Lex Fridman: uncertainty

Transcript context

…er and not just mull over what an answer might be. And so I became a particle physicist. It was difficult without having, you know, family mentors or anything like that, but, but, you know, I managed. And that actually is why, well, I’m here and why I have spent a fair bit of my time writing books and so forth, because I figure that there has to be some other kid out there in Iowa or Kansas, Montana, somewhere out in some little town without a lot of access to the kinds of thing that people, you know, who have highly educated parents do. And I’m hoping that, you know, some of them will have read some of the things I’ve written and will find their own path forward, because I found it very rewarding over the years. And you know, I’ve been doing this long enough that I’m, I’m sure this is true. I’ve had kids come up to me at the lab and say, “Hey, I’m a summer intern because I saw your video or read your book,” or, you know, whatever. So I know that at least I’ve made a small impact. I mean, I always would like to do more, and, you know, I appreciate the opportunity that your audience affords me ’cause I, I think it’s important to talk about these things. These are really cool, fascinating questions. They are unanswered, and they are just waiting for youngsters to come and spend some time thinking about them, ’cause one of your viewers might be one of the people who answer these questions that have stymied very smart people for decades. And we should also say that you’re a legit scientist. So what– we’ll mention Sean Carroll, who’s a legit scientist, legit physicist, but is also a good science communicator. Anyway, I did wanna mention, I don’t know if this is true, but I, I kind of heard you talk about this, that when you first showed up to Fermilab, you were, like, working crazy hours, working extremely hard- … eight AM to midnight. I did.…

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