Eric Weinstein's Conspiracy Theories

In the latest episode of his ridiculous podcast, Eric Weinstein launches into some theories that he has about Jeffrey Epstein. But before that, Eric Weinstein lays out all the other conspiracy theories that he apparently believes, which is the most concise overview of some of the nonsense he believes without evidence:

Eric Weinstein says:

in the minds of many, people believe that conspiracy theorists are people like Alex Jones, people who are spouting all sorts of crazy ideas, some of which might have a grain of truth in them but in general it feels like an exercise in talking to the tinfoil hat crowd. Now, I don't know much about Alex Jones, perhaps he's better than I think he is, but what I want to talk about is a different sort of conspiracy theorizing (Podcast Intro)

So the first thing I want to do is I want to be relatively clear that I'm somebody who believes that there is a fair amount of organization behind the scenes, usually of a relatively low-level of organization that is unknown to the people who are watching TV or listening to, let's say, NPR on the radio. And, at various times I've dug more deeply into various stories so I want you to have some idea of my history in this space.

In the 1980s and 1990s, I became very active in believing the so-called "Stem shortage" of scientists an engineers that was claimed by the Policy research and analysis division of the NSF was in fact a conspiracy in order to make life easier for employers who would be facing American scientists with an ability to bargain and make higher wage demands and that the national academy of sciences and NSF interceded on behalf of employers which was tampering in the labor market in an absolutely vital sector resulting in the immigration act of 1990 or "IMMACT 90" as it was called.

At that point, I also became aware of what I have termed 'Borjas Rectangle' theory. that is, employers generally in free market economies, when they are complaining about labor shortages they are actually trying to transfer wealth from labor to capital, complaining instead that there is a small inefficiency that needs to be rectified which we might call the 'Harberger Triangle', so that is employers are claim that there is a small inefficiency but are in fact seeing large transfer payments from the vulnerable to the well-heeled.

I also believe that NAFTA, the free trade agreement from the 1990s, was a kind of conspiracy supported by the economics establishment of the United states that they knew that in fact economics , sorry, free trade was not a 'freebie', it was not in fact a rising tide that lifted all boats but was in fact again a transfer which was claimed to be a pure good for everyone. This is the difference between something called the Kaldor-Hicks objective function and the pareto objective function.

I also believe string theory was largely a desperation measure in physics that was sold to the world to buy time when in fact the field of theoretical physics was failing.

I also claimed that the Boskin Commission formed by Packwood and Moynihan was a kind of conspiracy to transfer a trillion dollars by using the fact that social security payments are indexed to inflation as well as tax brackets being indexed to inflation. So if you could show that hte CPI was overstated and you could reduce the CPI you could transfer millions without having to touch the so-called 'third rail' of American politics.

This brings us to the two trading fortunes in New York City that during the first decade of the new millenium made no sense to me. those were Bernie Madoff, then referred to teh jewish t-bill, and Jeffrey Epstein. In the case of Madoff, I made a wrong guess. I beleived that Bernie Madoff was front-running a traditional business he held using actual orders that he knew were being placed and his hedge fund was effectively cheating based on the inside information he had from a legitimate business in an illegitimate business. I goofed, and I was wrong. In fact he was operating a pyramid scheme. it didn't occur to me.

In the case of Jeffrey Epstein, we'll get to that shortly, but it made no sense when i actually looked in to the story. let me keep going. i also became aware of what i call the 'gated institutional narrative'. In effect, a storyline or narrative that many institutions claim to believe but would easily be disrupted if outsiders were allowed to comment on it and the way of walling it off so that  these narratives could in fact govern the American mindset and get us talking about things that we would never normally choose to talk about in terms that seem completely unnatural to me. This is also the origin of the 'four quadrant' theory which I've pushed out which is a way of intimidating people away from holding positions that are not supposed to be habitable. Like, for example, if you're a xenophilic restrictionist on immigration, supposedly this is the position, most famous example of the theory is Cathy Newman questioning Jordan Peterson saying "so what you're really saying is", this is an implied threat which is if you try to express something subtle it will be mapped to be expressing something that is beyond the pale.

In addition, in the early 2000s i came out talking against the great moderation in mortgage backed securities. I published, I think in submitted in 2001, to Risk Magazine, a first article on mortgage backed securities and i kept talking about the fact that we had not actually banished volatility from the markets. This was a period of time where I was sort of going around the hedge fund conference circuit with Nassim Taleb talking about the fact that even though volatility was decreasing, this was not a permanent state of affairs.

Furthermore, I objected to non-recourse loans in the wake of the great financial crisis, and i talked openly about false narratives of the inevitability of Hillary Clinton versus Bernie Madoff (he meant Sanders) which was a giant mistake, in my opinion, of the New York Times interceding in an election in a completely inappropriate way, and they doubled down and came up with the impossibility of Donald Trump, which i tried to use preference falsification, the theory of Timur Kuran, who we just had on the program, in order to say that the likelihood of a Trump victory was far higher than anyone had imagined. 

