Max Tegmark vs. Eric Weinstein: AI, Aliens, Theories, & New Year’s Resolutions! (Repost from 2021)

Into the Impossible With Brian Keating

Brian Keating

Physics, Natural Sciences, Science

4.7 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 1 January 2026

⏱️ 145 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Win a $100 Amazon Gift Card! Help me help you get great guests on the Into the Impossible podcast and spread the message throughout the universe. Fill out this listener survey: https://forms.gle/EUKzyE2ZqXDYJ2F47 Please join my mailing list here 👉 https://briankeating.com/yt to win a meteorite 💥 --- Enjoy this classic episode from the vault: Max Tegmark & Eric Weinstein, New Years Eve 2020! Brian Keating brings together two thought leaders at the edge of physics and philosophy: Max Tegmark, physicist, cosmologist, and pioneer at MIT, and Eric Weinstein, mathematician, economist, and creator of Geometric Unity. Timestamps: 00:00 "Ambitions in AI, Physics, News" 16:58 "Emergent Reality from Proto-Spacetime" 22:50 "Rethinking Unification in Physics" 36:09 "Value of Disagreeable Individualism" 45:32 "Optimism for Academia Careers" 01:04:08 "Dangers of Oversimplifying Physics" 01:07:34 "On Success, Science, and Wonder" 01:18:47 "Funding and Advancing Physics Research" 01:30:28 "Perspective on Science and Society" 01:43:13 "Three Types of Scientific Experiments" 01:52:05 "Collaboration and Discovery in Science" 02:02:20 "The Messiness of Scientific Truth" 02:13:08 "Simulation, AI, and Ethics" 02:20:55 "Limits of Technology in Cosmos" --- Join this channel to get access to perks like monthly Office Hours: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmXH_moPhfkqCk6S3b9RWuw/join 📚 Get my books: Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner, with productivity tips from 9 Nobel Prize winners: https://a.co/d/03ezQFu Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner, with life-changing interviews with 9 Nobel Prizewinners: https://a.co/d/hi50U9U My tell-all cosmic memoir Losing the Nobel Prize: http://amzn.to/2sa5UpA The first-ever audiobook from Galileo: Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems: Ptolemaic and Copernican https://a.co/d/iZPi9Un Follow me to ask questions of my guests: 🏄‍♂️ Twitter: https://twitter.com/DrBrianKeating 🔔 Subscribe https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1 📝 Join my mailing list; just click here http://briankeating.com/list ✍️ Detailed Blog posts here: https://briankeating.com/blog 🎙️ Listen on audio-only platforms: https://briankeating.com/podcast #universe #podcast #briankeating #intotheimpossible #science #astronomy #cosmology #cosmicmicrowavebackground #intotheimpossible #briankeating Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Dr. Brian Keating's Rockin' New Year's Eve with two of my good friends, Max Tegmark, Eric Weinstein.
0:08.3	Guys, I can't thank you enough for joining us today.
0:10.5	We're going to have a fun conversation to end.
0:12.8	It's really been like a fun year for everybody, right?
0:15.3	Nothing bad has happened this year.
0:17.5	Where are you guys?
0:18.3	Same old.
0:19.2	Where are you guys weathering, weathering the storm that has been 2020? Max, where are you guys same old same old where are you guys weathering
0:21.3	weathering the storm that has been 2020 max where are you
0:24.8	currently joining us from home and the great metropolis of winchester
0:29.5	massachusetts ah winchester and eric where are you joining us from today
0:34.4	an undisclosed location somewhere in los angeles those are the scariest ones of all. When I was a kid, in New Year's Eve, we'd watch pro wrestling, you know, which is maybe a moniker. I don't know how professional you need to be. But anyway, it would always be the scariest wrestlers were from parts unknown. Like, they don't know where, like the guy didn't put it on his resume where he's from.
0:56.6	Well, the undertaker can't be from Middlebury, Connecticut.
1:00.3	That's right.
1:00.9	He has a small candle shop and he does some scrimshaw in there.
1:06.2	But boys, we are here.
1:07.7	You guys were last gracing my presence this summer together, at least,
1:11.5	although you were separated in time when my channel partnered with PBS Spacetime Studios,
1:17.0	Matt O'Dowd, and his team, on a discussion of theories of everything. And we had two live streams
1:22.2	over the summer. I'll put links to those in the notes box below. But since then, you both have been involved in some really interesting kind of side hustles,
1:32.1	I think.
1:32.7	And I think the audience would be appreciative if we could talk about how things have gone
	...

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