Joe Rogan Experience #1696 - Lex Fridman

Lex Fridman 0:00 (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.

Narrator 0:04 The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (instrumental music plays)

Joe Rogan 0:12 Hey, um, I saw that box that you have in your, uh, Instagram. Is that a robot?

Lex Fridman 0:17 Yeah, it's a robot.

Joe Rogan 0:18 That's what it said, "Consciousness not included." I'm like, "Oh-

Lex Fridman 0:20 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 0:20 ... I see what you're doing here."

Lex Fridman 0:21 What's in the box?

Joe Rogan 0:22 What's in the box, man?

Lex Fridman 0:24 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 0:24 What's in the box?

Lex Fridman 0:24 That's a great movie, by the way.

Joe Rogan 0:25 It's a great movie.

Lex Fridman 0:26 Uh-

Joe Rogan 0:26 It's a dark movie.

Lex Fridman 0:28 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.

Joe Rogan 0:41 Is it a Boston Dynamics one?

Lex Fridman 0:43 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-

Joe Rogan 0:59 But, I hear a but coming.

Lex Fridman 0:59 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.

Joe Rogan 1:19 In what way did they get in the way?

Lex Fridman 1:21 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.

Joe Rogan 2:33 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 2:34 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-

Joe Rogan 3:19 Permission for like what kind of actions?

Lex Fridman 3:21 Uh, so permission for the kind of things I wanted to do. So-

Joe Rogan 3:24 Right.

Lex Fridman 3:24 ... I asked for permission to, on video, touch Spot.

Joe Rogan 3:28 Touch it?

Lex Fridman 3:29 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-

Joe Rogan 3:38 Right. Because there's no sensors that can detect touch, right?

Lex Fridman 3:40 There's no... Right. So to have a sense where you... I mean, (laughs) the, where gestures and touch can be part of the communication between the robot and the human. T- telling them, uh, the Boston Dynamics folks that made them very nervous.

Joe Rogan 3:56 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 3:56 They know I know what I'm doing, but they also know I, I, I'm starting to give less and less fucks. And they get nervous about that 'cause, uh, they see the positivity. I, I, I love people. I love robots. I wanna show the positive stuff. I want to inspire and educate the world. But they're like, "Is there some evil thing he's gonna do?" (laughs)

Joe Rogan 4:16 (laughs) What do they think you're gonna do?

Lex Fridman 4:17 Well, it's like they only have stuff to lose, is... from their perspec-... Okay. From my perspective, I c- I'm, I love Boston Dynamics. I wanna show off some awesome stuff.

Joe Rogan 4:26 Right.

Lex Fridman 4:26 They're probably one of the greatest engineering feats in the space of robotics ever, which is, uh, both Atlas, the, the bipedal robot, and, uh, Spot, the legged robots. I, I don't know. From my perspective, it's a win-win. From their perspective, they got nervous. This is why-

Joe Rogan 4:43 Well, I'm, I'm, I'm, I don't understand why they would get nervous about touching the robot. That doesn't make any sense to me.

Lex Fridman 4:50 Because they're a business, they're trying to sell a lot of robots-

Joe Rogan 4:53 Right.

Lex Fridman 4:53 ... to companies that have zero interest in touching. I think the future of their robot requires them to understand what it's like for a, uh, robot to be close to a human being.

Joe Rogan 5:06 So you're looking at it in terms of like a consumer product?

Lex Fridman 5:10 Consume-... It's like a, in the gray area between industry and consumer.

Joe Rogan 5:15 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 5:15 So like, you know, uh, a factory worker is a kind of consumer. So like more and more, I think Boston Dynamics need to pivot that way in order to be a successful, profitable business. They were currently purchased by, I think Hyundai, like a large company. So they're, I think, trying to justify their worth, all that kinda stuff.

Joe Rogan 5:34 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 5:34 I'm not sure how businesses work. All I know is when marketing people get in the way of great engineering, you run into problems.

Joe Rogan 5:40 So-

Lex Fridman 5:41 This is why, sorry to interrupt-

Joe Rogan 5:42 Please, I interrupt you.

Lex Fridman 5:43 ... why Tesla i- I'm a huge fan of what Elon is doing. He's not let- letting marketing get in the way of great engineering. There, there's no, there's very little marketing people at Tesla, and most of the ones that do marketing... First of all, Elon does great marketing on his Twitter, but also the Tesla Twitter is run really well marketing-wise. They understand that to highlight...... uh, the brilliance of a particular product, you have to highlight the engineering, you have to highlight the design, and that means you don't want to get in the way of the engineers and the designers.

Joe Rogan 6:16 Well, here's the best example of that. There's zero advertisements for Tesla-

Lex Fridman 6:20 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 6:20 ... and it's the number one selling car in America. There you go.

Lex Fridman 6:25 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 6:25 It's just brilliantly made, that's all you need to know. I mean, they, everyone knows. You drive it, you're like, "Holy shit." Y- you see it, it's wild, you see the giant screen and you, you realize that it can move that fast with no sound. It's, it's pretty phenomenal stuff. When you consider the fact that the most ... I mean, think about most cars that are sold in America. You're inundated with advertisement, you know, whether it's Cadillac or, you know, Ford or, you know, whatever. There, there's constant ads. They make great cars, don't get me wrong, but Tesla doesn't have any ads and they sell more than anybody, which is pretty incredible.

Lex Fridman 7:03 Create a product that people love and it's word of mouth from there.

Joe Rogan 7:06 I think it's also connected to Elon too. I don't think he would be as successful if it wasn't connected to such a bizarre Tony Stark type character, 'cause he's such a unique cultural ... He's like a, he's an iconic figure. He's, it's not, he's not a normal human, you know? It's like he's our super genius.

Lex Fridman 7:26 Well, it's interesting to analyze 'em, right? Like, are all the memes about Doge useful or are they, are they productive or counterproductive?

Joe Rogan 7:36 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 7:36 Like, is the humor help advertise SpaceX and Tesla or does it destroy them? Is the, uh, funding secured 4/20 help or hurt? Does him smoking weed in, on your show and then saying, "Oops," uh, does that help or hurt? I don't know. But it seems-

Joe Rogan 7:54 It does not hurt.

Lex Fridman 7:55 Yeah, it feels like it helps. And then-

Joe Rogan 7:57 How could it help? I mean, how could it hurt if the company is doing so well? Like, you, you're telling me it'd be doing even better? That sounds crazy.

Lex Fridman 8:04 Well, a lot of most CEOs would say yes.

Joe Rogan 8:07 They're wrong.

Lex Fridman 8:08 Right. That's what I ... The sense is they're wrong, but that means you have to rethink the way you run companies. You have to be more open, you have to have more fun, you have to be more crazy.

Joe Rogan 8:17 But you have to be Elon Musk, see, that's the thing. You can't just get another person to do it that way.

Lex Fridman 8:22 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 8:22 You have to be that guy.

Lex Fridman 8:23 Being crazy is not enough. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 8:24 Well, this whole thing is his ef- uh, ef- his love of Space Balls.

Lex Fridman 8:30 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 8:30 Right?

Lex Fridman 8:30 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 8:31 I mean, that's the re-

Lex Fridman 8:31 He's genuine.

Joe Rogan 8:31 Yeah, genuine love of Space Balls. The reason why he created the flamethrower, not a flamethrower. The reason why he created, uh, the new, uh, model S and called it the Plaid. This is all Space Ball stuff. He even changed the shape of his rocket to look more like Space Balls.

Lex Fridman 8:48 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 8:49 I mean, it doesn't even make sense.

Lex Fridman 8:51 It's awesome. It's awesome.

Joe Rogan 8:52 But again, you're not gonna recreate that artificially. Like, you have, it has to actually genuinely, naturally, organically be that guy, and that's who he is.

Lex Fridman 9:02 But you have to allow people like that to rise to the top-

Joe Rogan 9:04 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 9:04 ... in all spaces of leadership. Like, the, I see in politics, like, I don't know, Andrew Yang, somebody like that, somebody who's, doesn't look like the past. And Elon Musk certainly doesn't look like the past in terms of CEOs. By the way, I know you're not a huge fan of autopilot or don't use it very often, but they, they have, uh, 'cause I wanna squeeze in AI a little bit. (laughs) They have, uh, autonomy day in a few days, uh, Tesla does, and they're going to, um, they've been doing ... I don't know if you've been paying attention, but they've been doing a lot of interesting stuff on the, like, uh, semi-autonomous, autonomous driving side. So, one of the crazy things they're doing that I never thought would be possible is to use vision only for their FSD, for their autopilot. Meaning cameras only. Talking about breaking with the ways of the past. So, in the past, you always have radar or if, if you have more, quote unquote, "reliable sensors" for emergency situations, for, um, for like, uh, emergency breaking. So here, Tesla is using only cameras, so only vision. The logic there is our roads are all designed for human eyes, therefore you should be able to drive with only visual information. The problem is, with rain, with fog, with all those conditions, with night, h- how are you going to be able to do it? And the fact that they're doing so, uh, m- much more successful than I would expect is, is quite incredible from an AI perspective. And they're just going full steam ahead there with, uh, something called Dojo, which is, um ... I don't know how, if you know how this whole process works, but they, they're basically deploying a version of autopilot software to a fleet of vehicles. Those cars are driving, sometime by human, sometime by AI, and then whenever AI runs into trouble, that's the little data point that then is sent back to the mothership, and then it retrains the system, and the system gets smarter and smarter, and then redeploys a smarter version. So there's this loop. They call it the data engine. This loop, it sounds maybe trivial, but it's one of the first large-scale implementation of an AI system in the world that does this kind of loop. So it's not ... Oftentimes, when you deploy these kinds of system, you deploy them and the time between versions is, like, years, you have to basically buy a new smartphone, something like that. Here, the time between new versions is every week. I think every Friday they're releasing a new version, something like that. Which is a, um, y- you know, it's a revolutionary idea. It sounds ridiculously simple, but it's revolutionary in that as opposed to deploying a perfect system, you deploy a system that's not perfect and then it improves over time and converges towards something that's safer than human drivers. That's fascinating. And then the Dojo computer is they're building their own huge system that's doing the training. So, to train neural networks or AI systems you have to have specialized hardware. So Elon ... This is another really interesting lesson for companies, especially car companies.... as opposed to outsourcing the work to other companies, you do it all in-house. So, if you look at the history of Tesla, they've, uh, at first, it was distributed, uh, across other suppliers and so on. But they're doing more and more and more in-house. I think that the dream is you have a single factory, like here, the giga in, in Austin, Texas, where the input is raw materials and the output is a finished car. And they're doing the same thing with the AI. They want to, they don't wanna use, uh, GPUs and computers from somebody else. They wanna have that in-house. So, the whole thing is like this, this organism that takes in raw materials and produces intelligent vehicles.

