I hope you guys are in for some premium brain rot this week because I’ve been debasing myself with pseudointellectual cringe.`

This last week was not a productive week for me. I had covid for much of it; accompanied by an intense brain fog. Whenever I’m not working, and I can’t bring myself to read a good book or listen to informative podcasts, I find myself exploring weird rabbit holes on the internet.

So that’s this week’s theme: Brain Rot. The crème de la crème of garbage ideas.

Terrance Howard is a Movie/Television actor. You might have caught him in the first Iron Man or in the hit TV series Empire. Recently the actor has been the star of a controversy in the world of physics and mathematics academia, for his controversial new “theories” that threaten the basis of everything we hold true and dear. What’s at stake? Only the underpinnings of Einstien’s theory of relativity, string theory, and even rudimentary principles of mathematics such as 1+1=2.

The controversy has drawn the ire of several notable figureheads in the academic community including Neil Degrasse Tyson who dedicated an entire YouTube video to refuting the claims made in Terrance Howard’s treatise.

The entire world of Academia was laughing at Terrance Howard’s expense until one man stepped in to defend him: Eric Weinstein.

Eric Weinstein is somewhat of a controversial character himself. He’s been very public about his criticisms of modern academia. He was also an outspoken critic of Dr. Anthony Faucci during the 2019 Coronavirus outbreak.

But he’s not without his accolades. He received his PhD in Mathematical Physics from Harvard and was the ideas man for Thiel Capital (Run by Peter Thiel, Co-founder of PayPal).

Spoiler Alert: Weinstein thinks that 99% of Terrance Howard’s claims are baseless drivel but attempts to strong-man his argument anyway.

Weinstein’s philosophy is that anyone should be able to enter their ideas into the arena with the incumbent theories held by institutions. If they’re right then you’ve moved the ball forward, if they’re wrong then you’ve strengthened the arguments for what you already believe to be true.

Anyway, the reason that this interview is worth watching is that the dynamic between these two men is absolutely fascinating. There is no one on earth that has the ability to fact-check Howard in real-time and also has the patience to do so in polite conversation.

I understand that 4 hours is a lot of content to wade through so I’m providing a couple of timestamps for the full interview. Try not to be thrown off by all of the jargon, it’s not important to understand every reference.

1:41:17-1:45:22

https://youtu.be/nrOaFxNex7U?si=Aks_bWXUkHZZW_K9&t=6077

In this clip, Weinstein wades through Howard’s pseudoscientific word salad to connect with him. After all, Terrance Howard is making interesting and beautiful art based on the actual principles of geometry. It’s fairly impressive.

Weinstein is patient. You can see him and Rogan exchange knowing glances when Howard is far off base, but Weinstein responds to him in a language Howard understands. He speaks to him as an artist, using metaphor and analogy, where Howard is proficient. He does all this when it would be simply easier to use rhetoric.

2:13:42-2:20:10

https://youtu.be/nrOaFxNex7U?si=p4A8EBrEqMs_NQR4&t=8022

In this clip, Weinstein references a time when a breakthrough in science was made through analogizing by scientists outside of their element. Watson and Crick, the discoverers of DNA, noticed the ubiquity of the helix and were actively looking for it.

You can make incredibly novel discoveries through analogy. This behavior is not to be discouraged because sometimes these intuitions are all that we have. Where Terrance Howard is running into trouble is that he doesn’t “prune” his ideas and extrapolates the ideas he’s playing with into facts.

Weinstein goes on to use the analogy of blackjack. “You’re taking all the good stuff that you’re doing and you’re getting to 19 and you’re saying hit me.”

Terrance Howard’s sculptures are cool. If he just left it at that there wouldn’t be a controversy; there might even be something to learn from them. It’s only by making sweeping epistemological statements about the universe that he gets into trouble.

You can watch the full interview here:

Or you can watch Weinstein be interviewed by Pierce Morgan which serves as a relatively precise recap.

You might already be familiar with the infamous subreddit r/wallstreetbets. If you remember the Gamestop short squeeze from a couple of years ago, you’ve already been exposed to peek financial degeneracy. It’s a place with a language of its own. You’re not a fool when you make a bad trade, you’re “regarded.” When you’re holding onto a meme stock and refusing to sell you have “diamond hands” that you’re “hodling with.”

HODL stands for hold on for dear life because the traders in the group have to be reminded not to panic sell constantly.

Do you want to gamble your life savings in the stock market? Wallstreet bets is the place to post your insane wins or, more likely, proof that you’ve ruined your life.

Wallstreet Bets is home to some of the funniest charts I’ve ever seen. Never before exploring this subreddit would I have imagined myself laughing out loud at a chart. Here are some screenshots of the posters’ portfolios:

Now that you’re somewhat acquainted with Wall Street bets. I want to share with you the story of:

It all started with a simple post:

TLDR: He inherited 800k from his grandma and spent 700k on intel stock.

“Grandma died 2 months ago. Left me $800k inheritance. I'm only a junior in college as a math major and I don't really have any use for the money, nor do I have any debt (I'm very fortunate that my parents are paying for my education). I always heard about people losing their inheritance by spending it on garbage instead of investing. So I told my parents I'm not going to spend a cent of this money and I'm going to invest all of it and they were proud of me. I put 100k into a high yield savings account and bought 700k worth of Intel stock at market open. I plan on holding this for a decade depending on how it performs.”

Then within the next 24 hours or so:

So then Intel’s stock does this:

zoom in for dramatic effect

oops

This is heart-wrenching. I mean, this is about the dumbest thing you could do with your money and it’s comical how quickly he was punished for it.

Naturally, the community was super empathetic towards him.

Just kidding, they’re all sociopaths and they’re still roasting him in every single post to this day. The man is now a legend in the community. Here are some of my favorite comments and posts:

One user edited over a cinema depiction of King Henry the 5th being anointed to get the point across.

Intel guy gets inducted into the WSB Hall of Fame
by u/yolocallking inwallstreetbets

This man is a “regarded” legend now. May he rest in peace.

The world is a strange place.

With its richness and complexity comes an emergent property: Weirdness.

Weirdness is unfamiliar. It’s a reminder that much of the world lives in a reality vastly different from my own.

I will never experience being a washed-up actor attempting to revolutionize the world of theoretical physics. I will never experience the emotional rollercoaster of making hundreds of thousands by betting it all on red, only to then lose it all the very next day. I will never experience the vast majority of what there is to experience firsthand.

I love these stories. I’m obsessive about curating them, and maybe it is just brain rot, information junk food but I’m going to make my case for the consumption of seemingly meaningless internet stories.

There’s an archetypal story plot that’s universal. It’s the shape of most of cinema and literature, and we call it The Hero’s Journey.

A good story is almost always comprised of the same basic elements. The hero is drawn from their ordinary world to some cause. He meets teachers, tricksters, and enemies along the way that force them to shift and grow. After an intense climactic action(some problem or event they attempt to overcome as a new person; a person fundamentally different from the way they were when they started this adventure) they return to some version of their ordinary world.

They’re different now though. The last stage of the hero’s journey is The Return with the Elixir.

The “Elixir” can be anything. It can be knowledge, skill, a change in attitude, a new relationship, or even a literal elixir.

But this is always the most important step. The hero has something to bring back. Otherwise, what was the point?

We all have our elixirs. Some of them we earned ourselves, but some of them are gifts.

We aren’t always the hero.

Every garbage thread on Reddit, or strange interview on YouTube features a hero, with the elixir that they fought for. It’s not always obvious what the takeaway is but you can be sure that it’s there.