Eric Weinstein

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Eric Weinstein
Born
Eric Ross Weinstein

(1965-10-26) October 26, 1965 (age 58)
EducationUniversity of Pennsylvania (BA)
Harvard University (MA, PhD)
Occupation(s)Podcast host, former investment fund director
Known forIntellectual dark web
SpousePia Malaney[1]
RelativesBret Weinstein (brother)

Eric Ross Weinstein (/ˈwnstn/; born October 26, 1965)[2] is an American podcast host.[a] He was a managing director for Thiel Capital (an American hedge fund) from 2013 until 2022. He has a PhD in mathematical physics from Harvard.[3][1][4][5]

Education[edit]

Weinstein received his PhD in mathematical physics from Harvard University in 1992 under the supervision of Raoul Bott.[6][7][8][9][10][11] In his dissertation, "Extension of Self-Dual Yang-Mills Equations Across the Eighth Dimension", Weinstein showed that the self-dual Yang–Mills equations were not peculiar to dimension four and admitted generalizations to higher dimensions.[12]

Career[edit]

Physics[edit]

Weinstein left academia after stints at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.[citation needed] Weinstein was invited to a colloquium by mathematician Marcus du Sautoy at Oxford University's Clarendon Laboratory in May 2013.[13] There he presented his ideas on a theory of everything called 'Geometric Unity'. Physicists expressed skepticism about the theory.[13][14] Joseph Conlon of Oxford stated that some of the predicted particles would already have been detected in existing accelerators such as the Large Hadron Collider.[13] Science writer Jennifer Ouellette criticized the colloquium in a blog for Scientific American, arguing that experts could not properly evaluate Weinstein's ideas because there was no published paper.[15]

On April 1, 2021, Weinstein released a draft paper on Geometric Unity in a guest appearance on the podcast The Joe Rogan Experience. Weinstein qualified in his paper that he "is not a physicist," but an "entertainer" and podcast host. It received strong criticism from some in the scientific community. Timothy Nguyen, whose PhD thesis intersects with Weinstein's work,[b] said what Weinstein has presented so far has "gaps, both mathematical and physical in origin" that "jeopardize Geometric Unity as a well-defined theory, much less one that is a candidate for a theory of everything."[17]

Weinstein is a member of the research team on The Galileo Project headed by Avi Loeb.[18]

Intellectual dark web[edit]

Weinstein coined the term "intellectual dark web" and named himself and his brother as members after his brother Bret Weinstein resigned from Evergreen State College, in response to a 2017 campus controversy.

Notes[edit]

  1. ^ Weinstein has not posted any podcast episodes since November 2020
  2. ^ Nguyen, who is a machine learning researcher at Google AI, co-authored a detailed paper with Theo Polya as a response[16]

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b McClurg, Lesley (May 7, 2015). "Let's Talk About Death Over Dinner". NPR. Retrieved February 1, 2019.
  2. ^ Weinstein, Eric (October 26, 2020). "Twitter post from Eric Weinstein on his birthday". Twitter. Retrieved October 26, 2020.
  3. ^ "Eric Weinstein Says He Solved the Universe's Mysteries. Scientists Disagree". www.vice.com.
  4. ^ Illing, Sean (August 20, 2017). "Why capitalism can't survive without socialism". Vox. Retrieved July 2, 2018.
  5. ^ Eric Weinstein on LinkedIn
  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: 47. ISBN 978-3-319-51781-0. Retrieved April 14, 2020.
  8. ^ "PhD Dissertations Archival Listing". Harvard Mathematics Department. Retrieved April 14, 2020.
  9. ^ Weinstein, Eric (February 19, 2021). "Tweet Thread 2:11 PM · Feb 19, 2021". Twitter. Retrieved March 10, 2023.
  10. ^ "Eric Weinstein's Harvard Story - The System Breaks Down in Novel Situations". AI Podcast Clips. Retrieved March 10, 2023.
  11. ^ "#1945 - Eric Weinstein". The Joe Rogan Experience. February 22, 2023. Retrieved March 10, 2023.
  12. ^ 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. S2CID 3238703.
  13. ^ a b c Pontzen, Andrew (May 24, 2013). "Weinstein's theory of everything is probably nothing". New Scientist. Retrieved June 2, 2013.
  14. ^ 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.
  15. ^ Ouellette, Jennifer. "Dear Guardian: You've Been Played". Scientific American Blog Network. Archived from the original on February 10, 2021. Retrieved January 11, 2020.
  16. ^ "Geometric Unity". Timothy Nguyen. August 4, 2021. Retrieved February 23, 2023.
  17. ^ Ongweso Jr, Edward (April 12, 2021). "Eric Weinstein Says He Solved the Universe's Mysteries. Scientists Disagree". Vice.
  18. ^ "Eric Weinstein". projects.iq.harvard.edu. Retrieved January 28, 2024.

External links[edit]