Lex Fridman: uncertainty

Transcript context

…Play with them a lot. … sense that. I mean, I’ve just seen you with snakes and they must sense in you the camaraderie. I don’t know. You have a way of speaking to animals and about animals like there’s zero danger. Well, from my outsider perspective, it seems like a lot of them are full of danger if you’re not communicating to them correctly. With snakes, I think it’s more of a “the highway is dangerous, but you can drive safely” thing. I know what I’m doing, so I’m working with a snake that can’t envenomate me and is small, so I can allow it to freak out. And then if I can get it into my hands and warm it up and it goes, “Ooh, it’s nice in here.” And of course, like you said, I’m not scared and so the snake is going… They are very sensitive to that and so he’s going, “Okay, this isn’t so bad.” You can chill him out. But I don’t think snakes have any camaraderie. I think that whales, monkeys, elephants—I think that they can sense. They can say, “Okay, this person’s trying to help me get out of this net. I’m gonna relax and not kill them.” I think you have that dynamic then very much so.…

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