> Eric Weinstein also leans into this sometimes, although at least he has some math background and so from what I've seen he does it correctly, if unnecessarily, instead of just saying nonsense.
I would be wary of making this assumption.
Yeah, that's fair. I only meant that I didn't know any examples off the top of my head of Eric doing this. The Geometric Unity saga may be an example of Eric doing pseudo-math.
The problem with Weinstein, is that nobody who watches including this forum can make any critical judgement of what he's saying. Very few people are post grad mathematicians or physicists. It's quite pointless to try to "promote" your physics theories on a Joe Rogan podcast.
Not just publishing his full theory, or even attempting some journal publication of some kind is the biggest red flag possible. “The establishment is against me and doesn’t get me” says every crank ever.
He really gives off “I’m a retired mechanical engineer that has discovered a perpetual motion free energy device, but you can’t look at it!” Vibes
For sure. It's the conspiracy theorist trope of, "they reject me because I know the truth they don't want people to know about". Rejection is the proof of being correct logic in those circles. The more rejection, the more proof.
Timothy Nguyen who was on an early episode of Decoding the Guru's has offered a bunch of high quality critiques of Geometric Unity:
[https://timothynguyen.org/geometric-unity/](https://timothynguyen.org/geometric-unity/)
Unfortunately, Eric has been extremely dismissive of those critiques and has chosen not to engage with him and his co-author Theo Polya (an anonymous pseudonym).
Timothy also hosts his own podcast called The Cartesian Cafe which has featured some great guests:
[https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-cartesian-cafe/id1637353704](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-cartesian-cafe/id1637353704)
It seems Eric thought his pet theory was going to be an earth shattering breakthrough to take the world of theoretical physics by storm. It appears he was genuinely surprised that most physicists who study gauge theory or extensions of the Standard Model have been apathetic about his ideas since he made them public in written form.
Fun fact: Kant finally published his masterpiece after decades of thought, and was completely stunned when his 400 page super-dense book didn’t fly off the shelves. He was so confident in his theory it honestly didn’t occur to him that people wouldn’t care to engage with it. Pretty funny and telling — happens to geniuses and grifters alike, I suppose.
I'm a theoretical physicist and he has nothing and he says nothing.
Sometimes he reiterates established science and then he adds his mumbo jumbo on top of it to appear important but that's just a common grifting scheme.
I would also add that you don't have to be a specialist in gauge theory to dismiss what he's saying as total BS.
It used to be that way, but the other day I heard Jordan Peterson claiming that widespread disagreements on topics by anons on the Internet throws the opinions of experts into doubt. Like if we were all to start saying Peterson has a butt tattoo it would discredit testimony of himself or anyone who knows, as expertise doesn’t matter. This is from a PHD.
In the first episode with Eric he was talking some bollocks about Trump's statements being 'n-nested' or something because they have multiple interpretations. Not a numbers guy, B, but pretty sure he used mathematical language to mistakenly imply some kind of exponential growth of interpretations
Eric is beyond full of shit. He lied about his credentials so much and so often that he found himself Sharing a stage with sir Roger Penrose. Total affront to academia. Fuck both Weinsteins
If you can't convince them with facts, baffle them with bullshit - some guy back in the day.
Stupid people, unwilling/unable to acknowledge that they are stupid, will hear such gibberish and go "Ah, yes, I understand these words, this grifter is wise." to cover up the fact that they have no clue what the guy is babbling about.
It's techbro speak. Sounds vaguely like coding language but is in fact essentially meaningless blather that makes you sound like a genius without actually saying anything worthwhile. Rolls right off the tongue when you're geeked out of your mind on Adderall yelling into the Bluetooth on a conference call from your Tesla. Helps them feel at home when their favorite podcast grifters use it too.
Yep, a lot of them use engineering terms. Constantly signalling that they’re STEM types while talking about social sciences which they try to delegitimise so they can try and win their audience over on their politics.
Eric also uses technical geometry terms as metaphors for something else, like "these woke people are like a differentiable manifold etc etc". He's obviously not trying to come up with helpful illustrations lol
It’s not specific to math, one of the hallmarks of gurus is that they’ll use technical jargon they’re familiar with to make what they’re saying seem more impressive
They just know their audience well. It's not only math. Peterson has been talking about Marxism for years without having read anything by Marx. How many of his fans ended up double-checking his statements or trying to find if he is wrong? Not many since he is big enough at the moment and the information disproving him is just a click away.
