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Language: en
without naming names can you tell the
story of your struggle during your time
at Harvard maybe in a way that tells the
bigger story of the struggle of young
bright minds that are trying to come up
with big bold ideas within the
institutions that we're talking about
you can start I mean in part it starts
with coffee with a couple of Croatians
in the math department at MIT and we
used to talk about music and dance and
math and physics and love and all this
kind of stuff as Eastern Europeans love
to and I ate it up and my friend
Gordana who was an instructor in the MIT
math department when I was a graduate
student at Harvard said to me and I'm
probably gonna do a bad version of her
accent there we go
it will I see you tomorrow at the secret
seminar and I said what secret seminar
it don't joke I said I'm not used to
this style of humor Gordon she's getting
the secret seminar that your adviser is
running I said what are you talking
about ha ha ha you know your advisor is
running a secret seminar on this aspect
I think it was like the chern-simons
invariants I'm not sure what the topic
was again but she gave me the room
number and the time and she was like not
cracking a smile I've never known her to
make this kind of a joke and I thought
this was crazy and I was trying to have
an advisor I didn't want an advisor but
people said you have to have one so I
took one and I went to this room at like
15 minutes early and there was not a
soul inside it it was outside of the
math department and I was still in the
same building the Science Center at
Harvard
and I sat there and let five minutes go
by
I'll let seven minutes go by ten minutes
go by there's nobody I thought okay so
this was all an elaborate joke and then
like three minutes to the hour this
graduate student walks in and like sees
me and does a double take and then I
start to see the professors in geometry
and topology start to file in and
everybody's like very disconcerted that
I'm in this room and finally the person
who is supposed to be my advisor walks
in to the seminar and sees me and goes
white as a ghost and I realized that the
secret seminar is true that the
department is conducting a secret
seminar on the exact topic that I'm
interested in not telling me about it
and that these are the reindeer games
that the Rudolph's of the department are
not invited to and so then I realize
okay I did not understand it there's a
parallel department and that became the
beginning of an incredible Odyssey in
which I came to understand that the game
that I had been sold about publication
about blind refereeing about openness
and scientific transmission of
information was all a lie I came to
understand that at the very top there's
a second system that's about closed
closed meetings and private
communications and agreements about
citation and publication that the rest
of us don't understand and that in large
measure that is the thing that I won't
submit to and so when you ask me
questions like well why wouldn't you
feel good about you know talking to your
critics or why wouldn't you feel the
answer is oh you don't know like if you
stay in a nice hotel
you don't realize that there is an
entire
second structure inside of that hotel
where like there's usually a workers
cafe in a resort complex that isn't
available to the people who are staying
in the hotel and then there are private
hallways inside the same hotel that are
parallel structures so that's what I
found which was in essence just the way
you can stay hotels your whole life and
not realize that inside of every hotel
is a second structure that you're not
supposed to see is the guest there is a
second structure inside of academics
that behaves totally differently with
respect to how people get dinged how
people get their grants taken away how
this person comes to have that thing
named after them and by pretending that
we're not running a parallel structure I
have no patience for that way anymore so
the I got a chance to see how the game
how hard ball is really played at
Harvard and I'm now eager to play
hardball back with the same people who
played hardball with me
let me ask two questions on this so one
do you think it's possible so I call
those people but that's the
technical term do you think it's
possible that that's just not the entire
system but a part of the system a sort
of that there's you can navigate you can
swim in the waters and find the groups
of people who do aspire to the guy who
wrestled my PhD was one of the people
who filed in to the secret seminar right
but are their Pinterest training side of
this right is he an well yes I
was as a bad no but then I'm trying to
make this point which is this isn't my
failure to correctly map these people
it's yours you have a simplification
that isn't gonna work I think okay I was
the wrong term I would say lacking of
character and what would you have had
these people do why did they do this why
have a secret seminar
I don't understand the exact dynamics of
a secret Samara but I think the right
thing to do is to I mean to see
individuals like you there might be a
reason to have a secret seminar but they
should detect that an individual like
you a brilliant mind who's thinking
about certain ideas could be damaged by
this I don't think they see it that way
the idea is we're going to sneak food to
the children we want to survive yeah so
that that's highly problematic and there
should be people within that room and
I'm trying to say this is the thing the
ball can't is thrown back won't be
caught the problem is they know that
most of their children won't survive and
they can't say that I see sorry to
interrupt you mean that the the fact
that the whole system is underfunded
that they naturally have to pick
favorites they live in a world which
reached steady state at some level let's
say you know in the early 70s and in
that world before that time you have a
professor like Norman's steam rod and
