Joe Rogan Experience #1422 - Lex Fridman

1. 0:00 – 5:08

   Lex’s suit as “armor” and the tie-choke debate

   1. JRJoe Rogan0:00

      ... here we go. Three, two, one. (slaps table) Lex, handsome as ever.

   2. LFLex Fridman0:05

      Thank you.

   3. JRJoe Rogan0:06

      Well dressed. I always feel like a slob when I'm around you.

   4. LFLex Fridman0:08

      (laughs)

   5. JRJoe Rogan0:08

      Do you dress like that in real life? Or only when you do podcasts?

   6. LFLex Fridman0:11

      Yeah. So I have two outfits, this and black shirt and jeans.

   7. JRJoe Rogan0:15

      Slick outfit.

   8. LFLex Fridman0:16

      Yeah.

   9. JRJoe Rogan0:16

      There's noth- nothing more classic than a, uh, dark suit with a white shirt and a black tie.

   10. LFLex Fridman0:22

       Yeah.

   11. JRJoe Rogan0:22

       Is that a black tie or is that a dark blue?

   12. LFLex Fridman0:25

       Black tie.

   13. JRJoe Rogan0:25

       Black. Black tie. Black suit, black tie.

   14. LFLex Fridman0:27

       It's armor.

   15. JRJoe Rogan0:28

       Yes.

   16. LFLex Fridman0:28

       It makes, makes me feel, uh, like it focuses the mind.

   17. JRJoe Rogan0:31

       Mm.

   18. LFLex Fridman0:32

       Somehow.

   19. JRJoe Rogan0:32

       Like a professional.

   20. LFLex Fridman0:33

       Yeah.

   21. JRJoe Rogan0:33

       Yeah.

   22. LFLex Fridman0:33

       Like I'm taking this seriously.

   23. JRJoe Rogan0:34

       Yes, yes, yes.

   24. LFLex Fridman0:36

       (laughs)

   25. JRJoe Rogan0:36

       Like you're, you're, you're fucking for real, man.

   26. LFLex Fridman0:38

       Got a-

   27. JRJoe Rogan0:38

       You got notes and shit?

   28. LFLex Fridman0:39

       Yeah, I got notes and shit. But I... (laughs)

   29. JRJoe Rogan0:43

       (laughs)

   30. LFLex Fridman0:43

       But given the suit, like, I like to get, like, dirty. Like I like to work on a car or whatever.
2. 5:08 – 7:31

   Joe’s dog-collar choke story: real-world collar leverage

   1. JRJoe Rogan5:08

      I, I took my dog out once.

   2. LFLex Fridman5:09

      (laughs)

   3. JRJoe Rogan5:10

      I had a pit bull and he bit my cat.

   4. LFLex Fridman5:12

      Yeah.

   5. JRJoe Rogan5:12

      He g- grabbed ahold of my cat. It's a terrible story. I had a crazy dog. One of, one of my dogs was a, um, a dog that I had gotten ... It was ... I was young and irresponsible, in my 20s. And I had gotten this dog that was, um, bred from a pig-hunting dog in Hawaii.

   6. LFLex Fridman5:28

      Wow.

   7. JRJoe Rogan5:28

      And those dogs are hyper animal aggressive. They're great with people. He was great with people. He loved people. But everything that moved, he was like locked in on. He would spend his days in my yard chasing lizards. His thing was to jump up on the wall of the house and try to snatch lizards. It was like a video game for him.

   8. LFLex Fridman5:47

      Man.

   9. JRJoe Rogan5:47

      And, uh, my friend Eddie was terrified of this dog.

   10. LFLex Fridman5:50

       Eddie Bravo?

   11. JRJoe Rogan5:51

       Yeah. And so, Eddie would come over the house, and Frank would just decide that he runs shit when Eddie's around, 'cause Eddie was so scared of him. He'd be like, "Hmm. I think I'm gonna kill this cat." (laughs)

   12. LFLex Fridman5:59

       (laughs)

   13. JRJoe Rogan5:59

       So he just, just tried to kill my cat, and I got ahold of him in time and I, I got my hand into his collar and I str- I choked him unconscious.

   14. LFLex Fridman6:07

       Like on top of his head like that?

   15. JRJoe Rogan6:08

       Yeah, I just dug-

   16. LFLex Fridman6:09

       Oh, from behind.

   17. JRJoe Rogan6:09

       Yeah, I ... From behind, I just dug my hand under his collar and I twisted-

   18. LFLex Fridman6:13

       Choked him off.

   19. JRJoe Rogan6:13

       ... and I put him to sleep. He went right out.

   20. LFLex Fridman6:15

       Man.

   21. JRJoe Rogan6:15

       It's crazy. Yeah, it works. Works on dogs.

   22. LFLex Fridman6:18

       ... yeah, maybe from the ba- I wasn't thinking from the back, I was thinking from the front, but from the back-

   23. JRJoe Rogan6:22

       Anywhere you can grab a dog collar-

   24. LFLex Fridman6:24

       ... I need to rest.

   25. JRJoe Rogan6:24

       ... if you get your hand in there, if you're strong enough and you have good technique, you know how to go knee on belly, and then you twist it.

   26. LFLex Fridman6:30

       Mm-hmm.

   27. JRJoe Rogan6:30

       You could put a dog to sleep.

   28. LFLex Fridman6:32

       Well, you're changing my mind. See? (laughs)

   29. JRJoe Rogan6:35

       Yeah. But-

   30. LFLex Fridman6:36

       'Cause-
3. 7:31 – 8:41

   10 years of JRE and the burden of platform responsibility

   1. LFLex Fridman7:31

      By the way, congratulations on the 10 years.

   2. JRJoe Rogan7:34

      Oh, thank you very much.

   3. LFLex Fridman7:34

      I don't, I don't think you've celebrated pro- all I see is, on Jaime's Instagram, uh, like a naked picture of Bert. Like you'll see-

   4. JRJoe Rogan7:41

      (laughs)

   5. LFLex Fridman7:42

      (laughs)

   6. JRJoe Rogan7:42

      Is that what that says? The 10-year picture?

