Lex Fridman: belief

Transcript context

…You call it disarming, which I don’t know that I am, but disarming basically means you’re taking down their shields also. And you know when people have a shield and you try to give them comfort. I had zero of that problem with Elon Musk. It was disarming to me, which is I kept waiting to say, okay, he’s not going to, they’ve got a shell or he won’t do that. But he was almost crazily open and did not seem to want to be spinning or hiding or faking things. And I’ve been lucky. Doudna was that way. Steve Jobs was that way. But you have to put in time too. In other words, you can’t say, okay, there’s a one-hour interview and I’m going to break down every wall. It’s like on your fifth visit. Yes. Well, actually, there’s one of the things that my situation, you learn, fifth visit is very nice, but sometimes you don’t get a fifth visit. Sometimes it’s just the first date. And I think what it boils down to, and we said disarming, but there’s something about this person that you trust. I think a lot of it just boils down to trust in some deep human way. I think with many other people I’ve spoken with, sometimes the trust happens after the interview, which is really sad because it’s like, oh man. I’ve never been in your situation where I have a show. I usually have-…

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