Lex Fridman: belief

Transcript context

…I’d rather not have it, but I certainly have lived with it this far. There’s a danger that negativity… For me, that negativity and consciousness become the same thing, you know? And sometimes I have to fight to not just be perpetually negative, and that can be part of the human struggle for lots of people and certainly has been for me. I think if you’re trying to do, you know, good stuff and you’re reflective inevitably, and, you know, you live in this world of constant, constant criticisms by the internet. Of course, you know, everyone who ever puts something on the internet, be it a picture of themselves or any kind of work they’ve made or whatever it is, is gonna get 50 good comments and one bad comment. Remember the bad comment. So that, and that, that becomes fuel for the negative voice. I don’t know anyone that’s strong enough not to… You know, we all, you know, at some level you should just measure that stuff in weight, not in quality. But of course we just focus on the quality. And I do think in general, as you get older, that’s the real challenge for people. You can see the different trajectories people choose to take. But it’s easy to slip into cynicism and negativity, into this Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground, nihilistic kind of worldview. I think the heroic action to take with time is to become more optimistic, to see more good. I think that- I agree…

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