Lex Fridman: recommendation

Transcript context

…Thanks for listening to this conversation with Jordan Jonas. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, let me try a new thing where I try to articulate some things I’ve been thinking about, whether prompted by one of your questions or just in general. If you’d like to submit a question including in audio and video form, go to lexfridman.com/ama. Now allow me to comment on the attempted assassination of Donald Trump on July 13th. First, as I’ve posted online, wishing Donald Trump good health after an assassination attempt is not a partisan statement. It’s a human statement. And I’m sorry if some of you want to categorize me and other people into blue and red bins. Perhaps you do it because it’s easier to hate than to understand. In this case it shouldn’t matter. But let me say once again that I am not right-wing nor left-wing. I’m not partisan. I make up my mind one issue at a time, and I try to approach everyone and every idea with empathy and with an open mind. I have and will continue to have many long-form conversations with people both on the left and the right. Now onto the much more important point, the attempted assassination of Donald Trump should serve as a reminder that history can turn on a single moment. World War I started with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. And just like that, one moment in history on June 18th, 1914 led to the death of 20 million people, half of whom were civilians. If one of the bullets on July 13th had a slightly different trajectory, where Donald Trump would end up dying in that small town in Pennsylvania, history would write a new dramatic chapter, the contents of which all the so-called experts and pundits would not be able to predict. It very well could have led to a civil war, because the true depth of the division in the country is unknown. We only see the surface turmoil on social media and so on. And it is events like the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand where we as a human species get to find out what the truth is of where people really stand. The task then is to try and make our society maximally resilient and robust as such to stabilizing events. The way to do that, I think, is to properly identify the threat, the enemy. It’s not the left or the right that are the “enemy,” extreme division itself is the enemy. Some division is productive. It’s how we develop good ideas and policies, but too much leads to the spread of resentment and hate that can boil over into destruction on a global scale. So we must absolutely avoid the slide into extreme division. There are many ways to do this, and perhaps it’s a discussion for another time. But at the very basic level, let’s continuously try to turn down the temperature of the partisan bickering and more often celebrate our obvious common humanity. aps it’s a discussion for another time. But at the very basic level, let’s continuously try to turn down the temperature of the partisan bickering and more often celebrate our obvious common humanity. Now let me also comment on conspiracy theories. I’ve been hearing a lot of those recently. I think they play an important role in society. They ask questions that serve as a check on power and corruption of centralized institutions. The way to answer the questions raised by conspiracy theories is not by dismissing them with arrogance and feigned ignorance, but with transparency and accountability. In this particular case, the obvious question that needs an honest answer is, why did the Secret Service fail so terribly in protecting the former president? The story we’re supposed to believe is that a 20-year-old untrained loner was able to outsmart the Secret Service by finding the optimal location on a roof for a shot on Trump from 130 yards away, even though the Secret Service snipers spotted him on the roof 20 minutes before the shooting and did nothing about it. This looks really shady to everyone. Why does it take so long to get to a full accounting of the truth of what happened? And why is the reporting of the truth concealed by corporate government speak? Cut the bullshit. What happened? Who fucked up and why? That’s what we need to know. That’s the beginning of transparency. And yes, the director of the US Secret Service should probably step down or be fired by the president, and not as part of some political circus that I’m sure is coming. But as a step towards uniting an increasingly divided and cynical nation. Conspiracy theories are not noise, even when they’re false. They are a signal that some shady, corrupt, secret bullshit is being done by those trying to hold on to power. Not always, but often. Transparency is the answer here, not secrecy. If we don’t do these things, we leave ourselves vulnerable to singular moments that turn the tides of history. Empires do fall, civil wars do break out, and tear apart the fabric of societies. This is a great nation, the most successful collective human experiment in the history of earth. And letting ourselves become extremely divided risks destroying all of that. So please ignore the political pundits, the political grifters, clickbait media, outrage fueling politicians on the right and the left who try to divide us. We’re not so divided. We’re in this together. As I’ve said many times before, I love you all. This is a long comment. I’m hoping not to do comments this long in the future and hoping to do many more. So I’ll leave it here for today, but I’ll try to answer questions and make comments on every episode. If you would like to submit questions, like I mentioned, including audio and video form, go to lexfridman.com/ama, and now let leave you with some words from Ralph Waldo Emerson, ” Adopt the pace of nature. Her secret is patience.” Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.…

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