Eric Weinstein

People always fancy themselves excellent chicken players, and so...

You know, it's like that scene in Rebel Without a Cause where you have two people who think that they can outwit the other one as to what level of risk they can handle.

I don't view the current crop of leaders as particularly skilled.

I mean, I would say that Putin would be the most skilled of the current crop of leaders in Xi.

But they're not world-class talents in this department, I don't think.

And nobody's...

use these weapons in so long, and I'm not even positive whether they'll work.

And so the fear of God also has to be reinstilled in the population through, let's say, through music.

I mean, there was a song called The Eve of Destruction that your listeners can find, or On the Beach, or Dr. Strangelove.

And all of these stories we've stopped telling so that we no longer think of these things as immediate.

So I don't think it works as well as you think it does.

But if you're satisfied with that short-term cessation of hostilities because everyone's so terrified of the consequence, absolutely.

That's the major positive externality of Armageddon

And the apocalypse is that it keeps the peace very well in the short term.

We should remind ourselves.

You know, I don't think... There's this sort of cavalier attitude that you develop when... You know how men who've never gone to war... I've never been to war.

Men who've never gone to war tend to talk tough because they have no idea what they're saying.

And so I'm always interested when I see people who are like, you've got a tough guy and you've got a guy who's actually been in special forces at the same table.

The guy who talks stuff will go on a great length, and the guy who's actually seen some stuff will just remain silent.

It's not even worth having the conversation.