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Bret Weinstein Quotes (1969-)
About Bret Weinstein
Bret Samuel Weinstein (born 21 February 1969) is an American evolutionary biologist and podcaster who came to national attention during the 2017 Evergreen State College protests. He is among the people referred to collectively as the "intellectual dark web," a term coined by Weinstein's brother Eric Weinstein.
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βStrategies evolve within markets and their larger regulatory context.β
β[T]he boundaries of the evolutionary environment do not stop at the market's edge.β
βWe need to place a firewall that is impermeable between the marketplace and the regulatory apparatus.β
β(3) These patterns are manifestations of an evolved antagonistic pleiotropy in which extrinsic causes of mortality favor a species-optimal balance between tumor suppression and tissue repair.β
βIf the next generation of people to take over the West does not know how to think, western civilization will come apart and it will be replaced in the way that civilizations before it have been. ...What we face is a very dire problem.β
βThe agents in the market are responding to opportunities that we have left open. It makes no more sense to be angry at them... than it does to be angry at the mosquito for sucking your blood. ...[Y]ou have to close down the opportunity.β
β(6) In iteroparous organisms selection tends to co-ordinate rates of senescence between tissues, such that no one organ generally limits life-span.β
β(4) With that trade-off as a fundamental constraint, selection adjusts telomere lengthsβlonger telomeres increasing the capacity for repair, shorter telomeres increasing tumor resistance.β
β[T]here's something about the way we are... vaccinating... who we are vaccinating, what dangers we are pretending don't exist, that suggests that to some set of people, vaccinating... is a good in and of itself. That that is the objective of the exercise, not herd immunity.β
βWeaponized "equity" is a means to an unacceptable and dangerous end, and it is already spreading from college campuses to other institutions... The emergence of this mentality, and this style of argument, at the highest levels of the tech sector and the press should alarm us greatly. The courts will not be far behind.β
β[I]mmovable objects are vanishingly rare in an academic context... If you're going to do it on the faculty side, you really need to have tenure, and in order to get tenure a lot of the things that you have to do train you not to be an immovable object. So there are very few immovable objects on college campuses, and that's a problem.β
βThe electorate is starved for honest debate and for the good governance that follows from it. My advice to this body is to put the nation and its core values ahead of partisanship and join us in the center to end this cultish power-grab, and return us to a forward path as a nation.β
βThere is a huge difference between a group or coalition deciding to voluntarily absent themselves from a shared space in order to highlight their vital and underappreciated roles... and a group encouraging another group to go away. The first is a forceful call to consciousness, which is... crippling to the logic of oppression. The second is a show of force, and an act of oppression in and of itself.β
β[A]ll of our environmental problems look like... somebody making a profit for degrading what belongs to the rest of us. ...[T]his behavior should not be allowed within a marketplace. We are fracturing the world. We are liquidating it, we are draining it, we are denuding it, we are over-exploiting it. It is apparent to anyone... The idea that this should not be allowed is transparent.β
β[T]here are two types of systems... One type... the costs of sustaining the system go to the benevolent. That system will inevitably evolve toward ruthlessness and instability. The converse system... where the costs of maintaining the society go to the ruthless evolves towards benevolence and stability. Whenever policy is in question, we should ask ourselves, "Does the policy lead in the direction of the one type or the other.β
β[F]ree speech is the wrong framework to be thinking about this, and... it has very little to do with college campuses. ...What happened at Evergreen that caused it to become a national story was that an unstoppable force met an immovable object. ...I was the immovable object ...for the moment, let's just chalk that up to a personality defect.β
βWe hypothesize that (1) in vertebrates, a telomeric fail-safe inhibits tumor formation by limiting cellular proliferation. (2) The same system results in the progressive degradation of tissue function with age.β
β[T]he personal responsibility vortex... sucks good people in... [W]e should redirect any effort that we are tempted to spend on personal responsibility, towards collective action... that can restructure the incentives that surround the market so that we... have a chance of altering the behavior.β
βSomething is seriously and dangerously amiss. At this moment in history, the center does not hold. Partisan polarization and political corruption have rendered government ineffective, predatory and often cruelly indifferent to the suffering of American citizens. Tribalism is a natural result.β
β[T]he third point... What is taking place is actually a threat to the Republic... in one of two ways. The first possible failure mode is that some sort of a Maoist takeover could escape the colleges and universities and... it could take over the West... I find this unlikely... but what I do find very frightening is the possibility that the self-censorship is going to cause colleges and universities to fail in their mission to educate people how to think about difficult issues.β
βIn the case that... what is good for the company is somewhat different than what is good for society, the ruthless corporation has the greatest advantage... because it can do anything it wants, and the corporation that is bound by what's good for society can't do anything. The corporation that tries to balance these concerns finds that it competes best with the ruthless corporation the more ruthless it becomes, and the outcome is predictable.β
βWe have to ask ourselves, what fraction of the economic activity that surrounds us is profitable only by virtue of the fact that those who make the money are externalizing the cost to somebody else. If we were to eliminate such behaviors, we would... reduce the amount of activity by a lot... but we would reduce it by exactly the fraction of activities that shouldn't have existed in the first place.β
β[O]ne can now advance... policies, and almost certainly succeed... if they are properly draped in weaponized terminology. "Equity", for example, has taken on special properties. If a person opposes an "equity" proposal, those advancing the proposal are secure in asserting that their opponent is motivated by opposition to racial equity itself: In other words, that they are racist. ...[O]neβs right to speak is now dictated by adherence to an ascendant orthodoxy in which oneβs race, gender and sexual orientation are paramount.β
βI stood up for three reasons. One... I felt an obligation to do it... it was the right thing to do. Two... manipulative bullies... Three, I thought that I was positioned to endure and repel the accusation that I absolutely knew was going to come back. Why did I think I was well positioned? ...I had tenure. I was well liked by students of every description, who knew me very well... and knew that I was not a bigot. I thought that would protect me. My own personal history was also completely inconsistent with the claim that I am a racist. ...I was wrong.β
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David Gorski on Bret Weinstein
β[T]he veterinary deworming drug ivermectin has become the new hydroxychloroquine in that it is being promoted as a highly effective treatment against COVID-19βand by many of the same people... despite evidence that is, at best very weak and at worst completely negative. Unfortunately, with the publication of two new and biased reviews, the "HCQ vibe" about ivermectin is stronger than ever. ...I concede that it is possible that ivermectin has clinically relevant in vivo antiviral activity against SARS-CoV-2. Based on current evidence, however, it seems unlikely that it does, when pharmacokinetics considerations are taken into account. As I routinely used to say when discussing hydroxychloroquine, Iβd be happy to change my mind if compelling scientific evidence for ivermectin were published. Itβs just that neither of these reviews qualify, nor do any of the clinical trials Iβve seen thus far. Thatβs why I agree that ivermectin shouldnβt be used to treat COVID-19 outside of the context of a well-designed clinical trial with a strong scientific rationale. Certainly, the conspiracy mongering by Bret Weinstein, Pierre Kory, and their fans are not leading me to reconsider that opinion.β
About Bret Weinstein
Bret Samuel Weinstein (born 21 February 1969) is an American evolutionary biologist and podcaster who came to national attention during the 2017 Evergreen State College protests. He is among the people referred to collectively as the "intellectual dark web," a term coined by Weinstein's brother Eric Weinstein.