   7. LFLex Fridman7:44

      Like w-

   8. JRJoe Rogan7:44

      Yeah, we probably should do something. It was December was officially 10 years.

   9. LFLex Fridman7:48

      Yeah.

   10. JRJoe Rogan7:48

       So it was two months ago.

   11. LFLex Fridman7:50

       Right?

   12. JRJoe Rogan7:50

       Probably should have some sort of a party or something.

   13. LFLex Fridman7:52

       I know you don't like to talk about it or think about it, but you've inspired millions.

   14. JRJoe Rogan7:56

       (smacks lips) Um, it's very nice.

   15. LFLex Fridman7:57

       So, so thank you for that.

   16. JRJoe Rogan7:58

       It's ver- it's a very nice-

   17. LFLex Fridman7:58

       Me included.

   18. JRJoe Rogan7:59

       ... side effect. But it's, uh, it's a weird gig, man. You know?

   19. LFLex Fridman8:02

       True.

   20. JRJoe Rogan8:02

       And it's a, it's a, it's a gig that became what it is slowly, without me understanding what was happening, why it was happening, which makes it weirder and weirder. And with it has come increasingly, like, uh, stronger levels of responsibility to where (sighs) you know, now I have to actually vet guests-

   21. LFLex Fridman8:20

       Right.

   22. JRJoe Rogan8:20

       ... and think about what they're saying. Whereas before, I would have someone on if they're crazy. I was like, "Let that crazy motherfucker on. Let's hear what he has to say." And people would say a lot of crazy shit, and then they would say, "Oh, you know, you didn't push back," or, "You had this person on and they, they said something irresponsible," and I had no idea what they were gonna say.

   23. LFLex Fridman8:37

       Yeah, like-

   24. JRJoe Rogan8:37

       There's a lot of people that have said some pretty outrageous things that I had no idea they were gonna say.

4. 8:41 – 13:12

   Jack Dorsey, censorship backlash, and the ‘healthy discourse’ problem

   1. LFLex Fridman8:41

      Yeah, I saw the ... Like, I started ... One of the things you inspired me to do is to start a podcast on, uh, artificial intelligence. And I have, uh, Jack Dorsey as a guest coming up.

   2. JRJoe Rogan8:52

      Aha.

   3. LFLex Fridman8:53

      And that's a good example of somebody you got, like, an insane amount of pushback on.

   4. JRJoe Rogan8:58

      (smacks lips) Yes, because they were mad that I didn't talk to him about censorship. My, my take on it was (sighs) it was, um, c- certainly irresponsible on my part the first podcast, because my take on it was I just wanna see what it's like to be a guy that starts this thing and it becomes probably one of the most important conversation tools the world's ever known.

   5. LFLex Fridman9:21

      Right.

   6. JRJoe Rogan9:22

      And also along the way, becomes, you know, it becomes something wei- like, right now it's weird. Like, Twitter now is just this, it's just, uh, 50% hot dumpster fire.

   7. LFLex Fridman9:35

      (laughs)

   8. JRJoe Rogan9:35

      You know? It's so much-

   9. LFLex Fridman9:37

      Yeah, but it's also amazing, inspiring stuff.

   10. JRJoe Rogan9:38

       Mm-hmm.

   11. LFLex Fridman9:39

       Like, you can, you can always find the dumpster fire in all kinds of conversations.

   12. JRJoe Rogan9:42

       Yes.

   13. LFLex Fridman9:42

       And m- the confusing thing to me about your conversation with Jack, which I didn't look at the internet before I listened to it, and I really enjoyed it.

   14. JRJoe Rogan9:51

       Mm-hmm.

   15. LFLex Fridman9:51

       It was interesting. I learned a lot from your first conversation with Jack. And, like, and then I looked at the internet-

   16. JRJoe Rogan9:56

       (laughs)

   17. LFLex Fridman9:57

       ... and that told me I'm supposed to hate that conversation. And what I'm confused about is why. Why is there such, like, why is there such hatred thrown towards, uh ... I also talked to the head of YouTube, head of the YouTube algorithm searching and discovery.

   18. JRJoe Rogan10:13

       Mm-hmm.

   19. LFLex Fridman10:13

       A lot of hate towards YouTube.

   20. JRJoe Rogan10:14

       Yeah.

   21. LFLex Fridman10:14

       A lot of hate towards Twitter, a lot towards Facebook. And deservedly so. There's some challenges and so on. But they're doing, like, an incredible service. And the algorithm they're trying to develop and control is really hard to develop and control.

   22. JRJoe Rogan10:28

       Yes.

   23. LFLex Fridman10:29

       So, like-

   24. JRJoe Rogan10:29

       For sure.

   25. LFLex Fridman10:30

       So the pushback that people get, it's almost like they're ignor- they're, um, they're taking specific anecdotal pieces of evidence, where, "Look, this person said this, and it's, um, it's not that problematic in our eyes, but they somehow got censored from the platform or moved from the platform."

   26. JRJoe Rogan10:46

       Mm-hmm.

   27. LFLex Fridman10:47

       And they don't look at the bigger picture of how challenging the entirety of it is and how incredible ... First of all, the incred- incredible the platform is to have a conversation, like, a global conversation like this, and how hard it is to do, to achieve the goal of having, it sounds like cheesy, but having, like, a healthy conversation, a healthy discourse. Because y- you want an algorithm and a platform that removes the assholes from the scene, because it, it's a really difficult challenge, because y- you want ... This is one person who's really loud, who's screaming in the room, like, comes to the party. You have a cool party, a bunch of cool people. Some communists, some right-wingers, whatever. It doesn't matter. They can all disagree. But they're not assholes.

   28. JRJoe Rogan11:32

       Mm-hmm.

