Eric Weinstein

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

Not to be confused with Eric W. Weisstein.
Eric Weinstein
Born
Eric Ross Weinstein

(1965-10-26) October 26, 1965
Los Angeles, California, U.S.
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)

Education

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

Physics

Weinstein left academia after stints at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. 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[lower-alpha 2] said what Weinstein has presented so far has had "no visible impact" and "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]

Intellectual dark web

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. The term is used to describe a number of academics and podcast hosts.[18][19]

Notes
  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
  1. 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. 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. Phillips, Melanie (May 23, 2018). "'Intellectual Dark Web' leads fightback against academic orthodoxy". The Australian. Archived from the original on June 17, 2018. Retrieved June 16, 2018.
  19. Svrluga, Susan; Heim, Joe (June 1, 2017). "Threat shuts down college embroiled in racial dispute". The Washington Post. Retrieved July 1, 2018.
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