Joe Rogan 12:55 I love that he called it Dojo.

Lex Fridman 12:57 Dojo, yeah.

Joe Rogan 12:58 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 12:58 The guy has, um, has a knack for names.

Joe Rogan 13:01 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 13:01 Some of them are ridiculous, but that's the point.

Joe Rogan 13:03 (laughs) What's the most ridiculous one?

Lex Fridman 13:06 Uh, so a lot of references, uh, to Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Joe Rogan 13:11 Yeah?

Lex Fridman 13:12 Right.

Joe Rogan 13:12 Like what?

Lex Fridman 13:13 Um, I'm trying to think. The, the naming of the ships, uh, of the, um, the ships that catch the rockets. I'm blanking on their names. It's like, um, I Love You Too, or something like that.

Joe Rogan 13:26 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 13:27 (laughs) It's, it's, uh, references to all of these sci-fi books, which, by the way, I've been, like, tormented by people on the internet to read more sci-fi. Unfortunately, I've-

Joe Rogan 13:35 How do you have the time?

Lex Fridman 13:37 You make... Oh, speaking of which ...

Joe Rogan 13:39 You're doing, like, a book a, a day for-

Lex Fridman 13:41 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 13:41 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 13:41 Andrew Huberman is coming into town and he is, uh, he's doing this thing that, like, I don't know, it's like Stephen King-style thing, where he's just locking himself in a room and writing. He has to finish his, he's working on a book, some like science-related book. Uh, he's a brilliant guy. So, he's just gonna sit there and write.

Joe Rogan 14:00 Is that how King does it? He locks himself in a room?

Lex Fridman 14:02 Well, it's all great writers, right? They go to, like, some weird, uh, ritual of like, you know, f- every f- like every morning for four hours, they go into a cabin with a typewriter. Like, they all have a ritual. Like, a routine. Writers are insane. I think it's like, that's the hardest ... I guess you do the same thing for comedy. Like, you don't have to do many hours of it, but it can be torture, which is why many people avoid it. You have to, you have to go in front of a blank sheet of paper or some version of that, and you have to, and you have to write, and it's like-

Joe Rogan 14:31 It's not torture. It is not torture. It's the, it is a, it's procrastination, that people have this issue with, uh, getting things started.

Lex Fridman 14:40 Right.

Joe Rogan 14:40 It's, it, it literally is just training the mind. It's training the mind to, to, like, that's how you get things done. I mean-

Lex Fridman 14:47 Right.

Joe Rogan 14:47 ... literally, it's all it is. It's just-

Lex Fridman 14:49 But you're not, you're not letting yourself, you're (laughs) you're somebody that just destroys yourself on the treadmill and the kettlebells. So, you're, you're not allowing yourself to not get started at something difficult. You just dive in.

Joe Rogan 14:59 Yeah, but 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.

Lex Fridman 15:10 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 15:10 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.

Lex Fridman 15:23 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 15:23 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-

Lex Fridman 15:53 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 15:53 ... 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.

Lex Fridman 16:07 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 16:07 But then again, like, what if you lose your notebook, you know?

Lex Fridman 16:11 Yeah. I still write letters. But when you look at somebody like Huberman, there's hundreds, if not thousands, of references. So yes-

Joe Rogan 16:16 Yes.

Lex Fridman 16:16 ... he kinda-

Joe Rogan 16:17 Of course.

Lex Fridman 16:17 ... unfortunately-

Joe Rogan 16:18 Different, different sort of writing.

Lex Fridman 16:19 ... he needs the computer.

Joe Rogan 16:20 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 16:20 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.

Joe Rogan 16:26 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 16:26 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-

Joe Rogan 16:43 12 hours a day? Really? Writing? Just reading 12 hours a day-

Lex Fridman 16:46 Just reading.

Joe Rogan 16:46 ... or writing as well?

Lex Fridman 16:48 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.

Joe Rogan 17:03 Oh, these are your books?

Lex Fridman 17:04 Uh-

Joe Rogan 17:04 Okay.

Lex Fridman 17:05 Uh, some of them are the ones I was, I was thinking about. Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. I wrote-

Joe Rogan 17:09 I just, uh, was reading that.

Lex Fridman 17:11 Yeah. So-

Joe Rogan 17:12 It's really wild.

Lex Fridman 17:13 It-

Joe Rogan 17:13 When you think about how long ago that guy lived and, you know, how applicable some of his thoughts are today.

Lex Fridman 17:19 Yeah. Same, I mean, the same as with Book of Five Rings and Art of War.

Joe Rogan 17:22 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 17:22 Right? It's been f- forever. Um, Man's Search ... I mean, a lot of these books, I've already read. I'm just sort of rereading them. The way I think about books is they're kind of travel. So, you're like traveling to a place.

Joe Rogan 17:35 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 17:35 Like Man's Search for Meaning with Viktor Frankl is, uh, the Holocaust and is, it's the story of, of a man in a concentration camp finding meaning and beauty in, in mo- in a moment of suffering. And so, you're, like, that, you're traveling with him to that, uh, concentration camp and you're there. And then, if you, you know, if you only read for like 30 minutes, you don't get a chance to fully immerse. If you just stay there and you d- you travel there, it can, um, I don't know, it can really change you. Or at least in the past, this has really kinda transformed your mind.

Joe Rogan 18:11 I watched, uh, Restrepo last night because of what's going on in Afghanistan. Do you, do you know Restrepo, Sebastian Junger's, uh, film on Afghanistan?

Lex Fridman 18:21 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 18:21 Just sort of, um-... just to put it in perspective, like what's going on over there now. And, um, the, it's, you know, I mean, books are amazing for putting things into perspective. But there's something about a documentary, especially a boots-on-the-ground documentary by a journalist like Sebastian Junger, and in Afghanistan while Afghanistan is falling to the Taliban. So it feels so... It's so intense when you're watching it and you see, you know, guys in the beginning of the film that wind up dying. And it's, uh, it... For- first of all, I, I forgot, like I think you, you have a sense of what they mean when they talk about these mountainous r- areas, this mountainous terrain that's impossible really to control 'cause it's very difficult to traverse, very difficult to get around. I don't think you really understand it until you watch that film, until you really see the mountains and you're like, "Oh, God. Like how is anybody ever going to control this area?"

Lex Fridman 19:23 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 19:23 Like, no wonder why the Soviets failed, no wonder why we failed, no wonder why, you know, the people that live there, they, they just... They're living in an incredibly difficult environment in terms of like just getting around.

Lex Fridman 19:41 Mm-hmm. Yeah, I remember some statistics about like 99% of people in Afghanistan, Afghanistan. Now I sound like Bryan Callen (laughs) .

Joe Rogan 19:50 Afghanistan.

Lex Fridman 19:51 (laughs) Uh, uh, Iran, Iran. Yeah, I never know how to say it.

Joe Rogan 19:57 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 19:57 Uh, I remember like 99% of them didn't know 9/11 happened. So, like they're completely disconnected from the world, even-

Joe Rogan 20:05 That's so crazy.

Lex Fridman 20:06 ... that they, e- even things that seem relevant to, uh-

Joe Rogan 20:10 Did you watch the videos today of people trying to climb aboard planes and falling to their deaths? The planes are taking off. These guys are hanging on to the landing gear, and as the landing gear pulls up, they're falling to their death.

Lex Fridman 20:21 Trying to save themselves?

Joe Rogan 20:22 Yes, trying to leave with the Americans. It's fucking crazy. Just the chaos at the airport is cr- You, you haven't seen any of this stuff?

Lex Fridman 20:31 No, I haven't seen... I, I, I actually have not been paying attention to what's happening in Afghanistan.

Joe Rogan 20:34 Jamie, show him some of the, the videos 'cause it's, it's heartbreaking.

Narrator 20:38 There's one. This is like-

Joe Rogan 20:41 Yeah, these are people just literally-

Lex Fridman 20:42 Oh, no.

Joe Rogan 20:42 ... climbing all over these ladders, doing whatever they can, trying to force themself onto these planes. And, but the really fucked one is like look, these guys hanging on the landing gear. Watch this. Like falling to his death. It's fucked.

Lex Fridman 21:01 Wow.

Joe Rogan 21:02 Yeah. And look at this. I mean, fucking crazy. All these guys trying to stop the plane so that they can get on board. I mean, this is just a tremendous failure. It's so heartbreaking.

Lex Fridman 21:20 Yeah, but what do you do?