you'd have 20 children that his graduate
students and all of them were going to
be professors and all of them would want
to have 20 children right so you start
like taking higher and higher powers of
20 and you see that the system could not
it's not just about money the system
couldn't survive so the way it's
supposed to work now
is that we should shut down the vast
majority of PhD programs and we should
let the small number of truly top places
populate mostly teaching and research
departments that aren't PhD producing we
don't want to do that because we use PhD
students as the labor force so the whole
thing has to do with growth resources
dishonesty and in that world you see all
of these adaptations to a ruthless world
where the key question is where we going
to bury this huge number of bodies of
people who don't work out so my problem
was I wasn't interested in dying
so you clearly highlight that there is
aspects of the system that are broken
but as an individual is your role to
exit the system or just acknowledge it
as a game and win it my role is to
survive and thrive in the public eye in
other words when you have an escapee of
the system like yourself such as and
that person says you know I wasn't
exactly finished let me show you a bunch
of stuff let me show you that the theory
of telomeres never got reported properly
let me show you that all of marginal
economics is supposed to be redone with
a different version of the differential
calculus let me show you that you didn't
understand the self dual yang-mills
equations correctly in topology and
physics because they're in fact much
more broadly found and it's only the
mutations that happen in special
dimensions there are lots of things to
say but this particular group of people
like if you just take where are all the
Gen X and millennial university
presidents all right okay they're all
they're all in a holding pattern now
where why in this story you know is it a
of telomeres was it an older professor
and a younger graduate student it's this
issue of what would be called
interference competition so for example
orcas try to drown minke whales by
covering their blowholes so that they
suffocate because the the needed
resource is air okay well what are the
universities do they try to make sure
that you can't be viable that you need
them that you need their grants you need
to be zinged with overhead charges or
fringe rates or all of the games that
the locals love to play well my point is
ok what's the cost of this how many
people died as a result of these
interference competition games you know
when you take somebody like Douglas
pressure who did green fluorescent
protein and he drives the shuttle bus
right because his grant runs out and he
has to give away all of his research and
all of that research gets a Nobel Prize
and he gets to drive a shuttle bus for
$35,000 a year what do you mean by die
do you mean their career their dreams
their holes they're there as an academic
Doug pressure was dead for a long period
of time okay so as a person who's
escaped the system yeah
can't you at this because you also have
in your mind a powerful theory that may
turn out to be useful maybe not
let's hope can't you also play the game
enough like with the children
so like publish and but also if you told
me that this would work really what I
want to do you see is I would love to
revolutionize a field with an H index of
zero like we have these proxies that
count how many papers you've written how
cited of the papers you've written all
this is nonsense it's interesting at the
aside what do you mean by a field with
an H index is your totally new H index
is count somehow how many papers have
you gotten that gets so many citations
yeah let's say H index undefined like
for example I don't have an advisor for
my PhD but I have to have an advisor as
far as something called the math
genealogy project that tracks who
advised who who advised whom right down
the line so I am my own advisor which
sets up a loop right how many students
do I have an infinite number your
descendents they don't want to have that
story so I have to be I have to have
formal advisor Rowell bots and my
wikipedia entry for example says that I
was advised by Raoul bot which is not
true so you get fit into a system that
says what we have to know what your H
index is we have to know you know where
are you a professor if you want to apply
for a grant it makes all of these
assumptions what I'm trying to do is to
impart to show all of this is nonsense
this is proxy BS that came up in the
institutional setting
and right now it's important for those
of us who are still vital like Elon it
would be great to have Ilan as a
professor of physics and engineering
Yeah right it seems ridiculous to say
but just as Charlotte just as a shot in
the arm yeah you know like be great to
have you on at Cal Tech even one day a
week yeah one day a month okay well why
can't we be in there it's the same
reason well why can't you be on the view
why can't you be on Bill Martin we need
to know what you're gonna do before we
take you on the show on the show well I
don't want to tell you what I'm going to
do do you think you need to be able to
dance the dance a little bit
I can dance the dance floor to be on the
view oh come on so you can't yeah you do
I do that fine here's where it's the
place that it goes south is there's like
a set of questions that get you into
this more adversarial stuff and you've
in fact asks some of those more
adversarial questions the setting and
they're not things that are necessarily
aggressive but there are things that are
making assumptions right right well so
when you make it I have a questions like
you know Lex are you avoiding your
critics you know it's just like okay
well why did you frame that that way or
the next question would be it's like do
you think that you should have a special
exemption and that you should have the
right to break rules and everyone else
should have to follow them like that
question I find enervating yeah it
