Today, podcaster and Joe Rogan regular, Eric Weinstein posted a Twitter/X “rant” against the idea of interdimensional beings. Eric Weinstein, who holds a PhD in mathematical physics from Harvard, was responding to recent claims by congressional members that at least some UFO (aka UAP) sightings were actually observations of beings from another dimension. He wrote,
“I have no idea...as in ZERO...what is meant by "Interdimensional Beings", despite a PhD in the relevant subject area. I have been looking at this for four or so years, and it is total garbage to my ears.”
He goes on by writing,
“It's such an insult to the intelligence of the world's premier scientific community that we have heard from ZERO particle theorists, general relativists, mathematical physicists or differential geometers. It's not that I can't imagine things that fit that phrase. I can imagine MANY such things because we don't talk like this. Do we mean Kaluza Klein theories? Fibrations over spacetime? Supermanifolds? Riemannian Immersions? Submersions? Large Extra Dimensions? It's that it is such garbage level language that it doesn't mean **anything**. [1]
He then cites conversations he had with scientists such as David Grusch, Eric W Davis, and Travis Taylor to argue that they also do not know what this phrase means. He says, “Show me a single high-level PhD in the above 4 relevant fields talking about "Interdimensional" visitation. I'll wait.” His central concern is that such claims are embarrassing to the US making us a “laughingstock.”
Given that I have written a book (The Return of the Dragon) about interdimensional beings, and it is important to the central premise of my book, I thought his “rant” was worth responding to. I would like discuss the science and history of both the phrase and the phenomenon that I believe it points to. I will limit my case to the science not because I think science is a better or surer source of knowledge than religion or philosophy. I think that if recent history has taught us anything it is that “scientific” knowledge is incredibly prone to be influenced by politics, presuppositions, and peer pressure. There is a sense in which scientists publish what they want to be true and know will be accepted by their peers and not the supposed hard facts found via a disinterested following of the evidence. In contrast, the time tested findings of philosophy and religion seem to grow more relevant and trustworthy with every passing year. And every major religion (including Weinstein’s Jewish religion - although he describes himself as an atheist) and much of classical philosophy acknowledges the existence of an unseen dimension where entities dwell. But I limit my case here to the scientific because Weinstein appealed to the scientific so to the scientific we must go.
So, let’s discuss. To begin I should note that on one very basic level, Weinstein is right. Most mainstream scientists do not talk about interdimensional beings. But Weinstein should know, having gained fame by challenging institutional science, science is not a democratic effort. There have been countless times when fringe theories pushed by one or two seminal thinkers have eventually gained widespread acceptance. In many ways, every new scientific finding is fringe when it is initially discovered. But in another way, he is wrong. He is wrong to imply that no credentialed physicists or mathematicians have used that phrase or at least have been open to what I think most people mean when they use it.
For example, one of the first scientists to propose the existence of interdimensional beings was Josef Allen Hynek who obtained a PhD in astrophysics at the University of Chicago and joined the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Ohio State University. He later worked as a civilian scientist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory at Harvard. He finally became the chairman of the astronomy department at Northwestern University.
Although initially a skeptic of UFO sightings, he became convinced that something real was going on. He proposed a number of solutions to explain the countless sightings that could not be explained but one of those was the idea of interdimensional entities. He said,
“There could be other universe with different quantum rules or vibration rates if you want. Our own space-time continuum could be a cross-section through a universe with many more dimensions. ... Think what a hard time you would have convincing an aborigine that right now, through this room, TV pictures are passing! Yet they're here. You have to have a transducer to see them -- namely a TV set. Well, in the same sense there may be interlocking universes right here! We have this idea of space, we always think of another universe being someplace else. It may not. Maybe it's right here.” [2]
Another example is Karl Svozil, an Austrian physicist educated at the University of Vienna and Heidelberg University. He has taught theoretical physics at USC Berkley, the Vienna Technical University, the Institute for Theoretical Physics of the Vienna Technical University and has also worked in the fields of mathematics and computer science. Svozil doesn’t specifically speak to interdimensional entities but he does speak of the possibility that there may be a,
“(co)existence of universes embedded into larger ones. These interdimensional universes may be isolated or intertwined, suggesting a variety of interdimensional intrinsic phenomena that can only be understood in terms of the outer, extrinsic reality.” [3]
He goes on to speak of the possibility of an overlap between these universes at a point or in large sections writing,
To proceed to interdimensional motion, we need to consider intertwining areas of interdimensionality. The simplest nontrivial case is the one schematically depicted in Figure 1b in which all universes share a single point of communication. Of greater interest might be a situation in which an entire region of space is shared. One might think also of a “small” fraction of a universe “traversing” another universe, such that, compared to the overall extension of these universes, this common share appears like the tip of an iceberg. [4]
This idea of other dimensions containing something that at least mathematically we can identify has also been argued for by astrophysicist Paul Sutter - who received his Bachelor of Science in physics from California Polytechnic State University in 2005 and received his PhD in physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in 2011. Sutter is open to other dimensions containing matter that might be invisible to us. Sutter speculates that “dark matter” could potentially be explained by forces and matter being present in other dimensions. [5]
And so, we see that Weinstein is simply wrong that there are no people with relevant degrees and training that are at least open to the ideas behind the concept behind the phrase. And of course, this research is new and still highly speculative but if it could be combined with observations that are consistent with such speculations, the ground might become much more firm. And I think this is the key. Modern science is at its core an observational endeavor. If it were purely theory, it would be philosophy. It has to be an interaction between theory and observation. And I think what drives so many to at least be open to these theories is the observations of so many that appear to be seeing something that are hard to explain without appealing to another dimension.