Joe Rogan 21:21 (exhales deeply) What could be done differently, right? That's the real question. Like could have, uh, could they have designed, uh, a better withdrawal plan that scaled over time where they gave, uh, uh, particularly the people that helped the American military over there, that they're very vulnerable right now, and they're in, they're in a lot of trouble. Could they have protected them better? Could they have done something? Could they have designed a plan? That's what most people who are criticizing this believe, the people that actually understand what's going on over there, they think this idea of pulling out immediately.

Lex Fridman 21:58 Yeah. But half the world is living under authoritarian regimes. So the question is, how do you help those people? How do you help... You had a, a nice sophisticated, deep historical conversation with Andrew Scholtes about North Korea, but outs-

Joe Rogan 22:12 Are you being sarcastic?

Lex Fridman 22:14 Yeah, there's a little bit of sarcasm there.

Joe Rogan 22:16 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 22:16 I lo- I lo- I love him. He's hilarious. I'm, I'm just joking.

Joe Rogan 22:18 He is hilarious, but he was, uh-

Lex Fridman 22:20 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 22:20 ... he was going hard in the paint.

Lex Fridman 22:21 Yeah, a little bit.

Joe Rogan 22:22 But he's-

Lex Fridman 22:23 But like how do you help-

Joe Rogan 22:24 ... you know, he's having fun.

Lex Fridman 22:24 Well, the, the, the criti- the, the one sort of, uh, sophisticated criticism there was, well, what the hell do you do about it when you-

Joe Rogan 22:33 Right, what do you do about North Korea? Well, what... And you-

Lex Fridman 22:39 And there's, there's a lot of places like that. And North Korea is probably the worst or one of the worst. But there's a lot of places where the leader of the government is abusing its people. What do you do about it? The b- uh, the whole cryptocurrency, Bitcoin people say maybe you can change the money. You can give people power by- Uh, like one of the ways government controls its people is the monetary system. So you can like swap out, try to give people power through the money. That's one way. That's interesting. Uh, the, obviously the old school way is military. Uh, and, or also maybe economic pressures. But then it becomes, it becomes difficult 'cause you've taken on that project and then you get the thing that you get in Afghanistan. And, you know, it's a project that takes 10 years, it takes 20 years, and then ultimately it's not successful. So what do you do?

Joe Rogan 23:30 Yeah, the Afghanistan situation is so crazy because, uh, you know, Biden was on television just a little while ago talking about how there's 300,000 armed Afghanistan soldiers that were trained by the United States, and there's only 75,000 Taliban. There's no way that they're gonna fall. But they never fought. They just gave up, like instantly.

Lex Fridman 23:51 Yeah. Right.

Joe Rogan 23:52 You know, it's like the, the whole situation is very confusing to someone who doesn't understand it. If you're, if you're a guy who fought over there too, it's got to be insanely frustrating. People spilled blood over there, people lost limbs over there. And then they're seeing how quickly we just pulled out and then abandoned ship. Like what, what was, what was that for?

Lex Fridman 24:14 Well, we, we got into that war under false pretenses. We stayed without much transparency about why we're staying, how many tr-

Joe Rogan 24:22 For 20 fucking years.

Lex Fridman 24:23 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 24:23 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 24:23 Without, without a clear plan for the future. And then we pulled out without a clear transparent plan-

Joe Rogan 24:30 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 24:30 A, what ... Uh, but I don't know what lesson to draw from that, except that we should've never gone in the first place.

Joe Rogan 24:36 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 24:36 That's, that's the only sort of solid set of arguments you can have. Beca- ... And like, why that place? You know, it's the people that argue it's all about oil and all those kinds of things.

Joe Rogan 24:45 And minerals-

Lex Fridman 24:46 And minerals.

Joe Rogan 24:46 ... and, and all sorts of natural resources, right? And natural gas. Like, Afghanistan is a, it's a rich suppository of lithium, I believe, too, right?

Lex Fridman 24:56 Yeah, natural ... But then w- what, what about Iraq? Like, what does that have to do with anything? And so (laughs) y- you st- you start, you start questioning the whole operation, the whole process of making decisions about foreign policy and the military conflicts. Uh, you know, what lesson do you draw from that when there's places like North Korea? When there's many people in, in, in Africa suffering? There's many regimes that are abusing its people-

Joe Rogan 25:22 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 25:22 ... there. Then, then there's people that criticize Russia, uh, for, for, for, for certain things in terms of from an authoritarian regime perspective, and then the big one is China. And then what do you do about that? And then, I d- I mean, I, I do find the libertarian argument here the most sophisticated and convincing, is we should stay out of, uh, other people's business until we have a really clear, good plan. And, um, th- you know, the majority of Americans, uh, given a transparent communication of what is going on and what we're going to do, majority of Americans, uh, are behind this plan. Otherwise, stay out of it. Uh, unless you have ... You know, and the, the, you know, when you have like a, something like a Nazi Germany, where there's obvious atrocities, uh, happening. Where there's an obvious war on the horizon, then that's different, but everything else-

Joe Rogan 26:17 Well, if that's the case, then why aren't we invading North Korea? If Wynona Park and all these different people that have escaped from North Korea are telling the truth, th- there's a holocaust going on there right now. I mean, they're, they're literally starving their people. They're putting their people in concentration camps. They're having children born in concentration camps for the crimes of their grandparents. And their children will also be born in these camps, in these prison camps. Um, they're starving their people. They execute them for, you know, almost no reason. They do whatever they want to them. They have full and total, complete control over them.

Lex Fridman 26:52 Well, the dark answer and the reason is because there's no way to do anything about North Korea without also doing something about China.

Joe Rogan 27:02 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 27:03 And that's, that's why we turn a blind eye to North Korea, because, um, I mean, that's would, uh, deeply ... I mean, a war with North Korea, or invasion of North Korea, is an invasion of China.

Joe Rogan 27:17 Well, also North Korea has nuclear weapons, right? The nuclear weapon thing really has changed the idea of war, because when ... It's, it's kind of amazing that no one's dropped a bomb since 1947. Isn't it?

Lex Fridman 27:31 Yeah, it's amazing. It gives me hope for-

Joe Rogan 27:34 Yeah. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 27:34 ... humanity. Like, we're not so crazy that-

Joe Rogan 27:37 Right.

Lex Fridman 27:37 ... we're going to just blow each other up.

Joe Rogan 27:39 Right.

Lex Fridman 27:40 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 27:40 Yeah. It is amazing. Right? I mean, that's, it's one of the most amazing things about people.

Lex Fridman 27:46 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 27:47 That we have the ultimate weapon and we've n- we haven't used it in decades. And everybody has one.

Lex Fridman 27:53 There's a lot of terrorists in this world and it, it's amazing to me they haven't done anything much more destructive than 9/11.

Joe Rogan 28:01 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 28:01 Like, just-

Joe Rogan 28:02 Like a nuke. Yeah.

Lex Fridman 28:03 With nuke, but even less than that. Like orchestrated, orchestrated attacks.

Joe Rogan 28:09 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 28:09 You, you, you sent me the QAnon documentary, that's an orchestrated, uh, attack.

Joe Rogan 28:13 Did you watch it?

Lex Fridman 28:14 But that's in ... Yeah, I, I started (laughs) .

Joe Rogan 28:16 Shh. I'm only on episode two. They-

Narrator 28:18 Oh.

Joe Rogan 28:18 I cannot recogni- recommend it enough.

Narrator 28:20 The one on H- the one on HBO?

Joe Rogan 28:20 Yes.

Narrator 28:21 You finally started it?

Joe Rogan 28:21 Yes.

Narrator 28:22 That's good. Oh, yeah.

Lex Fridman 28:22 It is so good. I love it.

Joe Rogan 28:24 It's incredible, right?

Narrator 28:24 Yeah, yeah, it's good.

Joe Rogan 28:25 Yeah, I'm on-

Narrator 28:26 Fun.

Joe Rogan 28:26 I'm, I'm only on it, I finished episode two, I'm moving to episode three. It's so fucked, 'cause ... I'm trying to be kind here.

Narrator 28:35 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 28:36 Misfits need love, too.

Narrator 28:39 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 28:39 And, and misfits need a purpose. And that is what I got out of that documentary, at least the first two episodes. I mean, free speech, also. You know, the family that runs, uh, 8chan in, uh, the Philippines.

Narrator 28:51 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 28:52 Like, their commitment to free speech and to let people just do whatever the fuck they wanna do, like, i- in many ways, I, I agree and see their point. But the, um ... And not, not even but. What I, what I'm seeing in the documentary, though, these people that are into QAnon, the people that were following the drops, the people that were deeply invested in believing that this was some person who ... I don't, I ... Maybe they resolve this later on in the series, I don't know.

Narrator 29:26 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 29:26 After two. Do they ever resolve it?

Lex Fridman 29:28 Who the person is?

Narrator 29:29 I haven't finished it either myself, to be honest with you, so ...

Joe Rogan 29:30 Oh.

Lex Fridman 29:30 Who the person is?

Joe Rogan 29:31 Yeah, who actually Q is.

Lex Fridman 29:32 No, they don't solve it.

Narrator 29:33 Oh, I don't think so. Yeah, I don't think so.

Lex Fridman 29:34 But as, um, as far as you, but from what I understand, the theme continues. They're ... So even in the first two, if we can give a little bit of a spoiler.

Joe Rogan 29:43 It's called Into the Storm, right?

Lex Fridman 29:44 Into the Storm, I think, no-

Joe Rogan 29:45 Yeah, it's on HBO Max.

Lex Fridman 29:47 Is that-

Joe Rogan 29:47 It's great. It's really well done.

Lex Fridman 29:49 It's Q: Into the Storm, or something like that

Narrator 29:50 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 29:50 Yeah, and one of those guys was on, um, uh, Duncan's podcast.

