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Joe Rogan Experience #1696 - Lex Fridman

Lex Fridman is a scientist and researcher in the fields of artificial intelligence and autonomous vehicles, as well as the host of "The Lex Fridman Podcast."

Lex FridmanguestJoe Roganhost
Jun 27, 20243h 31mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:0015:00

    (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast,…

    1. LF

      (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.

    2. NA

      The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (instrumental music plays)

    3. JR

      Hey, um, I saw that box that you have in your, uh, Instagram. Is that a robot?

    4. LF

      Yeah, it's a robot.

    5. JR

      That's what it said, "Consciousness not included." I'm like, "Oh-

    6. LF

      (laughs)

    7. JR

      ... I see what you're doing here."

    8. LF

      What's in the box?

    9. JR

      What's in the box, man?

    10. LF

      (laughs)

    11. JR

      What's in the box?

    12. LF

      That's a great movie, by the way.

    13. JR

      It's a great movie.

    14. LF

      Uh-

    15. JR

      It's a dark movie.

    16. LF

      Yeah. No, it's a, it's a legged robot, and I've been involved with those a lot recently and I'm going to explore... (inhales) I was gonna bring it here, but I thought this is the, the wrong, uh, the other robot I have is the wrong atmosphere.

    17. JR

      Is it a Boston Dynamics one?

    18. LF

      So I had a lot of... Um, I've been closely working with Boston Dynamics, and, um, how do I put it? I put a lot of my love into what they're doing for a few years. I love the engineers there. We're close. We like each other. Uh, let me-

    19. JR

      But, I hear a but coming.

    20. LF

      Let me politely say that, um, you know, they're also a company that are trying to make money. And so there's a marketing team, there's PR, and they were starting getting in the way of engineers. And whenever marketing people get in the way of engineering, I'm out. And so there's a lot of robotics companies... It was kind of heartbreaking for me because how much I love that company.

    21. JR

      In what way did they get in the way?

    22. LF

      So, uh, very specifically, I'm interested in the problem of human-robot interaction, where there's this, uh, beautiful dance between a human and a robot the same way you have a dog that you love playing with. There's a magic there, like, I don't know, there's an excitement, uh, when Marshall looks at you and looks away and then looks at you again, and like, just that excitement, I wanna understand how we can engineer that into our AI systems. So that's called human-robot interaction. From a perspective of Boston Dynamics, they want a machine that doesn't have anything, anything to do with humans. They want a machine that like, uh, um, patrols a factory looking for anything dangerous or like, uh, does surveillance on a factory floor or helps in dangerous environments where humans... It's too dangerous for humans so you want a robot to do the work. So that you want always there to be a distance between a human and a robot. For me, I'm interested in exploring when human and robot are close together, and I think that's actually really important to understand for safety as well. So robots should be able to detect and predict the movement of humans really well in order to avoid hurting them accidentally. Like that's a robotics AI problem.

    23. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    24. LF

      Y- you know, it's, uh, predicting the movement of pedestrians, predicting the movement of h- humans, whether it's the human body or the human hand on the factory floor. You have to understand, uh, the mind of humans. They don't move like, uh, billiard balls. They have, they move in unpredictable, complicated ways or rather predict- predictable but complicated ways. And that's the problem of human-robot interaction I think is beautiful. Not very many people are, are really studying it carefully, and I wanted to study it carefully. Uh, one of the things I did, in... You always learn this mistake the hard way, is I asked for permission on everything. Um, you know, the right way to do it is just to do it and apologize later. So-

    25. JR

      Permission for like what kind of actions?

    26. LF

      Uh, so permission for the kind of things I wanted to do. So-

    27. JR

      Right.

    28. LF

      ... I asked for permission to, on video, touch Spot.

    29. JR

      Touch it?

    30. LF

      Yeah, like, like as a human. So, so, uh, I wanted Spot to understand when a human touches it or not, and using only vision, uh, only camera sensor-

  2. 15:0030:00

    Yeah. …

    1. JR

      that's, yeah, it's, it's just a, it's, it's just ... You have to have, like, real clear boundaries what you'll tolerate from yourself.

    2. LF

      Yeah.

    3. JR

      And if you don't, then you'll just procrastinate till the end of time. And I know a lot of guys who do that. Like, Louis C.K. has an interesting approach to comedy writing. He doesn't, he doesn't have a wifi connection on the laptop that he uses that he writes on.