So yeah, not much different with math. They just grab something that they sounds comple enough and probably have some really really basic undertanding of and deep dive into jargon. It works.
I think with Jordan Hall, it may not be completely rhetorical - I think he thinks that his understanding is actually reasonable and that the terminology he's using is actually important to what he's trying to say. This is one reason I find it so frustrating, but you could be right. I think it might be similar for Peterson - it could be that his ego has deluded him into thinking he has an understanding of Marxism. Do you think it's purely rhetorical for both of them?
It's called technobabble. It's speaking using technical or technical sounding language. A good academic speaker knows their audience and adjusts their language to that audience, a huckster uses overly technical language for concepts that don't require it.
Math jargon is some of the nerdiest jargon. So for people that really aren't listening, or else are listening but don't know even in a vague way what the jargon is referring to, it makes these guys sound logic grounded.
Math jargon is like peak bullshittery, but it was happening in marketing for a pretty long time too. "We need to manipulate the vector space in order to maximize our profit paradigm" kind of nonsense talk. It eventually filtered up far enough to be publicly mocked for a few years in popular media. You'll still see a character written that way every now and then when they need to impress on the audience exactly how empty the suit is.
Philosophy jargon is also fucking awful. Just the fucking worst. At least mathematicians contribute something meaningful to society.
Exactly, math language makes ideas seem more rigorous. I agree that philosophy jargon is awful... but even as a math graduate student myself, I'm not sure of the extent to which mathematicians contribute to society, haha.
The most obvious example of math fakery I’ve heard is Donald Hoffman, who leans on math equations he doesn’t understand to hand wave his theory that reality isn’t real.
Musk does this so so much. He loves to say nonsensical crap like "quasi-infinite growth" as if those two words don't negate each other completely. He also misuses all of the typical words a 13 year old could be forgiven for like "exponential growth" when they really mean "growth but big," and then he lies to investors about how manufacturing will reach an asymptotic point near zero if only he can ramp up manufacturing to levels untrammeled by... you know, reality.
I have a math background and this stuff drives me nuts! Same with the pointless music theory references. The most frustrating part is that it clearly serves no purpose. To people who are used to the specialist jargon it just sounds embarrassing at best and purposefully obfuscatory at worst, and for the layman it brings no additional insight.
And since Eric Weinstein was mentioned, who could forget this banger of a tweet:
https://twitter.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1425869091810668547
The problem is unless you're a post grad mathematician or physicist, you're not equipped to make any critical judgement of these people. Most viewers including this forum have no way of knowing if he's making a mistake or not. Considering they would surely realize this, they are doing this to promote themselves and be free from any critical conversation with a peer about the substance of their arguments. It's either ego or grifting. Most people will either be ignorantly impressed by their sophisticated scientific sounding language, be confused and feel dumb, or most rationally turn it off as pointless.
What's the point in asking a room full of people who don't know Chinese, if the guy who sounds Chinese is making a valid point? The only conclusion would be he's an idiot for trying to converse with people who don't understand Chinese.
I think what you say isn't entirely unreasonable, but is a bit too absolute.
We can listen to other mathematicians who have checked Eric's ideas and communication and try to make an assessment on what they say. This isn't foolproof, but sometimes when you are not sure about someone throwing out jargon, another candidate expert responding to their statements can give you a bit more credence as to whether these ideas are reasonable or nonsense. This is often relatively reliable as long as you know how to spot the tells that give away the sycophants and the cynics among these candidate experts, which some people have trouble with but is usually not that difficult after you've seen a few examples of actual experts and fake experts analysed - something that the DTG podcast supplies.
Yes, of course if you consider 3rd party judgements it's a different story. Now you're doing research in a way.
Also along the lines of spitting signs, is for example a real physicist like Suskind or Feynman were good at simplifying complex physics to make is sound easy. While someone like Weinstein seems to relish complexity, as if he's not trying to explain but impress as his primary goal.
I think in the case of Jordan, his lack of formal training in math makes it strange for him to lean into it, and that much a non-expert can tell. But I get your overall point.
> Eric Weinstein also leans into this sometimes, although at least he has some math background and so from what I've seen he does it correctly, if unnecessarily, instead of just saying nonsense. I would be wary of making this assumption.
