Finding a portal

December 19, 2019

Eric Weinstein is looking for a portal. So am I.

Eric talks about portals on Joe Rogan Experience #1320 - Eric Weinstein (PodScribe transcription here) during which he announces his podcast, “The Portal“ (Podcast Notes)

Eric’s description

Eric starts describing portals starting at 1:12:18 into JRE episode

When I was a kid, I read all of these stories that I thought were known to be the same story but different versions of it.

I called it the portal story, and it was always the same.

Somebody is trapped in a humdrum existence in an ordinary world until some sort of magical portal accidentally or on purpose enters their life.

Either they go through a wardrobe, or they go through a rabbit hole, looking glass or platform 9 and 3/4…

So the question is: where’s the portal?

Like why do we tell the same story over and over and over again with different protagonists? But it’s always the same formula. Somebody Sis trapped in an ordinary world. They’re sort of there around normies. They find the portal and the portal becomes the Call to Adventure

And they spend time in the alternate universe and then somehow they’re able to live very often they return.

So my question was always: why on earth would we tell the same story over and over and over and over and over again? It has the same format, and it’s always a different context.

And I came to believe that this story is actually this unkept promise for most people. That in their adult lives, they don’t find these portals.

La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona: “Now that is a portal.”

It’s just incredibly it’s incredibly empowering to know that you’re a hair’s breadth away from superpowers.

My quest

I’ve been looking for portals, too. In different places, perhaps.

I’ve got the same sort of intuition: there’s the conventional world as revealed by common sense. That’s the “humdrum world” we’re all trapped in. There’s another world, as shown by science. Most people think that science has removed the sense of mystery and possibility that spiritual traditions were based on.

Why do the planets move the way that they do? What accounts for the richness of life on earth? Why are there stars in the sky? Once the answers were: these are mysteries beyond the mind of man. The answers are known only to God.

But then other answers appeared: Newton’s Law of Gravitation and deformations of space-time from General Relativity. Evolution and DNA. The big bang and nucleosynthesis. The mysteries were gone, and the supernatural fell into disrepute.

But that’s based on a misunderstanding of the remaining miracles of existence. What is the origin of space-time? How could physics or evolution have produced consciousness? What happens inside a black hole? Where does a universe come from?

The world runs according to the laws of physics, but it turns out that all these laws have loopholes.

Physics does not rule out miracles. They are just unlikely. And the world—precisely as it exists today—is fabulously unlikely. I am unlikely ever to have existed, and so are you. And the fact that I have written this AND you are reading this is unlikely beyond all imagining.

Portals are possible

Physics does not disallow portals to other universes.

Even though finding a portal is unlikely, it’s also true that there are an uncountable number portals and an uncountable number of ways to find one.

I’ve always believed that it was my job: to discover a way to free anyone from the limitations of conventional life.

I’ve always believed I was both special and no different from anyone else.

It’s like the paradox of being at the center of the universe.

I’m at the center. But that doesn’t mean you can’t also be at the center. In fact, you are.

So I’m reading science, and philosophy, and religion and keeping my mind open and my mind open, looking for a portal. If I find one, I’ll let you know. And if you find one first, please tell me about it.

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