Lex Fridman 29:57 (laughs)

Narrator 29:57 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 29:57 The, the, the gentleman who's, uh, he, disabled. What is his name?

Narrator 30:01 Oh.

Joe Rogan 30:01 Fred.

Lex Fridman 30:01 Fred.

Narrator 30:02 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 30:02 Yeah, he's-

Joe Rogan 30:02 Brennan?

Lex Fridman 30:03 Yeah, Fred Brennan.

Joe Rogan 30:04 Fred Brennan?

Narrator 30:04 Yep.

Joe Rogan 30:04 Yeah. He was on Duncan's podcast. Duncan says he's great.

Lex Fridman 30:08 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 30:08 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-

Lex Fridman 30:20 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 30:20 ... of cards, like, you know, biologically. There he is. Frederick Brennan.

Lex Fridman 30:25 You know, he-

Joe Rogan 30:25 I was very, I was very impressed with him. There it is, Duncan Trussell, episode 433.Yeah.

Lex Fridman 30:32 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-

Joe Rogan 30:52 Ruthless.

Lex Fridman 30:53 ... to him.

Joe Rogan 30:53 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 30:53 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.

Joe Rogan 31:03 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 31:04 I'm not sure that's true.

Joe Rogan 31:06 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.

Lex Fridman 31:13 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 31:13 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.

Lex Fridman 31:25 Yeah. It becomes a fun game of toxicity. Like, it's fun to just go-

Joe Rogan 31:29 Yeah. That's a good way of putting it.

Lex Fridman 31:30 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?

Joe Rogan 31:54 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 31:54 Ron Watkins, that's Q.

Joe Rogan 31:55 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 31:56 It's like, I've always thought-

Joe Rogan 31:57 That's what they think?

Lex Fridman 31:58 That's what the, the documentary's implying from the very beginning. I mean, the way they're painting it in the first two episodes. I'm like-

Joe Rogan 32:03 I didn't think that. You thought that?

Lex Fridman 32:05 Yeah, I, I, yeah. (laughs) Uh, so he looks like-

Joe Rogan 32:09 That's interesting.

Lex Fridman 32:09 ... he's lying nonstop.

Joe Rogan 32:11 Really?

Lex Fridman 32:11 First of all.

Joe Rogan 32:12 I don't think he looks like he's lying. I think he looks like he's very socially awkward, and he's just talking. I didn't think he looked like he was lying at all. It's interesting. We have a different perspective on this.

Lex Fridman 32:20 Mm, mm. This is analysis.

Joe Rogan 32:22 I didn't think he was lying.

Lex Fridman 32:22 It's like analyzing Shakespeare in high school.

Joe Rogan 32:23 Did you think, Jamie?

Narrator 32:25 Uh.

Joe Rogan 32:25 Did you think he was lying?

Narrator 32:26 He's the son of the guy, right?

Joe Rogan 32:27 Yeah.

Narrator 32:27 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 32:28 The son of the guy who runs 8chan.

Lex Fridman 32:28 Both of them look like they're lying.

Joe Rogan 32:30 That guy's a trip.

Narrator 32:30 They seem like they're up to something.

Joe Rogan 32:31 But 8chan, the, the guy r- runs, the old guy who runs 8chan, his dad, is a trip.

Lex Fridman 32:36 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 32:36 He's a character.

Lex Fridman 32:37 I, I don't, um, I'm not interested in politics. I'm not interested in politics. He keeps saying that.

Narrator 32:40 Off the first two episodes, though, I wouldn't say that I thought that, but, uh, he's a suspect, maybe, I guess, but not top of the top three.

Joe Rogan 32:48 Yeah, I didn't think he was a suspect at all.

Lex Fridman 32:50 First as- first time I saw him, I was like, "That guy."

Joe Rogan 32:52 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 32:52 That's Q right there.

Joe Rogan 32:54 Really?

Lex Fridman 32:54 Yeah, it's obvious. But it's... So, so to me, technically speaking, because... Not the people on the forums, but him, I know that person in the following sense. Like, I know programmers. These are hackers. These are programmers. I, I know these people. I, it, I knew from the very beginning that Q, uh, is not... If, if it's controlled by a government agency, like in Russia or something like that-

Joe Rogan 33:16 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 33:16 ... it's because they acquired a single person who was in- who was good at this. That, it's, it's pretty easy for a single person to control anonymous forums in this way. W- with some combination of bots and just indivi- it's weaving narratives. Human beings love narratives. And if you come up with crazy shit, and you start, there, there's a mystery, like a Hitchcock-style mystery, you're, you're basically telling stories. It's how Scientology got started. You're telling beautiful stories, like some mystery, some, uh, painting a picture of evil that you get to fight, pa- painting a picture of a better world if you defeat the evil. All those things you can do pretty effectively through technology, uh-

Joe Rogan 33:57 Well, I thought-

Lex Fridman 33:58 ... by, by a single person.

Joe Rogan 33:59 I thought it was clearly manipulative from the start, because if you look at the way Q is writing, like everything is a mystery and a puzzle.

Lex Fridman 34:07 Right.

Joe Rogan 34:07 If you're trying to release information, and you're doing so anonymously, why wouldn't you be clear and succinct?

Lex Fridman 34:14 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 34:14 Why? 'Cause they're playing games with misfits. That's what they're doing. You know what I don't like about, uh, what's his name? What's his name? Watkins? What's his name?

Lex Fridman 34:20 Yeah. Uh, the son?

Joe Rogan 34:21 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 34:21 Ron Watkins? Yeah.

Joe Rogan 34:22 I don't like his glasses. Why does he got taped-up glasses? It's, it's too on the nose.

Lex Fridman 34:28 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 34:28 It's like, I bet, I bet those fucking glasses are clear. I bet he doesn't even need them.

Lex Fridman 34:32 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 34:32 I mean, it's fake.

Lex Fridman 34:32 We notice different things.

Joe Rogan 34:34 He's got a little-

Lex Fridman 34:34 I noticed ego.

Joe Rogan 34:34 He's, he tapes his fucking glasses.

Narrator 34:36 Oh.

Joe Rogan 34:36 The little thing in the corner.

Narrator 34:37 That could have been done for the movie too, 'cause I'm looking at other pictures of him, and there are no pictures of taped-up glasses.

Joe Rogan 34:42 Look at that.

Narrator 34:42 But I had to find that one.

Joe Rogan 34:43 Well, maybe he broke his glasses right before.

Narrator 34:45 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 34:45 But I'm suspicious. I'm suspicious of the taped-up glasses, because-

Lex Fridman 34:50 What's with the cowboy hat? I don't know.

Joe Rogan 34:51 Eh, is there a more cliché, like, eh, portrayal of a nerd than the tape on the glasses?

Lex Fridman 35:00 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 35:00 I mean, it's literally from Revenge of the Nerds.

Lex Fridman 35:03 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 35:03 Right? In the movie, Revenge of the Nerds, didn't he have his glasses taped?

Narrator 35:06 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 35:06 I think he did. I'm guessing. I, I know it's-

Lex Fridman 35:08 Yeah, but it's gonan stay for a reason. First of all, tape is functional.

Joe Rogan 35:13 Right.

Lex Fridman 35:13 And nerds think in a very, uh, com- computer programmers think in a very functional way. What's your problem with tape, bro?

Joe Rogan 35:18 It's just the fact that he's got taped-up glasses while he's doing an HBO documentary.

Narrator 35:23 No, there seems no tape, I don't think.

Joe Rogan 35:24 No?

Narrator 35:25 I think it's just a, yeah, the like, a stereotype deal.

Joe Rogan 35:27 I feel like Revenge of the Nerds had taped-up glasses. No?

Narrator 35:32 I don't know.

Lex Fridman 35:33 You're right. One of those movies did.

Joe Rogan 35:34 But you know what I mean?

Lex Fridman 35:35 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 35:36 Taped, taped-up... The tape in the corner of the glasses is so cliché. But yes, do people tape their glasses when their glasses break? Yes, they do. It's a good thing to do. It is functional. But when I saw him with the taped-up glasses, I'm like, "Get the fuck out of here." You couldn't get your glasses fixed? You're really just gonna tape them up?

Lex Fridman 35:53 So who do you think is Q from just your sen- like, when, when you talk about QAnon, who, who did you... Before this documentary, who'd you, you think it was? An organization?

Joe Rogan 36:02 No.

Lex Fridman 36:02 A single person?

Joe Rogan 36:02 I thought it was probably some wackadoo who works with Trump, who is enjoying the fact that he has access, and he's playing games with people. That's what I felt like. He's playing games and manipulating people. It's just the way they're communicating, the way they're communicating with, like, puzzles, and then all these, these, these QAnon dorks, all these people that are like these misfits that they follow in this documentary that are really obsessed with it.

Lex Fridman 36:27 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 36:27 They have to, like, try to piece the puzzle together. Tell them what the fuck is going on.

Lex Fridman 36:33 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 36:33 Why you, why is this a puzzle? Why is this a puzzle that's open to interpretation?That's dumb. That's a dumb way to leak information. Did Edward Snowden release information in puzzles?

Lex Fridman 36:44 Right.

Joe Rogan 36:44 Did Julian Assange release information in puzzles? No. This is a stupid way to release information. You don't have to reveal your identity, but reveal the information very clearly. The way he speaks in these, like, broken sentences and th- the fact that it's very... it's al- it's coded, this is someone who's fucking with people.

Lex Fridman 37:02 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 37:02 But the, the thing is, what I got out of this documentary so far is that... Look, if you get 100 people in the room, you're gonna have a misfit. One person in that room is gonna be an outcast, they're not gonna fit in, and they're gonna l- be searching for meaning and longing. And this is just... Th- they don't, th- th- they don't have, like, a, a very clear place where they fit into the puzzle. So, if you get 100 people and one of them is like that, well, you have 330 million people in this country.