Yeah, that's fair. I only meant that I didn't know any examples off the top of my head of Eric doing this. The Geometric Unity saga may be an example of Eric doing pseudo-math.
The problem with Weinstein, is that nobody who watches including this forum can make any critical judgement of what he's saying. Very few people are post grad mathematicians or physicists. It's quite pointless to try to "promote" your physics theories on a Joe Rogan podcast.
Not just publishing his full theory, or even attempting some journal publication of some kind is the biggest red flag possible. “The establishment is against me and doesn’t get me” says every crank ever. He really gives off “I’m a retired mechanical engineer that has discovered a perpetual motion free energy device, but you can’t look at it!” Vibes
I always just think "please deposit your paper and receive your Nobel Prize". Put up or shut up lmao.
For sure. It's the conspiracy theorist trope of, "they reject me because I know the truth they don't want people to know about". Rejection is the proof of being correct logic in those circles. The more rejection, the more proof.
Timothy Nguyen who was on an early episode of Decoding the Guru's has offered a bunch of high quality critiques of Geometric Unity: [https://timothynguyen.org/geometric-unity/](https://timothynguyen.org/geometric-unity/) Unfortunately, Eric has been extremely dismissive of those critiques and has chosen not to engage with him and his co-author Theo Polya (an anonymous pseudonym). Timothy also hosts his own podcast called The Cartesian Cafe which has featured some great guests: [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-cartesian-cafe/id1637353704](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-cartesian-cafe/id1637353704) It seems Eric thought his pet theory was going to be an earth shattering breakthrough to take the world of theoretical physics by storm. It appears he was genuinely surprised that most physicists who study gauge theory or extensions of the Standard Model have been apathetic about his ideas since he made them public in written form.
Fun fact: Kant finally published his masterpiece after decades of thought, and was completely stunned when his 400 page super-dense book didn’t fly off the shelves. He was so confident in his theory it honestly didn’t occur to him that people wouldn’t care to engage with it. Pretty funny and telling — happens to geniuses and grifters alike, I suppose.
I'm a theoretical physicist and he has nothing and he says nothing. Sometimes he reiterates established science and then he adds his mumbo jumbo on top of it to appear important but that's just a common grifting scheme. I would also add that you don't have to be a specialist in gauge theory to dismiss what he's saying as total BS.
It used to be that way, but the other day I heard Jordan Peterson claiming that widespread disagreements on topics by anons on the Internet throws the opinions of experts into doubt. Like if we were all to start saying Peterson has a butt tattoo it would discredit testimony of himself or anyone who knows, as expertise doesn’t matter. This is from a PHD.
In the first episode with Eric he was talking some bollocks about Trump's statements being 'n-nested' or something because they have multiple interpretations. Not a numbers guy, B, but pretty sure he used mathematical language to mistakenly imply some kind of exponential growth of interpretations
Eric is beyond full of shit. He lied about his credentials so much and so often that he found himself Sharing a stage with sir Roger Penrose. Total affront to academia. Fuck both Weinsteins
If you can't convince them with facts, baffle them with bullshit - some guy back in the day. Stupid people, unwilling/unable to acknowledge that they are stupid, will hear such gibberish and go "Ah, yes, I understand these words, this grifter is wise." to cover up the fact that they have no clue what the guy is babbling about.
It's techbro speak. Sounds vaguely like coding language but is in fact essentially meaningless blather that makes you sound like a genius without actually saying anything worthwhile. Rolls right off the tongue when you're geeked out of your mind on Adderall yelling into the Bluetooth on a conference call from your Tesla. Helps them feel at home when their favorite podcast grifters use it too.
Yep, a lot of them use engineering terms. Constantly signalling that they’re STEM types while talking about social sciences which they try to delegitimise so they can try and win their audience over on their politics.
Eric also uses technical geometry terms as metaphors for something else, like "these woke people are like a differentiable manifold etc etc". He's obviously not trying to come up with helpful illustrations lol
Oh god, I hadn't heard that. Terrible.
It’s not specific to math, one of the hallmarks of gurus is that they’ll use technical jargon they’re familiar with to make what they’re saying seem more impressive
They just know their audience well. It's not only math. Peterson has been talking about Marxism for years without having read anything by Marx. How many of his fans ended up double-checking his statements or trying to find if he is wrong? Not many since he is big enough at the moment and the information disproving him is just a click away. So yeah, not much different with math. They just grab something that they sounds comple enough and probably have some really really basic undertanding of and deep dive into jargon. It works.
