Lex Fridman: evaluation

Transcript context

…Yeah. Prime example. Yeah. Underneath that, it’s, like, Chernobyl, which is this nuclear power plant that melted down. I feel like the bureaucracy needs politeness and civility, and paperwork to function, and then atrocities can happen underneath that. So, everybody, people in power, with a smile on their face can just do horrific things, and then give propaganda that, “Look, it’s rainbows and sunshine, and unicorns.” Yeah. So, people that are rude, and I’m starting to awaken to this a little bit, like, you need a little … Like, Tom Waits says, “I like my town with a little drop of poison. ” You need some poison, some swearing, some meanness, some bullshit, some intensity to shake up a system, because when it converges towards this polite bureaucracy, the atrocities can happen and hidden away. And what’s probably the most terrifying to me is that that politeness is just theatrical whereas it emulates the respect that we would normally give each other in society if we were healthy and functional.…

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