    4. LF

      Yeah.

    5. JR

      So, so when he writes, he has to just write. He can't just go, "Oh, let me look at porn. Oh, let me look at this and let me look at that." That's a real problem with people, where they just find things to do other than, you know, other than, um, the actual work itself. Like, if you had a typewriter, but the prob- you know, typewriters are whack. You know, it's, it's, it's probably okay, but, um, w- then you gotta reprint it. Like, uh, how are you gonna put it on a computer? Like, what are you gonna do? But I know guys who write on a typewriter-

    6. LF

      Yeah.

    7. JR

      ... because they don't want to fuck with anything electronic, where they have this, you know, this, uh, potential for, um, distraction. I know guys who write longhand for that reason too. They just have a notebook and they write it out on notepaper.

    8. LF

      Yeah.

    9. JR

      But then again, like, what if you lose your notebook, you know?

    10. LF

      Yeah. I still write letters. But when you look at somebody like Huberman, there's hundreds, if not thousands, of references. So yes-

    11. JR

      Yes.

    12. LF

      ... he kinda-

    13. JR

      Of course.

    14. LF

      ... unfortunately-

    15. JR

      Different, different sort of writing.

    16. LF

      ... he needs the computer.

    17. JR

      Yeah.

    18. LF

      And there's a different challenge to be able to use the internet effectively without looking at the porn. It always goes back to the porn.

    19. JR

      Yeah.

    20. LF

      But I, I'm doing the, I, uh, doing this li- little experiment of I'm just like disconnecting from the world and gonna read 12 to 14 hours a day. Just I, it, it's been a while since I did that. You know, I, I'll do like an hour or two a day, often audiobooks, that kinda thing. I'm just gonna, going back to-

    21. JR

      12 hours a day? Really? Writing? Just reading 12 hours a day-

    22. LF

      Just reading.

    23. JR

      ... or writing as well?

    24. LF

      Um, writing notes about it. Just thinking. Like, uh, I, I see books, especially those kinds, um, you know, it's, it's, it's like the classics, from, from, uh, The Stranger by Camus, Brave New World, um ... Oh, yeah.

    25. JR

      Oh, these are your books?

    26. LF

      Uh-

    27. JR

      Okay.

    28. LF

      Uh, some of them are the ones I was, I was thinking about. Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. I wrote-

    29. JR

      I just, uh, was reading that.

    30. LF

      Yeah. So-

  3. 30:0045:00

    Oh. …

    1. JR

      What is his name?

    2. NA

      Oh.

    3. JR

      Fred.

    4. LF

      Fred.

    5. NA

      Yeah.

    6. LF

      Yeah, he's-

    7. JR

      Brennan?

    8. LF

      Yeah, Fred Brennan.

    9. JR

      Fred Brennan?

    10. NA

      Yep.

    11. JR

      Yeah. He was on Duncan's podcast. Duncan says he's great.

    12. LF

      Yeah.

    13. JR

      And he's, uh, remarkably well, um ... What's the, what's the word? He handles himself really well for a guy who got dealt such a shit hand-

    14. LF

      Yeah.

    15. JR

      ... of cards, like, you know, biologically. There he is. Frederick Brennan.

    16. LF

      You know, he-

    17. JR

      I was very, I was very impressed with him. There it is, Duncan Trussell, episode 433.Yeah.

    18. LF

      Wow. Yeah, he was interesting 'cause, uh, he said, I think it was in the first episode, he says something like, you know, he, he's disabled and, you know, like, people were generally in, in, uh, public nice to him. But then when he went in anonymous forums, people were basically, um, just cruel-

    19. JR

      Ruthless.

    20. LF

      ... to him.

    21. JR

      Yeah.

    22. LF

      Yeah, ruthless. And he was kind of excited by that because he almost, uh, the way he put it, he, like, he was able to peek into what people really thought.

    23. JR

      Yeah.

    24. LF

      I'm not sure that's true.

    25. JR

      I don't think that's true either because I think people say things online that they don't really believe. They say it for shock value.

    26. LF

      Yeah.

    27. JR

      And they say it because there's no consequence, so they just, they just say fucked up things. And they say it also to try to impress each other with how dark you can get.