   29. LFLex Fridman11:32

       They're there to have a, like, interesting debate, conversation, so on. And then there's somebody that comes with, like, a ... and just starts screaming, like, one, like, slogan or something like that-

   30. JRJoe Rogan11:42

       Mm-hmm.
5. 13:12 – 19:48

   Deadnaming, TERFs, and where speech rules become political power

   1. JRJoe Rogan13:12

      Like, for instance, you can get banned from Twitter for life if you deadname someone. So, Lex, if you became, um, a female and you changed your name to Allie-

   2. LFLex Fridman13:24

      Mm-hmm.

   3. JRJoe Rogan13:24

      ... and I just said, "Fuck you, man. You're Lex." Banned for life.

   4. LFLex Fridman13:27

      That's what, uh, deadnaming means?

   5. JRJoe Rogan13:28

      That's deadnaming.

   6. LFLex Fridman13:29

      Oh.

   7. JRJoe Rogan13:29

      Like, if you wanted to call Caitlyn Jenner... If you wanted to call Caitlyn Jenner-

   8. LFLex Fridman13:33

      Yeah.

   9. JRJoe Rogan13:33

      ... Bruce on Twitter, you would get deadnamed. Or you would be deadnaming her and you would get banned for life. A woman named Meghan Murphy, who is a TERF. Do you know what a TERF is?

   10. LFLex Fridman13:43

       What do you think? I don't know what a TERF is.

   11. JRJoe Rogan13:45

       I'm sure you don't. You're too-

   12. LFLex Fridman13:46

       (laughs)

   13. JRJoe Rogan13:46

       ... you're too balls deep in science.

   14. LFLex Fridman13:48

       Yeah. (laughs)

   15. JRJoe Rogan13:48

       TERF is trans-exclusionary radical feminist.

   16. LFLex Fridman13:52

       Oh.

   17. JRJoe Rogan13:52

       So, trans-exclusionary... Uh, how... Why do I have such a hard time with that word? Exclusionary, right? Exclusionary. Why does it sound wrong? Exclusionary-

   18. LFLex Fridman14:01

       Exclusionary.

   19. JRJoe Rogan14:01

       ... sounds wrong.

   20. LFLex Fridman14:03

       So, what does it mean to be exclusionary to trans? Like, what-

   21. JRJoe Rogan14:06

       Y- They... She d-... Well, okay. TERFs-

   22. LFLex Fridman14:09

       Yeah.

   23. JRJoe Rogan14:09

       ... do not want trans people to be... To have a say in women's issues.

   24. LFLex Fridman14:16

       I see, got it.

   25. JRJoe Rogan14:16

       They think that they are a different thing, that there's women and women's issues, and these feminists that have been female their whole life, dealing with women's issues-

   26. LFLex Fridman14:26

       Yes.

   27. JRJoe Rogan14:26

       ... do not want trans people coming in. And in many cases, what you find is that trans people come in and n- then the conversation changes and it becomes about trans issues, and they want these conversations-

   28. LFLex Fridman14:38

       Right.

   29. JRJoe Rogan14:38

       ... to be a- about women's issues in- in feminist movements.

   30. LFLex Fridman14:41

       Right.
6. 19:48 – 22:53

   Cancel culture vs conversion: Daryl Davis, Westboro, and keeping the ‘party’ open

   1. LFLex Fridman19:48

      Like the, the guest, this amazing guest you had recently, uh, that converted a bunch of folks from the KKK.

   2. JRJoe Rogan19:53

      Daryl Davis.

   3. LFLex Fridman19:54

      Yeah. Wow.

   4. JRJoe Rogan19:55

      Fuck.

   5. LFLex Fridman19:55

      That-

   6. JRJoe Rogan19:55

      This is him right here. This is his CD. He's amazing. He's a incredible human, man.

   7. LFLex Fridman19:59

      But that kind of thinking, I wish you saw more of that in politics.

   8. JRJoe Rogan20:03

      Yeah.

   9. LFLex Fridman20:03

      Sort of like not ... Even if you're on the left, to be, to talk to people on the right, to-

   10. JRJoe Rogan20:07

       Right.

   11. LFLex Fridman20:08

       And then-

   12. JRJoe Rogan20:08

       Instead of just, "Shut 'em out."

   13. LFLex Fridman20:09

       "Shut 'em out."

   14. JRJoe Rogan20:10

       That's the problem with this p- idea of kicking people out of the party. You kick people out of the party, guys like Daryl Davis never get to convert them. There's been people from Twitter that have been converted. You know, Megan Phelps is a famous one.

   15. LFLex Fridman20:22

       Yeah.

   16. JRJoe Rogan20:22

       She was a part of the Westboro Baptist Church. Her grandfather was Fred Phelps, that fucking famous crazy asshole who was like super rude. Like, who r- uh, you know, would make them take those signs that say, "God hates fags." And, and literally go to soldiers' funerals and say that soldiers died because God is angry that people are homosexual.

   17. LFLex Fridman20:45

       Yeah.

   18. JRJoe Rogan20:45

       So Megan was completely entrenched in this toxic ideology.

   19. LFLex Fridman20:50

       And Twitter allowed her to escape that-

   20. JRJoe Rogan20:52

       Yes.

   21. LFLex Fridman20:52

       ... ideology.

   22. JRJoe Rogan20:53

       She met her husband on Twitter from arguing with him-

   23. LFLex Fridman20:55

       It's a beautiful thing.

   24. JRJoe Rogan20:55

       ... back and forth, and now she's out. And now, and now ... And you, if you talk to her, you would never believe it. And man, and not that long ago either.

   25. LFLex Fridman21:02

       Yeah.

   26. JRJoe Rogan21:02

       Not that long ago she was in that church, like six years ago.

   27. LFLex Fridman21:04

       It's kind of incredible that you can sort of-

   28. JRJoe Rogan21:06

       Amazing.

   29. LFLex Fridman21:06

       ... outgrow that mindset. So no matter ... I mean, that's inspiring that you can hold a mindset of hatred and out- outgrow it.