Lex Fridman 37:38 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 37:39 So, you have fucking millions and millions of misfits.

Lex Fridman 37:42 See, I think the number... I mean, you're just giving an example.

Joe Rogan 37:46 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 37:46 I think the number of people who are searching and are a bit lost and are deeply lonely is much closer to 100% than to 1%.

Joe Rogan 37:55 Whoa.

Lex Fridman 37:55 Like-

Joe Rogan 37:55 100% deeply lonely?

Lex Fridman 37:57 Yeah, there's a depth of loneliness in all of us and that we're searching for meaning. I really honestly think that if you look at the spread of the people in the world, I'm not saying 100%, but I'm saying, like, y- there's a population of 60, 70% that... I mean, they're not radicalized, but they're searching.

Joe Rogan 38:14 Right.

Lex Fridman 38:14 And we're searching for stories to unite over. And this is the scary thing. It's, it's both exciting and scary. It's exciting because you can use technology for the people to rise up against power centers that are abusing them. I mean, that's what QAnon is doing. They're doing it with false narratives and they're rising up against, I would say, the wrong kind of power centers. But the fact that people can do that, I think, with a single... starting from a single person is, uh, exciting to me and it's promising to me because I ultimately believe in the positive aspects of human nature. But I also do believe people are searching and we're hungry. And so, those... W- what we're calling misfits, you're a misfit.

Joe Rogan 38:57 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 38:58 You're just like (laughs) you're a busy misfit that-

Joe Rogan 39:01 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 39:01 ... runs on a treadmill. So, you don't have time to check forums.

Joe Rogan 39:05 Ugh. Well, I'm not interested in it either. It's not just that I don't have time. I just... I, I, I see what they're doing, this longing for community.

Lex Fridman 39:13 Right.

Joe Rogan 39:13 And, um, I, I get my community in different ways.

Lex Fridman 39:16 Right.

Joe Rogan 39:16 But if I, I didn't have standup comedy, if I didn't have jujitsu, if I didn't have podcasting, I would try to find community in some way. And I think when I say misfits, a lot of these folks (sighs) they're just social outcasts, right? In a lot of ways. And it's not just that they're misfits, they're kind of disconnected to, you know, like the lady with... who's missing her front tooth and the husband and they're like telling the kid, "Build that wall, build that wall." These are misfits, right?

Lex Fridman 39:48 Yeah. But those are the-

Joe Rogan 39:48 These are goofy people that-

Lex Fridman 39:50 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 39:50 ... they don't have, like... I don't think they have many conversations with objective intelligent people that are well-informed. So, when they're having these conversations, I think they lack the experience of critical thinking skills. And so, they'll believe all kinds of stupid shit. You know, like the, the guy who got super excited that he thinks that Trump was pointing at him. He's like, "Trump pointed at me."

Lex Fridman 40:13 With the little...

Joe Rogan 40:13 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Lex Fridman 40:15 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 40:15 He... this... 'Cause he's got the Q shirt on and it's... Trump always has 17 and, you know, Q... and, and what does he say? "Just Q wait."

Lex Fridman 40:23 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 40:23 You know?

Lex Fridman 40:24 "Just Q wait," yeah.

Joe Rogan 40:24 "Just..."

Lex Fridman 40:25 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 40:25 That could've been 'cause he's on Adderall and his fucking m- mouth was getting sloppery (laughs) .

Lex Fridman 40:31 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 40:32 I don't know what... I mean, he fucked up a lot of words, but-

Lex Fridman 40:35 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 40:36 ... the, uh, 17 is odd. That he's like the number 17 constantly.

Lex Fridman 40:40 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 40:40 And, uh, another thing wa-... like, that whole Q clearance thing. Another film that I watched recently was Collapse with Michael Ruppert.

Lex Fridman 40:53 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 40:53 Do you know who Michael Ruppert is?

Lex Fridman 40:54 No.

Joe Rogan 40:55 Michael Ruppert was a friend of mine. He killed himself a few years back and he, he's been on the pod... He'd been on the podcast a couple of times. The last time I saw him, he gave me a large jar of mushrooms.

Lex Fridman 41:05 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 41:05 He's a very interesting guy. And he worked for the Los Angeles D- Police Department in the Narcotics Division and he exposed the CIA selling drugs in South Central Los Angeles. And he did it on... I think it was on C-SPAN. And he did it at, like, a city council meeting or some, some, some big public meeting. It's a wild spee-... Have you ever seen it, Jamie?

Narrator 41:31 Yeah, we played it. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 41:32 Yeah, we played it. Um, I could send it to you if you want. I have it saved in my phone. But I, uh... In the film, he says, and this was like... At the same time I'm watching this documentary, I just... I was thinking about him, you know, just randomly thinking about him. And this is... This film collapsed and it was all about peak oil and the collapse of civilization. And it was a few years back. I wanna say the film was, like, probably 2008 or some shit. 2009? And, um, some of his predictions were accurate and some of his predictions were not. And, but the, the peak oil thing is definitely not correct because they've, they've s- subsequently found a lot of oil in other places. But in the film, he's talking about how he has Q level cl- Q level clearance. Like, it is a thing. Like, Q level clearance is a thing. And he had it from when... at the time he was young because his father was involved i- in some intelligence business. But this is him. Pl- play this so-

Narrator 42:34 This is- and Watchtower. I have Watchtower documents heavily redacted by the agency. I was personally exposed to CIA operations and recruited by CIA personnel who attempted to recruit me in the late '70s to become involved in protecting agency drug operations in this country. I have been trying to get this out for 18 years and I have the evidence. My question for you is very specific, sir.If, in the course of the IG's investigations and Fred Hitz's work, you come across evidence of severely criminal activity-

43:04 Let him speak into the mic.

43:05 ... and it's classified, will you use that classification to hide the criminal activity, or will you tell the American people the truth?

43:12 (applause) (cheers)

Lex Fridman 43:17 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 43:17 I think we missed the beginning of it where he said that he personally witnessed the CIA selling drugs. But-

Narrator 43:23 All right, do you wanna hear the response first-

Lex Fridman 43:24 This is, uh, 1996.

Narrator 43:26 ... from Congressman Julian Dixon and then from the rest of the panel? (cheers)

Joe Rogan 43:27 ... allegations of CIA involvement in drug trafficking. It's tu- it tu- all turned out to be 100% true.

Lex Fridman 43:32 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 43:33 I mean, this is, uh, how Freeway Ricky Ross, the original, real Rick Ross, made millions and millions and millions of dollars. He thought he was just an awesome drug dealer. Well, he was an awesome drug dealer that was working with the CIA, unbeknownst to him. Like, they were allowing him to sell drugs so that they could profit off of it so they could funnel the money into the war with the, the Contras and the Sandinistas in Nicaragua.

Lex Fridman 43:54 And this was when Clinton was president.

Joe Rogan 43:57 Yes. No, it was when Reagan was president that it was all going down.

Lex Fridman 44:00 No, no, not, not then. This.

Joe Rogan 44:00 But this was when Clinton was president that he was o- on television talking about it. Yeah.

Lex Fridman 44:04 By the way, uh, th- there's not often... I'm a big fan of JRE, but it's not often when I do a podcast interview, uh, that's talking Roger Reeves, where I'm thinking, "I wish I wasn't doing this interview, and I wish I was listening to this on, on, on your show." Uh, Roger Reed is the, the drug trafficker.

Joe Rogan 44:21 Yes.

Lex Fridman 44:21 That guy's incredible. You need to, you need to talk to him or somebody like him. Because-

Joe Rogan 44:25 I would definitely talk to him.

Lex Fridman 44:27 He's, uh, just... It's like a... F- first of all, Jorge Ochoa who, with Pablo Escobar together, created the Medellín cartel, is out of... Th- this is crazy to me. He's out of prison. He's living in, uh, Medellín. I don't know how these guys just-

Joe Rogan 44:44 Jorge Ochoa is? Yeah.

Lex Fridman 44:45 Yeah, yeah. He's been out for-

Joe Rogan 44:46 And R- Roger Reeves is as well, right? He's out of prison too.

Lex Fridman 44:48 Yeah, yeah. Roger Reeves just got out.

Joe Rogan 44:49 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 44:50 Uh, Roger Reeves got, uh, arrested in, I think, Australia for transporting one or two tons of cocaine.

Joe Rogan 44:59 Whoops. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 45:02 (laughs) You got-

Joe Rogan 45:02 Personal use.

Lex Fridman 45:03 Yeah. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 45:05 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 45:05 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-

Joe Rogan 45:13 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 45:13 ... worked for Roger Reeves, uh, and then Barry Seal became his own, like, big, big transporter.

Joe Rogan 45:19 And Roger was on your podcast.

Lex Fridman 45:21 Yeah, Roger, Roger was-

Joe Rogan 45:22 Which is really... I reached out to you about that because it was a-

Lex Fridman 45:24 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 45:24 ... really, really, really interesting episode.

Lex Fridman 45:26 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-

Joe Rogan 45:53 Look at that. Look at him.

Lex Fridman 45:54 ... just the crazy life they've been through together.

Joe Rogan 45:57 And is he allowed to travel? Did y- where did you meet him?

Lex Fridman 46:00 Uh, in... He came down to Austin.

Joe Rogan 46:02 Really?

Lex Fridman 46:03 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 46:03 And where does he live? Can you say?

Lex Fridman 46:05 In, uh, s- uh, San Diego. Yeah, or something like that.

Joe Rogan 46:07 Uh-huh.

Lex Fridman 46:07 Like California. I, I forgot. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 46:09 So, he can travel freely?