And it is worth noting how many observations there are that have been made by otherwise trustworthy and sane people. Academics that Weinstein would certainly respect. Statesmen in whose interest certainly would not be to lie. And upstanding citizens within the government and law enforcement. In his excellent, The Myth of Disenchantment, Jason Josephson Storm outlines the fact that almost all the figures of the so called “Enlightenment” believed in some sort of other “occult” dimension and many of them personally claimed to have experienced it. That list includes no lessor names than, René Descartes, Francis Bacon, Alfred Russel Wallace, Srinivasa Ramanujan, Wolfgang Ernst Pauli, Jack Parsons, Carl Jung, and shockingly Sigmund Freud! Does Weinstein think all these great thinkers were suckers for self deception and fraud?
And what about the CIA? As I have written in the past, the CIA, for years, conducted extensive experiments using mediums, psychics, drugs, and esoteric procedures. Those involved in the program often spoke of using another dimension to do so. Shockingly, a CIA report on the program from 1975 that stated, “A large body of reliable experimental evidence points to the inescapable conclusion that extrasensory perception does exist as a real phenomenon.” And when they shut down the program in 1995, they didn’t say they were doing so because it didn’t work but because of a lack of an explanation for the results.
Weinstein might be shocked and embarrassed by such language but so many great minds - and the CIA itself - are happy to use it and often attest to observing the things such language refers to. And many other thoughtful and academic minds are much more open to such language than Weinstein. When M.E Yingling and B.A. Bell surveyed University faculty and what they thought was going on with unidentified aerial phenomena they got varied responses, but “interdimensional beings” was among them. [6]
I will close by saying that it is interesting that Weinstein’s objection is a definitional one. He is concerned that he (and his physicist friends) don’t understand what is meant “by Interdimensional Beings”. And in some ways, this is true. We are dealing with things - at least from a scientific standpoint - we don’t understand fully. Therefore, a solid and universally agreed to definition is difficult. But I think what everyone involved in this discussion means by the term is that there are beings from some unseen dimension that at least at times can and do interact with humanity. And if this is true, it is shocking. And we can’t avoid it by calling for a better definition.
Endnotes
[1] https://twitter.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1747755521694937531
[2] Hynek, Joseph Allen, and Vallee, Jacques. The Edge of Reality: a Progress Report on Unidentified Flying Objects. United States, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 1975.
[3] Interdimensionality by Karl SvozilORCID Institute for Theoretical Physics, TU Wien, Wiedner Hauptstrasse 8-10/136, 1040 Vienna, Austria Axioms 2021, 10(4), 300; https://doi.org/10.3390/axioms10040300 Submission received: 19 October 2021 / Revised: 7 November 2021 / Accepted: 9 November 2021 / Published: 12 November 2021
[4] Interdimensionality by Karl SvozilORCID Institute for Theoretical Physics, TU Wien, Wiedner Hauptstrasse 8-10/136, 1040 Vienna, Austria Axioms 2021, 10(4), 300; https://doi.org/10.3390/axioms10040300 Submission received: 19 October 2021 / Revised: 7 November 2021 / Accepted: 9 November 2021 / Published: 12 November 2021
[5] Sutter, P. (2021, July 8). Can we explain dark matter by adding more dimensions to the universe? Retrieved from Live Science: https://www.livescience.com/self-interacting-dark-matter-higher-dimensional-universe.html
[6] Yingling, M.E., Yingling, C.W. & Bell, B.A. Faculty perceptions of unidentified aerial phenomena. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 10, 246 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-023-01746-3
I'm always perplexed by how people with mathematical or scientific training (like Weinstein) fail to grasp the "dimension" metaphor.