   30. JRJoe Rogan21:12

       Yes.
7. 22:53 – 27:51

   Fringe ideas in science: AGI, consciousness, and taboo topics

   1. LFLex Fridman22:53

      ... when you, when you start to drift away from the, the g- Like I, I have the same thing in my ... Like that's the focus I have in the academic setting of science. There is ... And that's, that's the inspiration of your podcast that you, you gave me is to talk outside the people that are sort of conventionally accepted by the scientific community, like a little bit on the fringes.

   2. JRJoe Rogan23:13

      Yeah.

   3. LFLex Fridman23:14

      On the "fringes." So you have the same thing in machine learning and artificial intelligence. There's people that are working on specific ... It's called deep learning, these learning methodologies that are accepted, you, you know. There's conferences where we all kind of accept the problems we're working on, and there's people a little bit on the fringes.

   4. JRJoe Rogan23:30

      Mm.

   5. LFLex Fridman23:30

      There's people in neuroscience. Actually, anybody w- thinking about working on what's called artificial general intelligence is already on the fringes.

   6. JRJoe Rogan23:39

      Yeah.

   7. LFLex Fridman23:40

      The, uh ... If you even raise the question, "Okay, so how do we build human level intelligence?" That's a little bit of a taboo subject. The consciousness, it was called the C-word for a while, consciousness.

   8. JRJoe Rogan23:50

      Really?

   9. LFLex Fridman23:51

      Yeah. Well, it's the scientists, so-

   10. JRJoe Rogan23:53

       I know. I understand.

   11. LFLex Fridman23:54

       Yeah.

   12. JRJoe Rogan23:54

       But w- explain it to me. Like what, what's the aversion? What is everyone worried about? Does-

   13. LFLex Fridman23:59

       Well, no. It's, uh, what are they worried about? It's this culture of, uh, rolling your eyes the same, the same way you might roll your eyes if somebody tells you the Earth is flat.

   14. JRJoe Rogan24:11

       Mm.

   15. LFLex Fridman24:12

       They, they sort of, uh, put a- all other things in that category as well. It's like, "Well, it's, okay. Whatever. That's ... We ..." So in the case of consciousness, we really don't understand very much at all what consciousness is, what the, what the ex- you know, the subjective experience, the fact that it feels like something to take in the world, that it's not just raw sensory information being processed. It actually feels like to touch something, to taste something, to see something. It's like incredible.... David Chalmers calls it the hard problem of consciousness. Why do we feel it? Okay. But we don't have scientific, physics, engineering methods of studying consciousness, so it immediately gets put into this bin that it's not a, an okay thing, like, you're a little bit a crazy ... off the reservation, I think somebody was-

   16. JRJoe Rogan25:00

       Daryl was saying that that's a-

   17. LFLex Fridman25:02

       ... Dar- Daryl. (laughs)

   18. JRJoe Rogan25:02

       ... a slur.

   19. LFLex Fridman25:02

       That's right.

   20. JRJoe Rogan25:02

       I never even thought of that.

   21. LFLex Fridman25:03

       Yeah. Yeah.

   22. JRJoe Rogan25:03

       I didn't think of what that meant.

   23. LFLex Fridman25:05

       Yeah, so they, they already put it in this bin of, "You're not a legitimate researcher."

   24. JRJoe Rogan25:09

       Mm-hmm.

   25. LFLex Fridman25:09

       And the same kind of, you know ... And I think we're now in a, in a culture which is great, you know. Eric Weinstein's good at this. I'm hoping to be good at this. Uh, you're good at this, at allowing those people on the fringes in and saying, "What are your ideas?" Exploring those.

   26. JRJoe Rogan25:24

       Yeah.

   27. LFLex Fridman25:25

       Of course, you have a greater and greater platform to where there is a line. You don't want too far on the fringes.

   28. JRJoe Rogan25:31

       Yeah, that's something I'm aware of now that I wasn't aware of, say, like, three or four years ago when I used to have a lot of those ... I, I've had some people on that I would never have on again, you know. And-

   29. LFLex Fridman25:43

       Yeah.

   30. JRJoe Rogan25:43

       And then I've had some people on that I've been criticized for having them on. I'm like, "Okay, I see why you are upset, but I think there's value in having conversations with people that are on the fringes." There's people that are bad-faith actors, right?
8. 27:51 – 40:15

   Politics, Sanders, Congress, and Andrew Yang’s AI/automation framing

   1. JRJoe Rogan27:51

      What people are terrified of is that he's going to raise taxes on successful people and ruin business.

   2. LFLex Fridman27:56

      Yeah.

   3. JRJoe Rogan27:57

      That's what people are worried about, that, that in doing that, it will crash the economy.

   4. LFLex Fridman28:01

      Yes.

   5. JRJoe Rogan28:02

      I don't know if they're right.

   6. LFLex Fridman28:03

      I, I don't even know if they're ... So first of all, the people who are using the word socialist-

   7. JRJoe Rogan28:09

      Yeah.

   8. LFLex Fridman28:09

      So you're saying, "He's a socialist. Do you really want socialism? America is a great country because we're a capitalist" kind of thing. Uh, s- th- f- from my perspective, I d- I think we already have a huge number of socialists. Social-

   9. JRJoe Rogan28:20

      Well, he's a Democratic socialist.

   10. LFLex Fridman28:22

       Democratic socialist.

   11. JRJoe Rogan28:23

       It's a different perspective. He just values workers. The idea is he wants people to earn a living wage. He wants people to not be indebted with a tremendous amount of student loan debt when you're just 21 years old and getting outta college. He thinks it's insane, and I agree with him. He doesn't want people to be burdened in this insane way if you ever get sick, and I agree with him.

   12. LFLex Fridman28:47

       Yeah.

   13. JRJoe Rogan28:47

       I think-

   14. LFLex Fridman28:47

       He wants to improve the healthcare system. Yeah, yeah.