Lex Fridman 46:10 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-

Joe Rogan 46:26 He never witnessed it?

Lex Fridman 46:28 No.

Joe Rogan 46:28 Really?

Lex Fridman 46:28 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?

Joe Rogan 46:46 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 46:46 He was protected, he was treated like royalty. There was no pressure. He nee- like, made sure that it's, uh, frictionless and, and comfortable for him to do the transportation. So-

Joe Rogan 46:56 So he was just flying the coke in?

Lex Fridman 46:58 Uh, coke and weed in large amounts back and forth. The, the s- the violence he's had is when he's being chased and he's been chased quite a bit by the police. So like, like, he doesn't shoot back, but he's trying not to die from being shot. And there's all these... (laughs) Uh, it is great. So the... I mean, Barry Seal has s- similar stories. You have to fly really low.

Joe Rogan 47:23 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 47:23 You have to do all this kind of crazy shit.

Joe Rogan 47:25 To avoid radar?

Lex Fridman 47:25 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 47:26 Right?

Lex Fridman 47:26 Yeah. So you have to, yeah, you have to know what you're doing. You have to take big risks. I mean, there's many times where he had to crash and then run through the jungle and like the, you know, that kind of stuff, like the usual.

Joe Rogan 47:35 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 47:36 The usual thing you would expect from many, many years of (laughs) transporting drugs. And he's always has this goofy, happy, like, smile on his face, just joyful. Uh, escaped from prison five times. Um, but from a, uh, you know, since actually doing that interview, a bunch of people have written me, like, they were, uh, in jail with him, uh, in prison with him. Like, they, everybody speaks really highly of him. It's kind of interesting. Like, except people who are like, "Uh, he aided in the transport." Th- you know, he aided in the suffering of many people by giving them drugs. And, and there's a lot of sort of-

Joe Rogan 48:11 Yeah. That's... I, I, I get... That, that one's a slippery one because I feel like though I... My opinion, particularly about cocaine, I think cocaine should be legal.

Lex Fridman 48:23 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 48:24 100%. Uh, I think marijuana's l- should be legal. It's kind of legal in a lot of places. Alcohol is legal everywhere. Cocaine is arguably better for you than those th- well, well, not marijuana, but better for you than alcohol. And the problem with cocaine is the fact that it's illegal. So you're getting cocaine that's been stepped on, cocaine that has things like fentanyl in it, that's ca- causing people to overdose. If they got ahold of pure cocaine and made supposedly educated decisions, if you could educate people. Like we- we've educated people somewhat about alcohol, right? We know not to drink and drive. We know alcohol can cause liver damage and it could fuck you up, and, you know, drink moderately. That's all... These narratives are all-... constantly distributed, right? Th- We should have done the same thing with cocaine.

Lex Fridman 49:12 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 49:12 Like, I'm not interested in cocaine, but I think cocaine should be legal. I really do. I mean, it's, I... So many fucking people do it and they're getting it from these weird sources where you, you really have no idea what's actually in it. You're not testing it.

Lex Fridman 49:28 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 49:28 You know, and it... I, I... It's infuriating for, for adults, for grown adults. They should be able to make informed decisions. And if they just had pure cocaine, which they would be able to get if it was legal, so there's stepped on bullshit that people are getting at, it'd probably be a lot better for you. Have you ever had him on your show?

Lex Fridman 49:44 Mm-mm.

Joe Rogan 49:45 You should have him on your show.

Lex Fridman 49:46 Definitely.

Joe Rogan 49:47 You know who he is? The guy-

Lex Fridman 49:48 Yep.

Joe Rogan 49:48 ... from Columbia?

Lex Fridman 49:48 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 49:49 He's brilliant. And his perspective is incredible. It's very refreshing because here you got a, a guy who's a professor at Columbia who talks openly about responsible drug use, that he uses drugs and he enjoys them.

Lex Fridman 50:02 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 50:02 And he's a brilliant man. And he doesn't... He's not wasted his life at all. It's not ruined him at all. He was a clinical researcher and before, before he was a researcher, he was of the opinion that drugs are bad. And he bought into all the propaganda about drugs and he's like, "There's no way to use them right. You're gonna get addicted. It's gonna fuck you up." But along the way, doing actual research, he became to understand what they actually do to you and how they could be used responsibly.

Lex Fridman 50:30 And he, he talks about heroin too, right?

Joe Rogan 50:32 Yeah. He uses heroin.

Lex Fridman 50:33 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 50:33 Sniffs heroin.

Lex Fridman 50:34 Yeah. So that might not (laughs) be right for everyone, but we should at least do really good science on who is it right for, what are the protocols, how to do it in a healthy way, all that kind of stuff.

Joe Rogan 50:42 Well, we know how... Do you know how many people are on OxyContin right now? How many people are on oxycodone? And how many people have back pains and their doctor's prescribed some opiates and they take them on a regular basis? I would like to know, wh- let's, let's find out. How many people in the United States regularly take prescribed opiates? Because there's very little difference between opiates prescribed in pill form and heroin. The difference is, again, with heroin, you're getting it from some fucking crazy sources and you don't know what's in it.

Lex Fridman 51:13 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 51:14 If you get oycodone or OxyContin and the, the various pills that you get opiates in, you're getting it... At least you're getting a pharmaceutical grade version of it.

Lex Fridman 51:24 And then Jordan Peterson went through hell because of uh-

Joe Rogan 51:26 Benzodiazepines.

Lex Fridman 51:27 ... benzodiazepines, yeah.

Joe Rogan 51:27 Yeah, that's even differently, 'cause that, that's an anti-anxiety medication.

Lex Fridman 51:31 Yeah. But that's also being over-pres... I mean, not over-prescribed, but pr- prescribed judiciously.

Joe Rogan 51:36 Okay. Let's see here.

Lex Fridman 51:38 Number of prescriptions.

Joe Rogan 51:39 Holy shit! Holy shit! Let's go to 2016. Two hundred and fourteen million, eight hundred and eighty-one thousand, six hundred and twenty-two prescriptions.

Lex Fridman 51:53 Wait, what? (laughs)

Joe Rogan 51:55 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 51:55 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 51:55 Just look at that number. Okay, let's just go to 2019 'cause it drops quite a bit. But it's still... Because they, they, they tighten down the regulations and there's a, a lot of documentaries about the abuse of it but in 2019 it's quite a bit less, but it's still 153,260,450 prescriptions.

Lex Fridman 52:16 50% of the population. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 52:17 For opioids. Yeah.

Lex Fridman 52:18 What's, what's the map look like? Rate maps? Is there a map of the United States that's kinda connecting to that? (laughs)

Joe Rogan 52:22 Listen, listen to this. The opioid dispensing rate per 100 persons, 46.7, but in 2016 it's 66.5. So for every 100 persons in 2016, 66 of them-

Lex Fridman 52:39 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 52:39 ... were taking opioids.

Lex Fridman 52:41 That's-

Joe Rogan 52:42 That's fucking wild. I mean, and that is a, a financial boom. Can you imagine the amount of money they're making off of this?

Lex Fridman 52:52 And the amount of suffering that's behind those numbers.

Joe Rogan 52:54 Yeah. It's crazy. It's really qu- The three waves of the rise of opioid overdose deaths.

Lex Fridman 53:04 Wow.

Joe Rogan 53:04 Heroin's way down there compared to synthetic opioids and the other shit.

Narrator 53:11 Fentanyl.

Joe Rogan 53:11 Yeah. Fentanyl's the big one, right? That's just killing people left and right. Fentanyl is... What is it? Something like 100 times stronger than, than heroin? Some- something bananas like that. So-

Lex Fridman 53:24 Yeah, I mean that's the argument Roger Rees uses is like, this is, this has never been... The war on drugs, this should never have been illegal.

Joe Rogan 53:32 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 53:32 Uh, and, and then obviously he ties it into like, the CIA and the, the, uh, Clintons with Mena, Arkansas, with Barry Seal. There's a lot of interesting stories that... I mean, to me, I'm not actually that... Like, with Oliver North, I'm not familiar with all of that world, especially just coming from the Soviet Union. I wasn't... I didn't have this history of... There's a lot of shady shit that happened- (laughs)

Joe Rogan 53:55 Oh, yeah.

Lex Fridman 53:56 ... in the past few decades-

Joe Rogan 53:57 Oh, yeah.

Lex Fridman 53:57 ... that I've not kind of tuned my mind to. Uh-

Joe Rogan 54:01 Well, they, they were aware that billions and billions of dollars were being made.

Lex Fridman 54:05 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 54:05 And so rogue elements of government agencies participated in the trafficking of this and they funneled that money into black operations, you know, like they did with the Sandinistas and the Contras-

Lex Fridman 54:17 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 54:17 ... versus the Contras. The, the... But they, they've been doing that forever. They've been doing that forever. And y- if you, if you thought about drug use and drug illegality and you scaled it down... I always like to scale things down to a preposterous number. So if there was just the three of us on the world-

Lex Fridman 54:33 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 54:34 ... why would we make anything illegal? If it was just the three of us, just three, three guys in this room, you, me, and Jamie, we're all grown adults.

Lex Fridman 54:42 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 54:43 We all... I- imagine if Jamie decided that he's the police officer and if he catches you with heroin, he's gonna lock you in a cage.

Lex Fridman 54:49 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 54:49 It'll be preposterous.

Lex Fridman 54:51 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 54:51 We'd have to pull Jamie aside. We have to go, "Jamie, well, you can't lock Lex up in jail 'cause he wants to use heroin. This is crazy."

Lex Fridman 54:56 But what if, what if I get violent when I drink? And then w- you would all agree that we don't let, let Lex drink because he gets violent.

