Leonard Susskind

The duopoly and the illusion of choice In the current geopolitical landscape, the concept of democracy has shifted from the will of the people to the preservation of institutions. Dr. Eric Weinstein argues that the United States is governed by a "rules-based international order," an interlocking series of agreements and understandings designed to keep markets open and prevent global conflict. Within this structure, the primary function of the two major American political parties is to prune the field of populist candidates. This ensures that regardless of the election's outcome, the resulting president is acceptable to the state department, the intelligence community, and the defense department. This system functions through what is known as "magician's choice." While the public believes it is selecting a leader, the primary process and institutional pressures ensure that any viable candidate has already pre-committed to maintaining existing alliances like NATO and trade agreements like NAFTA. The 2016 election of Donald Trump represented a catastrophic failure of this pruning mechanism. As the first president to enter the Oval Office without prior military or government service, Trump broke the primary structure, leading to what Weinstein describes as a "full-court press" by the institutional "blob" to delegitimize and constrain his presidency. Managed reality and the retconning of truth We are currently living in an era of "managed reality," where information is filtered and adjusted to support institutional narratives. A key tool in this management is "retroactive continuity" or "retconning." Originally a literary device used in fictional universes like Star Wars, retconning involves adjusting or ignoring established facts to fit a new narrative. In the political sphere, this manifests as media outlets and search engines subtly altering the historical record to favor certain candidates or suppress dissent. Weinstein points to the media's treatment of Kamala Harris as a prime example. He notes how her previous association with the "border czar" title was downplayed or erased once she became the primary Democratic candidate. Similarly, search engine results for political figures often reflect a stark imbalance, surfacing positive stories for favored candidates while emphasizing negative coverage for institutional threats. This isn't necessarily achieved through direct editorializing at the search engine level, but rather by drawing from a heavily biased pool of original content produced by an expert class that feels obligated to "tow the party line" to maintain their social and professional standing. Why string theory derailed theoretical physics For over four decades, String Theory has dominated the landscape of theoretical physics despite its failure to produce a single verifiable prediction or a minimal viable product. Weinstein posits that this stagnation may not be an accidental academic dead end, but a deliberate institutional maneuver. By funneling the world's most brilliant minds into a "shiny distraction" that is mathematically beautiful but physically irrelevant, the scientific establishment ensures that progress in areas that could lead to dangerous "restricted data"—specifically new forms of nuclear or energy-based weaponry—is effectively blocked. This institutional control is maintained through the suppression of competitors. Leading physicists like Leonard Susskind and Michio Kaku have presided over a sociology that "hunts and destroys its enemies," ensuring that funding and academic positions are reserved for those within the string theory community. This creates a "Science TM"—a corporate-academic complex that prioritizes institutional safety over actual discovery. Weinstein argues for a "relative value trade": going long on real science while shorting the bureaucratic version that lives within journals and funding agencies like the National Science Foundation. The high cost of the accuracy budget To exist in the public sphere is to navigate a series of "budgets": hypocrisy, inconsistency, and accuracy. No human being can be perfectly consistent or correct across a lifetime of public discourse. However, the modern digital environment, characterized by "criticism capture," has eliminated the principle of charity. Criticism capture occurs when a public figure's output is increasingly shaped by their reaction to their most unhinged detractors rather than their core beliefs. This often leads to a "slow descent" where individuals become caricatures of themselves, mirroring the derangement of those who hate them. High-agency individuals must learn to manage these budgets. Weinstein notes that even geniuses like Gregor Mendel or Isaac Newton had deficits—Mendel likely faked some data and Newton obsessed over alchemy—yet their contributions were transformative. If society torches its best people for minor inconsistencies, it loses the ability to benefit from their unique insights. The goal should be to remain "under budget" on hypocrisy while maintaining the courage to speak with an inner voice that hasn't been homogenized by the digital mob. High agency as a life commitment High agency is the commitment to finding "cheat codes" in a world designed to keep you in "flatland." It is the refusal to accept a "no" as the end of a conversation and the persistence to look for the "panic rooms" and "hidden compartments" within systems. Weinstein illustrates this through personal anecdotes of overcoming dyslexia and navigating rigid academic structures. He describes his son's path of taking the GRE in physics without ever having taken a formal class, simply by identifying the four core books required to understand the field. This mindset is essential for navigating the current multi-polar world. Whether it's understanding 4D geometric shapes or recognizing the strategic characters played by political figures like JD Vance or Robert F. Kennedy Jr., agency requires moving beyond the surface level of perception. It is the ability to hold complex, often contradictory ideas in superposition before collapsing them into action. In an era of rapid memeification and the loss of the sacred, maintaining individual agency is the only way to avoid becoming a mere node in an institutional network. The sacred and the speed of memes The internet has fundamentally altered our relationship with the sacred by accelerating the "velocity of stories" to a point where nothing remains archival. When Donald Trump's assassination attempt became a meme within seconds, it robbed the event of its historical and reverential weight. This "cringe-ation" of everything makes it difficult to maintain the earnestness required for great art or deep human connection. Weinstein advocates for a return to the "archival," where certain truths, relationships, and artistic achievements are protected from the joke-driven entropy of social media. This preservation of the sacred is particularly important in human relationships and romance. The modern focus on "body counts" and performative dating ignores the essential magic that happens when individuals choose to see the best in each other. By rediscovering Earnestness and rejecting the cynical detachment of the "Reddit-mind," we can begin to rebuild a society that values depth over speed. The future belongs to those who can cradle the flame of original thought and high trust in the middle of a digital hurricane.