    28. LF

      Yeah. It becomes a fun game of toxicity. Like, it's fun to just go-

    29. JR

      Yeah. That's a good way of putting it.

    30. LF

      Just go up, up. And, I mean, so there, there's... The cool thing about that documentary, to me, I always had a hunch, but that documentary makes it clear to me that one person can be Q. So the documentary from the very beginning, they, I don't think they resolve it, but it's the guy that's currently running it. Um, is it Code Monkey?

  4. 45:001:00:00

    (laughs) You got- …

    1. JR

      (laughs)

    2. LF

      (laughs) You got-

    3. JR

      Personal use.

    4. LF

      Yeah. (laughs)

    5. JR

      (laughs)

    6. LF

      Exactly. Uh, but he has so many... I- it's fascinating what it takes, especially back in the day, uh, it's like Barry Seal. So, Barry Seal-

    7. JR

      Yeah.

    8. LF

      ... worked for Roger Reeves, uh, and then Barry Seal became his own, like, big, big transporter.

    9. JR

      And Roger was on your podcast.

    10. LF

      Yeah, Roger, Roger was-

    11. JR

      Which is really... I reached out to you about that because it was a-

    12. LF

      Yeah.

    13. JR

      ... really, really, really interesting episode.

    14. LF

      Fasci-... Well, I'm, uh, it also touches my heart because, uh, he, uh, uh... It's like, uh, go- go to see about a girl. He's been, uh, he's been with his wife through that whole thing. She was with him through all the crazy times and when he was in prison for many, many years, she stayed with him, and now they're back together. And there's, there's like... I got to hang out with them, and they're like, they're still, like, they're unloved. It's crazy. Just to, like, look at a couple, like, through all of that, through all the-

    15. JR

      Look at that. Look at him.

    16. LF

      ... just the crazy life they've been through together.

    17. JR

      And is he allowed to travel? Did y- where did you meet him?

    18. LF

      Uh, in... He came down to Austin.

    19. JR

      Really?

    20. LF

      Yeah.

    21. JR

      And where does he live? Can you say?

    22. LF

      In, uh, s- uh, San Diego. Yeah, or something like that.

    23. JR

      Uh-huh.

    24. LF

      Like California. I, I forgot. Yeah.

    25. JR

      So, he can travel freely?

    26. LF

      Yeah. Well, well, he, um... I don't know all of this. What I, what I know is, he still doesn't seem to give a damn. He's so full of life and joy, and he always was. So, he's never witnessed or participated in any violence. He was never-

    27. JR

      He never witnessed it?

    28. LF

      No.

    29. JR

      Really?

    30. LF

      Also, like, the only times he was shooting... So, he was treated like royalty. So, he was protected, uh, like... F- he was never allowed to see anything bad because, like, he, uh, s- sort of, um, the violence was between the rival kind of cartels, right?

  5. 1:00:001:15:00

    Really? …

    1. LF

      is, um... Now, I'm biased a little bit, but I think Russian is a language that is, uh, more effective at communicating, uh, feeling, uh, emotion, suffering. The, the way the language has evolved because it went through the 20th century, through, through the wars, through the atrocities, through all of that, I think there's something to that where the language carries the burden of the people, the, the suffering of the people with it. Like, uh, the, the American experiment is a different trajectory that resulted in different, um, language. And I would say American language is much more simplistic. So it, um, you can't fuck with the words as much. The, the, the way the Russian language works, you can adjust the words to completely change the meaning. Plus swearing is an art form in Russia. Um, like, Russians swear a lot more. Obviously not Khabib, but, uh, in generally speaking, Russians swear a lot more than Americans.

    2. JR

      Really?

    3. LF

      And swearing is a much richer part of the language.

    4. JR

      So are Russians like American comedians?

    5. LF

      Basically.

    6. JR

      Really?

    7. LF

      So, so what you, you, you, you find when people suffer, when you go through the war, when you go through poverty, um-... more people become comedians because humor is a way to escape-

    8. JR

      Oh.

    9. LF

      ... pain. Just not, we're not talking about professional comedians. We're talking about-

    10. JR

      Right.

    11. LF

      ... you get some vodka, you get a guitar, and you're just shooting the shit.

    12. JR

      Right.