Joe Rogan 55:04 Would you? Wouldn't you just say, "Let's stay the fuck away from Lex when he is drinking?"

Lex Fridman 55:09 I don't know.

Joe Rogan 55:09 Listen, it depends. Like, you should be charged with... Listen, we all, we already have laws-

Lex Fridman 55:15 By the way, I'm a friendly drunk. I'm not saying-

Joe Rogan 55:17 He is a friendly drunk.

Lex Fridman 55:18 This is very... (laughs)

Joe Rogan 55:19 We all, we already have laws for crimes, but do we really need laws for substances that could potentially-

Lex Fridman 55:27 Nah.

Joe Rogan 55:27 ... cause you to commit crimes? Because if you get drunk, and you're a friendly drunk, like you are in real life, and you just laugh and we have a good time, then that's fine. But if you get drunk and you go out there and you wanna fight the security guards and you wanna go across the street to 7-Eleven and kick somebody's ass, you know, like, the problem is the actions. The problem is not the substance itself. The problem is what, what are you doing when you're on these substances? Well, we already have laws to stop you from doing those things. Are we saying that if you drink alcohol that it's impossible for you to control your violent urges? Well, you have a problem with violent urges. It's, it's nothing really to do with alcohol.

Lex Fridman 56:02 Yeah. Uh, this, this gets into that, uh, Michael Malice anarchy question.

Joe Rogan 56:06 Yes.

Lex Fridman 56:07 Is, is then, do you, uh, do you, should you even have an army to prot- a police force to protect?

Joe Rogan 56:12 Michael goes so deep with this stuff.

Lex Fridman 56:13 He goes, he says, like, "Give,"

Joe Rogan 56:14 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 56:15 "... don't. Everything should be legal. There should not be rules at all."

Joe Rogan 56:18 Does he have a gun?

Lex Fridman 56:20 (laughs) It's, he's in New York. He doesn't have a gun. He doesn't even know how to-

Joe Rogan 56:23 He lives here now?

Lex Fridman 56:24 He is, not only is he, well, he, doesn't officially live here. Yeah, I think he moves here September 1st. Not only does he live here, but he's, like, gonna move, like, next door to me.

Joe Rogan 56:32 Yay.

Lex Fridman 56:34 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 56:34 Good. I like it.

Lex Fridman 56:37 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 56:37 You two together are hilarious, by the way.

Lex Fridman 56:38 I, I, I don't, I don't even know what that... Yeah, that's-

Joe Rogan 56:41 He's a little shit stirrer, that guy.

Lex Fridman 56:42 Yeah, he is. And he's brilliant at it.

Joe Rogan 56:44 (laughs) Yes.

Lex Fridman 56:44 And he's also just, like, one of the most well-read-

Joe Rogan 56:47 Yes.

Lex Fridman 56:47 ... one of the most brilliant people I've ever talked to, which is hilarious because he has all of these, uh, sometimes literally masks that he can put on and take off. It's like the most masterful troll I've ever, uh, encountered in my life.

Joe Rogan 57:00 He's spent a lot of time on the internet and he, he knows how to stir some shit.

Lex Fridman 57:03 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 57:03 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 57:04 He's usually classy about it. But-

Joe Rogan 57:06 Yes, he's great. I love him. I think he's, I think he's amazing. But, you know, he's, uh, and also, I don't know anybody like him.

Lex Fridman 57:13 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 57:14 You know, just one-

Lex Fridman 57:14 Let, let's celebrate the weirdos. It's like, uh-

Joe Rogan 57:17 Yes. Yes.

Lex Fridman 57:17 ... Tim Dillon. There's, there's a few people-

Joe Rogan 57:19 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 57:19 ... that are just like, y-

Joe Rogan 57:21 They must be protected.

Lex Fridman 57:22 They must be protected. They're uniquely... It makes you happy to be part of this civilization 'cause, like, that thing exists.

Joe Rogan 57:29 Yeah, they're my favorite.

Lex Fridman 57:30 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 57:30 I love, I love weirdos.

Lex Fridman 57:32 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 57:32 Yeah. I really do. I celebrate them and I try to boost their signal as much as possible. I think, uh, I think we need 'em. We need weirdos. As long as they're nice.

Lex Fridman 57:42 Yeah, it's, it's, I always wonder, like, 'cause of Elon Musk. I wonder, um, in each industry there, there's like a rare moment when, that there's, like, this weird shooting star, this glimmering weird thing that, uh, that happens. One of my, um, I've been obsessed watching soccer lately, football.

Joe Rogan 58:02 Really?

Lex Fridman 58:03 For real.

Joe Rogan 58:03 Do you know Khabib is gonna play so- well, football. He's gonna play soccer now?

Lex Fridman 58:07 Wh- what, what do you mean? Professionally?

Joe Rogan 58:09 Yes.

Lex Fridman 58:10 What?

Joe Rogan 58:10 Yeah, he just signed to, uh, a soccer team.

Lex Fridman 58:14 Wh- what? (laughs)

Joe Rogan 58:14 Yeah, that's what he wants to do.

Lex Fridman 58:16 Really?

Joe Rogan 58:16 That was part, yeah, one of his dreams.

Lex Fridman 58:18 Interesting.

Joe Rogan 58:18 Yeah, he-

Lex Fridman 58:19 It's like Michael Jordan playing baseball. Interesting.

Joe Rogan 58:21 I mean, I don't know how good he is. He might be really good.

Lex Fridman 58:25 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 58:25 I mean-

Lex Fridman 58:25 But people are gonna tune in to watch.

Joe Rogan 58:26 Yeah, they'll tune in to watch.

Lex Fridman 58:28 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 58:28 But, I mean, he's done fighting. He's like, "I'm done. I accomplished everything I wanted to accomplish. I told my mother I'd quit." He's made millions and millions of dollars and he's also been given millions and millions of dollars by all sorts of, like, very, very rich Muslim people-

Lex Fridman 58:42 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 58:42 ... who love him and they gifted him money, and he's just, and also, he lives very simply.

Lex Fridman 58:48 Very simply. And-

Joe Rogan 58:49 Drives a Toyota truck.

Lex Fridman 58:50 (laughs) I've been talking to a lot of Ru- Russians lately and they, people in Russia love him.

Joe Rogan 58:56 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 58:56 I would, I would love to talk to that guy in Russian only 'cause I-

Joe Rogan 59:00 Oh, I bet he would do it. You could have-

Lex Fridman 59:02 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 59:02 ... like, a subtitled version on YouTube.

Lex Fridman 59:04 Mm-hmm. 'Cause I think there's a certain way he speaks in English and there's a certain way he speaks in Russian.

Joe Rogan 59:09 Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Lex Fridman 59:10 And that, it's very different because he's not, still not comfortable with English. So he speaks, uh, like, semi-location in, in English.

Joe Rogan 59:17 Yeah. Send location.

Lex Fridman 59:18 Send location. Uh, which is (laughs)

Joe Rogan 59:21 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 59:22 Which is nice for intimidation, but it's a different thing. It's a different thing. In Russian, you could be more poetic.

Joe Rogan 59:27 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 59:27 You can be deeper, you can be more emotional. Like, he doesn't actually know how to be real and emotional in English yet. So it's, it takes... It's weird 'cause I have the same kind of, uh, leap you have to take to, to be able to be open to the full human experience in another langu- It's weird how you need to know the language well in order to experience the world in that language.

Joe Rogan 59:47 If you had to make a judgment between the two languages, which language do you think allows you to express yourself more eloquently?

Lex Fridman 59:55 Well, so, uh, 100% (laughs) Russian 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.

Joe Rogan 1:01:04 Really?

Lex Fridman 1:01:05 And swearing is a much richer part of the language.

Joe Rogan 1:01:08 So are Russians like American comedians?

Lex Fridman 1:01:11 Basically.

Joe Rogan 1:01:11 Really?

Lex Fridman 1:01:12 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-

Joe Rogan 1:01:24 Oh.

Lex Fridman 1:01:25 ... pain. Just not, we're not talking about professional comedians. We're talking about-

Joe Rogan 1:01:28 Right.

Lex Fridman 1:01:28 ... you get some vodka, you get a guitar, and you're just shooting the shit.

Joe Rogan 1:01:32 Right.

Lex Fridman 1:01:32 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.

Joe Rogan 1:04:45 Mm.

Lex Fridman 1:04:46 Like, how much of the culture am I missing that I'll never get a chance to truly deeply experience?

Joe Rogan 1:04:51 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-

Lex Fridman 1:05:14 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:05:14 ... apologizing to China.

Lex Fridman 1:05:15 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:05:16 I would love to hear, like, these billionaires that are apologizing to China after, you know, China... Like Jack Ma.

Lex Fridman 1:05:23 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:05:23 Like, you know that guy? They disappeared him for, like, four months.

Lex Fridman 1:05:25 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:05:25 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?

Lex Fridman 1:05:38 I don't even know if he cri- Did he criticize?

Joe Rogan 1:05:40 I believe he did.

Lex Fridman 1:05:40 Okay.

Joe Rogan 1:05:40 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.

Lex Fridman 1:06:05 But the censorship there and the surveillance, that's a perfect atmosphere for brilliant writing to emerge in the shadows, right?

Joe Rogan 1:06:14 Really?

Lex Fridman 1:06:14 Like, that's the same as the Soviet Union-

Joe Rogan 1:06:17 Hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:06:17 ... because people don't want to be... The human spirit doesn't want to be oppressed in this way.

