Joe rogan Interview with Bret Weinstein -> difficult to dissect

[Philipp]

I need your help to dissect this interview. Bret Weinstein is similar to Jordan Peterson, but a bit more progressive and less conservative. In this video he critizises harshly the blm movement and especially critical theory (gender studies; queer studies; etc.) and denounces it as a neo marxist movement (similar to Jordan Peterson). 

I think Leo made it clear in his last video that naive thinking is very much on the rise through the democratization of political power and than there can be problems with political ideas from the left wing. 

Even though Bret Weinstein critics may seem similar to some remarks of Leo, I believe they are very much different and flawed. I would like to better understand what the exact problems with his his thinking are. I would invite you to watch the video and share your opinion/analysis of his thinking!

 

Edited June 26, 2020 by Philipp

[Leo Gura]

I watched the entire interview last week.

Overall he's a reasonable guy. More reasonable than JP. I actually agree with most of his analysis of the George Floyd case.

But of course he's not properly understanding the "cultural marxist" phenomena on college campuses. He sees it as a dangerous force that will destroy democracy. This is the same mistake JP makes. He's conflating stage Green with Maoism. He doesn't understand that stage Green has many healthy versions which are more evolved than the status quo. Of course Green has its excesses, but he's overly focused on that because he personally suffered from it. That's understandable, but it is skewing his perspective of where society is headed. Stage Green is not the end of democracy, it will lead to better democracy. He's failing to distinguish between health and unhealthy version of Green.

Overall, Bret's a decent guy. He simply doesn't have a high enough perspective on things. He's still stuck in materialism, which is why he can't fully understand stuff like critical theory and its post-modernist roots. This is clear when he says that scientifically, male and female are some biological objective fact. This is obviously false if you have a deep understanding of epistemology and metaphysics. But he doesn't have that understanding because he's operating on materialism and realism. He doesn't understand how "male" and "female" could be categories projected by his own mind. He takes this the metaphysics for granted, as most STEM people do.

And Joe Rogan does not have enough intellectual chops to challenge him on these points. Which is part of the problem when Joe interviews serious people on serious topics. He's not able to properly challenge their points. He mostly just ends up agreeing with whatever they say, and by extension so does his audience. Virtually nobody in Joe's audience will be able to deeply question Weinstein's view post-modernism. Post-modernism is really challenging to understand.

[Philipp]

Hey Leo! Thanks for the answer!

A problem to differentiate stage green with maoism is a good explanation, probably because to an untrained eyed they can seem very similar. 

Personally I have a feeling that he overdramatizes the problems with those movements/protest. As if there is so much  going on beneath the curtains that we have to become aware of and defend us against. I often feel that for most people it is mainly about raising awareness on a certain problem. To simply voice their suffering in the words Dr. West would maybe describe these events. What are your thought on this? Is there really something  problematic in these events, which has to be brought to light?  Or is it just the healthy expression of suffering? 

 

[Leo Gura]

9 minutes ago, Philipp said:

Is there really something  problematic in these events, which has to be brought to light?

Which events?

If you mean some of the deplatforming events on college campuses, like what happened to Bret in his classroom, yes, I think that is excessive and problematic. Stage Green can get excessively SJW-ey. But this is an exception and shouldn't cause too much alarm. Bret thinks it will cause a societal collapse, which is silly. That is just fearmongering.

Bret wants progressive reforms, but he's unwilling to pay the cost in terms of social and cultural upheaval that will be necessary to bring it about.

[Philipp]

7 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Which events?

Bret seems to put the blm protest and the happenings on college campuses, etc. in the same box himself, which is why I phrased it that way, but I meant especially the recent protesting against racism. 

 

I would be super curious, what your thoughts are on critical theory. Isn't it just solid green thinking? For example Dr. West seems to be part of that critical theory and I don't think he unreasonable at all. So is all of Bret (and also Jordan Peterson) critic just wrong, unable to grasp what critical theory really is?

[Leo Gura]

9 minutes ago, Philipp said:

Bret seems to put the blm protest and the happenings on college campuses, etc. in the same box himself, which is why I phrased it that way, but I meant especially the recent protesting against racism. 

Is here against peaceful protest? I don't think so. He's more complaining about extremist elements from what I remember.

I think most of us can agree that peaceful protest is okay and even good, but violence or looting should not be allowed.

