Lex Fridman: belief

Transcript context

…d to be an actor coming in and saying, “Hey, in the event of when the big one hits, here’s what you should do. Focus on doing these three things,” and I’m paraphrasing but I encourage you to watch it. I’m paraphrasing but she said, “Get inside. Stay inside and stay tuned.” That was it. And, “Get inside, go away from the windows. Stay inside. Don’t go outside until you get the all clear, and stay tuned. Follow our account on Instagram and Twitter.” And at the very end of this short PSA, her closing words were, “We’ve got this.” And it was so disturbing in that it was so completely out of touch with reality. It creates this kind of false sense of security that, okay, well, it’s like here’s what you do when a tornado hits or when a big storm hits, and categorizing the big one, a nuclear attack within that same kind of preparedness that you would want people to have in the event of a natural disaster of some sort. And it is reflective of the carelessness with which people in our government, that careless attitude that people in our government have towards nuclear war and a nuclear attack, even as they set us up for failure in pushing us closer and closer to the brink of a nuclear war occurring, whether it be an intentional attack, or as we saw during the last Cold War, one that could be launched unintentionally. How many near misses were there during the last Cold War? I saw this documentary called The Man Who Saved the World, and it was some mid-level officer who happened to be on duty and who didn’t do what he was told in launching the nuclear missiles because of what they thought was an incoming attack, and it turned out to be a complete mistake or misread on the radar, but that’s what we’re facing. But by the way, there’s so many things to say there, but one of the things that Annie Jacobsen details is just how organized the machinery of all of this is, where the humans involved don’t have to think. They just follow orders. There’s a very clear set of steps you take, and there’s very few places where you can inject your humanity and be like, “Wait a minute, what’s the big picture of this?” The only person that can think is the… That can think is the president of the United States. The president of the United States gets six minutes after the warning. The early warning system says, whether it’s false or not, says that, “We believe that there’s been a nuclear weapon launched. You have six minutes before you can make the decision of launch back, initiate.” And to me, that’s what I’m voting based on, in the current situation. Right.…

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