I had also said various things about Brexit, where i thought that the likelihood that that would actually pass was high, and afterwards, after the 2016 election, I talked about fake news an as invented concept. it had been discussed before that, but there was a slew of articles about fake news which i still think was a completely inauthentic attempt to put in a placeholder for some ability to control the internet, in particular the large platforms, so that a repeat of 2016 could never happen in the year 2020. In effect, there should be some way of restoring the gated institutional narrative which had clearly broken

I've also been vocal on the data and society alternative influencer network theory, particularly on the Dave Rubin program, I think this was a transparent attempt to attempt to control the internet and the ability of influencers to gain stature if they are outside the gated institutional network. 

I also made several tweets around Jeffrey Epstein, one of them which says if he is in fact a construct of the intel community, either the US intel community or a foreign one, then clearly he could not be allowed to live. many other people also made similar predictions. But that gives you an idea of the kind of thing I've been talking about. I in general believe that where we are as a society is that we are expected to believe in narratives that any person with a modicum of intelligence and a certain awareness of history can not possibly be expected to believe with a straight face.

Alright. That brings us to the doorstep of what I call "responsible conspiracy theorizing".

According to Eric Weinstein, this was recorded in August 2019. The glaring omission from anyone familiar with Eric Weinstein's conspiracy theories is WTC Building 7. He's constantly tweeting about it:







With every Eric Weinstein conspiracy theory, it's unclear what Eric Weinstein specifically feels "intelligent people" cannot be reasonably believe. He rarely cites examples of what in particular he finds unbelievable and ridiculous. Because he's lazy and reckless.

Another conspiracy theory missing is Eric Weinstein's claim that his family would be eligible for three nobel prizes if not undermined by a conspiracy of academics that opposed their genius. (More details on this and why Eric is generally awful is available here)

There are details in Eric Weinstein's ramblings in his Jeffrey Epstein podcast that aren't quite conspiracy theories, they are loaded suggestions that Eric Weinstein predicted disasters.

Eric Weinstein suggests he predicted:

• The financial crisis
• Trump
• Brexit

Getting back to conspiracy theories, and for the sake of actually investigating claims related to conspiracy theories, let's go over each of Eric Weinstein's pet conspiracy theories, and actually do the investigation work that he could have done at any time over past two decades.

The List Of Conspiracy Theories

Conspiracy Theory: The "Gated Institution"/Media/Corporate Press has a narrative

This is either a mundane indisputable fact (as interests naturally align) or an unfalsiable conspiracy theory  as long as the New York Times exists. Committed crackpots will look past all the media outlets that are incredibly committed to an extreme counternarrative - be it pro-Trump, pro-Brexit, or generic nativist and populist sentiments - and focus on the perception of the vast institutional control of the "liberal media". In Eric Weinstein's world, NPR, MSNBC & New York Times are calling all the shots, even though he doesn't seem to consume any of their content.

Conspiracy Theory: The NSF conspired to lower STEM wages through IMMACT 90

Usually crimes are about motive and opportunity, and it's not clear who at the NSF had any motive to do this.

Conspiracy Theory: Employers play up "labor shortages" to move immigration policy

This "conspiracy" amounts to employers in various sectors not wanting to do more training or pay higher wages and would rather hire migrants when presented the opportunity. As far as conspiracy theories goes, this is so obvious as to make it bland and meaningless - employers do not want to restrict their hiring opportunities. The problem is, of course, Eric Weinstein & other conspiracy nuts never bother elaborating on how this perspective has been always wrong and always nefarious. If they are not afraid of "opinions", they should not be afraid of employers having opinions.

Conspiracy Theory: NAFTA "didn't work"

Anyone claiming NAFTA is bad needs to explain why free trade between states within the union is an economic disaster, or is at least disadvantageous for the lower classes. This could be proven with data, but none of the tinfoil hats ever bring any.

Conspiracy Theory: Social networks are conspiring with the "gated institutional network" liberal media in order to suppress influencers outside of the network

The most shared evidence of this is Dave Rubin claiming that his YouTube subscriber count changes in ways he doesn't understand. The only case where Eric Weinstein, Dave Rubin and Jordan Peterson have championed free speech on platforms is when Carl Benjamin (Sargon) said the n-word on a YouTube stream and was subsequently banned by Patreon. Dave Rubin and Jordan Peterson actually quit Patreon in protest. Apparently Carl's access to all kinds of donation payment processors cannot be curtailed, as Dave Rubin & Eric Weinstein would be sad if Carl had to say the n-word unpaid!

Conspiracy Theory: Eric Weinstein, Bret Weinstein and Pia N. Malaney (Eric Weinstein's wife) had Nobel-track careers that were undermined by "the establishment"

The reality is, of course, that Eric Weinstein gets glowing press in The Guardian, Bigthink and other outlets (see section about Eric being a crybully) about every single one of his ridiculous ideas. The problem is Eric Weinstein has no follow-through. Eric Weinstein says he'll unify physics - it never happens. Eric Weinstein says he'll revolutionize economics with Pia - it never materializes.