Joe Rogan 1:06:20 But in the Soviet Union, it was never the kind of electronic-

Lex Fridman 1:06:23 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:06:23 ... censorship. See, the problem with electronic censorship is it's all entailing. You can't hide in a pub somewhere. You know what I'm saying? Like, you can't, like, uh, go into a basement and... I mean, you can, but the reality is most communication is done digitally. It's done online. And when they have their tentacles into all these servers and into everyone's phone and into everyone's computer, the consequences of communicating openly are very real.

Lex Fridman 1:06:55 Yeah, but... So, first of all, the surveillance is not perfect, but second of all, even without electronics, what surveillance used to look like is what is currently North Korea is you don't know who to trust.

Joe Rogan 1:07:09 Right.

Lex Fridman 1:07:09 You feel like everybody, your parents, your sister, your brother, your kids are all watching you. The surveillance-

Joe Rogan 1:07:14 Well, they all report on each other in North Korea.

Lex Fridman 1:07:16 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:07:16 They have to.

Lex Fridman 1:07:17 And so, like, that's... Like, it's... It basically takes a person who says, "I don't, I don't care. I'm willing to die for the things that are in my heart and I'm going to put them on paper. And I'm going to write some of the greatest literature, some of the greatest poetry ever written." I mean, that, that's kind of what I'm saying is I wish I was able to connect to-... that, uh, literature being written right now in China.

Joe Rogan 1:07:40 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:07:41 That probably is circulating and a lot of people know, but we just don't have a connection because, uh, China's a good example, uh, at least from the way I, I understand of there being a very big gap culturally and language-wise between America and China, uh, even bigger than I would say between, uh, America and Russia. So, like, it, it really is a leap of language, a leap of culture required to truly understand the people. And it's sad that we can't, or at, at least, I feel like that's a huge, um, learning curve, a huge burden to, to connect because these are like power centers. China's getting stronger and stronger and, uh, I believe, like, the way forward isn't through war, it's through, you know, through love, through connecting, through mixing the cultures and all that. But because of the language gap, that might be difficult. They have their own, uh, social networks. They have their own, like, they have their own internet, essentially. They have their own, like, in-house thing.

Joe Rogan 1:08:38 Yeah. But they have illegal songs you're not allowed to sing at karaoke. I mean, the-

Lex Fridman 1:08:42 (laughs) .

Joe Rogan 1:08:42 ... overwhelming censorship that they have.

Lex Fridman 1:08:44 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:08:45 And the overwhelming control that they have over the population is very different than what we, we tolerate currently. My concern over here is that we're moving towards some sort of social credit score, you know, and I think that's, uh, one of the big concerns that people have with vaccine passports and things along those lines, that it's a slippery slope-

Lex Fridman 1:09:04 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:09:04 ... and to inviting this kind of, uh, control over the population and to make it, to normalize it-

Lex Fridman 1:09:13 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:09:13 ... and to make it, you, you go from that to this and make it so that they have access to your whereabouts and because, you know, they need to track you for COVID-19 or COVID-23 or whatever the fuck it is when they ramp things up and make them even more intrusive than we have, we can get closer to what they have in China and it's fucking dangerous.

Lex Fridman 1:09:36 Yeah. It's terrifying because, uh, and pe- people have, for the most part, or are losing trust in, uh, our institutions and governments and being able to use something like a vaccine passport data to help us as opposed to limit our freedoms. And that's really disappointing because things like vaccine passports might be effective if it was done by, like, competent institutions. But, uh, right now, um, I would definitely be against something like that.

Joe Rogan 1:10:07 Well, the problem with it is you can still transmit it and you can still catch it. So if it was a vaccine passport for polio, okay, or the measles, okay. But you're talking about a vaccine passport that does not preve-... You're talking about a vaccine rather that does not prevent you from catching this disease, nor does it prevent you from spreading it.

Lex Fridman 1:10:24 Yeah, but-

Joe Rogan 1:10:24 So it doesn't make any sense.

Lex Fridman 1:10:25 ... the effectiveness of the vaccine is in that it, uh, significantly lowers your probability of dying. So that's the, the pro for the vaccine, right? Like that (laughs) that's a really important thing about the vaccine.

Joe Rogan 1:10:39 In the short term.

Lex Fridman 1:10:40 In the short... And the, everything about the long term we don't know.

Joe Rogan 1:10:43 We don't know. Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:10:44 I mean, it's, it's, it's, uh, it's, that's the discussion with ivermectin is like, what do we know about the long... Nothing. Uh, w- it's been used for a long time, but we still don't have a good understanding of long term positive or negative effects of ivermectin. We don't have a good understanding of positive and negative long term effects of mRNA vaccines.

Joe Rogan 1:11:04 But they have other things for therapeutics, like Regeneron, the monoclonal antibodies that show, uh, incredible effectiveness. There's other things that they do that, you know, help people when they have the disease.

Lex Fridman 1:11:15 But the... As far as I understand, I mean, the data on vaccines, it's like you, you have a set of solutions and the question is which one has the best ratio of, uh, uh, benefits to risks? It seems to me that the vaccine has the, is the best benefit to risk ratio. So in, in terms of... I mean, it's very confusing to me that we're, like, not opening schools and still behaving in certain parts of the United States like we're on lockdown even though there's vaccines. So, like that, that's really confusing to me because from my understanding, taking the vaccine significantly lowers your risk of death or go, uh, ending up in a hospital. So if, if anyone who wants to take the vaccine or is at risk, um, or wants to lower their risk of dying will take the vaccine. Everyone else accepts the risk of dying, great. Open up the society. I don't understand why, uh, it's not completely open now. So, like, you have full freedom. There's more than enough vaccines to take the vaccine. There's, uh, vaccines available, uh, to, uh, to be vaccinated and from that point, it's on you to decide what are the risks you're willing to accept.

Joe Rogan 1:12:29 Well, there's a lot of issues, right? There's, uh, certain companies who want to force people to be vaccinated and then there's-

Lex Fridman 1:12:37 Yeah. That's a, that's a problem.

Joe Rogan 1:12:38 ... there's the issues of side effects of vaccines and whether or not they're fully understood and es- p- particularly long term and whether or not they've been fully reported. And there's... And then also there's a lack of responsibility. The vaccine, uh, manufacturers don't have any responsibility in terms of, uh, what does or does not happen to someone once, you know, they can't be sued.

Lex Fridman 1:12:59 Yeah. So the problem is the source of information for the effectiveness of va- vaccines and the risks are coming from centralized institutions that have completely lost trust of the public.

Joe Rogan 1:13:13 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:13:13 So it's like, uh, you know... (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:13:16 Well, have you ever Googled like the, the lawsuits that are involved in the, the judgments against the very companies that have built these vaccines? It's, uh, some stunning-

Lex Fridman 1:13:27 Oh, like, uh, oh, against the companies? Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:13:28 Yeah. Some stunning corruption in the past and some horrible cases where they've shown to withhold evidence that-... you know, evidence and studies, and there's- it's just people don't trust pharmaceutical companies.

Lex Fridman 1:13:43 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:13:43 And they haven't for a long time.

Lex Fridman 1:13:44 And now there's a lot of money to be made to get people vaccinated-

Joe Rogan 1:13:48 That's an understatement.

Lex Fridman 1:13:48 ... and to make that public policy, right?

Joe Rogan 1:13:50 That's an understatement. Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:13:51 It's a huge amount of money. And so the incentives are not well-aligned, and then there's people who a- I mean, it's a- (sighs) there's not enough authentic strong leadership. You have something- somebody like Fauci, who, uh, basically, uh, nobody really trusts anymore, uh, uh, as being the chief communicator of how we proceed forward. Th- that's a huge problem. I still- I th-

Joe Rogan 1:14:17 But then you don't have just the fact that people don't trust him. You have the mainstream media ignoring all the things that he's done that would lead people to distrust him, particularly financing EcoHealth Alliance, which was responsible for gain-of-function research in Wuhan, which was responsible, perhaps, for the leak of this fucking virus in the first place.

Lex Fridman 1:14:38 Which, by the way, like if he was completely transparent about that, he was able to just talk about it normally li- like a human being, there's a lot of arguments to be- like there was a lot of interesting arguments about gain-of-function research for a long time. It's very difficult to understand whether it should be funded.

Joe Rogan 1:14:54 Right.

Lex Fridman 1:14:54 I think it's, uh, I think it definitely should not be funded. We should not be doing gain-of-function research.

Joe Rogan 1:15:00 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.

Lex Fridman 1:15:07 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.

Joe Rogan 1:15:23 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:15:24 And whenever he buys a lot of land, he's not very clear about communicating why he bought that land.

Joe Rogan 1:15:28 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:15:28 And so immediately conspiracy theories spring up that, uh, spread effectively through our Q friend-

Joe Rogan 1:15:35 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:15:35 ... 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-

Joe Rogan 1:15:48 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:15:48 ... 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.

Joe Rogan 1:16:52 Yeah, there's also a problem with people like him where they say things, they say these statements-

Lex Fridman 1:16:58 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:16:58 ... 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."

Lex Fridman 1:17:34 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:17:34 They don't say, "This is very confusing, and we're trying to figure it out as we go along."

Lex Fridman 1:17:40 "And this is the best course of action currently under the current amount of uncertainty."

Joe Rogan 1:17:45 Right. Right.

Lex Fridman 1:17:45 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.

Joe Rogan 1:17:56 Right.

Lex Fridman 1:17:56 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.

Joe Rogan 1:18:03 He talked about it in third person. He said, "If you criticize Andrew Fauci, you're criticizing science."

Lex Fridman 1:18:09 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.

Joe Rogan 1:18:29 Well, he's also been- he's used to communicating for most of his career without the internet.

Lex Fridman 1:18:35 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:18:35 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.

Lex Fridman 1:18:57 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-

Joe Rogan 1:19:18 Objectively.

Lex Fridman 1:19:19 ... 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