    13. LF

      There's much more of that energy because there's nothing else to do. And then the laughter is one of the, uh, only ways to deal with the absurdity of the government taking everything away from you, all those kinds of things. And so, there's a h- natural humor to the language. There's a natural ability to, like, between the lines to communicate pain. That's why you have all the... There's poets. There's, uh, Dostoevsky, e- even, even shooting w- way farther back, Tolstoy. So there, there's a history of literature being used to communicate that pain. I think Russian language is, is better at doing that. But there's also kind of a, general... Culturally speaking, there's an inclination to romanticize things, like to be kind of philosophical. I think that has to do with, um, the early education system in Russia under the Soviet Union, especially, was such that everybody was forced to read really heavy literature early on, like way early on. And, and also do some, like, math. Like the, the, the level of education in Russia in the first five years, um, the first eight years, leading up to 10 is just, like, an order of magnitude more intense than it is in America. Where America catches up is the college. America dominates the world in university education. But in terms of high school, uh, middle school, elementary school, American education is very soft. It, it doesn't really challenge people. It doesn't really push them. The Russian education system, you, you read, I mean, you read all that stuff. You read Tolstoy, you read Dostoevsky. Not only that, but you had to memorize hundreds of poems. You had to, um... There's a strictness to it where, like, you had to learn, uh, at least when I was coming up, handwriting and you can't make a single mistake. So, there's an emphasis on perfection. I think China has a similar kind of thing. Like, this w- like, you're afraid. The way I'm afraid when I go to a hard training session for jiu-jitsu, like beforehand, like fear, I was afraid going to school because there's an expectation of excellence. There's an expectation of perfection. If you suck, you're not going to... Like, everybody looks down on you. And if you are excellent, everybody celebrates you, and that creates a huge amount of pressure. But when, uh, a lot of the population does that, there's just an intellectual nature to everybody. The athletes, just everybody. The plumber, everybody in the (laughs) in the population is all of a sudden philosophical. And that, like, uh, the Saitia brothers, uh, that are, sort of made Dagestan and Russian wrestling famous, um, they're poetic. Uh, just, there's just a poetry, there's a romanticism, there's philosophy in the way people s- uh, people spoke. And I think that's connected to the language, but I'm not sure it's like the chicken or the egg. Um, I don't know if just the language is being used in this way or the language enables that kind of communication. That does make me wonder, because I know English and Russian, how much I'm losing that I can't speak Chinese or Japanese or p- or Portuguese.

    14. JR

      Mm.

    15. LF

      Like, how much of the culture am I missing that I'll never get a chance to truly deeply experience?

    16. JR

      Yeah, I would imagine that if you could understand Mandarin, if you could speak Mandarin and get an understanding of how the government communicates with the people, how the government controls people in China, like what they allow, what kind of conversations they allow, I would lo- You know, d- d- I'm sure you saw the, um, John Cena video where he was-

    17. LF

      Yeah.

    18. JR

      ... apologizing to China.

    19. LF

      Yeah.

    20. JR

      I would love to hear, like, these billionaires that are apologizing to China after, you know, China... Like Jack Ma.

    21. LF

      Yeah.

    22. JR

      Like, you know that guy? They disappeared him for, like, four months.

    23. LF

      Yeah.

    24. JR

      And then he came back and he was happy to be alive and, you know, they took billions of dollars from his company, devalued it, did a lot of weird shit, right? What did he do? He criticize the government in some way?

    25. LF

      I don't even know if he cri- Did he criticize?

    26. JR

      I believe he did.

    27. LF

      Okay.

    28. JR

      I believe that was his, uh, his fatal flaw. And, uh, many people thought he was dead 'cause they've done that before. There, there, there have been billionaires before that stepped out of line and they, they vanished forever. And either they're in a jail somewhere or w- who the fuck knows. But it's fascinating 'cause they have this weird combination of capitalism and a dictatorship.

    29. LF

      But the censorship there and the surveillance, that's a perfect atmosphere for brilliant writing to emerge in the shadows, right?

    30. JR

      Really?

  6. 1:15:001:19:46

    Well, if they are…

    1. LF

    2. JR

      Well, if they are doing it, it should be done with responsible labs. And they know that that lab in Wuhan was cited in 2018 for safety violations.