If I propose that perhaps these "things" operate in a manner which is as incomprehensible to us as our three dimensions of space would be to two dimensional "flatlanders" of the famous story--i.e. *as though* they exist in *something by analogy like* a higher "dimension" than ours, just as ours was to the flatlanders in that story-- the Weinsteinian response seems to be to say "but physicists say there are only 4 dimensions (or 7 other "small" ones in string theory)! Why haven't they discovered these other dimensions if they are there!"... They completely miss the point in a manner that is frankly bizarre and makes me wonder how it is possible these people are socially functional and use language at all if they are that incapable of understanding simple metaphors.
It seems to be a overarching pattern in these "skeptic/atheist" types when it comes to anything to do with metaphysical speculations--they regress to pedantic, "Young Sheldon"-y literalist autism with regard to language, whereas they obviously aren't like that when it comes to other subjects (or else they wouldn't be able to socially function at all).
I recall another conversation I had on here with my previous account with someone who was pretty open minded/"red pilled" to many things, but had some gears still stuck in stilted atheist/skeptic mode with regard to a great deal of The Science". He was a sci-fi fan and I tried to point out to him the inherent limits of rational observation/empiricism by referencing Gene Wolfe's "Book of the Long Sun"--where the characters live enclosed on the inside of a giant cylindrical starship, spinning to generate a centripetal pseudo gravity--since they've been on there for generations and forgotten their origins, their physics, despite being "embedded" in a universe like ours, would be different--there'd be a preferred direction, things would get lighter moving against the spin of the cylinder (say East-West) while they'd be heavier moving with it (West-East), they'd have no means at all of ever discerning an isotropic, homogenous gravity like Newtons--even though their world was entirely compatible with it, as a special case. Nor could they ever know there was an "outside", their entire world would be the cylinder and any cosmology they developed by scientific methods would have to assume the entire universe was such a cylinder too.
Of course, the point I was trying to make was that no matter how much we feel we have worked things out, we don't know that we aren't embedded in something much deeper which in fact thoroughly contradicts our worldview. And no matter how "successful" our physics are, we have no way of knowing that we aren't just further elaborating a limited, special situation while we are in fact wandering further and further from the general truth.
To my amazement, the guy's response (who was otherwise highly intelligent and articulate) was just "yeah... but we're not on a spaceship like them though"... still boggles my mind.
I'm always perplexed by how people with mathematical or scientific training (like Weinstein) fail to grasp the "dimension" metaphor.
If I propose that perhaps these "things" operate in a manner which is as incomprehensible to us as our three dimensions of space would be to two dimensional "flatlanders" of the famous story--i.e. *as though* they exist in *something by analogy like* a higher "dimension" than ours, just as ours was to the flatlanders in that story-- the Weinsteinian response seems to be to say "but physicists say there are only 4 dimensions (or 7 other "small" ones in string theory)! Why haven't they discovered these other dimensions if they are there!"... They completely miss the point in a manner that is frankly bizarre and makes me wonder how it is possible these people are socially functional and use language at all if they are that incapable of understanding simple metaphors.
It seems to be a overarching pattern in these "skeptic/atheist" types when it comes to anything to do with metaphysical speculations--they regress to pedantic, "Young Sheldon"-y literalist autism with regard to language, whereas they obviously aren't like that when it comes to other subjects (or else they wouldn't be able to socially function at all).
I recall another conversation I had on here with my previous account with someone who was pretty open minded/"red pilled" to many things, but had some gears still stuck in stilted atheist/skeptic mode with regard to a great deal of The Science". He was a sci-fi fan and I tried to point out to him the inherent limits of rational observation/empiricism by referencing Gene Wolfe's "Book of the Long Sun"--where the characters live enclosed on the inside of a giant cylindrical starship, spinning to generate a centripetal pseudo gravity--since they've been on there for generations and forgotten their origins, their physics, despite being "embedded" in a universe like ours, would be different--there'd be a preferred direction, things would get lighter moving against the spin of the cylinder (say East-West) while they'd be heavier moving with it (West-East), they'd have no means at all of ever discerning an isotropic, homogenous gravity like Newtons--even though their world was entirely compatible with it, as a special case. Nor could they ever know there was an "outside", their entire world would be the cylinder and any cosmology they developed by scientific methods would have to assume the entire universe was such a cylinder too.
Of course, the point I was trying to make was that no matter how much we feel we have worked things out, we don't know that we aren't embedded in something much deeper which in fact thoroughly contradicts our worldview. And no matter how "successful" our physics are, we have no way of knowing that we aren't just further elaborating a limited, special situation while we are in fact wandering further and further from the general truth.
To my amazement, the guy's response (who was otherwise highly intelligent and articulate) was just "yeah... but we're not on a spaceship like them though"... still boggles my mind.