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Eric Weinstein

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Not to be confused with Eric W. Weisstein.
Eric Weinstein
Weinstein in 2019
Born
Eric Ross Weinstein

October 1965
Los Angeles, California, U.S.
NationalityAmerican
Alma materUniversity of Pennsylvania
Harvard University
OccupationManaging director of Thiel Capital
SpousePia Malaney[1]
RelativesBret Weinstein (brother)

Eric Ross Weinstein (born October 1965) is an American mathematician, economist, and the managing director of Thiel Capital, Peter Thiel's investment firm.[2] He also writes on investments, capitalism, science, and mathematics.

Early life and education

Weinstein was born in Los Angeles, California. His family is Jewish, and his brother is biologist Bret Weinstein.[3]

In 1985, he graduated from the University of Pennsylvania as a University Scholar, receiving his bachelor's and master's degrees in mathematics followed by a Ph.D in Mathematical Physics from the Mathematics Department at Harvard University in 1992. He has since held a Lady Davis Fellowship in the Racah Institute of Physics at Hebrew University, a National Science Foundation fellowship in the mathematics department of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and he was an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation grantee in the Harvard Economics Department and National Bureau for Economic Research where he founded the Project on the Economics of Advanced Training with economist Richard Freeman.

Contributions

Economic theory

Recently, a program for 'Geometric Marginalism' by Weinstein and collaborator Pia Malaney has been funded by the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET).[4]

Mathematical physics

Weinstein claimed in his dissertation research that the self-dual Yang–Mills equations on which Donaldson theory was built were not unique as was believed at the time, putting forward two sets of alternate equations based on spinorial constructions. One set of equations became the basis for his dissertation showing that the Self-dual Yang–Mills (SDYM) equations were not really peculiar to dimension four and admitted generalizations to higher dimensions.[5]

In May, 2013, Weinstein delivered a lecture, Geometric Unity. It was promoted by Marcus du Sautoy as being a possible answer to some of the problems in modern physics.[6] Few physicists attended the original lecture, and no paper or preprint was published. The claims were met with skepticism by several commentators.[7] A repeat lecture was organized the following week with more physicists in attendance. His theory includes an "observerse," a 14-dimensional space, and predictions for undiscovered particles which could account for dark matter. Joseph Conlon of the University of Oxford pointed out that some of these particles should already have been seen in existing accelerators such as the Large Hadron Collider, if they existed.[8]

Intellectual dark web

Weinstein coined the term "intellectual dark web" after his brother, Bret Weinstein, resigned from The Evergreen State College in response to a campus controversy. The term is a semi-ironic reference to a particular group of academics and podcast hosts.[9][10][11] The neologism received wide discussion in May 2018, after becoming the subject of a column by Bari Weiss in the opinion section of The New York Times.[12][13] Individuals associated with the intellectual dark web, in addition to Eric and Bret Weinstein, include Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Sam Harris, Heather Heying, Claire Lehmann, Douglas Murray, Maajid Nawaz, Jordan Peterson, Steven Pinker, Joe Rogan, Dave Rubin, Ben Shapiro, Lindsay Shepherd, Michael Shermer, Debra Soh, and Christina Hoff Sommers.[10][14] They do not claim to share a common set of political ideas, with some identifying with the left and others with the right.[15][10] Weiss wrote that they share the experience of having been "purged from institutions that have become increasingly hostile to unorthodox thought".[10][16]

Writing in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Jacob Hamburger describes the intellectual dark web as "The first distinct intellectual movement to have emerged during the Trump presidency."[15]

References

  1. ^ McClurg, Lesley (May 7, 2015). "Let's Talk About Death Over Dinner". NPR. Retrieved February 1, 2019.
  2. ^ Illing, Sean (August 20, 2017). "Why capitalism can't survive without socialism". Vox. Retrieved July 2, 2018.
  3. ^ Richardson, Bradford (May 25, 2017). "Students berate professor who refused to participate in no-whites 'Day of Absence'". The Washington Times. Retrieved September 20, 2017.
  4. ^ "Annual Hayek Memorial Lecture 2010 - Prof Gary Becker". Institute of Economic Affairs. June 17, 2010. Retrieved May 31, 2013.
  5. ^ 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/9704167v2. Bibcode:1998CMaPh.194..149B. doi:10.1007/s002200050353. ISSN 0010-3616.
  6. ^ du Sautoy, Marcus (May 23, 2013). "Eric Weinstein may have found the answer to physics' biggest problems". The Guardian. Retrieved May 31, 2013.
  7. ^ Pontzen, Andrew (May 24, 2013). "Weinstein's theory of everything is probably nothing". New Scientist. Retrieved June 2, 2013.
  8. ^ Aron, Jacob (May 31, 2013). "How to test Weinstein's provocative theory of everything". New Scientist. Retrieved July 2, 2018.
  9. ^ Phillips, Melanie (May 23, 2018). "'Intellectual Dark Web' leads fightback against academic orthodoxy". The Australian. Retrieved June 16, 2018.
  10. ^ a b c d Weiss, Bari (May 8, 2018). "Meet the Renegades of the Intellectual Dark Web". The New York Times. Retrieved May 8, 2018.
  11. ^ Svrluga, Susan; Heim, Joe (June 1, 2017). "Threat shuts down college embroiled in racial dispute". The Washington Post. Retrieved July 1, 2018.
  12. ^ Drezner, Daniel W. (May 11, 2018). "The Ideas Industry meets the intellectual dark web". The Washington Post. Retrieved June 18, 2018.
  13. ^ Dreger, Alice (May 11, 2018). "Why I escaped the intellectual dark web". The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved June 18, 2018.
  14. ^ "Editorial: Truth requires free thinking, honest talk". Boston Herald. 14 May 2018.
  15. ^ a b Hamburger, Jacob (18 July 2018). "The "Intellectual Dark Web" Is Nothing New". Los Angeles Review of Books. Retrieved 12 November 2018.
  16. ^ Lester, Amelia (November 2018). "The Voice of the 'Intellectual Dark Web'". Politico. Retrieved 12 November 2018.
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