Lex Fridman: recommendation

Transcript context

…People that are making the case for American-born hires are usually not also supporting H-1B. It’s an extreme divide, and those people, they’re making that case are often not making it in a way that’s… Making it in quite a radical way, let’s put it this way. Yeah, yeah. But you have this interesting thing, you have a split between the sides that I’ve noticed, which is one side has all of the experts. And I’m using air quote for people listening to audio, I’m making quotes in the air with my fingers as vigorously as I can. One side has all the certified experts, the other side just has a bunch of people who are like, they know that something is wrong and they don’t quite know how to explain it. And what was so unusual about the Harvard UNC cases, by the way, in front of the Supreme Court is they actually had sophisticated lawyers for the first time in a long time actually put all this evidence together and actually put it in the public record. They actually had experts, which is just really rare. Generally what you get is you get… Because if you don’t have experts, what do you have? You know something is wrong, but you have primarily an emotional response. You feel it, but can you put it into the words and tables and charts that a certified expert can? No, you can’t, that’s not who you are. That doesn’t mean that you’re wrong, and it also doesn’t mean that you have less of a moral stance. And so, it’s just like, all right… Now, by the way, look, I think there are ways to square the circle, I think there’s a way to have our cake and eat it too, I think there’d be many ways to resolve this. I think, again, I think the way to do it is to look at these issues combined, look at DEI combined with high-skilled immigration. It so happens that DEI is under much more scrutiny today than it has been for probably 20 years, affirmative action is. The Supreme Court did just rule that it is not legal for universities to do that, they are still doing it, but they should stop. And then, there are more and more, you’ve seen more companies now also ditching their DEI programs, in part… That’s happening for a bunch of reasons, but it’s happening in part because a lot of corporate lawyers will tell you that the Supreme Court rulings in education either already apply to businesses, or it just is a clear foreshadowing the Supreme Court will rule on new cases that will ban in businesses. And so, there is a moment here to be able to look at this on both sides. Let me add one more nuance to it though, that makes it even more complicated. So, the cliché is we’re going to brain drain the world, you’ve heard that? We’re going to take all the smart people from all over the world, we’re going to bring them here, we’re going to educate them, and then we’re going to keep them, and then they’re going to raise their families here, create businesses here, create jobs here, right? In the cliché, that’s a super positive thing.…

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