doesn't really come out of anything
meaningful it's just like we feel we're
supposed to ask that of the other person
to show that we're not captured by their
madness that's not the real question you
want to ask me if you want to get really
excited about this you want to ask do
you think this thing is right yeah weird
thing I do do you think that it's going
to be immediately seen to be right I
don't I think it's gonna it's gonna have
an interesting fight and it's gonna have
an interesting evolution and well what
do you hope to do with it in
non-physical terms
oh gosh I hope it revolutionizes our
relationship of well with people outside
of the institutional framework and it
reinforces into the institutional
framework where we can do the most good
to bring the institution's back to
health you know it's like
these are positive uplifting questions
yeah if you had Frank we'll check you
wouldn't say Frank let's be honest you
have done very little with your life
after the original huge show that you
used to break under the physics seem
like we weirdly asked people different
questions based on how they sit down
yeah that's very strange right but you
have to understand that so here's the
thing I get these days a large number of
emails from people with the equivalent
of a theory of everything for a GI yeah
and I used my own radar BFBS radar to
detect on unfairly perhaps whether
they're full or not right because I
love what you're where you're going with
this by the way and Mike my concern that
I often think about is there's elements
of brilliance and what people write to
me and I and I'm trying to write now as
you made it clear that's the kind of
judgments and assumptions we make how am
I supposed to deal with you who are not
an outsider of the system and think
about what you're doing because my radar
saying you're not full of you know
what I'm also not completely outside of
the system that's right you've danced
beautifully you've actually get got all
the credibility that you're supposed to
get all the nice little stamps of
approval not all but a large enough
amount you use I mean it's hard to put
into words exactly why you sound whether
your theory turns out to be good or not
you sound like a special human being I
appreciate that and thank you hey Tina
good night
so but what am I supposed to do with
that flood of emails for me AJ why do I
sound different I don't know and I would
like to systemize that I don't know look
you know when you're talking to people
you very quickly consume eyes like am i
claiming to be a physicist
no I say it every turn I'm not a
physicist right when I say to you when
you say something about bundles you say
well can you explain it differently I
think you know I'm pushing around on
this this area that lever over there I'm
trying to find something that we can
play with and engage and you know
another thing is is that I'll say
something at scale so if I was saying
completely wrong things about bundles on
the Joe Rogan program you don't think
that we wouldn't hear a crushing chorus
yes and it's actually you know same
thing with geometric unity so I put up
this this video from this oxford lecture
I understand this not a standard lecture
but you haven't heard you know the most
brilliant people in the field said well
this is obviously nonsense they don't
know what to make of it
yeah I'm gonna hide behind well he
hasn't said enough to tale where's the
paper and where's the paper I've seen
the criticism yeah I've gotten the same
kind of critters I've published a few
things and like especially stuff related
to Tesla that we did studies and Tesla
vehicles and the kind of criticism I've
gotten was showed that they're
completely oh right like the guy who had
Elon Musk on his program twice is gonna
give us an accurate assessment yeah
exactly exactly it's just very low-level
like without actually ever addressing
you know and the content you know like I
think that in part you're trying to
solve a puzzle that isn't really your
puzzle I think you know that I'm sincere
you don't know whether the theory is
gonna work or not and you know that it's
not coming out of somebody who's coming
out of left field like the story makes
sense there's enough that's new and
creative and different in other aspects
where you can check me that your real
concern is are you really telling me
that when you start breaking the rules
you see the system for what it is and
it's become really vicious and
aggressive and the answer is yes and I
had to break the rules in part because
of learning issues because I came into
this field you know with a totally
different set of attributes my
file just doesn't look like anybody
else's remotely but as a result what
that did is it showed me what is the
system true to its own ideals or does it
just follow these weird procedures and
then when it when you take it off the
rails it behaves terribly and that's
really what my story I think does is it
just says well he completely takes the
system into new territory where it's not
expecting to have to deal with somebody
with these confusing sets of attributes
and I think what he's telling us is he
believes it behaves terribly now if you
take somebody with perfect standardized
tests and you know a winner of math
competitions and you put them in a ph.d
program they're probably going to be
okay I'm not saying that the system you
know breaks down for any everybody under
all circumstances I'm saying when you
present the system with a novel
situation at the moment it will almost
certainly break down with probability
approaching 100% but to me the painful
and the tragic thing is it sorry to
bring out my motherly instinct but it
feels like it's too much it could be too
much of a burden to exist outside the
system maybe by psychologically first of
all I've got a podcast that I that's
kind of like I've got amazing friends I
have a life which has more interesting
people passing through it than I know
what to do with and they haven't managed
to kill me off yet so so far so good
you