Lex Fridman: belief

Transcript context

…Well, I mean, one of the big questions with the Roman emperors, and we’ve been talking about some of them, is why did so many seem to be either crazy or just sadists? I don’t know that there’s a good answer to that. I mean, people have theories. Oh, Caligula got a brain fever and changed after that or something. But I think there’s a lot of maybe truth in the notion that the ones who seem to go craziest quite often are the ones who become emperor at a young age. And there is something about that old cliche that absolute power corrupts absolutely, especially if your own personality isn’t really fully formed yet. You know what I’m saying? I think take anybody when they’re a teenager, if you all of a sudden said, you have unlimited power, what would that do to you? How would that warp your personality? I mean, look at all the… [inaudible 02:51:40] like the Disney stars who sort of go wrong or something because they get rich and famous at this very young age. Yeah. Fame, power, and even money, if you get way too much of it at a young age, I think we’re egotistical, narcissistic, all that kind of stuff as babies. And then when we clash with the world and we figure out the morality of the world, how to interact with others, that other people suffer in all kinds of ways, understand the cruelty, the beauty of the world, the fact that other people suffer in different ways, the fact that other people are also human and have different perspectives, all of that, in order to develop that, you shouldn’t be blocked off from the world, which power and money And fame can do. And conversely, a lot of the emperors we regard as, quote, “good emperors”, are the ones who become emperor at a middle-aged or something, where their personalities are fully formed, where they’re not going to really become different people. And so that works in that theory too. I mean, I don’t think it’s absolute. And of course, the greatest exception is Octavian Augustus, who starts as rise to power as a teenager. Somehow doesn’t seem to go nuts.…

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