   15. JRJoe Rogan28:48

       I think as a community, if we're, we're looking at the United States as a community, one of the things that ... You know, look, it's great to support business. It's great to have a strong economy. It's great to give business the confidence to take chances, and a lot of people think Donald Trump does that. It's also great to take care of our own, and I don't think we do that enough. I don't think we take care of our own enough in terms of ... We have the same problems in the same inner cities that we've had for decade after decade after decade, and there's no significant attempt to change that, but meanwhile we do these nation-building projects in other countries. And we have the interventionist foreign policy where we go in and invade these countries and try to, uh, prop up new, uh, new governments and try to support them, and we spend insane amounts of money doing that. And along the while, we don't do anything to our inner cities that are the exact same fucked-up places that they were in the '70s and in the '60s.

   16. LFLex Fridman29:46

       Yeah.

   17. JRJoe Rogan29:46

       Do you know, do you know who Michael Wood Jr. is?

   18. LFLex Fridman29:48

       No.

   19. JRJoe Rogan29:49

       He was on the podcast a couple times, and he used to be a, uh, police officer in Baltimore.

   20. LFLex Fridman29:54

       Yes, I know him. Okay. So I listen-

   21. JRJoe Rogan29:56

       Yeah.

   22. LFLex Fridman29:56

       ... to that podcast. I'm just horrible with names. Okay.

   23. JRJoe Rogan29:58

       His, his, uh, experience was, first of all, just i- th- he found a piece of paper that showed, like, a crime docket-

   24. LFLex Fridman30:07

       Oh.

   25. JRJoe Rogan30:07

       ... from the 1970s, all the stuff, like, ju- drugs, crime, robbery. It was all the same issues in the same neighborhoods that he was patrolling in today. And he was like, "Holy shit." And he realized, like, "Oh, this is a quagmire." And then he found out about the laws that were in place from way back in the day where you literally, if you were an African American, you couldn't buy a home in certain areas.

   26. LFLex Fridman30:35

       Right.

   27. JRJoe Rogan30:36

       They had ... What is that term? Is it redlined? Is that what the term is? Where they, um-... they designate certain areas where they literally won't sell homes to Black people. And he was becoming aware of this shit as he was a cop. And, you know, in the beginning, he was all gung-ho. He's like, "Um, I'm a cop. You know, I'm here to bust bad guys and, and do the right thing." And then along the way, he kind of recognized you're dealing with systemic racism.

   28. LFLex Fridman31:03

       You're right, yeah.

   29. JRJoe Rogan31:03

       Redlining.

   30. LFLex Fridman31:04

       Redline.
9. 40:15 – 43:34

   Autonomous vehicles, Tesla’s ‘full self-driving,’ and safety reality checks

   1. JRJoe Rogan40:15

      I just got a new update for the Tesla.

   2. LFLex Fridman40:18

      Uh-oh.

   3. JRJoe Rogan40:18

      Some new self-driving update. It costs four grand. And I was like, "What is it?"

   4. LFLex Fridman40:25

      (laughs)

   5. JRJoe Rogan40:25

      You know, and then, but, uh... I think I was high, and I was looking at my phone, I was like, "Hmm. Okay. Let's do it."

   6. LFLex Fridman40:31

      Let's do it.

   7. JRJoe Rogan40:31

      And so I, I got this update, but I'm like, "What did I just pay for?" And I, I'm not even gonna u-... I don't even know if I'm gonna use it.

   8. LFLex Fridman40:38

      Right.

   9. JRJoe Rogan40:38

      But I think it can change... I think it does everything. I think it changes lanes and-

   10. LFLex Fridman40:41

       Yeah. Well, okay. So I'm not exactly sure what the update is, but it's probably the-

   11. JRJoe Rogan40:45

       See if you can find out, Jamie.

   12. LFLex Fridman40:46

       ... so it's probably the "full self-driving."

   13. JRJoe Rogan40:50

       Yeah.

   14. LFLex Fridman40:50

       Very important. I'm the safety person, I guess, on this podcast.

   15. JRJoe Rogan40:55

       (laughs)

   16. LFLex Fridman40:55

       Tesla cannot drive itself fully autonomously. You have to keep your eyes on the road, always pay attention.

   17. JRJoe Rogan41:00

       But I saw a guy sleeping on the internet and he was fine-

   18. LFLex Fridman41:03

       Yeah. Well-

   19. JRJoe Rogan41:04

       ... in a car (snores) out cold.

   20. LFLex Fridman41:07

       (laughs) I'll look into it.

   21. JRJoe Rogan41:08

       (laughs)

   22. LFLex Fridman41:09

       What was it on? Was it on CNN? (laughs)

   23. JRJoe Rogan41:11

       No. It was, uh... (laughs) it was, uh... someone filmed the guy, he was in his car, passed out. And not just one.

   24. LFLex Fridman41:15

       Yeah.

   25. JRJoe Rogan41:16

       There's b- there's been a few examples of that.

   26. LFLex Fridman41:17

       Yeah. Uh-

   27. JRJoe Rogan41:17

       Uh, people commuting on their way to work, just out cold.

   28. LFLex Fridman41:20

       So some are for fun and fake, but it's certainly a real thing that you pass out-

   29. JRJoe Rogan41:24

       Yeah.

   30. LFLex Fridman41:24

       ... and sleep. Uh, we do that with manual driven cars too, right? We'll s-
10. 43:34 – 57:45

    Interviewing Elon Musk: first principles, over-the-air updates, and custom AI hardware

    1. LFLex Fridman43:34

       But I've also sort of ... Also, on the podcast, just like you, I got a chance to talk to Elon Musk, meet him, talk to him in person, and realize that there's, you know, there's people in this world that can make the impossible happen.

    2. JRJoe Rogan43:48

       You interviewed him as well.

    3. LFLex Fridman43:49

       Yeah, twice, yep.

