The Portal with Eric Weinstein (episode 001) An Interview with Peter Thiel... rough transcription

0:00:00 Eric introduces Peter Thiel and the Portal Podcast
0:02:46 Peter explains how he and Eric reach similar conclusions even though they come from different places/experiences, intellectually and politically
0:05:30 Eric asks Peter what the Narrative is vs what their counter-narrative is, when it comes to the influence of stagnation, and Institutional failure
0:07:00 Eric brings up the mythos/ prevailing narrative of Upward Mobility
0:08:50 Peter dates this era of Stagnation as having it's beginnings in the 1970s
0:11:00 Peter uses the Star Trek Metaphor, We live in a world with a Star Trek computer, but none of the other technologies of Star Trek have caught up
0:13:00 Eric asks whether this is a Scientific Problem rather than the Mismanagement of our Future.
0:14:15 Peter Talks about Nature vs Culture...
0:17:30 Peter suggests that in Late Modernity there's simply too much knowledge for any one human being to understand everything in this era of extreme hyper-specialization
0:18:28 Peter says "The hyper specialization of scientists should make people suspicious"
0:19:50 Eric suggests "All of our major institutions are now almost pathological"
0:21:00 Peter says that the institutions could grow in ways that are healthy, but that's not the path that's been chosen for them.
0:22:00 Peter discusses the various Bubbles that have existed since the 1990s
0:24:00 Eric and Peter discuss the costs of speaking up in ways that counter the prevailing narrative about growth and stagnation
0:26:00 Eric and Peter use the Kayfabe/Larping metaphor to discuss The different ways people respond to the narrative/counter narrative discussions
0:27:33 Peter talks about being hopeful about truth ultimately prevailing
0:29:00 Eric talks about how amazing it was to live through a boom period in Silicon Valley
0:32:00 Peter talks about how hopeful he is about the ending of the Fake narrative i.e. "The Truman Show" and predicts it will wrap up within 10 years
0:34:50 Peter discusses all the technological innovations of the 1930s
0:37:30 Eric asks if we are "between scientific revolutions"?
0:40:00 Peter says the rule when it comes to this era/narrative re hyper-specialization is that "No Polymaths Allowed"
0:42:20 Eric says "There's no level that you can arise to in the field that allows you to question the assumptions of that field" - re famous physicists that fell out of favor for daring to question things
0:45:55 Peter says "In a healthy system you can have wild dissent and it's not threatening because everybody knows the system is healthy. In an unhealthy system, dissent becomes much more dangerous"
0:47:00 Peter asks "What has the 1.6 Trillion Dollars worth of Student Debt paid for?"
0:50:55 Eric talks about the "Sugar Daddy" Industry re financing College/University education as an option
0:55:00 Peter suggests as a solution to the college debt problem, that part of the debt should have to be paid by the university that the debt was spent on.
0:56:20 Eric talks about his suggestion that a "College Equivalency Degree" be created for people to challenge their degrees
0:58:20 Peter talks about how he needed to "hack" the prestige of Universities for his Thiel Fellowships for young students and that the Thiel Fellowship Program is not scalable unfortunately
1:06:39 Peter talks about how these (particularly educational) institutions are pretending to be kind to young students, but that instead the system is unbearably cruel
1:12:00 Peter discusses the trends towards automation
1:15:40 Peter discusses the retail industry and it's relationship to Amazon
1:17:20 Peter suggests we should be more concerned about the lack of automation instead
1:18:30 Peter talks about UBI and social programs
1:20:20 Eric says that he views Markets as being good for providing most of the progress that we currently enjoy
1:22:00 Eric and Peter talk about the "Redistribution" rhetoric and who it's really targeting
1:23:20 Eric asks "Start with any good social program and ask, what is the minimum amount of violence needed to accomplish that idea. Now add that violence to the original idea, and ask yourself if you still find it to be an attractive good idea?"
1:25:04 Peter discusses what attracts people to or detracts from Communism.
1:26:20 Eric discusses Paul Robeson and the Communist movement's ideals
1:30:00 BREAK
1:30:40 Eric asks Peter to explain his heartfelt repugnance of the use of violence in human affairs, as an underlying premise in his life OR How Progress is used to reduce Violence in human affairs overall.
1:32:43 Peter says "A world without growth is one that is going to be much more violent or deformed"
1:36:10 Peter and Eric discuss their relationship with one another and their views on how they have been shaped by the past. (WWII)
1:40:00 Eric relates his experiences as a Jewish person visiting Germany for the first time
1:42:03 Peter discusses his own unique experience growing up apart from mainstream German culture
1:45:12 Eric mentions that he and Peter often swap unpopular theories surrounding the subject of "How do we re-start growth?" and "how do we minimize violence?"(Orphaned and unpopular theories that are shared by few people)
1:46:10 Peter talks about the strange things that happened in 2016 (Trump's election, Brexit etc) Preference falsification
1:50:12 Peter discusses polling and it's limitations
1:51:20 Peter and Eric re-hash the Trump vs Hillary election upset
1:53:45 Peter discusses how Political Correctness is a big problem in terms of how it impacts on people's ability to say and do what they really believe
1:55:23 Eric discusses the formation of the Intellectual Dark Web as a means to encourage those people who are willing to speak out and take some risks averse to PC culture
1:58:45 Peter talks about the chilling aspects of political correctness - How it freezes other topics from being able to be freely discussed other than politics
2:01:00 Eric suggests that if Productivity and Growth are stagnant, you don't want to discuss merit in human affairs because you don't think the merit is going to translate
2:02:03 Peter says "If we can't talk about problems honestly, we can't solve them"
2:03:03 Eric and Peter discuss the destruction of Gawker.
2:06:42 Peter discusses the two speeches he had prepared re Trump's campaign in 2016 re the eradication of Bush's foreign policy
2:08:02 Eric outlines the problems that he sees with Trump's administration
2:12:04 Peter discusses American Exceptionalism as a form of massive distraction and as a major detriment
2:14:55 Eric asks Peter about his personal relationship to the life and work of Rene Girard and mimetics.
2:17:13 Eric asks Peter to explain how people listening can learn more about Girard's philosophy and ideas
2:19:40 Eric and Peter talk about scapegoating and it's function or role in society
2:26;10 Peter says "A Nation State contains violence"
2:27:03 Eric speaks to the issue of ending oppression vs reversing oppression
2:31:40 Peter talks about the cold war and nuclear weapons as part of the progress of technology that no longer made sense
2:34:03 Peter says that he is more afraid of stagnation and where it's leading us, than AI and other technological potential threats
2:36:02 Peter says "You can't have an economy without an environment. You can't have an environment without an economy" - The implications for this are staggering.
2:37:11 Peter asks re AGW and CO2, "What about China and India"?
2:38:26 Eric talks about Govt being a monopoly on the instigation of violence, and "A nation is a group of people who have agreed to forget something in common" - Does this mean, together that there is a chain of causality towards the end of the ability of the Nation State to continue existing?
2:39:25 Peter says "I think there always is a transparency/privacy trade off"
discusses transparency
2:41:03 Peter discusses the choice between violence by the individual vs violence as initiated by the State
2:43:04 Peter says re transparency "Maybe if, because of transparency, you have no backroom deals going on between governments... nothing gets done"
2:45:06 Eric asks Peter for his take on the concept of " Universal Institutional Betrayal" - Peter responds
2:48:03 Eric and Peter discuss what steps might be needed to bring people back into trust with Institutions