Quote

I would be super curious, what your thoughts are on critical theory. Isn't it just solid green thinking? For example Dr. West seems to be part of that critical theory and I don't think he unreasonable at all. So is all of Bret (and also Jordan Peterson) critic just wrong, unable to grasp what critical theory really is?

It's a deep topic. You'd have to start defining what you mean by critical theory and give concrete examples of it. Some of it will be reasonable, some of it will be excessive.

The fundamental thing that's not understood by Bret and JP is relativism. There are no objective facts per se. Reality is relative and constructed by the mind.

If there is no such thing as absolute time, as Einstein showed, there surely is no such thing as absolute male or female. It's pretty embarrassing how a hard scientist like Bret can accept General Relativity but then insist that males and females are objective biological facts.

[Epikur]

@Leo Gura

I think they know relativity but at one point you have to act like "facts" are "facts" Otherweise we would lose ourself in relativism. 
 

 

[Leo Gura]

1 minute ago, Epikur said:

@Leo Gura

I think they know relativity but at one point you have to act like "facts" are "facts" Otherweise we would lose ourself in relativism. 
 

But there's the rub: facts aren't facts.

They have no clue how deep relativity runs.

[Epikur]

10 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

But there's the rub: facts aren't facts.

They have no clue how deep relativity runs.

Well even then we act like facts are like facts. Otherwise we would not be able to communicate at all. 

You have rules for a reason in the forum. Without facts it's hard to make rules.

It's hard to talk about truth and lies without facts. 





 

[Leo Gura]

25 minutes ago, Epikur said:

Well even then we act like facts are like facts. Otherwise we would not be able to communicate at all. 

You have rules for a reason in the forum. Without facts it's hard to make rules.

It's hard to talk about truth and lies without facts.

In ordinary life, yes.

But the point of these political and philosophical discussions to question certain held "facts".

For example, it's an legit question to wonder whether such a thing as "a man" and "a women" really exists, or if it's just a socially constructed "fact" which we use because it's convenient.

All human knowledge works this way. First we over-simplify reality, then we discover that our over-simplifications aren't nuanced enough to deal with complex edge-cases like trans people. And so we have to re-evaluate our simplistic ideas. But lots of people are resistant to doing so because they have taken on those oversimplifications as "facts", and they get outraged when they find you denying their "facts".

Point me to a fact in the world which says, "That is man, and that is woman." You will not find such a fact within biology.

[Raze]

Here's a documentary about the incident that rocketed Bret into popularity, it's pretty well edited and in 3 parts.

 

[Leo Gura]

20 minutes ago, Raze said:

Here's a documentary about the incident that rocketed Bret into popularity, it's pretty well edited and in 3 parts.

 

LOL, so Green it makes you want to vomit

[Epikur]

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

In ordinary life, yes.

But the point of these political and philosophical discussions to question certain held "facts".

For example, it's an legit question to wonder whether such a thing as "a man" and "a women" really exists, or if it's just a socially constructed "fact" which we use because it's convenient.

All human knowledge works this way. First we over-simplify reality, then we discover that our over-simplifications aren't nuanced enough to deal with complex edge-cases like trans people. And so we have to re-evaluate our simplistic ideas. But lots of people are resistant to doing so because they have taken on those oversimplifications as "facts", and they get outraged when they find you denying their "facts".

Point me to a fact in the world which says, "That is man, and that is woman." You will not find such a fact within biology.

If you feel or think it's legit you may or may not try to convince others. Some will not be convinced and for them it is not a legit question. Not everybody has to care about it.

It does produce also outrage with progressives who think everybody has to accept the new model. Specially when you identify ( being invested) as being a progressive.

If the "idiots" get outraged because of their simplifications so what? You never even know if the "idiots" are right in the bigger picture too. 

Specially from a relativistic deterministic perspective "change" does not matter. 

In a relativistic perspective you can never be right anyway. In the video zahabi makes a good point that science basically is historical patterns. 

Yes most human knowledge seems to work in some ways. Sometimes if you want to learn something new you have to unlearn  what you know. What we know creats a filter for the things we want to learn.

So basically we can not know what we don't know. So it's hard to be certain about what is "legit".

We are basically puppys playing around imho.