    4. JRJoe Rogan43:49

       Yeah. Tell me what, what, what's that experience like for you?

    5. LFLex Fridman43:54

       So, uh, you know, there was ... It's quite incredible in the sense that he is a legit engineer and designer, which is like a pleasure for me. I've talked to a few CEOs. I've talked to Eric Schmidt, just, just CEOs, and they're a little bit more business oriented. Elon is really, really focused on the fundament- ... Like the first principles to like the physics level of the problems that are being solved, whether that's SpaceX with the fundamentals of rocket- reusable rockets, and, and, uh, you know, going into deep space and colonizing Mars. Whether that's in Neuralink, sort of the getting to the core, the fundamentals of what it's like to have a computer communicate with the human brain. And with Tesla on the battery side, sort of saying he, he threw away a lot of the conventional thinking about what's required to build, first of all, uh, an appealing car, electric car, but also one that's, has a long range. That's something I don't know as much about. But then on the AI side, just, I mean, he boldly said from scratch we can build a system ourselves in a matter of months, now a couple of years, that's able to drive autonomously. I mean, most people would laugh at that idea. Like the most roboticists that know from the DARPA Challenge days, most of them know how hard this problem is. He said, "No, no, no. We're going to ... We're not only gonna throw away LIDAR," which is this laser-based sensor, "We're gonna say cameras only, and we're gonna use deep learning, machine learning, which is learning based system." So it's a system that learns from scratch, and we're gonna teach it to drive from eight cameras and so on. So just talking to somebody like that was the, the, the not ... The fact that he thinks like that, I think it's just fun to talk to people like that.

    6. JRJoe Rogan45:41

       Mm-hmm.

    7. LFLex Fridman45:41

       I, I don't meet them often. Let's say, "No, no, no. Stop this bullshit of thinking that this task is impossible. Let's say why is it impossible. Is it really impossible?" Well, you find out when you start to think about most problems from first principles is that it's not actually impossible. And then you have to think, okay, so how do we make it happen? How do we create an infrastructure that allows you to learn from huge amounts of data? So one of the most revolutionary things that Tesla's doing, and hopefully other car companies will be doing, is the over-the-air software updates. Just like the update-

    8. JRJoe Rogan46:14

       Hmm.

    9. LFLex Fridman46:14

       ... that you got. The fact that just like on your phone you can get updates over time means you can have a learning system, a machine learning based system, that can learn and then deploy the thing it learned over time, and do that weekly. That sounds like maybe trivial, but it's com- nobody else is doing it and it's completely revolutionary. So cars, once you buy them, they don't learn. Most cars. Tesla learns. That, that's a huge thing. Uh, forget about Tesla autopilot, all the stuff. Just the fact that you can update the software, I think is a revolutionary idea. And then they're also doing everything else from scratch. This is this first principles type of thinking. The hardware. So the, the hardware in your car ... I don't know when you got the Tesla but it should be hardware, um, version two. But that hardware performs what's called inference. So it's already trained, it's already learned its thing, and it's just taking in the raw sensory input and making decisions. Okay. They built that hardware themselves from scratch. Again, ballsy move. Now they're building what they're calling ... Uh, again, he's such a troll. But they're calling Dojo, is the, the name of the, the specialized hardware for training the neural networks or training the models. What training is, is the learning side of it. So they're building their own like supercomputer, like Google has a TPU to improve the training. They-

    10. JRJoe Rogan47:40

        TPU? What's that stand for?

    11. LFLex Fridman47:42

        Tensor processing unit. It's the same thing as the more general. NVIDIA has graphics processing unit GPUs that all the nerds, all the people like me have been using on, um, for machine learning to train neural networks. Uh, it's what most also gamers use-

    12. JRJoe Rogan47:57

        Mm-hmm.

    13. LFLex Fridman47:57

        ... to play video games, right? But they have, they have this nice quality that you can train huge neural networks on them. Okay. TPU is, uh, is a specialized hardware for training neural networks. GPUs allow you to play video games and train neural networks. TPUs clean some stuff up to make it more efficient, energy efficient, more efficient for the kinds of computation neural networks need. Google has them, a bunch of other companies have them. You know, most com- most car companies would be like, okay, let me partner with somebody else to u- from with Google to use their TPUs or use NVIDIA's GPUs. Tesla's building it from scratch. So that kind of from scratch thinking is i- is incredible. And, uh, the other two things I really l- listen, really l- that I like about Musk is, uh, the hard work. We live in a culture ... Like so many people, like I often don't sleep. I do crazy shit in terms of just focus, stay up nights sometimes. And now o- o- often people recommend to me that, you know, balance is really important.... and taking a break is important, you know, it- it- that you re- re- rejuvenate yourself, you return to it with fresh ideas. All those things are true. Sleep is important. You had, uh, people on the podcast tell you how important sleep is. But what most people don't- don't advise me is hard work is more imp- passion is more important than all of those things. Like, that should come first. And then sleep empowers it, rest empowers it, rejuvenation empowers it. Especially in engineering disciplines. Hard work is everything. And he's sort of unapologetically about that. It's not like a "Come- come to us, come work with us. It'll be a friendly environment with free snacks."

    14. JRJoe Rogan49:43

        (laughs)

    15. LFLex Fridman49:43

        It's like, "You're gonna work the hardest you've ever worked on," whether you agree with him or not, "on the most important problems of your life." Okay. I like that kind of thinking, because it emphasizes the hard work. The- the other part, it was ... in terms of meeting him in person, I don't know if you got to interact with that off, because when he was on mic with you, he was very, um, he was very kind of-

    16. JRJoe Rogan50:10

        It was hard to bring it out of him.

    17. LFLex Fridman50:11

        Yeah.

    18. JRJoe Rogan50:11

        In, in person before that, he was very jovial and friendly-

    19. LFLex Fridman50:15

        Yeah. Yeah.

    20. JRJoe Rogan50:16

        ... and huggy. He's great.

