Eric Weinstein

Eric Ross Weinstein (born 1965)[2] is the managing director of Thiel Capital, Peter Thiel's investment firm, a position he has held since 2015.[3] He and his brother Bret Weinstein coined the term Intellectual Dark Web to refer to an informal group of pundits.[4][5]

Not to be confused with Eric W. Weisstein.
Eric Weinstein
Weinstein in 2019
Born
Eric Ross Weinstein

1965
Los Angeles
NationalityAmerican
Alma materHarvard University (PhD)
OccupationManaging director of Thiel Capital
Spouse(s)Pia Malaney[1]
RelativesBret Weinstein (brother)

Education

Weinstein received his Ph.D. in mathematical physics from the Mathematics Department at Harvard University in 1992 under the supervision of Raoul Bott.[6][7][8] In his dissertation, titled "Extension of Self-Dual Yang-Mills Equations across the Eighth Dimension", Weinstein showed that the self-dual Yang–Mills equations were not really peculiar to dimension four and admitted generalizations to higher dimensions.[9][10]

Career

Physics

In May 2013, Weinstein gave a colloquium talk, Geometric Unity, promoted by Marcus du Sautoy as a potential unified theory of physics, an event covered by The Guardian.[11][12] His unpublished theory includes an "observerse," a 14-dimensional space, and predictions for undiscovered particles which he stated could account for dark matter. Joseph Conlon of the University of Oxford stated that some of these particles, if they existed, would already have been detected in existing accelerators such as the Large Hadron Collider.[13]

Few physicists attended and no preprint, paper, or equations were published.[14] Weinstein's ideas were not widely debated. The few that did engage expressed skepticism.[13][15] Science writer Jennifer Ouellette criticized the promotion of Weinstein's colloquium in an article for Scientific American, arguing that the ideas could not be properly vetted by experts because there was no published paper.[16]

Intellectual dark web

Weinstein said he coined the term "Intellectual Dark Web" after his brother, Bret Weinstein, resigned from The Evergreen State College in response to a campus controversy. The term is used to describe a number of academics and podcast hosts.[17][18][19]

The Portal

In June 2019, Weinstein launched a podcast called The Portal.[20] As Weinstein explained on The Joe Rogan Experience, the title refers to fictional events such as the rabbit hole in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and Platform Nine and Three-Quarters in Harry Potter, when a "humdrum existence in an ordinary world" is disrupted by traveling through "some sort of magical portal."[21] As of May 2020, guests have included The New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, conspiracy theorist James O'Keefe, and author and fellow podcaster Sam Harris.[22]

References
  1. McClurg, Lesley (May 7, 2015). "Let's Talk About Death Over Dinner". NPR. Retrieved February 1, 2019.
  2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkAWAJyX0fM
  3. Illing, Sean (August 20, 2017). "Why capitalism can't survive without socialism". Vox. Retrieved July 2, 2018.
  4. French, David A. (May 11, 2018). "Critics Miss the Point of the 'Intellectual Dark Web'". National Review. Retrieved June 25, 2019.
  5. Sommer, Will. "Intellectual Dark Web Frays After Jordan Peterson Tweets Critically About Brett Kavanaugh". Daily Beast. Retrieved January 14, 2020.
  6. Eric Weinstein at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  7. Tu, Loring W., ed. (2018). Raoul Bott: Collected Papers, Volume 5. Notices of the American Mathematical Society. Contemporary Mathematicians. Birkhäuser. p. 47. Retrieved April 14, 2020.
  8. "PhD Dissertations Archival Listing". Harvard Mathematics Department. Retrieved April 14, 2020.
  9. Beaulieu, Laurent; Kanno, Hiroaki; Singer, I. M. (1998). "Special Quantum Field Theories in Eight And Other Dimensions". Communications in Mathematical Physics. 194 (1): 149–175. arXiv:hep-th/9704167. Bibcode:1998CMaPh.194..149B. doi:10.1007/s002200050353. ISSN 0010-3616.
  10. "Extension of Self-Dual Yang-Mills Equations Across the 8th Dimension". The High Energy Physics Information System. Retrieved January 21, 2020.
  11. du Sautoy, Marcus (May 23, 2013). "Eric Weinstein may have found the answer to physics' biggest problems". The Guardian. Retrieved May 31, 2013.
  12. Geometric Unity, Eric Weinstein lecture at Oxford University (May 23, 2013) with "Supplementary Explainer" (April 1, 2020), posted to YouTube on April 2, 2020
  13. Pontzen, Andrew (May 24, 2013). "Weinstein's theory of everything is probably nothing". New Scientist. Retrieved June 2, 2013.
  14. Pontzen, Andrew (March 2013). "End of darkness: the stuff that really rules the cosmos". New Scientist. 217 (2909): 32–35. doi:10.1016/s0262-4079(13)60757-5. ISSN 0262-4079.
  15. Aron, Jacob (June 2013). "How to test Weinstein's provocative theory of everything". New Scientist. 218 (2920): 10. doi:10.1016/s0262-4079(13)61403-7. ISSN 0262-4079.
  16. Ouellette, Jennifer. "Dear Guardian: You've Been Played". Scientific American Blog Network. Retrieved January 11, 2020.
  17. Phillips, Melanie (May 23, 2018). "'Intellectual Dark Web' leads fightback against academic orthodoxy". The Australian. Retrieved June 16, 2018.
  18. Weiss, Bari (May 8, 2018). "Meet the Renegades of the Intellectual Dark Web". The New York Times. Retrieved May 8, 2018.
  19. Svrluga, Susan; Heim, Joe (June 1, 2017). "Threat shuts down college embroiled in racial dispute". The Washington Post. Retrieved July 1, 2018.
  20. Beres, Derek (July 12, 2019). "Mathematician Eric Weinstein launches a new podcast, 'The Portal'". Big Think. Retrieved April 16, 2020.
  21. Joe, Rogan (July 3, 2019). "Joe Rogan Experience #1320 - Eric Weinstein". YouTube.
  22. "The Portal". Apple Podcasts. Retrieved May 17, 2020.
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