian Roulette, where we spend a six-chambered revolver and have our youngest child, put it in his head and pull the trigger, and if he wins, we get 10 million dollars.
Okay, so now you actually go through it and you pull the trigger and there is no bullet in the chamber and the family's 10 million dollars richer. All of their problems have gone away. Was that father correct?
By recognizing that there was an opportunity X if everything ex-post works out. I don't think so the right thing to do is believe in your institutions, do not believe in their leadership.
That causes your problem because the institutions are going to do bad things, there's a lot of wisdom that is resident in the rules in the culture. In the fact that people who see patients all day long, you know, pick up clinical knowledge. There's a lot of group think, it's not one way that the establishment is the establishment because they are the worst. They are the best they are
Trustworthy, not trustworthy, you're in a very difficult complicated landscape. If you're coming to conclusions of, it's all the market man, or you know, they're just trying to get us to put microchips in. Are you probably wrong?
I'm concerned that there are behind the scenes narratives. I am concerned that this doesn't make any sense. Do I have fears that we're going to discover that? There was some terrible thing that was afoot. I don't know. Yeah, it's possible right now. I don't know what to tell anybody and I keep saying that over and over again. You're in a world in which you can't trust the leadership of the institutions, you're going to have to make it a go of it.
If you've never heard a voice, say this, I want to speak to you. I don't trust these people, either. I want Anthony fauci out of his chair yesterday, I can't stand to listen to him. I can't stand that the Surgeon General lied to me under Trump.
I can't stand that. Nancy Pelosi. Wanted me to go and put myself in danger in order that we didn't hurt businesses on Chinese Lunar New Year. I still took the vaccine. I don't think it's completely safe. I do think that Ivermectin is hopeful
It is not illogical to try to find a new shelling Point. Am I correct? I don't know. I'm just telling you Auntie, I like my position more than Brett's ex-post breath position may carry the day, but I will certainly not be bowing down to it as if it was, the world's greatest prediction. I can assure you that he has the best of intentions and that this isn't simply some sort of a power grab and I can assure you that people like me. And
I'm here, as behind the scenes, we are all trying to talk. We're trying to do the sense-making and in particular, there will be a patreon, you will be able to contribute to me. I will come back with new episodes but keep in mind that you're listening to somebody who's very worried about protecting The credibility of the heterodoxy. And we're going to have to confront the fact that our audiences want us to do things that are not safe, not good. Because of the fact that they want to shelling point, which either says the man is right, or the man is trying to stick it to us.
Us and neither of these shelling points is viable. Congratulations. You've entered, you've entered the Wilderness of modernity and David, you know, my personal opinion is you've been trying to balance this from the beginning of my relationship with you. And it's one of the reasons that this is the first podcast that I'm talking about this on because I know that you've been seeing this coming for quite some time. And now, we have the pandemic to show that both you and I have been right to be concerned about this the whole time.
Eric, thank you for joining me again. David as always, thank you for watching all the way to the end and if you'd like to join conversations like this, check out a digital campfire, you get access to a load of member only films. You can watch live, ask questions, come to our book club wisdom gym sessions, and our regular monthly, meetups where we share, what's going on behind the scenes. And you can also connect with other rebel wisdom members. What's more? You can also get discounts on our courses like sense, making
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