    21. LFLex Fridman50:17

        Yeah. He's fun.

    22. JRJoe Rogan50:17

        And then once he got on the microphone, I was like, "Oh, this is heavy lifting."

    23. LFLex Fridman50:21

        Yeah.

    24. JRJoe Rogan50:21

        "I gotta bring this out of him."

    25. LFLex Fridman50:22

        Yeah.

    26. JRJoe Rogan50:22

        So then we started drinking.

    27. LFLex Fridman50:23

        Drinking helps.

    28. JRJoe Rogan50:24

        And then ... Oh, yeah.

    29. LFLex Fridman50:25

        Yeah, yeah.

    30. JRJoe Rogan50:26

        It helps a lot.
11. 57:45 – 1:01:59

    Mars skepticism, ‘space is fake,’ and learning via MIT OpenCourseWare

    1. JRJoe Rogan57:45

       See, that one I'm skeptical of.

    2. LFLex Fridman57:48

       So which part?

    3. JRJoe Rogan57:48

       Just the k- the type of people that are gonna wanna go.

    4. LFLex Fridman57:52

       (laughs) See, y- y- you're not talking about the engineering problem-

    5. JRJoe Rogan57:55

       No.

    6. LFLex Fridman57:55

       ... of getting pe- you, you re-

    7. JRJoe Rogan57:56

       I think it's possible, uh, it, uh, ultimately, you know. I mean, it's... Look, can we put people in space? For sure, we've definitely done it. Um, can we-

    8. LFLex Fridman58:05

       Are you sure?

    9. JRJoe Rogan58:05

       ... put things... Well, some people think space is fake.

    10. LFLex Fridman58:08

        Th- space is fake.

    11. JRJoe Rogan58:09

        (laughs) That's... Do you ever Google hashtag space is fake?

    12. LFLex Fridman58:13

        I-

    13. JRJoe Rogan58:13

        It's wonderful.

    14. LFLex Fridman58:14

        ... I've, I've looked it up.

    15. JRJoe Rogan58:14

        It's a testament to the education system in this country. But-

    16. LFLex Fridman58:17

        Well, I, uh, on that s- tiny little tangent, I've gotten... I joked about flat earth and s- space is fake a little bit, almost like saying that's an interesting way to being open-minded and then I realized that's not something to joke about.

    17. JRJoe Rogan58:30

        (laughs)

    18. LFLex Fridman58:30

        But, but there is a community of people that take it extremely seriously and then some of them thanked me for acknowledging that the possibility of f-

    19. JRJoe Rogan58:38

        Oh.

    20. LFLex Fridman58:39

        And then I had said, "Okay."

    21. JRJoe Rogan58:41

        Bless their little hearts.

    22. LFLex Fridman58:42

        Okay. This is not-

    23. JRJoe Rogan58:43

        And they'll lower their brains. (laughs)

    24. LFLex Fridman58:46

        (laughs) But I appreciated their open-mindedness, but they should take Introduction to Physics. Uh, MIT OpenCourse where it provides courses on physics that should, um-

    25. JRJoe Rogan58:56

        Can a, a regular person just sign up for that?

    26. LFLex Fridman58:58

        Yeah, yeah, it's open, free.

    27. JRJoe Rogan59:00

        So how does that work? Um, you, what do you have to do in order to take those courses?

    28. LFLex Fridman59:04

        It's, uh, it's all made available online for free.

    29. JRJoe Rogan59:06

        Just go to ma- mit.org or is it .edu?

    30. LFLex Fridman59:09

        Uh, MIT OpenCourse where is the website. I mean, most people... Oh, and it's all on YouTube now.
12. 1:01:59 – 1:10:29

    Native American history obsession, warrior cultures, and jiu-jitsu as a time machine

    1. LFLex Fridman1:01:59

       This is the thing, uh, you've, you're, you're into, um, the Native Americans. You've been r- reading the books-

    2. JRJoe Rogan1:02:06

       Yeah.

    3. LFLex Fridman1:02:06

       ... I've been following your work there. It's like-

    4. JRJoe Rogan1:02:07

       I'm sa- obsessed, man.

    5. LFLex Fridman1:02:08

       Yeah, yeah, yeah.

    6. JRJoe Rogan1:02:09

       I'm obsessed.

    7. LFLex Fridman1:02:09

       I've been obsessed about World War II, World War I, but you're like, you're converting me to think of, like, to the, to the, both the warrior cultures and the suffering in that world.

    8. JRJoe Rogan1:02:17

       The suffering's insane. It's insane. Um, this book, um, Black Elk, (exhales) man, it details his life from he was a young boy when, during Custer's Last Stand, he was there when Custer was killed.

    9. LFLex Fridman1:02:29

       Who is he?

    10. JRJoe Rogan1:02:29

        Black Elk.

    11. LFLex Fridman1:02:30

        Yeah, Black Elk.

    12. JRJoe Rogan1:02:30

        The man, the, the guy-

    13. LFLex Fridman1:02:31

        He's the, uh, yeah, what do you call that?

    14. JRJoe Rogan1:02:33

        He's a Oglala S- uh, Lakota medicine man.

    15. LFLex Fridman1:02:35

        Medicine man, yeah.

    16. JRJoe Rogan1:02:36

        Yeah, and he just lived through the transition. He lived through the transition of them battling with the US soldiers, to them being on the reservation and fucking insane poverty, insane. Uh, th- just d- d- d- in just the stories of people, the illnesses and the deaths, how many people's children died, malnour- malnourishment, starvation, abuse, and then how, just how much they hated where they were living and how they were living.

    17. LFLex Fridman1:03:10

        On the reservation, yeah.

