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Lex Fridman: commitment

20 May 2025 Lex Fridman Podcast #469 – Oliver Anthony: Country Music, Blue-Collar America, Fame, Money, and Pain

“I’ve talked to great engineers about this, Jim Keller is a legendary engineer, Elon, Elon Musk is another example, that you need that … I don’t know what’s the nice term for it, but you need the asshole, because you want to get to the ground truth of things, to the first principle of things.”

— Lex Fridman

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Speaker
Lex Fridman
Attribution
Verified speaker
Claim type
commitment
Recorded
20 May 2025
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

Transcript context

…Yeah. So, then these companies just slowly fall apart, and disintegrate, because they’re so worried about structure and … Like, God, man, even in America today, our culture has become … Because so many big corporations own and manage everything that we live under, like, food, agriculture, healthcare, social media, it’s all in corporate structures, that it’s almost, like, a lot of the problems we find ourselves in now with society, I think are like … It’s almost, like, corporate HR has been implemented into our whole thought process of everything. I think that’s what you’re touching on, though. It’s hard to be a human, and be a good little corporate employee at the same time. And as our whole society moves more into becoming, basically, one big corporation, it’s, like, you don’t want to piss the HR lady off. So, it’s a lot easier for me to just beep boop. We’re all turning into robots. I’ve talked to great engineers about this, Jim Keller is a legendary engineer, Elon, Elon Musk is another example, that you need that … I don’t know what’s the nice term for it, but you need the asshole, because you want to get to the ground truth of things, to the first principle of things. Like, how do we simplify? How do we make it more efficient? How do we move faster? How do we get shit done? And that has no place for this polite speak. And then other great team members swoop in, and repair the damage that the tornado has done. Do you think that’s … Because I’m not super well-versed about all this. So, I’m probably dumb to even mention it, but this guy who’s been helping me with doing a documentary, he’s been following me around since the very first show, August of ’23. His background was doing promotional videos for Boeing. Like, for on their new spacecraft to pitch it to whoever. And so, we touched base a little bit on Boeing, and, of course, they’re having a lot of problems now it sounds like. And he was comparing that with SpaceX, or with … I think it’s that, exactly what we touched on with that thought process of that dehumanization within companies. I think that’s what, ultimately, causes maybe … I don’t know if there’s a connection there, or not, but it seems like Boeing would be more of that … They don’t have that tornado. They’re very … He was telling me even just with his protocols, and some of the people he worked with, like, everything’s just very, “Lightly touch everything. Don’t touch anything too hard.”…

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