Fires, Facebook & Free Speech: The 259th Evolutionary Lens with Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying

In this week’s episode, we discuss the Palisades Fire in Los Angeles, which has destroyed the neighborhood where Heather grew up. Why does California burn, how are fires different now than they used to be, what happens now? We discuss the Getty Villa and Palisades Village, and why we should care what happens to a wealthy neighborhood in West LA. Also: did the LA Fire Chief drinking the DEI Kool-Aid contribute to the devastation? And when are natural disasters not entirely natural? Then: Zuckerberg announces changes to fact-checking, filters, and trust and safety teams at Meta. It’s not an apology. Are the changes politically motivated, or market-driven, or philosophical, and will they stick? At the same time, Musk announces plans for algorithmic deboosting on X. Zero is a special number.

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Mentioned in this episode:

Scope of the LA fires from The Lookout: https://www.youtube.com/live/OjE9xVU4eUA

Heather’s childhood LA fire experience: https://naturalselections.substack.com/p/antipode-chapter-1

Jacob Soboroff on the Palisades Fire: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DEkTEKdJxe9/

Fox News in Palisades Village: https://x.com/BigFish3000/status/1877008354008035683

Getty History: https://www.getty.edu/press/pdfs/Getty_History_and_Timeline.pdf

DEI LA Fire Chief: https://x.com/amuse/status/1876873508006842709

Zuckerberg announces changes: https://x.com/andrewcurran_/status/1876624442643878065

Musk does too: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1875355425601999255

Fact checkers aren’t scientists: https://naturalselections.substack.com/p/coming-soon

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Timestamps:
00:00:00 Holding Screen
00:05:15 Welcome & Quarter-Zip Backlash
00:07:46 Sponsors: Crowdhealth, Sundays, Pique’s Nandaka
00:18:49 Pacific Palisades Wildfire in Los Angeles
01:22:40 Facebook, “Complex Systems” and “Trade-offs”
01:40:40 Elon Musk Announcing a Change on X
01:57:01 Closing