    18. JRJoe Rogan1:03:11

        Yeah, it's, it's horrific, man. It's horrific. It's like (exhales) i- i- it's hard to imagine. It's hard to imagine when you're reading that this just happened, you know? I mean, he's talking about, uh, the, the, the really horrible parts at the end were in the early 1920s, 1930s. Um, it's hard to imagine. It's hard to imagine that this, this tribe from 100 years prior, in the 1820s, were living wild and free, and were, you know, were living the same way they had lived for hundreds of years, and had this incredible relationship with the land and these, this incredible religion that they practiced, where they worshiped the, the, the earth and the animals and the sky. And they had all these concepts for the way you should live your life, and how to guarantee prosperity, and how to guarantee success, and man, it's just, they had a fascinating culture. I mean,-

    19. LFLex Fridman1:04:14

        Yeah.

    20. JRJoe Rogan1:04:14

        ... and it's gone. It was wiped off the face of the map. There was nothing like it anywhere else on Earth. There's no, there was no culture anywhere on Earth that was like the Native American culture in the 1600s, the 1700s, 1800s, and but, i- in that period of time, they had this spectacular way of life, and it was often very cruel and very ruthless, and they w- they w- warred on each other. Like, this, this idea that Native Americans were living in peace, in harmony with each other is nonsense.

    21. LFLex Fridman1:04:46

        Yeah, so I started, I was li- listening while doing Hills Yes You Kicked My Ass.

    22. JRJoe Rogan1:04:50

        (laughs)

    23. LFLex Fridman1:04:50

        I was listening to The Empire of the Summer Moon-

    24. JRJoe Rogan1:04:52

        Fucking great book.

    25. LFLex Fridman1:04:53

        ... with the Comanche. I, uh, I c-

    26. JRJoe Rogan1:04:55

        Woo.

    27. LFLex Fridman1:04:55

        ... I commented on your Instagram, like, saying something, um, you know, basically admiring the purity of that way of life.

    28. JRJoe Rogan1:05:05

        Yeah.

    29. LFLex Fridman1:05:05

        And I got so much shit by people saying, "Oh, you think rape and murder is, uh, is, uh, pure and admirable?" So, there's a, certainly an aspect to their way of life which is sort of the warrior ethos, right?

    30. JRJoe Rogan1:05:17

        The Comanches in particular.
13. 1:10:29 – 1:26:36

    Carnivore/keto/fasting: inflammation, focus, and the psychology of eating

    1. LFLex Fridman1:10:29

       Congrats on the ... I saw the, the diet, the carnivore diet is-

    2. JRJoe Rogan1:10:34

       Yeah, man. Here's something crazy. I got off that diet for this weekend-

    3. LFLex Fridman1:10:39

       Yeah.

    4. JRJoe Rogan1:10:39

       ... 'cause it was ... I did the month, and then-

    5. LFLex Fridman1:10:40

       Yeah.

    6. JRJoe Rogan1:10:40

       ... once Saturday came around, I s- I, I ate Italian food. I had Girl Scout cookies.

    7. LFLex Fridman1:10:45

       Pasta and Girl Scout, um, man.

    8. JRJoe Rogan1:10:46

       Uh, pa- pasta. And then yesterday, I went to Disneyland. So yesterday, I went way, way off the diet, and I had ice cream, and I ate all kinds of shitty food. And I was getting back pains and knee pains and all these kinda weird pains that went away when I was on the diet.

    9. LFLex Fridman1:11:04

       Yeah.

    10. JRJoe Rogan1:11:04

        Now, this is not, uh, a testament against plant-based diets 'cause p- I was eating shit, shitty food.

    11. LFLex Fridman1:11:12

        Right.

    12. JRJoe Rogan1:11:13

        And pot- pasta, you know, which is a lot of, you know, bread and-

    13. LFLex Fridman1:11:16

        Like, white pasta? Like, uh-

    14. JRJoe Rogan1:11:17

        Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, spaghetti. That stuff, e- causes inflammation. It just does.

    15. LFLex Fridman1:11:22

        Yeah.

    16. JRJoe Rogan1:11:22

        You know, it just does. Sugar causes inflammation, but it's interesting to have this great month where basically two weeks in, after the diarrhea died off, I had two solid weeks of no aches and pains and feeling great. I was like, "This is wild. This is really wild. I feel amazing."

    17. LFLex Fridman1:11:38

        Look-

    18. JRJoe Rogan1:11:39

        And then two days of eating shit-

    19. LFLex Fridman1:11:42

        Just-

    20. JRJoe Rogan1:11:42

        ... and, like, my back hurts right now. I'm sitting here. My back is hurting. My knee was hurting l- yesterday. Like, all those weird aches come right back.

    21. LFLex Fridman1:11:50

        Well, it's, uh ... There's a ... The nice thing about the Joe Rogan effect is that you trying this diet, and you talking about keto a lot, that's, like, become m- more socially acceptable to do, 'cause I've been eating keto or low carb for many years and doing fasting, like 24 or 48-hour fasts.

    22. JRJoe Rogan1:12:06

        Mm-hmm.

    23. LFLex Fridman1:12:06

        And I would always kinda keep it more on the lowdown, but even this time, uh, like, traveling, like, uh, what, what I like to do when traveling is, um, I'm, I'm kinda ... I'm trying to be, um, given my current situation, not spend much money. And, uh, so I go ... One of the best ways to go either carnivore or keto is to go to McDonald's and just order beef patties.

    24. JRJoe Rogan1:12:31

        They'll sell you just beef patties at McDonald's?

    25. LFLex Fridman1:12:33

        Just beef patties. $1.50-

    26. JRJoe Rogan1:12:34

        Really?

    27. LFLex Fridman1:12:34

        ... for a patty, for a quarter pound. Yeah. So you can ... You know, uh, like, it's, it's ... Like, usually what I eat is about two pounds of meat a day. And that's ... What is it? I don't know. That's like, uh, 15 bucks.

    28. JRJoe Rogan1:12:47

        So you been doing this carnivore thing too?

    29. LFLex Fridman1:12:49

        Mm-hmm. Yeah.

    30. JRJoe Rogan1:12:50

        How long you been doing it for?

Episode duration: 2:50:25