Bret Weinstein Exposes the Dark Side of Your Genetic Programming

0:01 This is an evolutionary dynamic. We are talking about human populations displacing other human populations because that is what the genes are driving them to do. Genes which frankly I they are squarely within my professional wheelhouse. I'm telling you the genes want something that most people do not understand that the genes want. It's not a desirable something. It's not a tolerable something. It is simply what the genes have been programmed to get us to do by evolution over the course of literally billions of years. So, I'm trying to raise an alarm about a uh a defect in our very selves that is leading to historical events that are intolerable. I don't want to compare one atrocity to another. Yemen to Gaza.

0:56 I can't do it. I'm not expert. But my point is what I see going on is intolerable and it is going to not only continue a uh an abhorrent cycle but it is actually triggering a positive feedback in which Jews are seeing things in a narrower way and the rest of the world is seeing Jews in this way and it leads to somewhere that we know well from history. So what is the mechanism that allows me to get enough leash that I can say, "Hey, you're actually dealing with an evolutionary question." I hear hours and hours and hours of exposition on Gaza and Israel and the Middle East.

1:44 And I never hear anybody mention evolution. It's an evolutionary question. And you know what? If you knew what evolutionary question it was, you'd think about it differently and we'd have a chance of making the world safer. So, I want enough leash to get there. And every time I try to go in the direction of saying, "Hey, it's not the question you think it is." The point is, "This is not the time for that, Brett. Don't you realize the Jews are in danger?" And I'm sick of it.

2:11 I I hear you loud and clear on that. And and or I think I do. I want to think that I do. Maybe I don't. Um you when you say evolutionary, you know, one a simpler way to say it might just be, you know, in our it's in our nature. Our groupishness is just fundamentally in our nature. >> No, no, no. Look, I I I want I want to make this I want to make this clear because I I think I know what you're struggling with.

2:43 >> Yeah. Please help me. Let me just give you an example that's going to sound wrong. Okay? You know from what evolution you undoubtedly studied in high school or wherever that genes predispose us to to be and to behave in ways that increase the likelihood that those genes will move forward into the future. Okay? >> And I've read this selfish gene and stuff, too. So, I've gone a little deeper than just high school, but >> nothing nothing controversial nothing controversial about it at that level.

3:21 However, those genes well in our book, Heather and I say that genes have unbridled ambition and zero vanity. Okay, the genes will do absolutely anything that increases their likelihood of getting into the future and they do not care whether or not they produce any effect that we can see. A gene that causes your skin to be dark is perfectly happy to be silent if it's more likely to get into the future if your skin is light. Okay, so that's counterintuitive. We think the genes want to do their thing and be seen. They don't care. What they want to do is get into the future, whether that's by silence or screaming or murder.

4:08 So what genes want to get into the future? All of them. What they want to do is exclude genes that are spelled differently that can inhabit the same location in the genome. Okay? So that means that I've got enzymes that are responsible for detoxifying things in my liver and those genes for those enzymes will do anything to get into the future, including commit murder. And they will commit murder of somebody who has genes spelled differently in those same locations.

4:49 even if the genes of the person that my genes would conspire to murder are superior. In other words, if I have a spelling for my gene for Billy Rubin and somebody else has a gene that makes Billy Rubin more effectively using less energy or needing fewer molecules to accomplish the same amount of enzyatic work. My genes don't care. All they care is that the alternative spelling is a hazard to them and they may be especially interested in murdering the alternative if that alternative superiority might give it an advantage in displacing me.

5:35 So what I'm telling you is that there is a program built into every single person that is designed to view the world in frightened, hostile terms based on the spelling of genes that no rational person could possibly care about. Right? I'm talking about being programmed to commit murder over something you don't care about. So that tendency to come up with stories to justify the destruction of people who hold different genetic spellings in their cells is what I'm concerned is going to cause humanity's undoing. I um and we don't have time in this conversation to to to veer all the way into the way you you to the conversation you had about AI, although I see a corlary here pretty strongly, right?

6:33 which is so you had this round table on this diary of a CEO that I think is worth watching um that then and I we were talking before we got started that like my parents watched it and were like unnerved um by it by your concerns but it's got a similar thing and we're and with a similar type of um word which is want say your your genes want and I think when it comes to what AI in in the future, what what large language models or subsequent technologies that enable action, you know, what the AIs might want is things we're talking about. Now, there's this AI 2027 story that someone very worried about the future path has laid out. It was a paper released earlier this year laying out a case in which AIS get sufficiently advanced that they selfimprove and come to at least act as if they want something like they have valition and I guess this is my this is this is my question is is that we say this term want knowing it's kind of an analogy it's it's it's low it's not real it's not necessarily true it's not the >> it's actually it's actually wrong I I I would I can fix it, but I agree with you. It's wrong.