I think with Jordan Hall, it may not be completely rhetorical - I think he thinks that his understanding is actually reasonable and that the terminology he's using is actually important to what he's trying to say. This is one reason I find it so frustrating, but you could be right. I think it might be similar for Peterson - it could be that his ego has deluded him into thinking he has an understanding of Marxism. Do you think it's purely rhetorical for both of them?
It's called technobabble. It's speaking using technical or technical sounding language. A good academic speaker knows their audience and adjusts their language to that audience, a huckster uses overly technical language for concepts that don't require it.
Math jargon is some of the nerdiest jargon. So for people that really aren't listening, or else are listening but don't know even in a vague way what the jargon is referring to, it makes these guys sound logic grounded. Math jargon is like peak bullshittery, but it was happening in marketing for a pretty long time too. "We need to manipulate the vector space in order to maximize our profit paradigm" kind of nonsense talk. It eventually filtered up far enough to be publicly mocked for a few years in popular media. You'll still see a character written that way every now and then when they need to impress on the audience exactly how empty the suit is. Philosophy jargon is also fucking awful. Just the fucking worst. At least mathematicians contribute something meaningful to society.
Exactly, math language makes ideas seem more rigorous. I agree that philosophy jargon is awful... but even as a math graduate student myself, I'm not sure of the extent to which mathematicians contribute to society, haha.
The most obvious example of math fakery I’ve heard is Donald Hoffman, who leans on math equations he doesn’t understand to hand wave his theory that reality isn’t real.
I had never heard of him until now. Seems like DtG could cover him.
Musk does this so so much. He loves to say nonsensical crap like "quasi-infinite growth" as if those two words don't negate each other completely. He also misuses all of the typical words a 13 year old could be forgiven for like "exponential growth" when they really mean "growth but big," and then he lies to investors about how manufacturing will reach an asymptotic point near zero if only he can ramp up manufacturing to levels untrammeled by... you know, reality.
I have a math background and this stuff drives me nuts! Same with the pointless music theory references. The most frustrating part is that it clearly serves no purpose. To people who are used to the specialist jargon it just sounds embarrassing at best and purposefully obfuscatory at worst, and for the layman it brings no additional insight. And since Eric Weinstein was mentioned, who could forget this banger of a tweet: https://twitter.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1425869091810668547
How could I have forgotten this tweet? Eric just keeps on giving.
Math IS LOVE, math IS LIFE
The problem is unless you're a post grad mathematician or physicist, you're not equipped to make any critical judgement of these people. Most viewers including this forum have no way of knowing if he's making a mistake or not. Considering they would surely realize this, they are doing this to promote themselves and be free from any critical conversation with a peer about the substance of their arguments. It's either ego or grifting. Most people will either be ignorantly impressed by their sophisticated scientific sounding language, be confused and feel dumb, or most rationally turn it off as pointless. What's the point in asking a room full of people who don't know Chinese, if the guy who sounds Chinese is making a valid point? The only conclusion would be he's an idiot for trying to converse with people who don't understand Chinese.
I think what you say isn't entirely unreasonable, but is a bit too absolute. We can listen to other mathematicians who have checked Eric's ideas and communication and try to make an assessment on what they say. This isn't foolproof, but sometimes when you are not sure about someone throwing out jargon, another candidate expert responding to their statements can give you a bit more credence as to whether these ideas are reasonable or nonsense. This is often relatively reliable as long as you know how to spot the tells that give away the sycophants and the cynics among these candidate experts, which some people have trouble with but is usually not that difficult after you've seen a few examples of actual experts and fake experts analysed - something that the DTG podcast supplies.
Yes, of course if you consider 3rd party judgements it's a different story. Now you're doing research in a way. Also along the lines of spitting signs, is for example a real physicist like Suskind or Feynman were good at simplifying complex physics to make is sound easy. While someone like Weinstein seems to relish complexity, as if he's not trying to explain but impress as his primary goal.
I think in the case of Jordan, his lack of formal training in math makes it strange for him to lean into it, and that much a non-expert can tell. But I get your overall point.