 

Edited June 26, 2020 by Epikur

[remember]

7 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

LOL, so Green it makes you want to vomit

that’s just because you finally arrived in orange. you got blind to red  it’s not that you haven‘t been all along. its totally normal that you get disgusted by green if you get attracted by red.

[Display_Name]

1 hour ago, remember said:

that’s just because you finally arrived in orange. you got blind to red  it’s not that you haven‘t been all along. its totally normal that you get disgusted by green if you get attracted by red.

the fuck?

we all tier 2 boys here

doesn't mean you can't laugh at the ironic absurdity of humans

[remember]

On 26.6.2020 at 9:09 PM, Display_Name said:

the fuck?

we all tier 2 boys here

doesn't mean you can't laugh at the ironic absurdity of humans

well... you think you are does not mean you are what you think you are - you see  spiral dynamics is kind of twisted. its already hidden in the word „spiral“. the relativity of the spiral shows where you are at, which means it’s not like you could say: „i‘ve reached this or that colour“ and when you look into the mirror you are yellow or turquoise, while in the end you still are stuck in orange or blue, but your ego (mind in that case) thinks it already is at turquoise because it thinks it already grasped what turquoise is all about. no, no, no! you got that wrong. relativity is sth you must grasp to even reach second tier, what you obviously did not.

Edited June 28, 2020 by remember

[Forestluv]

On 6/26/2020 at 3:26 AM, Epikur said:

If you feel or think it's legit you may or may not try to convince others. Some will not be convinced and for them it is not a legit question. Not everybody has to care about it.

It does produce also outrage with progressives who think everybody has to accept the new model. Specially when you identify ( being invested) as being a progressive.

If the "idiots" get outraged because of their simplifications so what? You never even know if the "idiots" are right in the bigger picture too. 

Specially from a relativistic deterministic perspective "change" does not matter. 

In a relativistic perspective you can never be right anyway. In the video zahabi makes a good point that science basically is historical patterns. 

Yes most human knowledge seems to work in some ways. Sometimes if you want to learn something new you have to unlearn  what you know. What we know creats a filter for the things we want to learn.

So basically we can not know what we don't know. So it's hard to be certain about what is "legit".

We are basically puppys playing around imho.

It won’t matter to those that are not impacted and want the status quo.

Imagine that your finger length was in the lower 5% of the population and by that definition, you are a female. You are now expected to dress like a female and act like a female. You are called a chimeric female, stigmatized and bullied. When you say that you are actually a male and feel just like other men, scientists correct you and say “You are incorrect. Here are the facts about your finger length. You are actually a female”. AS well, people tell you that your experience of being a man is just relative, yet due to your finger length, you must act as a female. Imagine what that experience would be like. It would be awful. That’s what transgender and non-binary people have to go through.

There is a difference between acknowledging someone’s relative experience and excesses. For example, imagine a group of non-binary people say that there are 20,623 variations of binary gender and demand 20,623 new personal pronouns. That is an excess. Yet it doesn’t invalidate the relative identity of non-binary, discrimination against non-binary people and the need for inclusion. There is a difference between saying “Sorry, based on the measurements of your genitalia, you are actually a male and must act like a male”  vs saying “We recognize the relative gender identity of non-binary and the desire for inclusion. It is reasonable to create 1-3 new personal pronouns for better inclusion, yet 20,623 new pronouns is excessive”. 

[Display_Name]

2 hours ago, remember said:

well... you think you are does not mean you are what you think you are - you see  spiral dynamics is kind of twisted. its already hidden in the word „spiral“. the relativity of the spiral shows where you are at, which means it’s not like you could say: „i‘ve reached this or that colour“ and when you look into the mirror you are yellow or turquoise, while in the end you still are stuck in orange or blue, but your ego (mind in that case) thinks it already is at turquoise because it thinks it already grasped what turquoise is all about. no, no, no! you got that wrong. relativity is sth you must grasp to even reach second tier, what you obviously did not.

lol

the irony of what you just said

Edited June 28, 2020 by Display_Name

[remember]

@Serotoninluv yes, and by definition what actually is a male?

(1-0 is not exactly binary anyways)

Edited June 30, 2020 by remember

[Forestluv]

5 minutes ago, remember said:

@Serotoninluv yes, and by definition what actually is a male?

It depends on the definition. Many definitions can be created. 
Definitions can have practical value in society, yet definitions can be quite restrictive.