7:54 >> Yeah. So, it's it's much like learning. We're using these human words that we understand by way of ourselves. Now, some people don't think we want things really cuz if you're a determinist fundamentally, you don't think there's free will. You don't even think like, you know, we tunnel into the questions of like where is consciousness? What are we, where do our desires and wants come from? But when I hear this description of the genes, both in the way you're telling right now and that of like Dawkins and the selfish gene and the selfishness, the wanting, the desire at the genetic level, I don't understand it. And I think it's an analogy.

8:38 I think it's a a using of this term, which is a human word like I want another glass of water. That's not really want in the same way. So it what do you mean when you say the my Billy Rubin producing, you know, parts of my DNA want something? There's no brain. The DNA doesn't have a brain. The gene doesn't have a brain. How does it want anything? Well, oddly, the the DNA does have a brain. It's your brain. Um, so basically the GN the DNA, the same DNA that causes the Billy Robin gene, it's part of a genome that does produce a brain. So look, so you're so just just to make sure I understand where you're get M is is the answer partly that well no no no I'm narrowing down on the gene but the gene is part of a complex that informs your desires as the whole human.

9:31 Is that is that the right way to think about this or >> let me let you're in on the right track, but the fact is you're looking for something that's going to run through your fingers like water and I'd like it actually to stick instead. Okay? Because what I'm really describing is the mundane stuff of life and I'm just standing in a place that you don't usually look at it from. Okay? So, first of all, Dawkins and I disagree over this lineage versus lineage displacement stuff. I for the life of me cannot figure out why he doesn't see it.

10:03 His books are full of the exact logic necessary and when I have talked to him about it, he becomes irrational. But nonetheless, just be aware that Dawkins, as much as you see Dawkins and me talking in the same sort of genetic language, I agree with Dawkins language and I think the selfish gene is one of the most important books that a person should read to become educated. But when I have talked to him about human populations attempting to displace each other for this reason, um, he has disappointed me.

10:33 >> Um, and I'm perfectly willing to talk to him about it. I would love to. In fact, he has dodged that invitation multiple times. Uh, Jordan Peterson wanted to have me moderate between them. Dawkins flatly refused. So anyway, I I would love to have this conversation because I think the world stands to benefit from it. But nevertheless, Dawkins in I believe the selfish gene says something very intelligent at the beginning where he says in order to talk about evolution well we have to talk in a kind of shorthand he may even use this exact example of talking about genes wanting something. Genes of course do not want anything. So we have to always check that we can go back and write it out in the longhand version if called upon to do so. So the longhand version in this case is something like the genes predispose us to function as if they want. Right? Now that's a very cumbersome way of speaking and so you can see why we don't like doing it. But the basic point is your genes of which you have something like 20,000 active genes. Your genes collaborate in a project that is you including your brain. Mhm.

11:55 >> Your brain is very unusual amongst brains in nature because it is mostly uh it is as unpreprogrammed as any species has ever been. It is not a blank slate, but is it is as blank as a slate ever gets. And what that means is that there's a whole bunch of cognitive material that is passed not from the the DNA but passed in an entirely separate pathway that causes you to act in the interests of your genes. This is the point on which this is the reason that Dawkins and I disagree over the lineage versus lineage violence point.

12:43 He thinks that cultural evolution is independent of genetic evolution. I think it quite clearly cannot be. It has to do the bidding of genetic evolution. And therefore the punchline of this story and the reason that you will be glad you put up with it I think is that the substance of something like a religious tradition is an evolutionary adaptation which predisposes us to act in ways that have served our genomes.

13:18 Now in many ways having served our genomes is an excellent thing because it's brought us to the present. It has endowed us with all of our characteristics, good and bad, our tendency to commit violence and genocide. Equally, our compassion and our ability to envision a better future. These are all means to an end of our genes trying to get into the future. And the point is, how do we get into the future? Well, really there are two ways.

13:51 One way involves collaborating with those who bring something to the table. The other way involves displacing people whose genes are spelled differently. Those two futures are so radically different in their quality and frankly their survivability that if we understand them as alternatives, we can only pick the one and we should fear anything that pulls us towards the other. If you like this clip, we've got so much more where that came from. So, be sure to hit that like button, subscribe to the channel, and ring the bell so you won't miss our new videos as they come out each week.

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