    3. LF

      But the problem to me with Fauci isn't the- the- the actions he did. It's the lack of transparency and just basic human authentic communication. It's the same problems with Bill Gates. I think Bill Gates is a brilliant person. I like him. But there's something shady about the way he communicates about stuff.

    4. JR

      Yeah.

    5. LF

      And whenever he buys a lot of land, he's not very clear about communicating why he bought that land.

    6. JR

      (laughs)

    7. LF

      And so immediately conspiracy theories spring up that, uh, spread effectively through our Q friend-

    8. JR

      (laughs)

    9. LF

      ... and- and- and- and others like him, and so the- and- and the final r- result that hurts my heart deeply is the mistrust in science. S- s- so like mistrust in scientific institutions lead to mistrust in science-

    10. JR

      Yeah.

    11. LF

      ... and then there's like this kinda sense that science sucks. No, science and technology enables the high quality of life that you currently have. It gives you the freedom to be able to tweet, uh, and the f- the freedom period to choose the path in life for most of the people in the United States. That's science and technology. Al- also to get medical help, uh, on many- an infinite number of conditions you might have. That's science. Like the best, uh, the- the best aspect of life that you can think of are presented by s- science today. So like th- there's a lot of great stuff being done by science. Don't let, uh, shady, greedy, uh, assholes at the, uh, at the very kinda top that are communicating science as part of our government be somehow connected to what is the essence of science. So that- that, to me, like hurts me in this conversation about vaccines, is that like somehow it's like, uh, it's- it- it- it's somehow leading to a mistrust in like all the amazing things that science has brought us.

    12. JR

      Yeah, there's also a problem with people like him where they say things, they say these statements-

    13. LF

      Yeah.

    14. JR

      ... these, uh, these statements that b- you're- you're led to believe that they have an understanding of the situation like and they clearly can tell you where it's going and what's possible and- and what- wh- where we're at with the virus. But then it turns out they're 100% wrong, but then they come up with a new statement and you're supposed to believe that. Remember like in the beginning he was saying that masks were ineffective. He was saying there's no asymptomatic transmission of the virus. There was- there was all these different statements. They were saying that- it's just like when they don't know, they never say, "We don't know."

    15. LF

      Yeah.

    16. JR

      They don't say, "This is very confusing, and we're trying to figure it out as we go along."

    17. LF

      "And this is the best course of action currently under the current amount of uncertainty."

    18. JR

      Right. Right.

    19. LF

      B- there- there's- there's so many w- wrong ways that the communication's been done. First of all, this is true for a lot of scientists at the top is they're talking down to people.

    20. JR

      Right.

    21. LF

      And I'm allergic to this. Fauci certainly is. He's- he is es- as if he is, uh, bringing down the Ten Commandments from the sky.

    22. JR

      He talked about it in third person. He said, "If you criticize Andrew Fauci, you're criticizing science."

    23. LF

      It's ego. At the end of the day, it's ego, and ego is a thing that destroys all awesome things. (laughs) If you let- if you let ego get in the way, that's always going to destroy things. So I'm sure Fauci was an excellent e- uh, scientist for most of his life. The higher and higher you get in a position, especially administrative, uh, positions, that, uh, that power starts getting to you.

    24. JR

      Well, he's also been- he's used to communicating for most of his career without the internet.

    25. LF

      Right.

    26. JR

      You know, you gotta think like he was the guy who was the head of the United States' response to the AIDS crisis. And he was the guy who was responsible like, um, I don't know what his exact role was, in prescribing AZT for- for people who had AIDS which turned out to be disastrous.

    27. LF

      Okay, so, uh, the- you know, the- I- I don't know the actual decisions. I'm sure he might've- there have been a lot of things we're not saying that made him a great scientist. The point is he's not a great communicator of science, so what we need now- or certainly a great leader, and what we need now is a great leader to communicate the- the- the current data available on vaccines. As far as I understand-

    28. JR

      Objectively.

    29. LF

      ... objectively, like f- from- from everything I see, and th- that's why like Bret Weinstein stands on his own with like, um, (laughs) army, uh, of mainstream media, uh, a- against him sort of communicating what are the different options out there, like ivermectin one of them. Uh, he may be- very well be wrong. I tend to-... think the effectiveness of ivermectin will not, uh, be as high as, as he predicts. Well, it's unknown.

Episode duration: 3:31:19

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